I sometimes compare Rand to Marx. Both were very astute critics -- Marx of capitalism and Rand of socialism/communism. Unfortunately neither had practical ideas of what to do about it. Both advocated some version of "put certain ideas into practice and then (magic happens here) and then the evil state withers away." The magic is what doesn't happen. We're now able to see that the real world endpoint of communism is mafia rule and that the real world endpoint of capitalism is techno-feudalism.
Rand's heroes all look like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. People like that are notable because they are rare. Most of the ultra-wealthy more closely resemble Rand's villains.
Real creators are too busy creating to play the kind of dominance games that most often lead to political and business success. You can succeed by creating, but doing so is many orders of magnitude harder than succeeding through manipulation and so you get a smaller pool of people who can pull it off.
There are positive points to be taken from many political philosophies (including libertarians and communists alike), my personal outlook is to never attach too dogmatically to one side though. :)
Capitalism and basic freedoms are indeed separate entities, but I do think it remains an open question whether China can become a knowledge / innovation powerhouse, while at the same time heading backwards on basic freedoms as they seem to be now. This is more the key that I see has been historically linked together. Controlled societies may be just fine for the nuts and bolts portion of capitalism, but one can point to countless examples in history where suppressed / tightly controlled knowledge ended up holding societies back, severely suppressing innovation.