Appreciative of the broadness here, but I take trust in the readership here to recommend interestingly.

I'm looking for an introductory book on non-democratic political systems. I'd be particularly interested in a book that argues some of the core issues in democracy, and proposes alternative solutions.

I often find myself critical of democratic systems ("we shouldn't be voting, I don't trust these people"), but have little arguing power to the alternatives when needed. Often hear neoreactionary / anarchism thrown around, but I'd actually like to ready beyond a wikipedia article.

Thoughts?

Yes, Berlin is the most obvious candidate at this point, and it seems strong on most fronts except climate and prices.

Prices aren't bad compared to other big cities.

You would need around 3,087.02€ (2,438.53£) in Berlin to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 4,500.00£ in London

You would need around 3,073.39€ (2,427.76£) in Berlin to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 3,600.00£ in Oxford

You would need around 3,084.93€ in Berlin to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 3,400.00€ in Vienna

You would need around 3,093.66€ (3,484.64$) in Berlin to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 6,000.00$ in Berkeley, CA

You would need around 3,077.66€ (3,342.51Fr.) in Berlin to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 7,300.00Fr. in Zurich

It's not anymore the price level it had when Tim Ferriss wrote the 4HW and recommended digital nomads to move to Berlin to have it super cheap, but it's still relatively cheap.

Which city do you consider suitable that is cheaper than Berlin?

In most cities I think you couldn't run an event like the LWCW for 150€.

I think it's meant as a rationality test for those who say voting is pointless. If you consider voting pointless but value being 10c richer at least a little bit, then on Liron's premises you should maybe be willing to vote whichever way gets you the 10c.

(I am unconvinced, for reasons I've given in another comment on the OP. Also because people may reasonably value voting for "internal" reasons: it makes them feel like fuller participants in their society, or something.)

In case you're still looking, I think you might find Chris Brecheen's "Social Justice Bard" blog edifying

Looking at this blog I'm having trouble not coming to the conclusion that he's an idiot. Could you cite some of his posts you found particularly edifying?

Don't overdo

Don't overdo anything!

I see two ways to hack the need for validation, but they sort of run in opposite directions: creating, or hanging around, a community where you're the most or one of the most competent person around. This helps a lot because validation is fluid, is not necessarily related to romantic appreciation but also to social status.
A second way that I sometimes practice is to go in a place full of attractive people and begin looking each in the eyes, smiling. More often than not, they will reciprocate and it doesn't take much to fill your romantic validation meter, we are (at least, males are) very good at self-deluding.
Bonus tip: calisthenics or a home-gym are effective ways of training, you do not need to necessarily run to train alone.

If "the operator of calculating future-time snapshots is linear", it'd be very hard for me to consider X = A(S) + R "garbage".

Yes and my question was how does he know? If he never had that amount of money available to him, his guesstimate of how much utility he will be able to gain from it is subject to doubt. People do change, especially when their circumstances change.

log utility is not sufficient to explain risk aversion.

In fact it's pretty well established that typical levels of risk aversion cannot be explained by any halfway-credible utility function. A paper by Matthew Rabin shows, e.g., that if you decline a bet where you lose $100 or gain $110 with equal probability (which many people would) and this is merely because of the concavity of your utility function, then subject to rather modest assumptions you must also decline a bet where you lose $1000 or gain all the money in the world with equal probability.

in terms of how it changes your life the first increment is far more significant

Yes, of course, no one is arguing against that. However you make a couple of rather stronger statements e.g.

anything more than a couple hundred K provides little utility at all

which don't strike me as true for most people.

There are large individual differences -- for a monk who has taken a vow of poverty even your "first increment" is pretty meaningless, while for someone with a life dream of flying her own plane around the world a few hundred $K aren't that much. But I would expect that a large majority of people would be able to extract significant utility out of a few hundred thousands of dollars beyond the first couple.