The question is, is equity stake from government into private enterprises conservative? Is it wise for the government to own a failing company, which equity, or money, are not the source of the problem to begin with? In other words, trying to prop up a failing company, doesn’t seem like a good money decision. There are are many moral implications of doing this.
I think this is all really complicated, though. We have to also consider that most countries practice protectionism and have subsidies and other benefits given to their companies to try to enable them to gain some kind of competitive edge. This is not only because they want to profit from the hard cash inflow of successful industry and major commercial endeavors, but also simply because of the fact that they benefit very much from having greater amounts of their people employed.
One of the ironies about this, too, is how a lot of formerly Communist/Socialist states benefited immensely from their period under a planned economy by having a centralized force bring in the industry and infrastructure necessary to have a superior private market.
I am not saying Capitalism is wrong, per se, I think their descriptions of the free market are generally good… I am just saying that socialism actually also makes a lot of sense for the developing world and for nations that do not have the edge to be competitive internationally.
That’s why you see it everywhere and there really is no such thing as a ‘free market,’ and so designing your economy around a free market is just shooting yourself in the foot.
State corporations exist in Western countries, and Western governments do focus stimulus on industry-wide sectors of the economy, and subsidize research of novel technologies, but that is different from owning a stake in a private company, and dictating what it should do. Donald Trump knows nothing about semiconductors, or computers. There is a reason why market economies are more efficient, because the bureaucrats back off knowing they have no expertise in anything. Donald Trump has the instincts of a dictator of a planned economy, in that he wants to force things, instead of conceding to reality. This is why planned economies are very inefficient or how planned regimes created famine, because they wanted to force the economy into something it is not.