If you have looked at fascism in its various tried forms, communism in its various tried forms, religious and other dictatorships in their various tried forms, I think it is hard to disagree with that statement, and I can even see the feedback mechanism that democracy has for keeping things from getting too crappy for too many people.

Here I disagree, controlling for technology I'm not at all sure that limited franchise Republics weren't superior to democracy (indeed modern democracy is limited franchise as well, ask the children, felons and illegal immigrants). Monarchy doesn't look obviously worse to me either. You have to admit that our society as a whole, basically any modern source you pick will have a pro-democracy bias. I'm not saying this means Democracy isn't as great as you think it might not be that big a bias, but it is clearly there.

And it seems hard to figure out how strong this bias is. How does a single individual doing research fix that? Remember that North Korean society has constructed a narrative that lets them feel they have a superior system of government to all previous ones (I hope you agree classical Monarchy is better than that) and that it is the logical conclusion of centuries of moral progress. Aren't you a bit scared that they can do that? Where does power come from in a democracy? Good military skill? Management skill? No whoever convinces the most people of his or her agenda will have that agenda enacted... the power of flesh Conan. If the entire planet was North Korea how would you know something radically better is possible and not even that hard to acheive?

It didn't seem to have anything to do with superior alternatives to democracy.

Right it didn't, I'm sorry I should have made it more explicit. It is basically an argument that democracy is a very local optimum or not an optimum at all and is holding back technological progress. If you are reading Moldbug for the very first time I actually recommend you start with "An open letter to open-minded progressives", but if you don't enjoy his writing so far don't bother because he is verbose.

To give three possible superior alternatives to democracy I will cite:

• Robin Hanson's Futarchy, which is basically just updating democracy to use prediction markets (great institutions). Vote for what you want, the markets discover the best way to get it by pooling together expert knowledge and incentivizing truth seeking.

• Neocameralism by Moldbug which is basically to have the state be guided by the profit motive and have such overwhelming military force that uses crypto lock technology to enforce it has no reason to brainwash its citizens since they don't have the military force to matter politically. They can't seize the government/compaines assets. The profit motive together with the corporate structure keeps most of them from being hijacked by its CEO as well as keeps most of them nice to its customers (citizens). You can make sure it will be nice by give stock options to specialized efficient charities. Basically divide the state between the rent extracting part and the goodness generating part people expect, min-max both, pair them up in a single adventuring party and enjoy your munchkinized society. Obviously it kind of sucks if you discover things people really really like spending money on but hurt them, but hey democracy would collapse at that too.

• Singapore's authoritarian free market friendly technocracy (theoretically a normal democracy)