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... how directly involved do you think any CEO is?
If the state is making policy and planning decisions for both the public and private sectors, how does the distinction even matter? It's like if Biden was Jeff Bezos's boss.
- It's just an extremely odd thing to say and paints any leader as a CEO. The coach is the CEO of the football team, the Starbucks manager is the CEO of the store, etc. Etc.
  
  Not an argument. You're just complaining about how there's multiple words for "some schmuck in charge." Do you realize that's incompatible with your prior insistence he is not in charge?
  
  Xi is in the highest seat of the CPC, that doesn't make him a "CEO." Your comment is nonsense word salad.
  
  If you can distinctly disagree with it then it's not word salad. You're just pulling insults from a hat.
  The comparison between shmucks-in-charge is crystal clear. No CEO plans and runs an entire company. They have layers of people under them. They are still in charge. They pick those planners, and tell them what to do, in broad terms.
  Your argument against this is that the state only has half the economy... and even that is undercut by acknowledging they "heavily plan" the other half.
  
  No, my argument is that framing Xi as a CEO is nonsense. I disagree with the framing as it isn't accurate.
  
  That's not an argument. That's a conclusion. The argument is the "why" part. Why is not not accurate?
  You tried arguing why, and missed. That's what all the stuff about layers of planners is about. If those are the actual reasons you reached this conclusion, it should change.
  
  Let me try arguing along your style. "Xi Jinping is a magical fairy."
  
  Oh sorry, do CEOs not exist on your planet? Are they not in executive control of a hierarchy, with only theoretical means to remove them? Do they not set long-term plans and broad strategic goals, within the context of a global market economy? Y'know - the thing you acknowledge Xi Jinping does, as you try to say he shares no qualities whatsoever with people who do the same thing in the private sector?
  Because that's what it would take for your response to be anything besides empty signalling to people who dogmatically agree with you just because of who you're defending. Fairies aren't real. CEOs are. National executives share enough in common, at the best of times, that idiots and assholes think states should "be run like a business."
  What happens when a state does control half of a country's business, and "heavily plans" the other half?
  
  Xi can be recalled, he just hasn't because he's wildly popular. The other aspects, such as having some level of control, becomes "Xi is a leader." Not a leaders are CEOs.
  
  Hey look, an argument! Why'd you jerk me around seven times before trying that?
  He's a leader in charge of goddamn near an entire economy. Half of it - by your own reckoning - directly under the state he controls. The other half - as you say - "heavily planned." How is he not as responsible for those industries as any CEO is responsible for their company? Is it just because he's even higher up the chain?

320 comments