Though to be fair, the vast vast majority of HN comments regarding more complex topics are not coming from first hand sources, or those who've had serious discussions with people who've had that first hand experience.

Or you can just work for a large company.

The reason most large countries have standardized on democracy + separation of powers + rule of law (in various flavors) is precisely because it's a decent solution to this.

China's governance struggles are because it wants two contradictory things (a) absolute authority of the CCP + (b) absolute adherence to the rule of law.

Unfortunately, explicitly placing a political party made of humans above the rule of law is a recipe for ignoring the latter. First when it's politically inconvenient. Then, once it's become culturally acceptable, whenever anyone thinks they can get away with it.

Xi smartly pushed this back a few decades, to the extent possible, by identifying and pursuing corruption vigorously (from the top) as an existential threat to the CCP. Unfortunately, absolute power... etc. ... and inevitably aspects of those corruption crusades turned into removing political enemies from power.

Authoritarian regimes' greatest weaknesses are corruption and blindness to inconvenient truths.

Democracies' are lack of unity and long term planning.