This is empirically nonsense.
Democratic states are MORE likely to engage in long-term projects than less democratic states. Please do not extrapolate to all non-democratic states based on media presentations of China, or extrapolate to all democratic states based on media presentations of the US congress. Empirically speaking, infrastructural and long-term investments, controlling for geographical and economic factors and opportunity costs, are more frequent in democracies than more authoritarian states. So that argument is bunk.
Collective rule IS more just: always and everywhere. Because any rule which is not collective is of its very nature unjust. We can pretend otherwise for a video game– but in the real world, this is obvious. Rule by a king, or a general, or a politburo, is unjust.
Now, a dictator may carry out more just actions than some democracy might– that may be true. Empirically, it is unlikely: authoritarian states tend to offer fewer freedoms and liberties and be more prone to use violence against their people. The possibility of benevolent dictators is defeated by the fact of their non-existence.
Democracies are flawed, yes. Duh. But seriously people, this is showing a shocking amount of historical blindness: do I really hear educated people questioning whether democracy is good for us, whether we might not be better off not as democracies? Please tell me this is some kind of strange devil's advocate situation. Because that's just gross ignorance. Democracy is not promoted abroad by nearly every democratic state because it is so strategically advantageous or something. It's promoted abroad because even the most realpolitiking democratic states have realized that this system is so obviously better than to not promote it would be such an obvious travesty and crime against humanity as to constitute a national embarrassment before all of history. It's like walking into Botswana and going, "Nah man, AIDS ain't a problem."
I can't speak for others, but I do firmly believe that democracies are better, and that we should strive to make them as perfect as possible.
I'm just stating that I also don't buy the praises about how simply having elected officials is a safeguard for freedom or justice. Nor that imposing elections upon other states guarantees them greater freedom and justice.
