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TheAncientGeek comments on Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary? - Less Wrong
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For starters a monarch doesn't have to spend most of his effort manufacturing democratic support, thus he can actually focus his effort into governing the country.
A more concrete way to see the difference is that under a monarchy most people aren't expected to participate in politics or hold political opinions, the attitude you captured rather well in your post here. Under a demotic dictatorship, all people are required to participate in politics and form their own political opinions, and those opinions had better mach the dictator's/today's cathedral consensus.
Except they don't. Buying votes is illegal. Thus in order to buy votes you have to ensure that said law won't be enforced against you, witch requires that you have the right connections. Which means to have power you must constantly be playing signaling games to maintain those connections.
That doesn't explain the difference between a monarch and a dictator, as requested. Once a dictator has suspended elections, they don't need democratic support either.
That means that means that they have less time, not that the dictator does. The dictator doesn't need to manufacture assent, they rather need to quash dissent...as would a monarch, as many did. NRxs just assume that Monarchy will work effortlessly, because that's their desired conclusion.
The question was specifically about demotic dictatorships. As for dictators in general, that depends on how the dictator legitimizes his rule.
Monarchs had a lot less dissent to quash. For example, the dress code at Versailles required all men to carry swords. Compare that with a modern president, good luck getting close to him with so much as a pocket knife.
No kind of dictator has to generate democratic support. Demotic dictators are supposed to justify themselves by generating ideological support, but that doesn't actually distinguish them from real world monarchies, because of all the ideology about God Put Me on the Throne,
OTOH, the Star Chamber.
"The People Support Me" is a lot easier to falsify then "God Put Me on the Throne", thus you need correspondingly more oppression to keep anyone from falsifying it.
Or you can manufacture consent, in both cases. Monarchies have not been free of oppressive violence, any more they they have been fire of memmetic engineering.