I mostly agree with your analysis, in that I think we've been lucky in some sense that the good guys won.

The good guys did win, because I'm not a National Socialist or a Communist or a Muslim or a Roman. But I don't think we where lucky. "The Gift We Give Tomorrow" should illustrate why I don't think you can say we where "lucky". By definition anyone that won would have made sure we viewed them as the more or less good guys.

But doesn't Moldbug have some totally different explanation for the Cold War, involving infighting between the US State Dept. and the Pentagon?

That wasn't Moldbug's argument about the USSR, it was mine :)

Yes, if I recall right his model goes something like this: The State Department wanted to make the Soviet Union its client much like say Britain or or West Germany or Japan where, it viewed US society and Soviet society as on a converging path, with the Soviet Union's ruling class having its heart in the right place but sometimes going too far. Something they could never do with any truly right wing regime. This is why they often basically sabotaged the Pentagon's efforts and attempts at client making. The Cold War and the Third World in general would have never been as bloody if the State Department vs. the Pentagon civli war by proxy wouldn't have been going on.

Anyway, isn't it easier (and more efficient) to use social engineering to suppress populist sedition?

Sure but I don't want to live in a society that takes this logic to its general conclusion. I want to be able to dislike the government I'm living under even if I can't do anything about it. Many people might not either, and we may be willing to tolerate living in a different less wealthy part of patch land or paying higher taxes for it.

consent-of-the-governed .

What is that? Can we depack this concept?

I think government should provide "unprofitable" services, and he doesn't.

I'm trying to figure out what you mean by this. Can't we have a "Deliver mail to far off corners foundation" and give it 0.5% of the stocks of Neo-Washington corp. when the thing takes off? Do you in principle object to government being for profit or is it just you think that nonprofits funded by shares of the government of equal GDP fractions as they have right now couldn't provide services of equally quality? What is the governments mission then? Which unprofitable services should it provide? All possible ones? Those that have the most eloquent rent-seekers? Those that are "good"? Can you define then the mission of government in words that are a bit more specific than universal benevolence? And if democratic government is so good at that why don't we have seed AI report to congress for approval of each self-modification? Don't worry the AI also gets one vote.