The reality is fine-grained democratic voting on every issue does not scale to today's world. People do not have the time, attention, education and understanding to vote properly on everything, and when you add in personal biases, lack of risk management, short-term outlooks, majority power, and special interests; things break down completely.
Many of these things which could improve civic life do not really need a voting process. It's not a system for the people (not anymore) but stays around because it removes accountability and provides regulatory capture for the few who profit. Of course, as you say, the very people who do not take action are the ones that need to take action for this to get better. I do not have an answer for that.
Tell it to Switzerland. The most recent referendum included such important issues as "should the government offer subsidies to farmers who leave the horns on their cows".
Having lived in Switzerland a while, direct democracy may not be perfect but it definitely works. It might not work in America but it works.
Switzerland is also around 8M people which is smaller than some cities in bigger countries so it barely qualifies for the scale argument.
I still hold my point that the public may get "outraged" or whine about the problem, but they won't act or vote in alignment with that outrage until it actually impacts them. The homeless/opioid epidemic finally crossed that threshold and so they did. But that just proves my point that it's the public that must act/vote and see themselves as the responsible party, and not wait for the government to solve everything.