So you're saying there has never been a single leader in all of time and space that had to power to point at someone, snap their fingers, and have them executed for whatever trumped up reason they feel like giving (if any at all)? Okay, sure. If you say so, guy.
It's about weighing the consequences and seeing if you care. Do you think that Tsar Nicholas the second, Marie Antonette or Batista really had a firm grasp on what would happen to them as they continued indescriminately raping the civil liberties of their citizens? Originally, Rome was ruled periodically between elections by two consols almost equally. During times of war however, they needed a singluar though process to their government and a single dictator was elected rather than a pair of consuls.
Marie Antoinette did not coin the phrase "let them eat cake" you know. She was just an unlucky broad in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No. I'm saying that those dictators only ever had that power by gaining the support of other powerful elites, and could only continue snapping their fingers and having people killed if those other powerful elites didn't object to it too much. History is full of dictators who went too far, pissed off their patrons, and ended up out of power for having pissed off the other elites. Just ask Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. No man -- not even a dictator -- is a law unto himself. Everyone requires the assistance of others to wield power -- and the superiority of democratic governance over autocracy lies in its demand for the consent of the general populace rather than just the consent of elites.