(Just to be sure that AOC's statements about billionaires are fully contextualized . . .)
Just how to the left of the Chinese Communist Party does this make AOC? Even China allows billionaires, and I don't think China is much of anything to the right of Rawls (see this blog's Jan 2019 post on Rawls for more). Maybe there aren't human problems that are easily solved by having the ever-more-big-and-powerful state coercing people into doings things? Presumably the billions lifted out of poverty by neoliberal market forces (a lot of that interacting with the Chinese Communist agenda) do matter even if they still face lots of financial and quality-of-life challenges (her example being ringworms but there are lots of other challenges still to be met via the usual: capitalistic growth)? China seems to think that the existence of billionaires is necessary to lift the country out of poverty. Even China.
More importantly, from an ethical and philosophical angle (and not the more narrowly political-economic one, a matter where, in any event, Mises/Hayek/Friedman/Buchanan tower over whatever academic leftists who egged on AOC), perhaps the Chinese learned a little bit of epistemic caution or 'humility' given its past failures due to zealous reform-ism egged on by charismatic 'leaders'. Perhaps they're more pragmatic than AOC, and what does that tell you? Even the CCP. But back to the key ethical-philosophical point: AOC displays a hubris that the CCP already experienced back with Mao and has greater wisdom on that front than she has. Even they.
(Implication: Put AOC & academic left comrades in charge of China and watch her/them wreck everything compared to what even the CCP finds feasible-plus-acceptable, poverty-reduction/existence-of-billionaires-wise? ofmg lol, how ever do these academic leftist (qua leftist, etc.) salaries keep getting funded...)
