In the end, most people are even happy living under the most brutal of dictatorships as long as they themselves live a relatively comfortable life, and for that you need a working economy (and the hand of luck protecting you from being in the group that said dictatorship thinks the scapegoat should be).

The same is much more true for "well, this is essentially not a democracy anymore, and has some weird tendencies, but at least we're not forced to salute the flag every morning in school" style systems.