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Comment by bediger4000 | Hacker News Reader

So 40 years of "Free Market" absolutism, which was a central pillar of conservative economics, gets reversed just like that?

There's consequences to mercantilism. For starters, the best products may no longer win. Justifying anything by "best product won due to consumer choice" will be a laughable reason. Justifying respect for founders and CEOs as intelligent or better isn't possible. A successful founder or CEO is just better at sucking up or whatever it takes to be blessed by authority.

There's some consequences to this reversal to conservatism as well. How can any thinking man believe a justification from principles now? They're reversible. Conservatives lose any kind of intellectual high ground, even in retrospect. Are they reasoning from principles now or were they doing it then? Can't tell.

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A lot of people who describe themselves as "conservative" have completely abandoned formerly conservative values: the rule of law, moral integrity, personal humility, and so on. I'd prefer we not call these people "conservative" because those old values have real merit.

I live in a major American city run by progressive democrats, like all major American cities, and petty crime is rampant. The "rule of law" here doesn't seem to apply to anything except murders because reporting anything else takes hours at the station to even get them to file a report, let alone solve anything (hah!). Even worse, the apparatchiks that run local politics never believe anything they do is wrong and entirely lack personal humility. It is hard to square this being a "Republicans Only!" problem when I see so much of the same all around me.

"the rule of law" doesn't mean miraculously eliminating petty crime, it means believing that the administration itself should try not to conspicuously break it on a regular basis...

Where I live, laws are broken routinely, and criminals are let out of prison with a slap on the wrist

Yet prisons are overfull everywhere in America

Maybe we need more prisons

See, here's the problem. You've revealed yourself as a conservative, at least in social issues, and that usually comes with all the conservative beliefs. Why should we believe you, why should we believe you're not just taking some position today that makes you money at the expense of the rest of us? That's why 180 degree policy reversals are weird. I just don't know what to believe about what you're writing - sincere position or throwaway trolling.

You already said that you lived in the US, no need to repeat it.

I agree that in our current system, consumer choice generally determines which product wins.

But does the best product really always win? As a fan of BeOS, it doesn't seem that way to me.

Arguably, there wasn't a free market. Jean-Louis Gassée has been on record criticizing the Microsoft Windows monopoly of the late 90's, early 2000's.

> Conservatives lose any kind of intellectual high ground

I'm not sure what country you're from but in the US conservatism has always been a reductionist, post-hoc justification of doing "whatever the hell I want because I can", going back as far as I know political history. Civil war era at least, when states rights were when it was good for me and Federal enforcement when it was bad.

The market was free when that was how these groups made the most money, now that they arent making the most money its tossed out like yesterdays garbage. And if you believed "reasoning from principles" fluff around it, I think you could reconsider what incentives lead you originally down that path of weaponized naivety that is so common in this community (organized as it is around making money.)

The media typically let conservatives get by with assertions of principle in the past, and let them get away with slurs like "radical leftist" or "socialist". Conservatives in real life very often argued from principle in my experience, letting them override lived experience.

Justification from principles is for rationalisation. Never confuse cause and effect.

If the free market is good for my business, it is good. Same thing with foreign relations. Same thing with control over democratic instutions.

Always look at what people do, not what they say.

(Keep in mind though, that just because things have always been this way does not justify getting bitter over it. Society has been through this before.)

I will die on the hill that the "best product" respects its customers, is safe, performs correctly, and is purchased not rented.

Under those constraints the "best product" largely does not win now.

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