If it's clear that there's plenty to go around you can just abandon a bad leader. If not, then maybe tolerating them is a necessary evil (because they control the food).
No. For most of human history we've been lead by shitty autocratic leaders. Now, when there's too little to go around we're more apt to go to war and/or have population migrations which is a different subject.
> If it's clear that there's plenty to go around you can just abandon a bad leader.
If only it were that easy.
I don't know about "only", but I agree that that's the best move: Fewer labyrinthine dependencies, more providing directly for yourself and your neighbors.
But isn't the difficulty of that proposition a direct function of population density? If "locally" means 1000 people on 100 acres, that's a lot different than if "locally" means 10000 people on 10 acres.
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To put it differently, premises:
1. The planet can sustain 100M of us
2. The planet cannot sustain 100B of us
3. There is uncertainty about whether the planet can sustain 8B of us
Conclusion:
The safer direction for our population to go is down.
Or they just live in a shitty place under some autocratic/dictator/religious rule. I'm not sure that has much to do with the population size.