this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Murdered by Words
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When I started dating my now wife, my now Father In Law got into a massive argument with my wife's uncle because the uncle's a pretty unhinged version of a leftist and was arguing that his ideal form of goverment was that of a benevolent dictatorship. My FIL was flabbergasted that anyone would think that that was a good idea, not just because he's politically opposed to my wife's Uncle's idea of what constitutes benevolence, but that he would think that a strong autocratic leader would fix anything, regardless of their politics.
8 years later, here we are with my Father In Law being so loudly and unrelentingly pro-Trump it has nearly caused permanent rifts in the family, including with my wife, and nearly destroyed his marriage too. He has zero problem with Trump taking as much power as needed to push his policies through. The fucking irony of it, supporting the most blatant autocratic shift in American political history after being furious at the idea from my wife's Uncle, and it's entirely lost on him.
The original point about a benevolent dictatorship being the ideal form of government is, in my opinion, true. Having a single point of decision means that issues are dealt with quickly and efficiently, the 'benevolent' part means that the needs of the populace are heard and addressed, oppression is eliminated wherever it can be found. A truly benevolent dictatorship looks a lot like a well-run democracy.
The problem comes when the benevolent dictator dies peacefully in their sleep. Or when other parts of the government begin to realize that they can feed the dictator lies in order to get what they want. Or when the dear leader starts to get paranoid. A benevolent dictatorship only works briefly, after which the 'dictatorship' part starts to become a real problem.
Or if 'benevolence' includes religious extremism (although I would argue that a leader like that wouldn't count as truly benevolent).
The problems arise well before that. There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator because it's an oxymoron. Anyone who would seek to control everyone is not benevolent. And even if we agreed that unilaterally controlling everyone could still be benevolent, there is no means to gaining such control that is not inherently not benevolent short of nearly every one of your constituents collectively appointing you to that position.
Yeah. George Washington is one of the only men in history who had a chance to be a benevolent dictator. And what did he do? He said "No, we're doing democracy now." And if he hadn't, he wouldn't have been benevolent.
He understood normal human kindness.
Yes, that is why I continued to give examples of when it would go south.
This is absolutely a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Benevolent dictatorships work as well as state-run communism does - which is to say, in theory they're great, but they show cracks nearly the instant they're actually enacted.
State-run communism is also an oxymoron. The total state control of production is meant to be an intermediary step in the transition from capitalism. First the state seizes materials, machinery, money, etc away from the capitalists and corporations, redistributes the seized wealth according to need, and then it relinquishes control of production to the workers and of the governance to community structures and dissolves itself. That last step has never happened at a national scale in human history. State-run communism is not communism, by definition. It's just capitalism where the state leadership are the only capitalists.
Amen
I have not ever heard such a bang on take vs communism on the internet before. Upvotes for you.
The Roman dictators were unlike what we think of a dictator nowadays. From Wikipedia:
Worked out fairly well for the Roman Republic, until Julius Caesar became dictator-for-life which a lot of people didn't like. You can guess how that ended.
You mean killing him was a bad idea?
I heard that Brutus is an honourable man. Dude that told me sounded a little sarcastic tho, not sure if he was for real.
No because its still a single person imposing their will on an entire country and only giving them what they feel they deserve.
The ultimate form of government will always be a democracy. People should work together to build society. It may be slower but thats fine, government doesnt need to move fast and break things.
Even in a democracy, you will still have a small group of people imposing their will over others, and only giving them what they feel they deserve. The only difference you are seeing is that of scale. Instead of a collection of elected representatives who are granted disparate powers by the plurality of people they are ruling over in their various capacities as governors, a benevolent dictatorship has one person who is granted all governmental powers by the people they are ruling over. Even a democracy can, briefly, be a tyranny. It just requires multiple bad actors to work together.
The primary difference is how long it takes for the wheels to fall off. In a dictatorship, it can - and usually does - happen virtually instantly. That's the primary reason democracies (and republics) are the way they are - to slow down the encroachment of tyranny, hopefully enough to allow people to react to it and overturn it. (And as we're seeing in the USA right now, that's no guarantee.)
Yeah, it seems like it would be one of the better forms of government. The problem I see is having a human as said dictator. And I don't see any way of making something like an AI that isn't compromised.