This is very fair and I generally agree.

Don't read following as a caricature/driveby, really appreciated the thought and framing and it wins out over what I'm about to say, I'm just putting my thoughts after 2 minutes musing as concisely as possible:

There is something to be said for that's how stuff works today.

i.e. "a complex apparatus of legal jousting and machinations by small groups of people" can be reframed from (my rewording) "confusing thing I'm excluded from" as "people who give a shit doing the work to change things" - if it was popular to get rid of food stalls in LA*, should be pretty easy, people are pretty plugged in these days

There's the impossible extreme of "we live poll everything all the time", and you've made me really curious about a shift in that direction looks like.

* it wouldn't be, they're not, like, disheveled people slaving over a stove with unclearly sourced hot dogs. Generally, juice and fruit outside park entrance, ethnic food under tent next to sidewalk, miniature hot dog stand at sporting event. If someone said something like they did in real life, you'd ignore it because it's fringe, or, tell them to move to Newport Beach (ritzy suburb). Even just ~15 years ago, in Buffalo, it was perfectly polite to say "sounds like you should move to the suburbs."