To Govern Well or Fairly? Or Maybe just Fairly Well...

I feel like there are two big ideas when people talk about "good" government. In one, people want a government where everyone gets a say, where everyones interests are represented, and where everyone is heard and is a part of the decision making process in some way, shape, or form. In the other, people want a government that will make wise decisions that will benefit everyone as a group. The trouble is that while these ideas may seem compatible in theory, in practice you can only have one or the other. You don't usually get both. Governments that are fair (ie that are beholden to the people's wishes) tend to make bad decisions because "the people" often don't know what the best decision really is and everyone tries to do what is in their individual best interests anyway. Business tries to screw labor, labor tries to screw business, one region want's to have priority over the next, and each class, each familly, and more than anything else, each individual is out for itself. We don't do a good job of looking after the group as a whole rather than ourselves. This results in a tumultuous debacle of a decision making process, since the government has to try and please as many people as possible or face the prospect of being thrown out of office, and as a consequence policy is designed to please rather than bring results and can be inconsistent according to the shifting winds of popular oppinion. On the other hand, regardless of whatever else you might want to say about it, it is fair. The majority always wins (whether they're right or wrong) and if you can get the majority then you can get your way no matter who you are. Incidently, fair isn't the same thing as everyone getting their own way...that's just inconsistent and impossible.
On the other hand you can have a government that governs well but doesn't really ask anyone's oppinion. Because decision making is taken out of the hands of the mob, they cna make decisions to benefit the whole system rather than having each element of it try and screw over the others. They can do what's best for the group and trust that as life improves for the group life will improve for the each individual in the group as well. Now, no one is always right and this applies to givernments as well as people...but you have a much better chance of being right if you can take the time to sit down and think things our rationally rather trying to appease several different factions all at once. The trouble with this is that the enlightened people making the decisions aren't always so enlightened, and that when you get people in office who are dishonest or downright evil, it can be a bother to get them out. On the other hand, it is possible to have a system where the government makes the decisions and the people can remove the government only in dire circumstances.
Quite frankly, I think that the differnce between these two systens doesn't lie in the system istelf so much as the culture of the people in the system. People can choose leaders because they want them to implement the policies they want, or they can choose leaders because they trust their wisdom, intelligence, and competence and accept that the reason why they elected them in the first place is because they believe that these people truly do know best.

So, which do you choose?