Moldbug: The case against democracy: ten red pills

This is an abbreviated post. The original can be found here.

Imagine that you lived in 16th-century Spain. You would be Catholic, your family would be Catholic, and your friends would be Catholic. You would have heard that the Protestants do terrible stupid violent things, and let's not even talk about the Mohammedans. It would be very hard to convince you to stop being Catholic - particularly when you take into account that your country has an Inquisition dedicated to making sure people are good Catholics.

Now imagine that you lived in 21st-century America. This is probably simple for a lot of you. You'd probably think democracy is a good thing, as would your friends and family. It would be very hard to convince you to stop believing in the righteousness of democracy - particularly when you take into account that your country has an army that goes around killing people to spread democracy.

You probably don't believe in 16th-century Catholicism. I say you shouldn't believe in 21st-century democracy either. Now I'm going to state some specific disagreements I have with democracy, given in the "blue pill, red pill" form from the Matrix. I'm not going to argue for them here, just present them for you to think about. Each blue pill is a democratic position, and each red pill is what I believe instead.

Blue pill 1: Places like Europe, the United States and Japan are nice places because they have democracy.
Red pill 1: Places like Europe, the United States and Japan are nice places because they have rule of law.

Blue pill 2: Democracy is required for freedom and the rule of law.
Red pill 2: Democracy is somewhere between irrelevant and harmful to the rule of law.

Blue pill 3: Democracy is important as an alternative to disasters like fascism and communism.
Red pill 3: Democracy is merely a smaller disaster and a close relative of fascism and communism, all three being essentially populist ideologies.

Blue pill 4: The will of the people directs the modern democratic state for the good of all.
Red pill 4: The modern democratic state mostly just flails about.

Blue pill 5: Power is held by The People.
Red pill 5: Power is held by the permanent civil service.

Blue pill 6: The state consists of elected politicians.
Red pill 6: The state also consists of unelected journalists, professors, NGOs, and the civil service.

Blue pill 7: Right-wing politicians are a threat to democracy and must be stopped.
Red pill 7: Right-wing politicians are a harmless nuisance and an inescapable consequence of democracy.

Blue pill 8: True democracy has apolitical decisionmaking and nonpartisan civil servants such as judges.
Red pill 8: All democracy is partisan and political, but I agree that apolitical decisionmaking would be nice.

Blue pill 9: The present system of Western government is the result of adapting 19th-century classical liberalism to the complex modern world.
Red pill 9: No, it's the result of FDR and his fellow Progressives breaking classical liberalism, complaining that it didn't work, becoming less democratic, and exporting their system.

Blue pill 10: Our state is moving towards a bright future with a globalized, transnational free market where experts and NGOs fight corruption and deliver public services.
Red pill 10: Our state is moving towards a future of sclerotic Brezhnevism, endless bureacracy, and stagnation. It'll probably collapse within ten years, because the economy is a mess and the Internet is upsetting its lock on the captive educational system.