Im reflecting from the pov of a parents role re: the kids. If you give the kids what they want, its going to be soda and candy every day of their lives. Some deciaions are tough, e.g. delayed gratification, and holding ones ground, but do voters even care about stuff like that?
Can we even hope on common sense, when the population is concerned?
It depends on how that government is chartered.
In democracies, it’s to enact the will of the people (within the bounds set by human rights, because any government that does not respect human rights is illegitimate).
In representational forms of government, the balance shifts towards the good of the people but is still informed by their will.
In completely non-democratic forms of government, it should be informed entirely by the good of the people but historically has been informed instead by the will and desires of the rulers, typically without even the necessary respect for human rights.
Comparing it to parenting is not a good analogy, because parents normally love their children and are better informed and wiser than them, whereas governments have little reason to love their citizens, and are only rarely better informed or wiser.
I don’t trust democracy, but it’s a good sight better than autocracy. Representative governments do something to curb the worst excesses of both, in my opinion.
Representative governments are generally oligarchic and blinded by previous power balances. True democracy like sortition lets the deliberative body hear from a member of a minority that they will revolt or become non participatory if you do a certain action. Then the greater body can decide if that’s worth paying attention to. It’s a level of agility that is frankly only available in true democracies and very rare in both autocracies and oligarchies. Where sortition is poor isn’t tyranny of the majority. It’s poor in identifying power structures that are completely unrelated to popular power. Most of those power structures, however, are illegitimate.