I would be more interested to see your response to the key point of their comment - that the US exemplified this on a large scale in recent history.

That would be more compelling than to simply claim to have a lot of knowledge of history

We already have communism to a certain degree in every democratic government. You already accept it willingly. It is just a matter of expanding more government programs on top of sectors being squatted by rent seekers looking to make money without actual contribution to the economy beyond rent seeking from those that do contribute to the economy. The only hard part is that rent seekers tend to have an outsized influence on politics than workers.

Really, what is the utility of a rent seeker? By definition they are a leach on the actual productive elements of an economy. A waste. An inefficiency. I mean, you pay someone to do something, but you have to pay them even more than what might be required because they have this nonworking person sustaining themselves on rent seeking you also need to pay stuck on that back of that worker. That is the situation in so many economic sectors. It leads to a huge loss of money and productivity objectively. It leads to businesses outsourcing labor due to the artificial costs brought on by speculative rent seekers in a given local economy.

My landlord has no job. They collect probably 16k in rent a month from all the units in the small complex in which they raise rents yearly. In terms of investment in the property they once hired a handyman to cauk my sink so probably not even $200 a unit a year in overhead on average. They don’t do renovations or any work between tenants beyond sweeping up the floors and they try and keep as much security deposit for themselves as possible for stupid things. I pay a substantial portion of my income not to upkeep the roof over my head, but to ensure my landlord can have an upper class existence in a high cost of living area while not having to work a job and contribute any labor or ideas.

Does that seem like a good system to you? Enabling freeloaders to leech off the people doing the actual work that makes the world spin, to a point where they are paid far more than most workers? Passing that lifestyle to their nonworking children through inheritance? Essentially creating a hidden nonworking feudal kingdom sustained by the functional economy? One that has outsized political and media influence to ensure the boat is not rocked? Really think about what is actually happening in our economy.

This is a pretty glib way of putting it. The chinese system isn't really capitalism, at least not of the "free market" type. Like I'm not saying that communism is responsible for the improvements in poverty, but I am saying that a significantly non-capitalist system has resulted in big changes. My point is that we often talk like anything that is not a pure capitalism is bound to grind to a halt and be catastrophically bad, but that isn't true.