Communism is when you steal the fruits of an entrepreneur's labor (who, in turn, totally didn't steal them from his workers, nuh uh). The more you steal, the communister it is. - Karl Marx

Not spending trillions on useless wars and investing that money into taxpayer funded education and healthcare would probably be enough for the start. Wouldn't even be necessary to raise taxes. Look at how we're doing it over here in Europe. Even right wing politicians here wouldn't ever suggest getting rid of education and healthcare just to fuel that money into bombing Afghani villages and killing brown kids. It's common sense, really.
Alternatively, you could raise FDR from the dead and let him have a go at dealing with the exploitative megacorps. So both options are about equally likely to happen.

What a coincidence, if we lived 85 years ago in Germany we also would be branded with a red triangle, lol.
Don't worry though, there are plenty of reasonable people on this website, they just don't tend to gank people with downvotes.

Haha thanks, I have my moments. Let's redistribute the thumbs, comrade!

Ah, so we're at *that* part of the conversation already, the part where my opinions have created all of the problems I'm talking about solving. Ya got me, I'm actually three Stalins in a trench coat.
As for someone stealing the fruit of someone else's labor, I believe Karl Marx had something to say about that, lol.
As a parting note, here's a study that you may be interested in reading, about the US being effectively an oligarchy rather than a meritocracy. doi. org/ 10.1017/ S1537592714001595

Conceptually speaking, capitalism deepens differences while communism flattens them. And I believe both are necessary for a functioning society. On an individual level, you should be entitled to the fruits of your labor. If you founded a successful business, you deserve it! And if someone was lazy and didn't work hard, too bad for them. The logic of meritocracy works here. Simple cause and effect, right? But if it then means that that person's child won't be able to get an education or hell, even proper healthcare, that's when I have an issue with it. I think we should provide anyone with enough opportunities on an individual level (and yes, unfortunately it seems at this point we have to do it through the government), not have rich families have many times more opportunities than poor. Because then it's not about individual responsibility anymore but about being lucky enough to be born into a family with successful and wealthy ancestors.

I have no problem with investing, as long as the person doesn't also attempt market manipulation.
I have an ancap friend who talks about capitalism the way you do, "voluntary transactions of rational actors" etc. The way he describes it, it sounds great! But it's just so detached from reality. Humans aren't rational actors, in fact they're very easy to fool by false advertisement. Transactions aren't always voluntary as everyone is restrained by their circumstances (which I'd even argue becomes inefficient in the end, as talented individuals can't utilize their full potential because one idiot ancestor many generations back put the family into poverty). Capitalism doesn't exist in a bubble where the better entrepreneur prevails and then we restart the simulation. It keeps going, and the better entrepreneur may eventually make a monopoly and even take control of the government through bribes. Capitalism without any checks would become a disaster.

Hahaha, I meant that a fly would land on it lol

And sure, maybe I'm wrong about this being a *principle* per se. There are plenty of companies who manage to profit even when they pay their employees well and use ethical sources for their materials. But they aren't and never will be the most successful ones. The most successful ones are the ones using unethical labor, cutting corners and using misleading advertising. Just look at where and how most of our stuff is made. So it's pretty clear to me what the incentives are.

I didn't imply you did, but value can't be created out of nothing. If you're "gaming the system", ie. getting a lot of money for (relatively) little labor, there comes a point where *someone* down the production chain is getting screwed. With a few exceptions (one that comes to mind is programmers who can sell a lot of copies of a good software because the copies make themselves and there's only their own labor involved), it's always at someone's expense.

So is it morally okay to "game the system" if it means you're directly contributing to suffering of other people? Should a good system be "gameable"?

What I'm trying to get at is, neither system is inherently evil. But both have plenty space for exploitation. If people were perfect, we wouldn't need any system, everyone would treat each other fairly. But obviously people aren't perfect and many will try to screw each other over first chance they get. Ideally, the government and the law should prevent people from getting screwed over. But we all know how that's going lol. Especially when the government and the capitalists doing the screwing-over are in cahoots.

Is it really without coercion though? Work for very little or don't work at all and starve to death doesn't seem like much freedom of choice to me. This oversimplification of "capitalism is just people making free, mutually beneficial transactions and exchanging goods", while historically accurate, just doesn't take into account like 90% of stuff that's currently going on, like coercion, like bribes, like corrupt regulations, oligopolies, underselling to remove competition, I could go on and on. And I'm not even going to get into how monetary value can be created seemingly randomly from nothing, even from speculation and lies (*cough* Wall Street *cough*), how it is not tied to labor anymore. This oversimplification doesn't take into account human nature (which ironically is what is often said about communism – and fully rightly so, but the irony is still present).
How did that quote go? Under communism, man exploits man. Under capitalism it's vice versa. Something like that.

Right? Thank you! I was about to write the same when I saw the post. It's not lazy to filter out useless/irrelevant information.

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way