Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.
Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational.
There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China, despite all the negative press, has done plenty of rational things in order to get toe to toe with the US as both a military and economic rival.
I think the negative connotation associated with the word dictator paints anyone labeled with it in a biased light. Not saying anything bad or good about pooh bear in general. Whatever that man is, him being a dictator is not a causal origin of his current character.
People, including leaders, are influenced by those around them.
A sane leader has advisors, which they trust to provide rational arguments, which sometimes may differ from their own.
A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions. So, there is no one to provide a counter argument to the dictator's own viewpoints and makes them believe in their supreme power. This is what makes them dangerous and act irrationally.
Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
You say this asa if it's axiomatically true. It's not. This can happen. But it can also not happen.
>Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
In another thread, I have cited multiple historical and modern examples of where what you described did not happen. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281
a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship.
decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside.
of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.
Singapore is the first one that comes to mind.
See: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship
Additionally monarchies are essentially old forms of dictatorship with slightly different customs and titles. It's one and the same and plenty of good kingdoms exist. I have PLENTY of examples:
The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt;
The Byzantine Emperors;
The Habsburg Monarchy in its various incarnations;
The Capetian Kings of France;
The Tsars;
The Tang, Ming and Qing - my three favorite Chinese dynasties;
The Incas.
Tibet it also an example. A little iffy this one, it's actually not benevolent but the West has definitely painted them as such to use as propaganda against China. Chinas actions against Tibet were quite horrific and wrong but even still... Tibet was not an example of a benevolent dictatorship... more of an example how a dictatorship can be PERCIEVED as benevolent and how your perceptions can be easily influenced. Tibet and China is an example of evil acting on evil to simplify the situation, but again I want to emphasize that the actual reality is not so black and white.
You may also want to look into the term enlightened absolutism.
Also China is an example of a benevolent dictatorship despite all the bad things they've done (TBH China is more of a mixed bag, and by mixed bag I mean both benevolent and self interested at the same time... but then again so is the US).
You cannot deny that the rise of China has been unprecedented. The amount of people lifted out of poverty at such a velocity has never been seen before in the history of human civilization. That is benevolence. While of course what is happening in Xinjiang is not benevolence; blinding yourself to the good because of the bad is irrational. You must acknowledge both.
Lack of constructive feedback paired with that all your thoughts including irrational ones are amplified through the echo chamber.
It's easy to get caught up with weird ideas (and the more power you have the weirder it might get because you have to solve more complex problems and have much more vast capabilities). If you don't have external feedback you need to be much more resilient to irrationality than under normal circumstances.
In fact there are multitudes of successful "dictatorships" throughout history. I cite many in another reply in this thread:
I'm not offended
I do like to argue. A better way to put it, is I like to talk to people and convince people on a viewpoint I truly believe in while at the same time I'm open to learning as well.
Whether someone agrees with me or not doesn't correlate with whether I'm right. That is the point. And I am right and you are wrong.
You view international politics from the microcosm of US news. The entire population of Asia which outnumbers the US population by a huge number has a more nuanced and complicated view of the situation.
Dismissing China as evil or putin as crazy is an oversimplification.
Think bigger.