Jared Diamond, in his latest, "Collapse" cites two examples where
societies were saved by dictators- Tokugawa in Japan, and Trujillo in
the Dominican Republic, by doing what no democratic government will do.

In both cases, they were clearcutting, and this was devastating the
lowlands with floods. Both dictators had the same simple solution: they
sent out goon squads to murder the loggers.

Diamond notes that today, if you fly over the island, you can see how
brown and devastated Haiti is, and how green and lush the Dominican end
of the island is.

Likewise, we have the example of Dion in Syracuse. Franco kept Spain out
of WWII; a democracy would have been morally bound to fight the Nazis,
and seen the country devastated as so many others were.

Machiavelli prefers monarchy because after its been going a while, a
nation becomes like a family business, and the leadership considers what
will be handed down to the granchildren. Republics give this lip
service, but as we see, increase entitlements to unsustainable levels.

Everone bitches about the tyranny of Augustus, but what he replaced was
a corrupt republic that kept on resorting to goon squads and civil war.

Were Machiavelli to look at the Untied States of Denial, he'd say it was
ready for tyranny or anarchy. Pick one. If the leader is rational, as
they sometimes are, the results are vastly better. Yes, absolute power
corrupts, but only if the leader is corruptable; which they usually are.
But Tokugawa set a standard for himself and the Samurai that lasted for
hundreds of years that is still widely admired.

Only when the gun eliminated the need for bravery with the sword in hand
did it start to come apart. Japan banned guns successfully for a long
time, an example of integrity that is hard to match.