Yes, if you could have a highly intelligent, wise and benevolent Dictator. Then you would probably end up with much better results than in a democracy. I used to believe that democracy was the best system, but in recent years I've come to have my doubts. This is because it seems so easy to manipulate an electorate that is often woefully undereducated, apathetic, and lazy about researching serious issues. An example is the climate change crisis.

With very few exceptions, scientists are pretty much in agreement that this is a) real, and b) caused by man, and c) a likely to become a serious threat to human civilisation. Yet, governments are doing very little about this. Why, because they are worried about short-term issues. They do not want to do anything that hurts the economy in the short term, even if it saves the economy/nation in the longterm. Because their goal is to try and get back into power every few years - and this means trying to please the majority - instead of doing what they know is best their electorate. A dictator would not have this concern and could plan for the longer term. Furthermore, it is so easy to manipulate the beliefs of an undereducated and apathetic electorate. Take the climate debate again. The media (corporate owned, and acting in the interests of the corporate sector - which is also concerned with the short term issues of profits and shares) has provided the electorate with a very poor understanding of how serious the climate issue really is. Indeed, some media, like Murdoch owned media, has actively sought to muddy the debate and steer readers/viewers to doubt the scientists claims. With so many people so ignorant of the actual science, the government does not have the support to take the proper action required. Finally, our so called democracies have been bought by the corporate world, and most politicians are in the pockets of big business. So they are not acting in the interests of the majority anyway. So we don't have real democracies anyway.

I'm only on this side because some members of this site (who need special education) consider Monarchy to be a form of Dictatorship. So I don't want to be caught out.

It really depends. If the dictator is effective, takes care of the people and brings prosperity to the nation - what is so wrong about it?

In the same sense, who should control the ship - the capten or the passengers?

The only difference between Democracy and Dictatorship is that in a Democracy, the majority chooses their ruler.

Since there is so little defined for this question, and both democracy and dictatorship have a ton of various meanings, we can look at two different aspects. The worst of each and the best of each. Starting with the worst.

Direct Democracy vs Tyrannical Dictatorship

Tyrannical Dictatorship has the problem that they often don't care about the people that they lead. They often cause negative effects on the living conditions and economic well being for their people. They will often use military and police force to keep the people from revolting. While this is often viewed as the worst form a government can take, it is actually not that bad for the very reason that it is not too hard to correct. Revolution can be difficult because of the police and military force, however, when conditions get bad, the police and military will often step aside. This can very from dictator to dictator (see Egypt vs Libya for both ends), but it with enough will power, it is always able to overthrow them.

Now, comparing to Direct Democracy, we see that different issues arrise. First, there is a reason that this form of democracy is often called "tyranny of the majority." It allows the majority, regardless of any moral code or guidance to enact whatever they want. This means that if the poorest 51% want to make the top 49% to pay a lot more taxes, and they want to "equalize" their economic differences, they can. This means that if enough ignorant people see that more crime is committed by minority groups, they can impose racist regulations. This means that the law will be directed by the ignorance of the majority. This can cause just as horrible economic and liberty restrictions as the Tyrannical Dictator (though it will usually take longer to come out), however, it is harder to have a revolution against. Since the oppressed are a minority, rather than a majority. Because of this difficulty in revolting and correcting the problem, the Tyrannical Dictatorship is superior.

Representative Democracy vs Benevolent Dictatorship

Now we can look at the ideal for each form. The Representative Democracy allows people to choose the best leaders to make the rules. Because they vote for individuals, rather than individual policies, a particular candidate cannot take stances which are too extreme or polarizing. Because if they have 10 issues that they hold as important, and 1 is extremely polarizing, then all the people that do not like your view on that 1 issue, will not support you regardless of your other 9, and those that do like that 1, may be changed by the other 9. As such, many are voted on, not because of particular stances on specific issues, but based on a more generic ideology or philosophy. This has the downside that many candidates may simply pander and lie to get elected, as we see with the current US congressional makeup.

In Benevolent Dictatorship, the dictator chooses actions which they honestly believe are best for their people. While they may be wrong, and so bad things can happen, they also have the ability to recognize that their ideas are not working and changing their ideas. A single individual can learn and adapt significantly faster than a group. And since the individual dictator does not have opposing parties to throw blame at, they are more likely to actually adjust their thinking and policies for the good of the people. So in the ideal sense, the Dictator is better.

Since the dictator is better in both the worst and best situations, then we can say that a dictatorship is better than a democracy (even though neither are defined).