A Chinese immigrant escapes one of history’s most brutal communist regimes, crosses the Pacific, lands in America, collects a multi-million dollar net worth, and then steps in front of a red carpet microphone to declare that capitalism is “the greatest evil in the world.” That is exactly what Hacks star and professional they/them progressive Poppy Liu said at a recent premiere, before adding, generously, that she would “be okay with [capitalism]” if fewer people lived under oppression. A noble sentiment. A historically illiterate one (because capitalism leads to less oppression) and coming from her specifically, one of the most spectacular acts of self-unawareness in Hollywood this week. How do we know? Because last year, Poppy sat down with the L.A. Times to share her ideal Los Angeles Sunday. The schedule: 10:30 a.m personal training session. 11:30 acupuncture recovery. A quick bite at Amara Cafe. An afternoon trek to Koreatown for fresh fruit. Dinner at Levant Bistro. Movie night. And then, naturally, some late-night TikTok couch rot to wind down, after she put “they” to sleep. (The toddler is nongender.) Every single stop on that itinerary was brought to her by the economic system she’d like to dismantle. The irony is again richer than a 12-course tasting menu. Let’s briefly audit what capitalism actually provided for Poppy’s American dream. The personal trainer hustling clients in a free market. The acupuncturist running a private practice. The cafe, the restaurant, the movie theater: all private enterprises, all paying wages, all generating profit, all apparently evil. The phone she used to post about it all? Designed by a company, assembled across a global supply chain, powered by semiconductors and lithium batteries that exist because competitive markets incentivized someone to invent them. Her career? Funded by capitalist studios and streaming giants. Her designer wardrobe and thousand-dollar couture dress? It operates through international trade and global capitalist markets. Her immigration story? The electric car with GPS and safety features that brought her to the vanity show? All market-driven. All only possible because she landed in a country built on economic freedom rather than state control. China, where she spent much of her youth, tried the alternative. It killed tens of millions of people through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and fostered state-managed famine on an industrial scale. She made it out, made it to America, made millions, and her takeaway is that capitalism is the problem. This deranged mentality that she and other elites are projecting is going to slowly kill America, if we let it. It’s nothing new, however. Hating the merchant class is one of the oldest political tricks in human history. Ancient Greeks viewed private trade as disruptive. Medieval Europeans were suspicious of commerce. For centuries, aristocrats rallied against anyone who threatened the established order of wealth. The resentment predates Marx by millennia. He just gave it a pamphlet. What Marx actually did was shift the target. Before Marx, people resented wealth. After Marx, they were taught to resent the wealthy. To hate the person, not just the gap. To see every successful entrepreneur as a thief, every profit as exploitation, every billionaire as a threat to democracy. Modern progressives didn’t invent this; they just introduced it to the youth on TikTok. And it’s working. Only 54% of Americans now view capitalism positively. The lowest number in 15 years. This ought to terrify you. As I “Sunday Scrolled” on Instagram, I came across a viral video that inaccurately reframed the entire economic debate between Capitalism and communism as a father asking his daughter: if another kid doesn’t have a lunch, do you share yours? She says yes. Dad says, “Then you’re a little commie.” The implication was that capitalism means hoarding your sandwich while your classmate starves. It was emotional, clever, and completely wrong. A child voluntarily sharing her lunch is not communism. That’s private property plus individual charity. Americans donate over $590 billion annually, the highest charitable giving rate on earth. Communism isn’t the sweet kid at the lunch table. Communism is the government seizing the cafeteria, mismanaging the food supply, and leaving everyone hungry. Ask Venezuela. Ask the Soviet Union. Ask the 45 million people who died in Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The video had 5.6 million views. The comments had a collective IQ of 80. The indoctrination is working. Nobody is arguing that capitalism is perfect. It is flawed, but obviously the best option we’ve got. Under it, global extreme poverty cratered from 42% to under 9% since 1990. Lifespans doubled over the last century. The smartphone in your pocket contains more computing power than NASA used to land astronauts on the moon, and you can buy one for a few hundred dollars. This happened because markets reward innovation, competition drives down costs, and human ingenuity is allowed to function. Every alternative has delivered something else. Stagnation. Poverty. Body Counts. Even Sweden, long the Left’s favorite argument for socialism, is embracing capitalism wholesale: free markets, private enterprise, lower taxes, and strong property rights. And of course, it’s working. The country has seen massive increases in innovation and Initial Public Offerings, so much so that the small country of 11 million is far outpacing Germany, France, and the Netherlands. What the Poppys of the world are selling is not a better system. It is envy dressed in the language of compassion, packaged by people wealthy enough to never feel the consequences of the ideas they promote. They hate billionaires from their million-dollar homes. They hate corporations on the devices that those corporations made. They perform poverty from penthouses and call it solidarity. They fight “oppression” over oat-milk matchas. Poppy Liu immigrated from a country that starved its own people in the name of economic equality, built a career in a country that rewards talent and ambition, accumulated real wealth, and concluded that the problem is capitalism. She is welcome to her opinion. She is welcome to donate her sequined couture, her L.A. restaurant tabs, her streaming residuals, and her personal training sessions to the revolution. We’ll take the million-dollar home too, since she’s offering. For the rest of us: you are not a bad person for believing in free markets. You are not greedy for wanting to keep what you earn. You are not heartless for understanding that a system rewarding innovation and competition has done more to lift human beings out of poverty than any government program in history. The greatest evil of all time did not build the modern world. Capitalism did. Don’t let the millionaire tell you otherwise.