>>7181
Monarchy is the least bad form of government because of time-preference. The monarch has the lowest time-preference of all the possible rulers, and as such, thinks has the longest time horizon and thinks in the longest term. He is encouraged therefore to be even-handed in his rule and minimalist in his policy, for he understands that this is to his benefit. For instance, he knows that if he taxes less now, his realm's economy will grow all the faster, allowing him to plunder a larger gross profit later, even if the percentage is lower. Other rulers have no such incentive to think in the long term, and will simply plunder as much as they can in the short term with oppressively high tax rates, to the extreme detriment of the realm.
>rule by the church
Monarchs rule by divine right. Attempting direct rule through the church would only cause the church to lose its luster as an eternal spiritual guide–as the clergy gain political power, they lose sight of their original purpose and become deficient at providing it. You can see this by observing how the Protestant nations (in which head of church and head of state are one and the same) have succumbed much more fully to degeneracy than their Orthodox or Catholic cousins. I don't want to see the Church corrupted, so I don't want the church to rule.
>secular bureaucrats
Bureaucrats are the bane of all creation and one of the worst things to come out of democracy, and its coked-up younger brother communism. Why on Earth would you suggest democracy's inbred bastard child as a non-democratic alternative?
>If we share the tragic view of human nature, the tendency among monarchs and aristocrats will be to descend into profligacy over time, and that is what happened.
Of course, no human is fallible. But monarchies descend far, far, slower than any of the alternatives, and provide certain positive incentives which the alternatives do not. Hereditary succession, for instance, does not lend itself to rewarding those who crave power, for the line of succession is predetermined. Democracies, or even dictatorships with cognatic succession, actively encourage liars, sociopaths, and sycophants to seek power. With monarchies, such a man may occasionally gain power, but only through an accident of genetics–the system does not reward the dregs of humanity the way other systems do.
>Of course institutions can also become corrupted but at least there, there is the chance of reform. Monarchs and aristocrats cannot be removed except by death.
But in this same statement, you prove the efficacy of monarchies. A theoretical "bad" monarch's reign ends with his death. But a bad institution will survive the death of its head, even the death of most of its upper leadership. There is no chance of reform. You can't kill a bureaucracy, even if you're the head of that bureaucracy and wish to kill it from the inside. There's far too much inertia and red tape to even attempt such a thing, to the point that anyone who wishes to "fix" a bureaucracy usually gives up, burns the whole thing down, and builds a completely new institution. Bureaucracies actively resist change with all their might, even change that is to the benefit of every member of that bureaucracy. But it only takes one man to restore a declining monarchy.