The problem is not democracy (everyone getting an equal vote) but representative democracy (everyone getting a vote on a person once every N years who then gets the power to do what they want which they hopefully did not lie about in order to get those votes).
Delegation (everyone getting an equal vote on all issues but being able to designate someone else to vote on their behalf on any given issue without forfeiting the right to vote directly on other issues) does not suffer this problem and is arguably more democratic.
Additionally certain forms of representative democracy make this problem worse like first-past-the-post voting resulting in strategic voting, i.e. voting not for the person you think best represents your interests but most likely to win while still representing some of your interests, encouraging politicians to do the bare minimum and avoid taking strong stances on divisive issues to remain "electable".
The problem is that representative democracy centralizes power in a ruling class (sometimes literally, due to nepotism and dynastic reputations) whereas delegation maintains decentralized power while allowing for that power to be temporarily centralized (e.g. many people delegating to the same individual) but always with the understanding that everyone is free to reclaim their power by withdrawing it from their delegate on a case by case basis. In Germany a variant of this was promoted by the Pirate Party under the label "liquid democracy" - although they of course heavily focused on a possible technological implementation of it rather than promoting the idea itself first.
I've been thinking about something similar. Before the internet, this sort of system would be extremely impractical, and representative democracy is a pretty obvious choice, given the limitations of the time. But now, with the internet, it's a lot easier to handle this in a fluid way with little friction.
The only downside might be that deep discussions of nuanced topics between the delegates might be useless if most votes ignore the discussion. Compromise might get a lot harder, and nuance and depth might be lost. On the other hand, it might also kill corporate lobbying. It's worth a try, and definitely an improvement over first-past-the-post systems and those where politicians are bought by corporate interests.
The problem with "liquid democracy" is that it's unappealing to those who would have to implement it because it takes away their power (and financial prospects in the form of lobbying). It's the same problem as with trying to replace first-past-the-post voting (i.e. why should the major parties that always get to be in government do something that would give the smaller parties a better chance).
Delegation (everyone getting an equal vote on all issues but being able to designate someone else to vote on their behalf on any given issue without forfeiting the right to vote directly on other issues) does not suffer this problem and is arguably more democratic.
Additionally certain forms of representative democracy make this problem worse like first-past-the-post voting resulting in strategic voting, i.e. voting not for the person you think best represents your interests but most likely to win while still representing some of your interests, encouraging politicians to do the bare minimum and avoid taking strong stances on divisive issues to remain "electable".
The problem is that representative democracy centralizes power in a ruling class (sometimes literally, due to nepotism and dynastic reputations) whereas delegation maintains decentralized power while allowing for that power to be temporarily centralized (e.g. many people delegating to the same individual) but always with the understanding that everyone is free to reclaim their power by withdrawing it from their delegate on a case by case basis. In Germany a variant of this was promoted by the Pirate Party under the label "liquid democracy" - although they of course heavily focused on a possible technological implementation of it rather than promoting the idea itself first.