Peasants Need the Hierarchy Democracy Hates

Democracy eschews hierarchy.
Scene: someone screws up their garbage, so animals find it and tear it open. Some of it ends up on your lawn. In America, they normally won't clean it up.
"On my property I do what I want! And also on your property!" The only way you can get them back is being at least as antisocial as they are, thus starting a defect-defect spiral. 

The result of deprecating hierarchy is that the peasants are stripped of guidance. Instead of being given advice when they screw up, they get other inarticulate peasants raging at them. They need to figure it out themselves, but they can't figure it out themselves, so the peasants are consigned to living in their own squalor. At best you get a home owner's association, which is apparently even worse than simply letting the animals into the garbage, because the workable solutions are illegal.

Very satisfying if you're a status-obsessed lord. Those peasants are the peasantiest peasants ever to pez. You're not merely better than they are, you're so much better than it looks like a species difference. (Certainly you would never agree to breed with one.)
Eschewing the hierarchy heightens hierarchical contrasts.