The essence of economic conservatism is about preserving power for those already in power, reducing opportunity. Of course it’s dressed up as libertarian freedo

The essence of economic conservatism is about preserving power for those already in power, reducing opportunity. Of course it’s dressed up as libertarian freedom but that’s just the doublespeak. For example, in a laissez-faire, libertarian education system, kids who are born into wealth get a great education, kids who are not start adulthood with lots of disadvantages, which obviously conserves the status quo, and starves an economy by reducing its potential intellectual capital without benefit to the system as a whole. American prosperity is a direct result of our unusual democratic institutions that push in the direction of economic opportunity, through laws that enforce a more even economic playing field relative to other economies around the world, but it is always being attacked by monopoly oriented interests, and the inherited wealth class. This is the primary political axis of Democrat vs Republican. It's an argument especially relevant to the startup community because great startups disrupt the economic status quo. Take away the system that enables that and you are left with top-down/autocratic economic systems. They have their benefits, efficient use of resources, so long as it benefits the regime, but over time, since autocratic regimes are optimized to keep people in power, they can't innovate as well. The highest profile example recently, was Jack Ma's attempted IPO that got shut down because he offended Xi in a speech. Loyalty to the top trumps all.