The Course of Democracy

I just read an article about Paul Krugramn's conversion to a more moderate Globalisation attitude.     https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/economists-globalization-trade-paul-krugman-china/ Mainly this is about the effect on (US) employment from cheap Chinese Labour. Not mentioned, however, are the twin effects on Global Ecology (Climate Change, Pollution, Species Collapse) and the consumer's powerlessness to influence the economy. I want to stay with the second idea. This itself has two strands - the assault by low-quality goods, and the assault by low-quality information. I think we are all familiar with the perils of sub-contracting. The loss of specialist knowledge, fall in quality, the distance between supplier and end-user, most importantly the lack of trust in products, the production methods, the source, etc. Similarly the same things could be said about Information - or Fake News. How can Democracy function in these conditions? How can it defend itself?