Actually, you aren’t wrong. I am not defending authoritarianism, but it is important to know why some prefer it. There is an old documentary that interviewed a German lady who lived through Nazism. She admit it was wrong to support the Nazis, but Hitler jump-started the economy after the Great Depression due to massive government spending caused by remilitarization. If a bread of loaf cost million deutchmark, making the value of money became so worthless that its only purpose is to burn the wads of cash to heat yourself, wouldn’t you become desperate?

Picking between authoritarianism versus democracy is actually a question between liberty and perceived stability.

Contrary to popular Western belief, however, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for all places and people. Not all dictatorships end in misery, and not everyone wants to live in a democracy. “A bad democracy might be worse than a humane dictatorship,” Pinker points out.

There is no proof that the desire for freedom and democracy is an innate part of human nature, Ezrow says. As long as quality of life remains high and people are allowed to live their lives as they wish, citizens can be completely happy under a dictatorship. Some even become nostalgic for the authoritarian regime after they lose it. “When I was younger, as a student in graduate school, I just assumed that everyone wanted to be living in a democracy,” Ezrow says. “But if you look at survey research in some countries under authoritarian regimes, people are happy.”

In other words, ending all dictatorships might not be ideal for everyone. As long as leaders avoid the inherent pitfalls of that mode of governance and take their citizens’ wishes into account, dictatorships are simply a different approach for leading a country, one that values order over individual liberties. As Ezrow puts it: “Some cultures may just prefer security and stability over freedom.”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150531-will-dictators-disappear