Do Conservatives Want A Truly Free Market?

All the talk from conservatives about preserving a "free market" by keeping government involvement away is often just that: talk, and talk of a shallow, insincere kind more specifically.  I do not mean that they are completely insincere about wanting a free market, an economic system where buyers and sellers (companies and consumers) will shape the costs of items sold instead of the government and where there is no involuntary redistribution of wealth--except as part of a just criminal punishment where one party owes the other money.  When it comes to this, conservatives are in ideological support, or at least they would say they are.

The insincerity is partial because it is rooted in inconsistency between their beliefs, or professed beliefs, and the actions they call for in certain national circumstances.  When an industry or even a business conservatives like faces troubled financial waters, it would not be unusual for them to call for government bailouts of the industry in question.  In fact, last year, the conservative Trump administration backed corporate bailouts of billions of dollars, something that inherently involves direct government intervention in a market that conservatives like to say should stay free of political manipulation.

This kind of intervention contradicts what conservatives claim they want elsewhere.  A market cannot be free when some of its component are artificially changed or maintained by a political body.  A truly free market would have no government bailouts to save industries or companies that consumers have not kept afloat by sheer luck, popularity, or some other private or consumer factor--even in a pandemic where there is more than typical business-consumer interaction at play.  A government-sponsored corporate bailout reeks of the kind of intrusion that conservatives love to denounce as "socialistic" when the process does not get them what they want.

Therefore, anyone who considers themselves a thoroughly conservative capitalist with no socialist tendencies is a blind fool if they suddenly endorse the government putting large amounts of money into failing businesses to keep them afloat in a rough economic time.  A conservative would be hypocritical to endorse government intervention in a "free market" while protesting the manipulation of who holds what wealth in other ways, such as by taxing billionaires at higher rates than the lower and middle class.  This kind of hypocrisy is one of many examples of philosophical inconsistencies that plague major political factions.

One never has to look far to find conservatives and liberals displaying their stupidity through hypocrisy, but events of the last year made some of their mistakes receive more scrutiny by individuals who might have otherwise never challenged any of the contradictory beliefs and actions that are never far from.  Contradictory stances on government intervention in economics just happened to be part of the madness.  Conservatives tend to want a free market when it is convenient for their interests (such as when a political opponent calls for an industry bailout) and want a market subject to government manipulation when it is convenient for their interests.  Anyone who rationalistically examines their ideas can see this.