Of "control everything" and "execute anyone who disagrees", only the former is useful; the latter is kinda why Russia (and the USSR before it) are failing despite also having a government that could control everything.
You only achieve greatness when your control gets you to do the correct thing. Strong governments make decisions faster, not better. Freedom to debate, to speak out against bad governance, to speak truth to power, democracy, all that's a system to keep a government pointing in the right direction, it slows down decision making but (generally) also increases the accuracy of that decision making.
Same deal with free markets in capitalism: its a feedback mechanism, Tim Cook can announce the Vision Pro and Zuckerberg the Metaverse, direct their teams to spend whatever number of billions was necessary to develop them, market says no.
You only achieve greatness when your control gets you to do the correct thing. Strong governments make decisions faster, not better. Freedom to debate, to speak out against bad governance, to speak truth to power, democracy, all that's a system to keep a government pointing in the right direction, it slows down decision making but (generally) also increases the accuracy of that decision making.
Same deal with free markets in capitalism: its a feedback mechanism, Tim Cook can announce the Vision Pro and Zuckerberg the Metaverse, direct their teams to spend whatever number of billions was necessary to develop them, market says no.