Democracy is just a different arrangement of same malice that exists in all other earlier forms of the rule. It's zero sum game. You focus on a few things at the cost of the other things. Overall, there is no net gain. You don't need to look beyond the coalition politics of Europe, for example.

In non-democratic systems, people are assumed to be not having the expertise needed to choose the ruler. In a democracy with a large number of political parties, people's vote will be highly fragmented, leaving the decision to coalition politics, making the people's vote meaningless.

Also, the assumption that crowd is right about what policies should a government have, is also questionable. 100 monkeys, or the leader elected by them, can't make a better decision than a single subject matter expert.

Since non-democratic systems give far more power and duration to their leaders, a good leader in these systems provide a superior rule than a good leader in a democratic system, while bad leaders in non-democratic systems is worse than bad leader in democratic system. Over a long-term of multiple generations, both even out.