"one run of a time machine, with a printout of Wikipedia, would be pretty much all the real 1950 needed. Send the technology back to 1945, and you'll have iPads by '55 at the latest. Those guys got things done."
That kind of thinking betrays a common misunderstanding. The limiting factor on what we can build at any given time is very rarely ideas. In 1950, people already knew enough physics to build an iPad. The idea of integrated circuits had already been proposed. The first one was demonstrated in 1958 -- only three years later than Moldbug's alternate history.
And yet no iPads in 1960. Because there's a vast global capital structure that needed to evolve first. Technology is not an external factor. It makes no sense to argue whether society is better after factoring out technology, because technology cannot be factored out. It's all part of the same web of interrelationships.
Edit to add:
I had to add this, because it's so wrong it's perverse: "At the base of the pyramid are air, water and food. How does 2013 do at supplying oxygen, hydration and nutrition? How did 1950 do? Just fine. Gentlemen, a draw."
Only if you limit yourself to the wealthiest 10% of human beings. Out here in reality, global food security for everybody else is dramatically better than it was in 1950. Much of the developing world is starting to worry more about obesity than starvation. Moldbug is simply ignoring the biggest economic story of the last 40 years, presumably because it didn't happen in The West.