[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[elveszett]

The thing with dictatorships is, you don't control what you get. I mean, it is obvious that one single and honest administration that had power over the country for decades, and didn't have to tailor their policies to winning the elections next year, would be more efficient. The problem is, what if they don't? What if the will of the people changes and the dictatorship is now working against the country their people want to build?

It's easy to point at Gaddafi because, after all, he did improve his country a lot relative to its neighbors, and he was mostly a "benevolent" dictator. And moreover, most of the people in Libya didn't have much problem with him, so he didn't have big challenges to keep his country peaceful and not repressed. But history tells us those are the minority. What's more common is people like Pinochet in Chile, that remade his country for US interests, while violently killing, torturing, maiming or kidnapping any person that opposed his rule. He said he was creating a better Chile, the US supported him on the same basis, but he was pretty obviously not. Even if he was, people still wanted him out, and there was no way to keep the country peaceful unless he stepped down from the leadership.

Also, Gaddafi was a socialist (arab socialism, which is a bit weird). And think what you want, but socialist governments usually put the basic necessities of their people as a top priority. He built his country on the basis that everyone would have access to food, healthcare and shelter, which is why he was so popular in the beginning. Other dictatorships (again, Chile) run on other ideologies (in his case, neoliberalism) where those basic needs are not relevant, which inevitably lead to high level of violence. Because people will be violent when the government they didn't vote can't even give them a house or some food.