Industrial Espionage is actually a lot better than it sounds, due to how the mechanic is calculated in that is. Say normal espionage rate is 100% but with the -50% from Constable and Police Station you are now only at 50%, which isn't uncommon for that juicy tech capital city you are spying in, with Industrial Espionage you wont get back up to 100% but to 150% actually (it isn't multiplied by 2 but rather 100% is added), so in effect you are at 3 times the speed! Not bad, not bad at all.
I can vouch for this, as every time I've picked this tenet, it takes my tech stealing speed go from 40+ turns down to 10-15. If you are not the tech leader, Industrial Espionage will put you back on the map, and you will not be the tech leader on Immortal/Deity.
Same thing with Futurism. It sounds bad, but when you're on Immortal and higher, an art+wonder rush is necessary
just to keep up with the average AI, and forget wonder spamming, as even if you do spam all the wonders, your nearest neighbor will DOW you into the stone age for not having an army, and even if that doesn't happen, guess what, the AI is still somehow besting your culture. I've seriously rushed the GL on Immortal, picked Philosophy as my free tech, got the Parthenon right afterward, Oracle, then used the Liberty finisher to get a Great Artist, and my Culture was still only average compared to AIs that don't even have any great works or wonders! My tourism was only 1/3 of that of the nearest piety AI. A THIRD.
Everyone saying Autocracy is bad is looking at it the wrong way. If you are already comfortable or ahead at your chosen VC, of course Autocracy is bad and Freedom/Order are superior, they are designed to cement a lead you already have, or give you the boost you need to go from competitive to leader. At the highest two difficulties, though, the AI who is going after your chosen victory condition is ALWAYS going to be better at it than you. Brilliant plays that would put you forever ahead on Emperor will merely keep you in the game on Immortal.
Autocracy shines in come-from-behind situations, and the reason it has things like Futurism, Fortified Borders, and Industrial Espionage as starting tenets. None of them are any good if you're already sitting pretty, but they are astoundingly effective if the AI is making you sweat. Once that happens, the only cure is an invasion. To invade, you need tech; to get tech, you need spies. To prevent other AIs from making your people unhappy, you not only need culture, but Tourism. Better, you don't even need to make great works to get tourism out of Futurism, you can use the musicians to go on tour and use the writers for Political Writs and still get 50 turns' worth of a great work out of each deal. Both of these functions are ESSENTIAL if you have fallen behind in the culture game, since you'll be well past the point where idly waiting is even going to work anymore. That's the name of the game with Autocracy.
Every Autocracy game is about giving your military more leverage in everything your civ does. Even if you're not going for Domination, Autocracy is perfect for enabling your military to even the odds in your favor for any VC, and really, you can't peace-monger your way to victory on high difficulties anyway. If there's a runaway AI, it's very likely that the other AIs don't like them either. This is where Cult of Personality comes into play, since the AIs will all start coming to you with an offer of joint wars. When you get into a joint war, it legitimizes your war and makes the other AIs less likely to denounce, and best of all, it increases the tourism you put out towards them
without increasing the tourism they put out towards you -- all the other output boosting factors are always mutual, and Cult of Personality is worth two of them. It's a MUCH better Culture Tier 3 than Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In this manner, you wipe out your biggest competitor while pounding your influence into the other AIs who are friendly with you. Autocracy is definitely still about using your army, but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be Autocracy.
As an aside, Universal Healthcare is a tenet shared by EVERY ideology, so it can't be knocked too much for being there. Besides, there are a LOT of national wonders now, and you will probably already have at least 80% of them by the time you even get to ideologies:
Heroic Epic
National Epic
Circus Maximus
National College
East India Company
Oxford University
Writers' Guild
Artists' Guild
Musicians' Guild
Ironworks
Hermitage
Grand Temple
So if you have them all, that's a whopping +12 happiness, and these are all buildings you want anyway. Not bad for a tier 1.