I wish people advocating these views would visit Eastern Europe and ask them how well Communism prevented disparities and despair.

No no. The way I would do communism would be good!

That wasn't real communism.

I wish people advocating capitalism would visit my hometown in rural southeast US and see it too honestly. 18% of children and 25% of elderly adults under the poverty line. Every single family I know of directly touched by at least one of the wave after wave of addiction crises we've been having.

We aren't better you just don't have to look at it.

People in your town can keep fruits of their labor? Do what they want with their money?

Have you ever lived an entire family on $18k/year? What you want to do with your money is completely moot.

It is definition of capitalism. You get money for work and spend on what you want.

Do what they want with their money, like not be able to afford a home, or a means of transportation, or adequate food.

Real fucking freedom you have there.

So you don't have capitalism there.

The problem is that, no matter the organization or system we devise, people who want power and control sooner or later (and usually it's sooner) find a way to work their way to the top, where they can f*ck over everyone else.

Until we fix that problem, the best we can do is to pick systems and ways of organizing that tend to limit the ability of these people to get control.

What town/state are we talking about? Is it a mining town where the mines are shutdown? Is it a mill town where the mills are shutdown? Is it a auto manufacturing town where the cars went obsolete? Agricultural town where the farms are gone?

You mean sort of attention to context and nuance that wasn't part of the conversation when we were talking about other economic systems?

For a people who won the cold war y'all are very defensive about this whole thing lol. Like the slightest acknowledgement that this system also sucks for a lot of people means we're headed straight for the gulags again.

Capital controls are communist? That's funny, because up until the Post-WWII order that's pretty much what everyone had. It's what some western nations still have to this day. It's what we do for our entire military supply chain. You know, like those radical lefty organizations Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon.

Adam Smith himself is communist by many modern capitalists' definitions, the label is getting tiresome. They (and possibly you) just want money without any responsibility, a child's idea of a good life.

Indeed. The US had capital controls: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/024/1975/001/arti... .. introduced by noted communist Lyndon B Johnson.