This prioritization of issues (where for a rational actor, economics will most often be at the top), is why democratic republic systems don't allow democracy to permeate less "important" issues.

Citizens don't get to vote on how much surveillance they want, they chose from 2 big bundles of unrelated positions, with surveillance-related positions buried within. The 2 parties might both have unpopular opinions on surveillance, the issue is comparatively not pressing enough to have any influence on their candidacy.

So, can we say that we hit the scalability limits of indirect democracy?

I think it can be satisfactory under certain conditions. City-scale works because people can vote with their feet (the binary Keynesian beauty contest has an escape hatch), diversity is somewhat limited, and there is somewhat more accountability (the mayor lives in the same city, walks the same streets as its inhabitants).

But it's certainly not democratic at the scale of a country-continent such as the USA. Their citizens don't have the freedom to vote with their feet (even less than other countries due to the unique tax on citizenship that follows them around the world), and city/countryside people have opposing opinions on many important issues.

College-debt cancellation is currently being discussed on a shallow level, so it’s easier to discuss. Mass surveillance needs some in-depth thought that requires a principled approach to simple questions like ‘if you are not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?’. Most people can’t make it past that one point, so it’s an intellectually stunted topic at the moment.

If we sat here and said we will cancel college debt, refund everyone that actually paid for college their money, refund those who paid their college loans, then refund everyone that went to college ever with an inflation-adjusted amount, then we come to the core of the issue of the price of education, and what is fair when you give amnesty to one group of college goers but not others. The true debate is about fairness, and on a technical level, what is affordable, and lastly who bears responsibility of giving and taking loans. Anyone truly ready to discuss this in-depth? Or do we just want to say the rent is too damn high?

The whole purpose of student loans is to allow politicians to simultaneously claim low taxes AND assistance to students.

Politician A says they will help students by funding higher education and lowering tuition, but will have to implement higher taxes than politician B who says they will help students by enabling students to borrow unlimited amounts of money from the federal government.

Politician B will win the election every time, because voters want lower taxes more than helping those below them in the socioeconomic order. Higher education facilities will raise prices because people that work at those facilities like more money than less money. The customers have infinite amounts of money due to being able to borrow as much as they want, and don’t have fully formed brains nor the requisite education or guidance to be able to calculate return on investment to make an informed decision.

And the free money encourages people to go to college who probably should not. It's a predatory loan disguised as a handout to the poor. Nothing sets people up for a lifetime of failure quicker than $120k private school soft science degree