...So what, exactly, is the conservative problem with markets per se, as opposed to a problem with generic aspects of modern economies, whether organized via markets or on a non-market basis?
First, implicit in much conservative criticism is the Polyani-like argument that the problem is not about change itself but about the pace of change. The complaint is that market systems translate changes from trade and technological shocks faster to the domestic economy than would more-politically controlled transitions. The remedy would be to slow down the pace of these changes to a more human scale, allowing more time to acclimate.
Criticisms such as Tucker Carlson’s suggest that American politicians, at the behest of elite economic interests, allow economic transitions to reflect lower-cost production overseas so quickly and abruptly that they cause unnecessary economic and social harm. Because this pain concentrates in lower socioeconomic strata, the argument goes, American political and economic elites do not care. Additionally, elites use the ostensible ideology of the autonomous market as an excuse to justify the neglect.
This objection, however, divides more along the lines of populist/elite governance than it does between market/non-market economies....
The speed at which elites in a nation allow a transition that harms particular sectors within that nation seems more a reflection of the allocation of political power and political organization rather than a reflection of its internal economic organization....
Beyond the speed of transition, however, the more radical conservative criticism takes on instrumentalist rationality—the cash nexus—engendered by the penetration of market relationships into life and consciousness relative to non-market systems.
Markets, and market rationality, the claim goes, liquidate traditional relationships. This is a well-known account, particularly in sociology, regarding the shift from “community” to “society” (or gemeinschaft to gesellschaft). This is a deeper objection to markets than the complaint that markets communicate economic transitions too quickly. Yet there are problems with the argument. It reflects economic determinism. This is ironic given the critics commitment to the superiority of the social over the economic. Beyond that, the argument reflects the temptation to romanticize pre-modern social and economic relationships.
Whatever the answer, however, here’s the rub: As a practical matter, how can American society replicate ostensibly more-humane, pre-industrial non-market economic organization of the past while maintaining the efficiencies reflected in advanced modern economies? I have yet to see even a remotely satisfying answer to that question on the right.