The problem with Kings and Queens is that even the best ones expire after a while (... but maybe not, if you believe the transhumanists) and the replacement ten

The problem with Kings and Queens is that even the best ones expire after a while (... but maybe not, if you believe the transhumanists) and the replacement tends to be even less accountable than the Presidents and Prime Ministers of today's governments are. If you get Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius all in the same century, you're lucky. You could have just as easily gotten five Neros and five Caligulas in a row, or an alternating series of Catholics and Protestants who try to kill everyone who was loyal to the previous monarch. With a democracy, you can't optimize the society to the same degree of perfection as you can with philosopher kings, but you also get to avoid the worst crashes. Do you want extreme performance or do you want reliability? Hint: human lives are supposed to be many times more important than records in your database.