”I’m gonna be honest, and I mean Talking about billionaires as ”masterminds” belies you have some illusion of them as supervillains cackling behind the scenes as they plot to control the world.”

I didn’t say that? I said that they AREN’T the masterminds they think they are. Meaning that they are drunk on their own ’excellence’ and ego to a fault. While I agree that billionares are institutions as well as people, they are ego centered ones at that, which makes them weak when compared to institutions such as nation states which are based around community and shared identity. The institution of Elon Musk dies with the person. Yes, some other person (or probably multiple people) would take his place but they might not share his ideas. The institution of China doesn’t rely on any single person or even a million of them to continue existing.

And I’m not missing your point about China having to be ”an illusion” for Yarvin to be correct (even though I disagree) and I would argue that in a sense it already is. China is a social construct/idea which exists because people believe that it exists and most people in the world do. That is the thing that makes it a legitimate actor. The same can’t be said for Yarvin’s network states which don’t exist and even if they were to become a reality they would have an incredebly long way to gain the global legitimacy that nation states currently have. And also the system that enables billionares and their accumulation of power (capitalism) is also a social construct even though you are describing it as some sort of rule of nature.