This is incomplete to the point of being incorrect. The correct version is:
> In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people who happen to have the time/energy/intelligence to research candidates and physically cast a vote in spite of various barriers to voting, choosing from among the small number of candidates who happen to be running.
I guess I'm defining consent as "anything less than a desire for violent overthrow of the government" because that's the primary problem democracies solve. Things can still get bad to the point where in any other system a violent rebellion would take place, it's just that in a functioning democracy there's a bloodless rebellion at the ballot box instead of a civil war.
I would have said the solution is referendums, where the population can regularly vote on some specific issue. But as far as I understand California's "proposition" fit this, and they don't really seem to work.
* referendums, as a single-issue-only vote, suffer when an electorate is only thinking about immediate first-order effects, and due to how many issues are happening at the same time it's also very easy to get voter fatigue. WA has been through a few cycles for lowering car tab fees to $30, it ends up being ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court due to procedural errors, and in the meantime it totally wrecks budgets. But who would vote down a tax cut for themselves even if the final figure has no bearing on reality? Similar story with Prop 13 and all the nasty knock-on things it has caused.
* referendums only represent a snapshot in time, but due to inertia it is hard to change it. Is Scotland going to get a second vote after Brexit? Who knows? New Caledonia is trying a third time in three years for an independence referendum.
The religious and more recently nativist turns that the GOP has taken nationally have made them uncompetitive in California; it's notable that the last Republican governor of California was neither of those things while that transition was happening.
so, in short, it's not revealed preference.
Preferences are not 'revealed' by action because even if we were hyper rational, action would take into account expected success, which may be depressed by factors that have nothing to do with our preferences.
I reject your operational definition of preferences. I Think most people would be with me on this one.
When a group has the power to change something but chooses to prioritize other things instead (which may be a valid response, depending on circumstances), it's clear that the group "prefers" the thing they do over whatever they might say.
This is all a long-winded version of "Actions speak louder than words", or more in context: "votes speak louder than opinions".
I reject your purely theoretical definition of "preferences". I imagine most people would "prefer" to eat and drink whatever they want, never exercise and still maintain perfect health. Unfortunately in the real worth that "preference" is completely irrelevant, and plenty of people (myself included) don't "prefer" health all the time for any number of reasons.
> Whereas people in SF who have voting rights DO have power over what politicians do about the local homeless situation.
But they don't. Politics is a winner-take-all system, as you said yourself: "voting out the ruling government might mean voting in someone they disagree with on other issues"
As we know from arrow's theorem, a sufficiently complex schedule of multiple choices (in this case competing policy issues that must be represented by a slate of government officials) can wind up misrepresenting group preferences no matter what the preference selection criteria.
The answer of course could be to fix the homelessness situation outside of the political system, however as the tiny homes for homeless in LA guy found out, often people are powerless to go outside the system, too, they will find themselves shut out for trying to do some good.
Of course voting out the ruling government might mean voting in someone they disagree with on other issues, but this is why single issue voters get more things done politically than their "wiser" counterparts who try to consider all the variables.
It's the same with the various opinion polls that make headlines showing "75% of Americans want X, so why is the government still refusing?" The simple answer is far less than 75% are willing to base their vote solely on X, whereas the opposition often is.