The benefit of liberal democracy is that it prevents the corrupt and powerful few from acquiring the leverage to do great damage, allowing for technological and civil progress over the long haul.
Well-run dictatorships can be prosperous in the short run, but the inexorable decay into rule by a corrupt elite will bankrupt a society. Once a madman or idiot gets into power, decades or centuries of progress will be erased. One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust, relying on laws and traditions rather than the people running it. Look at how much damage the Bush Administration has done to the US. Were it not for our liberal, democratic political traditions, they'd have caused 100 times more ruin by this point, and we wouldn't have a very good chance of being rid of them in Jan. 2009.
I think the jury is still out on whether a corrupt elite cannot hijack a democratic system. You got rid of "Bush" in '93 yet here he is again. More to the point, the powers behind the Bushes and probably any other candidate you get to choose from are still there - big money sponsors.
And that doesn't even touch upon the other issue, that of the corrupt elite being put in place by the democratic system itself, as happened with basically all the fascist dictators in the 30s. Who's to say that won't happen again?
I think the jury is still out on whether a corrupt elite cannot hijack a democratic system.
I don't think the jury's out, so to speak. It can definitely happen, and I think US plutocracy is definitely corroding the democracy. Democracy is a complex system and needs a lot of safeguards; a constitution and an electoral process are only two of many necessary ingredients.
Well-run dictatorships can be prosperous in the short run, but the inexorable decay into rule by a corrupt elite will bankrupt a society.
Is that, historically, true? The monarchies of Europe lasted for generations, and in many cases overthrown in bloody coups causing more destruction than the regimes they sought to replace.
It seems weird to me that government would be the only business that isn't run better through private ownership. If Bush owned the US's future tax revenues, and could pass them on to future generations of Bushes, you'd expect him to run things pretty consistently, and with an eye to maximizing property values to keep the tax-generating people happy. If you compare how well-run your government is at its best to how well-run Google or Goldman Sachs is at their worst, you can see the advantages to treating institutions as transferable and valuable private property, rather than giving managers temporary license to extract what benefit they can, after which the consequences are passed on to someone else.
Would FDR have designed Social Security the way he did if the future cash flows cut into the dividend checks of future Roosevelts? Would Reagan have allowed Congress to spend so heavily if it were his money? I seriously doubt it.
One problem of liberal democracy is that the rhetoric of liberalism and freedom it invokes legitimizes even very questionable practices.
Was slavery legitimate because it was approved by a "liberal democracy"? Or was pre-Civil War (or even pre-Civil Rights) US not a liberal democracy? If it wasn't a liberal democracy back then, were the then-government's actions still legitimate? These questions get at many thorny issues (like reparations, etc).
Also, is it legitimate for liberal democratic states to mandate the teaching of intelligent design, prohibit same-sex marriages, etc? Would a constitutional amendment (duly passing the democratic process) banning interracial marriages (or gay marriages) be legitimate?
I guess my point is: Do legitimate (i.e., democratic) means justify any ends? The rhetoric of "liberal democracy" is so powerful that it can be (and sometimes is) used to justify very questionable practices.
Well-run dictatorships can be prosperous in the short run, but the inexorable decay into rule by a corrupt elite will bankrupt a society. Once a madman or idiot gets into power, decades or centuries of progress will be erased. One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust, relying on laws and traditions rather than the people running it. Look at how much damage the Bush Administration has done to the US. Were it not for our liberal, democratic political traditions, they'd have caused 100 times more ruin by this point, and we wouldn't have a very good chance of being rid of them in Jan. 2009.