Well, no, mods on Reddit aren't democratic in the slightest, it's a basic dictatorship where the topmost mod has all the power. And in a dictatorship the best you can hope for is a BDFL, but BDFLs arise when a community starts small (and thus doesn't attract malevolent dictators) and congeals around someone benevolent. You can't take a large community and appoint a new dictator, because it will overwhelmingly attract exactly the type of person who shouldn't be the dictator. In practice, this will likely result in more malevolent dictators, not fewer.
