Dictatorships
A dictatorship is a type of governance structure in which a single individual has total power, typically obtained by force. Traditionally this word is exclusively used to refer to state-level governance. We get the impression that most people who have put some, but not much, thought into governance structures see dictatorships as underrated governance structures—if only one could ensure they were led by a great dictator. This idea often emerges from frustration with the leaders democracies typically produce.
To become a leader in a democracy, most people must repeatedly win elections, which can lead to both a distance from the “common man” and a lack of authenticity. When individuals break this cycle and successfully win elected office as outsiders, they often represent some form of extremism that differentiates them from the old guard. These forces leave many saying to themselves: “Look, I am not saying I need to be dictator, but if we could just give an average citizen—someone with views not that different from my own—total power for a few years, they could really turn things around.”
The sentiment makes sense, but only in a reactionary context. While circumventing democracy may fix the problems that were frustrating in more democratic systems, the new problems it inevitably introduces are worse. Just as communism is a great vision on paper that consistently collapses into the same shape—like an architectural design of an upside-down pyramid built using bricks will collapse into a pyramid-shaped pile if actually built—the same is true of dictatorships.
At first glance it may seem the real danger in a dictatorship involves installing the wrong dictator, but as it turns out, even a great dictator has only about 20 years to get things right before they need to step down should they want to leave a positive legacy. Why? Once you consolidate power structures into a single branching command hierarchy without checks and balances (as one does in a normal dictatorship), you give enormous power to the individuals directly below you—and those people grant enormous power to the individuals directly below them.
The real problem with dictatorships is functionally they do not operate like a single individual dictator running a country, but rather like a hierarchical pyramid of dictators running other dictators all the way down to the level of the factory line manager. It is extremely difficult to put any other management structure under a dictatorship (though it can theoretically be done—more on that later).
This chain of power creates stability for the individual on top. Unlike other types of politicians, a dictator—even a benevolent dictator—is very likely to be killed if a new dictator comes into power. While many factors could lead to this, the greatest threat to a dictator is the existence of a living former dictator that compromises the new dictator’s power base, giving the current dictator’s enemies someone to rally around (even if that rallying is happening against the former dictator’s wishes). Even when dictators become tremendously old and clearly want to step down, they often feel forced to stay in power—lest they be killed to ensure stability.
Because of this, a dictator has a vested interest in doing everything they can to ensure they don’t leave power. This can be really scary when you consider the amount of power invested in the portions of the pyramid directly below the dictator (i.e. the little dictator who runs the military, the little dictator who runs the communications network, etc.). As switching out top leaders in the hierarchy subjects the dictator at the top of the pyramid to new, enormous risk for the same reason (as every little dictator is equally at risk if they ever get fired, making them likely to incite a regime change if fired), turnover will be minimized, both at the top of the hierarchy and along every rank below.
Not only is turnover minimized by this dynamic, but the dictator must go out of their way to ingratiate themselves as much as possible to every individual immediately below them (i.e. those most likely to have the power to overthrow them). This leads to absurd amounts of waste and bribes in almost every dictatorship—waste that might be truncated if it didn’t then need to be reflected all the way down the chain of little dictators to the bottom of the pyramid.
The problem with dictatorship as a style of operation for a nation state is not the dictator themselves but the system’s structure. Fortunately, at smaller governance levels, this is less of a problem. The less a person loses by being “overthrown” and the lower the rewards for overthrowing them, the less a dictatorship risks running poorly (so long as you find the “right” dictator). This is because it is those factors that incentivize power consolidation and graft. While at something like a large company, dictatorships are fairly suboptimal, dictatorships can hit it out of the park at the level of a small family office.
Finally, a system structured like a dictatorship that has good mechanisms in place to cycle out rulers every five years or so can generally be fairly effective—the problem here being that the Dictator will have a lot of motivation to break this system and will often have the power to do so.
For a good breakdown of this problem, see the YouTuber CPG Grey’s video: “Rules for Rulers.”