altruistic leader with accountability who steps down
That is traditional leadership, and leadership is one thing and authoritarianism is quite another.
A leader does not have to be authoritarian. A leader works best when they delegates functions and distributes power horizontally. The leader is not the one who knows more but the one who is more focused.
In authoritarianism, the despot is “the alpha and the omega”, the top of the pyramid and the highest authority, regardless of the scope. He is the one who has the last word, even if what he says is bullshit. There is no form of authoritarianism that is mild or “altruistic”.
I grant you that the population is easy to manipulate, but that is precisely because of the dependence on authority figures, people trust more in what their “leader” tells them than in their own judgment.
The solution is to educate the population so that it is less prone to manipulation, not to continue doing the same as always.
If the specialist cannot explain to the common population in a concise way the implications of carrying out a project of that size so that they can make a sensible choice in a vote, then the problem lies with the specialist, not the population. Giving that kind of explanation is education.
That is not at all the same as giving absolute authority to a despot. A specialist is not necessarily an authority, just as in most cases authorities are not specialists.
You could say that a doctor has the power over who lives and who dies, but what if the hospital director fires the doctor? Or demands that he give priority to some patients over others? And hospital directors are not necessarily Doctors of Medicine. Sure, ideally, the specialists in a field should be the aurities in that field, but that is an ideal and not a reality. The authority of the Hospital is not the doctor, but the Hospital Director. The authority that decides whether or not to build a dam is not the Engineer, it is the owner of the construction company.
Besides, the fact that we have been giving too much power to individuals for years does not mean that it is the right thing to do! For some reason we are on the verge of a new rebirth of fascism.