I think phrases like "will of the people" or "the people have spoken" are incoherent gibberish due to things like Arrow's theorem and the work of others, including Buchanan and Tullock.
And yes, discrimination is bad and as Buchanan and Congleton have shown there is nothing special about democracy, voting or the like that will prevent such discrimination. This is where the constraints on democracy come in and are very important in limiting what can be done via voting. One interesting conclusion they present is that for private exchange that entails no externalities there is zero justification for voting to be invoked and thus provides a good argument for the classical liberal position.
This is why I despair when I see elected officials who are extremely good at speaking to people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She talks about democracy as if it provides good things. But it too our least democratic institution to put a major dent in racial discrimination with Brown v. Board which literally overturned the results of a democratic election. A perfectly legitimate election with little known voter fraud or the like. I am pretty sure some like Ocasio Cortez would consider Brown v. Board a good thing/outcome. But at the same time her rhetoric indicates she has not thought about this fundamental error in her views on democracy and voting.
And layering democracy on top of socialism (collective ownership of the means of production) does not help at all in terms of solving things like the knowledge problem. In fact, it would likely make it worse depending on how the voting actually works. While tactical voting is not much of a thing in large elections in elections with smaller numbers of people it certainly can be. Where people vote to actually hide their true preferences or mislead others to gain an advantage.
It is amusing how these people can be so critical of things like the market process but cannot seem to turn that critical thinking to democracy. Suddenly they become like children believing the Voting Fairy instead of the Tooth Fairy.
