system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does communism work? If everyone is equal, leaders couldn't exist.

Leaders couldn't exist and if people with more demanding jobs where paid equally to others, why should the bother? Also, they couldn't have bosses either 'cause everyone *has* to be equal.
gpt
Communism implies that society evolves to a new stage.  In that stage people agree to make good decisions about their consumption and production without having to have someone tell them what to do and how to do it.  Essentially, it assumes a radical change in human nature is required to make it work.

Think about how things operate in your household.  You don't eat all the food, keep all the blankets, use all the gas in the car, monopolize the TV, etc.  Instead, you share those resources with the people you live with.  You don't use money to decide how these resources are allocated - you have a social compact.  When things need to be replaced you take some responsibility for replacing them.  When a resource is limited you work out an agreement for how to share it.  This is the ideal that Communism would enshrine as the daily lives for every person.

It is probably impossible without unlimited free energy.  But if there was unlimited free energy, you might get very Communistic social structures.  Star Trek, for example, is a Communist ideal.  People do what they want to be productive, consume what they need without being jerks, and a meritocracy determines the hierarchy of authority.  But they have limitless free energy and the wealth of entire solar systems to fund their lifestyles.  We just have energy that has a real cost and the resources of one overpopulated planet.