It's not that #conservatives aren't sometimes right - it's that even when they're right, they're *highly selective* about it. Take the hoary chestnut that "#IncentivesMatter," trotted out to deny humane benefits to poor people on the grounds that "free money" makes people "workshy."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca
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There's a whole body of conservative economic orthodoxy, #PublicChoiceTheory, that concerns itself with the motives of callow, easily corrupted regulators, legislators and civil servants, and how they might be tempted to distort markets.
But the same people who obsess over our fallible public institutions are convinced that private institutions will never yield to temptation, because the fear of competition keeps temptation at bay.
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It's this belief that leads the right to embrace #monopolies as "efficient": "A company's dominance is evidence of its quality. Customers flock to it, and competitors fail to lure them away, therefore monopolies are the public's best friend."
But this only makes sense if you don't understand how monopolies can prevent competitors.
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