There are problems with hierarchies. However, determining and maintaining correct teaching by democratic vote, combined with a proclivity to schisms, IMHO, creates much worse problems of error and heterodoxy.
I understand your concerns and emphases especially when filtered through the Romanist lens of the Church. I’m NOT denying that God has instituted certain authority structures to restrain evil. The question is what are those structures and how do they interrelate?
Consider the 5th Commandment to honor your father and mother. Of all the authority structures God could have chose to restrain evil in his wisdom he chose that structure which is most decentralized. Perhaps it’s surprising that God did not command them to honor and obey Moses?
Reading the biblical narratives one should come away with the distinct feeling that centralized authority structures that overstep their rightful boundaries will necessarily lead to tyranny, not to mention subsequent history.
To me Romanism is a repeat of the errors of Old Israel thinking that a human convention is what defines God’s people. The Prophets were singular in their cries that the people needed realize that human conventions were not the thing in themselves but pointed to a greater reality.
Here’s what should strike you in counterpoint to your concerns. Despite Israel’s reliance on human convention they still fell into idolatry. The greater danger, ISTM, is that a heresy once incorporated into a society dedicated to human convention can never be reformed because of that convention.