Capitalism rewards those who have the most command over capital. And how much command over capital one has is determined by how much command over capital one already has.

Capitalism rewards those who control more capital. Period.

Goods, materials, labor sources, infrastructure, intellectual property, supply chains, real estate, contracts, and political influence. The more of all of that you control, the more you reap financial rewards.

The most idealistic view of capitalism is that you earn such reward by improving the world and providing what people need. You invent a product, process, IP, etc. and people pay you money for materially improving their lives or meeting a need.

But that is far from the only way to gain such control. Using your massive wealth to gain political influence. Using both your wealth and political influence to buy or destroy your competition. Using unethical methods like collusion to remove choice from consumers, to force them to buy your product, to raise prices because you can.

Hell, you can even do everything to destroy a good productive company and still make bank. David Zaslav at Warner Bros is proving that you can buy a profitable company, merge it with a company in massive debt, put that debt on the profitable company, use that debt to justify massive cuts that make the company less productive with fewer profit streams including cancelling finished movies for tax write-offs, destroy the stock valuation of the company screwing over the shareholders, force a new sale/merger to a MAGA billionaire to save the company, and fly away from the wreckage on your $886 million dollar golden parachute richer than when you started.

A 16 year old barista does much more to contribute to society than David Zaslav did, but the rewards are not even close.

Capitalism rewards trade, patents, grift,
but above all, sales pitches.

The richest people in capitalism are the best orators
and tradespeople at the bazaar.
It’s what Steve Jobs is most famous for.
His infamous iPhone sales pitchis infamous the world over.
It’s what Elon Musk does, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg,
Bill Gates, all of the big wigs in the world.
And they get rewarded for it like no other.

It’s why liberal democracy is associated with a person
on the soapbox trying to sell a crowd,
whatever they want to hear,
instead of a people’s democracy,
that has a council of political entities
around a table that debate each other,
where all members have power,
instead of a capitalist corporate board room,
with a corporate head that
appoints its subjects.
It’s not like neither have one or the other,
but it’s one more emblematic to their style of governing.

It’s why the US has Donald Trump.
What is he good at? What does he do?
He campaigns, relentlessly. That’s his sole quality.

Usonians (US citizens) seem to keep thinking that
capitalism is making money and socialism is when
capitalism fails at making money.

And I believe I will slightly go off Marx’ thought and
explain all socio-economic systems as such:

Primitivism = Gatherer ideologues + Hunter rule Feudalism = Priestly ideologues + Nobility rule
Capitalism = Judiciary ideologues + Merchantry rule
Socialism = Academic ideologues + Engineering rule
Communism = Copyleft ideologues? + AI rule?

Greed.

It rewards greed above all else. The desire to hoard and take more than you need. And only through your greed for yourself will be able to overcome the others in your life that hold you back from what you desire. It isolates and it rewards you for holding yourself separate from others.

It rewards greed.

I think it’s almost tautological - The ability and will to accumulate wealth, by any means. That’s not necessarily greed, but after a point it basically always is.

Some skilled people, some union workers, some talented creatives, earn decent money because they, by differing means, have the ability to leverage their skills for above-average money. Obviously, in a free market, that leverage has a limit.

If you can get wealth by murder, by abuse, if you can offset your expenses by dooming the human race to the extinction, if you can bring in more sales by destruction, genocide and theft, if you can avoid helping others, caring about people, righting your wrongs or repairing damages, then you will do extremely well. Because those things minimise your outgoings and maximise your incoming.

“Successful” people typically do these things because of pathological greed, but some might do those things because they’ve build a fake world in their head and don’t accept reality, or simple sociopathy. Often a combination of all three. The common thread is an ability and will to accumulate capital by any means.

See: All billionaires.

Even the groups of people and their asaociated characteristics in this meme is an example of how capitalism colonizes.

capitalism rewards owning things. if you own a thing that makes money you can do no work and be rich

I have a group of friends who I have known since I was a kid. This is useful in that, while it’s of course anecdotal, I can say that it’s a sample of people who all knew each other before any of us were capable of earning money.

Within this group, there is zero correlation between intelligence or work ethic and wealth/income. My wealthiest friend inherited his family business. My second wealthiest friend married into money. These two are among the least hard working and intelligent friends I have. Meanwhile the smartest friend I have - the one who almost aced his SAT - is doing ok but not like he’s swimming in money (community college professor - which honestly is a pretty great gig, he was smart enough to recognize that). Another truly brilliant friend of mine is doing research in a field he is passionate about but he’s definitely not the highest earner in our group.

Admittedly none of us are extremely hard workers, but I know tons of workers - especially some undocumented folks, who work way harder than I can even imagine, and they are of course making very little.

Selfishness. Capitalism rewards and reinforces selfishness. As others pointed out, making more money than what you’ve worked for requires that you start out with more money and the more money you started out with, the more you are rewarded with more. And remember that money, the thing we agree socially has universal value, is essentially frozen labor (labor being the source of value). It is only feasible through money to accumulate others’ labor. An accumulation of money that you didn’t work for (i.e. capital) is stolen labor. Capitalism rewards the hoarding of stolen labor, with the more labor you hoard the more you are rewarded with. Capitalism fundamentally, definitionally, requires the exploitation of others and once again, the more exploitation you do, the more exploitation you are able to do and the more value you possess. That is the epitome of selfishness.

A great deal of evil flows from this, including the pathological individualism that infects the deepest aspects of a capitalist society, it is the system reproducing itself.

Money. It rewards money.

Those who have money are the only ones deserving of getting money.

Capitalism rewards capital.

it mostly rewards luck and having money

Capitalism is the most efficient way to distribute resources (to the 1%).

I hate how many people think we live in a meritocracy. It implies people who have been placed at the bottom of the social/financial hierarchy deserve to be there.

This is real good entry level agitprop