Data is Beautiful

Sure, a good autocracy will always be more effective and fairer than a good democracy. The greek already knew that.

The Greeks thought that. By actual empirical measures democracies do unambiguously better, beyond what can be explained by individual leaders. It comes down to autocracies never actually being one man rule, because the lower downs have their own agendas and palace intrigues, too.

Sure, a good autocracy will always be more effective and fairer than a good democracy. The greek already knew that.

They also knew that a bad autocracy will always be worse than a bad democracy.

Autocracy is good for the cronies. The theory of Democracy is that you make everyone a potential crony and create political incentive for a broad egalitarian base of support.

So democracy is not just about giving people what they want or representing their views, it is about damage limitation between all the established “mafias” vying for power and a ruleset for peaceful evolution.

But in practice, this doesn't work. Cartels are an effective tool to undermine democracy via Divide and Conquer of the natural social subunits.

Mafias build strong bonds of trust and shared economic advantage at the expense of their neighbors. They form internal patronage networks that promise more than a fair share of reward for compromised ideology and ethics. They also foment superstition and FUD that polarize people against one another.

To make it worse, some modern societies hide de facto autocracy or oligarchy under democracy, which may sour you towards democracy.

The perception of hidden selfish cartels operating underneath broad egalitarian institutions is what ultimately undermine them.

That is why mass media has such a major role to play in democracy. And why privatization of media ultimately leads to a failed democracy.