Requiring large numbers of people to agree to a change makes it predictable - I've seen few surprises from Western governments; whatever one thinks of Trump, hi

Requiring large numbers of people to agree to a change makes it predictable - I've seen few surprises from Western governments; whatever one thinks of Trump, his behavior is what he advertised in the campaign. But whatever your theories, the data is that democracies do have the most stable and predictable business and legal environments, and more so than China where instability and lack of rule of law is a complaint of businesses, especially foreign ones. Almost all the world's leading businesses are based in democracies; the vast majority of business is done in democracies. Those monarchies that ran the world for millennia didn't perform so well. It's not just predictability either; corruption is a huge problem. In places with lifetime appointments, what happens to corrupt leaders? They can't be voted out, and lacking the rule of law and separation of powers, they will not be investigated and tried (unless a more powerful leader causes them to be). And why should we think that lifetime appointees will care at all about the voters? The lesson is, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countries without democracies, in fact, stagnate (such as China until the encounter with the West in the 19th century and again under the Communists (compare w/ Taiwan and Hong Kong), the USSR, N. Korea (compare with S. Korea) and many, many more). Also, by not giving citizens a forceful voice, they ignore and overlook citizens' interests, leaving serious issues unaddressed. Even the well-intentioned cannot centrally plan politics any better than they can centrally plan economics - nobody knows enough to understand and address the needs of hundreds of millions. Finally, one reason democracies have more prosperity is that they are more dynamic. In autocracies, economic success tends to depend much more on access to those in power. The government will never allow a SpaceX to challenge the favorites of the powerful, Boeing and NASA; or allow Microsoft and Compaq to take down IBM; the Internet to take down the telecomm system (at least not until it was proven to be a necessity in the West), etc. It's because the autocrats have no reason to allow a challenge to their own power and every reason to prevent it. I'm afraid this debate was settled long ago, around 1776 in the U.S., and monarchy and autocracy clearly lost.