The ship is doomed, then. A captain must have total leeway to decide for a ship to survive and thrive. There must be no external limits to his power, but morale is a thing, and when morale gets bad enough there is mutiny. Which is why the real limits to power must be internal, called "self-restraint", and therefore the success of the ship rests in large part in the ability of the crew to identify this virtue in a captain, in addition to his ability to run the ship.

The virtue of self-restraint is dying in today's world; many successful leaders are famous for not just not having any, but actively deriding the idea of having any. Sadly, the only way humans seem to learn this lesson is full-blown Collapse. The cognitive dissonance we need is to both fight for self-restraint and so against Collapse, and also accept the inevitable defeat with equanimity.

If you are doubtful of the value of self-restraint, look to all the countries and governments that embrace the strong-man philosophy, and see how they are miserable places to live, to raise families, to grow up. Especially for intellectuals, geeks and nerds, because they are the ones that see the problems and are helpless to change it, and if they don't quickly learn camouflage themselves, they get murdered. And camouflage is dishonest, and so they live despising themselves. Imagining this dystopia is one way to motivate oneself to fight, and fight hard, to avoid this fate.