[amyjess]

My main worry about enlightened despotism is "what happens when the despot kicks the bucket?". No guarantee their successor will be as enlightened as them.

If you solve the succession problem, enlightened despotism starts sounding very good.

[jqm]

Except the term "enlightened" is most often relative to a groups desired outcomes...

[TeMPOraL]

That's good enough. It's better to have a stable and reasonable ruler that tries to do the Right Thing (i.e. optimize globally in the scale of country) than everyone trying to have it their - however smart or stupid - way.

[jqm]

Well I don't fully disagree, but then there are the "enlightened" rulers of ISIS trying to do the "right thing" for humanity...

[TeMPOraL]

Yeah, I'll grant you that. I guess that I dream of someone pulling off an enlightened semi-dictatorship based on liberal values...