Where do you prefer your rich ***s?

Well said. Often when comparing capitalism and communism people compare an “idealized” communist scenario to a highly flawed capitalism. The two systems ultimately produce very similar results when operating at either extreme of “flawed” or “perfect” order. It’s also the case that people conflate the economic concepts with various styles of government when in fact you can have a capitalist dictatorship or a communist democracy or any combination. Specific flavors like Marxism may not philosophically allow democracy- but even at that the divides in democracy such as direct democracy or representative etc. sort of downplay the distinction anyway as to my earlier statement- the ultimate expression of either system ends up very similar in most regards. One party or two you still have liberals and conservatives and all sorts, and you still don’t have a direct say unless you are in office.

To be clear I’m not saying that there aren’t differences between the systems and such, nor am I saying that I believe it doesn’t matter if one has communism or capitalism, democracy or some other system- it’s just that to the original point- in the end the people in power tend to create the rules and thusly tend to create rules which favor them and their continued positions of power or privilege. The Pareto principle isn’t unquestionable- but the basic premise is a good guide to how most things work- a ship has many parts and systems, but if that ship sinks, there are either a narrow number of problems likely to cause that or a narrow number of collective issues that can cause it. Ships don’t sink because the seat warmers only go to half way or the stairs to the bridge are squeaky.