As for Russia, you may correct me but their system of government seems to be basically a social democracy. In time, they will probably decline in terms of budget and ruling class quality. The system is bound to fail and you described how. The biggest temptation is paradoxically to finance project to enhance people’s life and then basically whatever the ruling class pursues as common good. That’s how progressivism or left liberalism or social democracy as I call it came to birth. Perhaps they transform it into something else.

In your text about monarchy one point you hurried over is the difference between societies antiquity which were basically city states and medieval societies. The latter were much more legally polycentric with all sorts of customs, ancient rights, statutes and other legal burdens that hindered the power of kings. The aristocracy was not some appointed stewards or office-holders. That came much later. They ruled on their own right.

I mention this because modern society and to certain extent the city states of antiquity are completely different beast with all the layers of society leveled to just one – the citizen. All the sources of law, rights, customs and liberties, canon law reduced to just one – legislative branch of government. All of this done for the sake of a more enlightened, more efficient and rational rule. It is difficult to see how this is not going to end up sooner or later in some sort of totalitarian state.

Fustel de Coulanges describes life in the ancient city and it is not a place where I would like to be. And modern life rushes towards similar mode – either the woke semi-totalitarianism of niceness and gratification or a technocratic full or semi-totalitarianism, think China. The medieval option (somehow translated to modern circumstances) turns out to have a little bit more room for freedom than the other two.