As an individual welfare recipient, my "ownership and control" of the welfare system is effectively zero.

The majority of people, who happen to have a job, who don't want to pay for people who do not have a job, but who also have no interest in more competition from the bottom, are effectively in control of the welfare system, immigration law, and many other regulations that prevent people from exercising their right to work. It's a racket.

> As an individual welfare recipient, my "ownership and control" of the welfare system is effectively zero.

No, it isn't. Every citizen has the same share of ownership and control as every other. One person, one vote and all that.

That’s not mutually exclusive with a single person’s vote having effectively zero effect in and of itself.

Also I’d argue that even if technically everyone only gets one vote, some people exert much more control than that by influencing voters, politicians, etc, through their wealth or other sources of power.

One person one vote doesn't mean equal power, it means the power distribution isn't nailed down by law.

It is rather apparent that some people - and certainly some groups - have a lot more power than others in any country. Voting just means the power is a little more mobile, and can shift over time.

1 randomly selected citizen has, practically speaking, no ownership or control of the welfare system.

"One person, one vote" also has the obvious problem if similarly situated people constitute 5% of the population and it takes 51% to effect a change in policy.

This also provides a reasonable explanation for why existing policies are so ineffective -- politicians still want your vote (5% is 5%), but they also don't want to lose the votes of the other 95%, so if they can convince the 5% that they're getting something when they're really getting nothing (or worse than nothing), they get elected again.