r/Capitalism

Aren't communism and capitalism opposites and incompatible?

Capitalism is about private ownership. But in communism, there is no private ownership, the people own everything.

How can China have both?

I believe capitalism is a form of plutocracy, as it tries to equate wealth with power. Why should a work slave away in a job, while the CEO goes on luxury cruises. How is lobbying not quid pro quo (this for that, i.e. bribery)?

I believe how wages work under capitalism is a form of wage slavery, as it is not a meaningful choice to choose between homelessness and starvation and slaving away in a 9 to 5 job doing back breaking labor while making minimum wage living paycheck to paycheck.

If you have any questions or see anything missing please ask, and I will be very glad to answer.

that's all.

"Zhao Gao once showed a deer to the Emperor and called it a horse. Anyone who disagreed was executed. Today, they do the same thing with information. They call it 'curation' or 'safety,' but it’s just the same old palace walls. If the voters only see what the 'Deep State' allows, are the voters even in control? 🦌➡️🐎"

That's what commies do.

Questioning leftism is banned.

The vast majority of communist states are countries with historically Confucian/Buddhist culture. The majority of the world’s Buddhists live in Communist countries. Is there something about Buddhist/Confucian culture/history that makes Marxism Leninism endure longer in those countries?

Elon Musk’s wealth is around USD 800 billion — roughly 2–3% of annual US GDP. That is his total net worth, not his yearly income. In other words, even the fortune of one of the richest people alive today represents only a small slice of a single year’s economic output in America. Yet many treat this level of inequality as some kind of moral catastrophe never seen before in human history.

Let’s pause and look back at the ancient world with honest eyes.

Take Qin Shi Huang (Ying Zheng), the man who forged China’s first empire. He didn’t just want to be king — he wanted to rule “all under heaven.” And he did. The Qin state seized total control over land, labor, taxes, and the lives of millions. Earlier Chinese states like Qi under Guan Zhong had been relatively practical, encouraging merchants and even offering some basic welfare. But under the Qin, the system turned brutally merciless.

Countless peasants and prisoners were ripped from their families and conscripted into brutal labor gangs. They died by the tens of thousands building roads, palaces, and the early Great Wall. Many were literally buried alive inside the wall itself — their bodies becoming building material for the emperor’s grand vision. Imagine the despair: farmers who only wanted to feed their children, suddenly dragged away, worked to death in chains, their broken bodies packed into the very stones meant to glorify their tyrant. Poor men were also drafted as soldiers, thrown into endless wars of conquest, often never returning home.

That was not mere “inequality.” That was total ownership of human beings by the state and its god-like ruler.

We don’t have modern Gini coefficients for the Qin or Mongol empires, but the real concentration of power was almost unimaginable. An emperor didn’t just have “wealth” — he owned the army, the laws, the grain stores, the land, and the very right to decide who lived and who died. One man’s whim could starve provinces or bury thousands inside defensive walls.

Genghis Khan and his successors operated on a similar scale. Their power was measured not in dollars, but in conquered nations, rivers of blood, and pyramids of skulls.

Modern statistics often miss this deeper truth: visible financial wealth is not the same as total coercive power. America’s Gini coefficient sits around 0.49 before taxes and about 0.39 after redistribution. Democracies redistribute not always out of pure kindness, but because ignoring the poor eventually becomes expensive — riots, instability, and collapse threaten everyone.

Too little inequality is not practical. Why should I work unless I get more and can pass it on to my children?

Authoritarian systems, by contrast, often hide their inequality. During Suharto’s Indonesia, official inequality numbers looked better than today’s. In reality, vast wealth and power flowed through crony monopolies, military-business empires, political favors, and family-linked foundations. The suffering was simply swept off the official books.

Modern capitalism creates highly visible billionaires who build cars, rockets, and internet infrastructure. Ancient and authoritarian systems created god-kings who built monuments on the bones of the powerless. The difference is stark: one system lets people see the wealth and argue about it. The other buried its victims inside the walls and called it glory.

I keep seeing the same pro-capitalist talking points over and over. It creates growth. It reduces poverty. It’s the most efficient system.

But nobody really answers a simpler question. Who is it actually working for?

When I look around, I don’t see something that’s working evenly. I see productivity going up while wages don’t really keep pace. I see a small group of people holding most of the wealth. I see people working full time and still struggling to afford housing, healthcare, or just basic stability.

So what exactly are we defending?

If the argument is that it creates wealth, then who is actually getting that wealth? If it’s efficient, what is it efficient at doing? If it’s the best system we have, what standard are we even using to say that?

I’m not even arguing for some perfect alternative. I’m just trying to understand why the default reaction is to defend this system as it is when the outcomes look this uneven.

If a system consistently leads to extreme inequality and a lot of instability for working people, why is the instinct to protect it instead of question it?

So what is the actual justification beyond just saying it’s better than something else?