Conservatism and Capitalism

From my second comment on a post at Right Reason:

Conservatism of the Burkean-Hayekian kind isn't an ideology of the status quo, it's an ideology of voluntary social evolution -- and capitalism is one of the great manifestations of voluntary social evolution. Capitalism favors accomplishment rather than class, rank, and ritual (unlike European conservatism). Capitalism most decidedly does not exploit workers: it enables them to progress materially in ways that caste systems, socialism, and welfarism cannot because they stifle accomplishment and reward stupidity, incompetence, and ignorance.