[tokenadult]

Public comments are routine in setting administrative law. (The concept is called notice-and-comment.) Congress gives the administering agency authority to make an administrative rule, and that rule can only happen after a public notice period about the proposed rule, during which any member of the public can comment on the proposed rule. Rules are often modified during the public comment period, which will be reflected when the rule is finally published.

Your point is well taken that well organized (not always well moneyed) narrow interest groups can often get their way in the legislative or administrative rule-making process simply by being organized and cohesive. That is why public-choice theory[1] suggests that representative democracy cannot always achieve disinterested action in favor of the abstract public good. But what we deal with is a system that is imperfect, but better than other systems of government that have been tried, in the comparison that Churchill popularized.[2]

[1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html

[2] http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government