i. communism seems to (and theoretically probably must) produce or at least facilitate maos and stalins ii. theres no compensatory payoff iii. capitalist systems can break but their failure mode is generally transient and less-dreadful iv. mitigating mechanisms exist, understood
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v. capitalism has enormous and proven nice side effects like, that's more than enough, and it doesnt push the argument into shifty moral status gaming
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It can be a good argument against communism as a utopian panacea. The fact that when it was tried it did not merely fail but was a historical disaster makes it very unlikely that it is the solution to mankind's fundamental problems.
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Even most libertarians don't make the symmetric argument that capitalism is a cost-free cure-all. Ayn Rand is justifiably mocked for doing this.
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the only good take is:
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When you're contrasting Stalin and Mao with capitalism, though, you're not only contrasting economic systems . The worst things about Stalin and Mao was that they were murderous autocrats. Murderous autocrats (like, I guess, Hitler?) can coexist with capitalism.
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Hitler didn't co-exist with capitalism. He told companies what they were allowed to produce, how much they were allowed to pay people, how much they were allowed to sell for, and enforced it with threat of taking the companies away.
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I am open to better examples? China? There's sort of a state sponsored capitalism going on in both examples?
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China is certainly more capitalist than Nazi Germany, but its murderous autocrats are, uh, the communist party.
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And, moreover, the biggest point of friction and rebellion against those autocrats comes from institutional capital.
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the one i worry about it "communism requires violence." if i were commie i'd say there's no violence in just not letting an absentee capitalist skim wealth from the facilities you work and maintain, and i don't have a good answer to that but they never end up using it so

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i think it's probably because they actually really do fantasize about murdering people and other ways of revolution don't occur to them.
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