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The other solution is welfare which provides people who do not contribute to the production of wealth in any manner what-so-ever access to a portion of that wealth. This has gotten so out of hand that we've got a large unemployed work force out there that will not hold a job even though millions are available. Why work when you can sit at home and get high?
This is truly the biggest problem right now - it justifies endless illegal immigration because "the locals won't do it!" when, in reality, some amount of pressure must be exerted on the chronically unemployed to get the desired results.
Likewise, illegal immigration dilutes wages way too much. You could even say that illegal immigration is a stressor on the free market.
The battle between capitalism and communism is one that can't be won because pure forms of either do not work. And this is going to become more true as AI, robotics, and automation in general become a larger part of our lives.
The problem can be reduced to this. Those that own the means of production keep the wealth to themselves. But if we distribute the means of production equally productivity dies and we all starve. The Bolsheviks are a case in point. A relative minority of farmers owned all the land, produced all the food, and they were wealthier than others because everybody has to eat so they will trade whatever they have to get enough to eat.
Enter the Bolshevik revolution, land is taken away from the farmers and given to all the populace on a more or less equal basis. Most of whom either don't know how to farm, don't want to farm, or are just plain lazy, no food is produced, 60 MILLION people die of starvation.
In the west we find ways to compromise but in some areas we have compromised too much, labor unions are a case in point. They help by forcing the owners of the means of production to share some of that production with their workers. It is an imperfect system as it exists because it doesn't incentivize production, it just incentivizes showing up and collecting a paycheck, and in practice many employees these days have problems even with the showing up part. It generally forbids or makes difficult for a corporation to reward a more productive worker for their productivity verses the employee that just shows up and collects a pay check but does little to contribute to the generation of wealth that is distributed to them.
The west does have a market system that allows people to buy-in to the means of production, called Stock Markets. But this usually requires a more long term view than most people have.
The other solution is welfare which provides people who do not contribute to the production of wealth in any manner what-so-ever access to a portion of that wealth. This has gotten so out of hand that we've got a large unemployed work force out there that will not hold a job even though millions are available. Why work when you can sit at home and get high?
Part of the reason that people sit on welfare and don't take jobs is because the type of jobs that are becoming available requires knowledge they don't have. If a robot takes over flipping burgers at your local burger palace, SOMEONE still has to fix that robot when it breaks, and it will, someone still has to provide the energy it requires, someone has to build it, program it, etc. So it took a few peoples jobs but many jobs are created to maintain it, but not enough people are trained in those technologies.
So laziness is part of the issue, but the lack of availability of training is another part. My view, we should not support laziness. If someone wants to collect welfare and they are able bodied but lack training then they should have to be in training to receive it and we should find some means of providing that training.
Fighting over which economic system should rule by throwing Molotov cocktails at each other in the streets and destroying existing goods, services, and the means of producing them is NOT the way we should be going about this.
I think we should find some ways to make it easier for someone interested in entering the market to do so, reduce regulations that make it too complex, people who own a stake in the means of production, even if other people are doing the production, are more likely to contribute to it in positive ways than people who do not.