I think it's more that our governments only leap to patch up some of those chips and cracks when big biz rolls thru, even though "the little guy" has been raising it as an issue for decades.

But then again, democracy absolutely fails in that you have to already be rich to be a politician most of the time and people tend to vote extremely tribally by party rather than on policies (lest they accidentally vote for the wrong party!)

The truth is in many democracies none of the parties are prepared to do what needs to be done most of the time, nor is the average voter prepared to accept any form of compromise or abstain from uninformed, knee-jerk and tribally motivated reactions to proposed policy.

Aka we only have our dumb selves to blame.