To stop starving its population, China embraced capitalist ideas: leveraging self-interest, creating jobs, and allowing for income inequality. This paradoxical move by a communist regime serves as powerful evidence that capitalism is the most effective tool for pulling masses out of poverty.

Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto demands a state monopoly on money and credit. Since all modern economies use central banks to control the money supply, they are built on a Marxist principle. With money being half of every transaction, these economies are at best 50% capitalist and 50% Marxist.

Marx wrote when only the wealthy could risk starting businesses because they had to personally absorb all losses. This created a closed loop where the rich got richer, forming the basis of his critique of capital accumulation.

Marx's most profound insight was that all production inputs, including machinery, could create surplus value, not just labor. However, he suppressed this realization because it contradicted his claim that socialism was inevitable, which depended on a falling rate of profit caused by increased machinery use.

Modern definitions of entrepreneurship have narrowed to exclude most business owners, focusing on venture-backed disruptors. The original 18th-century definition was broader: anyone who accepts uncertain pay for a potential greater reward. The core elements are having the freedom to do the work you want while accepting the financial and emotional risk.

The earliest American colonies were not purely ideological crusades but high-risk investment projects financed by joint-stock companies—the 17th-century equivalent of VC funds. This model required property rights and contract enforcement not as afterthoughts, but as prerequisites to attract capital, fundamentally shaping American culture from its inception.

Capitalism's true power lies in its fluidity, enabling anyone to move from being solely a provider of labor to an owner of capital. Through sweat equity, stock options, or entrepreneurship, individuals can compound capital and achieve economic mobility—a process threatened by systems that denounce such success.

Contrary to popular belief, the doctrine of shareholder primacy is a recent invention. For most of corporate history, companies were chartered for a specific public benefit, and subverting that mission purely for shareholder profit would have been considered a crime.

Unlike direct handouts, the Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a policy-based safety net. By separating personal and business liability, it allows entrepreneurs to fail without personal financial ruin, encouraging the risk-taking necessary for a prosperous economy.