Definitely one of the most interesting questions I've seen posed on this site, and probably one of the most difficult to answer.

One thing to keep in mind is... humans tend to be dichotomous thinkers but reality is rarely so dichotomous. It may not require an either/or answer.

The U.S. founding fathers (and subsequent movers and shakers) were pretty knowledgeable and aware of human nature. They worked some of the solution to this problem into the constitution. They made sure there were checks and balances.

For starters, they made sure our republic was not a pure democracy. Wise.
They created every opportunity for the elite (not fair, but whaddya gonna do) to hang on to some levers of power, the electoral college being an example, as a buffer against mob rule. How well that particular mechanism is serving is another question, but it could serve as such a buffer. And democracy or no, the powerful (wealthy) will always have more influence than the powerless. The flipside of that coin is that the poor will always outnumber the rich by revolutionary proportions, so it will probably always be a messy tug-o-war like the one between evolving viruses and evolving medical technology.

Where are Plato's Philosopher Kings when we need them!

I'm guessing the backdrop for this post is impending climate doom. For any lesser problem I'd tend to trust the democratic process over setting dictatorial precedents. For climate catastrophe... a benevolent dictator would probably be necessary to turn things around in time, but it ain't likely to be turned around by much of anything at this point I guess. So onward with messy checks, balances, and the dubious wisdom of hindsight.

I hope you'll share your thoughts.

Authoritarianism is not a place I will willingly accept, in fact I prefer direct action to slothful acquiesce..

There are no lessons that haven't been learned before, probably several times.

The collective people are not retarded.