We don't necessarily have a functioning representative democracy, though - too much power is held by lobbyists, the fact that politicians can lie to the population, and the fact that our votes don't 1:1 elect officials due to gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Too much power is given to money and wealth. This has held true for thousands of years in Western civilisation (back in Ancient Greece, wealth was measured by output, the Pentekosiomedimnoi being the aristocrats).
The whole setup seems more and more like a grand cash grab.
The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 was enacted because it was "too hard" for Congress to rezone/redistribute House of Representative members. This measure, and ones like it both in law and in business, create large bureaucratic organizations that move slowly and are prized for their stability, which is another word for "zero accountability or disruption."
Very few people set out to have growing inequality of resources or to amass power for the sake of doing it, though of course the people in power now seek to keep it for the sole reason of not wanting to lose it (they frame it as "too big to fail," "stability is important," and so forth).
It's just pure inertia. We went away from smaller regional governments that reports up to a lightly-empowered federal one with a lot of individual liberty step by step, for convenience and for "safety" (any number of military or police actions, foreign and domestic), and we get what we deserve.
