While I find your argument about the people being responsible for those they elect entirely agreeable I have to wonder how realistic you're being in saying that we are all responsible for any thing that any elected official does.
Are you really suggesting that we, as voters, can be held accountable for every single policy decided upon by our elected representatives?
Do you really expect (or want) to know what goes on for every minute of every day in each area of life which happens to be devolved? For each person of influence who is elected there will be thousands more who are not.

As an exercise, try standing for election under the banner "I'm gonna watch your kids' behaviour through their webcams even when they don't know I'm watching"
against an hypothetical rival:
"We're gonna make our educational system as safe as possible" blah blah - please do it,see how many votes you get.
YOU (I'm assuming you are an American, because you sound like one. Forgive me if I'm wrong) live in a democracy, YOU are responsible as anyone else.

IIRC 3.0 ports will be physically different than 2.0, so it should at least be possible to tell the difference just by looking at them
OK they may be round the back of the machine but in any case you'll need a visual just to plug something in.

Have you read 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn? It's a (fictional) book that attempts to explain how we got to be in the situation you describe.

If you are at all interested in the profit motive it's well worth a read.

Like most generalisations it has a grain of truth but in my experience there are plenty of 'live to work' types over here and they tend to be the ones running things.
Me, I view work as just that, work.
My time is more valuable to me than the money I can get selling it on the open market.