I'd argue that they do win out, it's just not the ideas that we thought were best.

"Best idea", but it's "best" by memetic reproduction score, not by "how well does this solve a real problem?"

Same thing with evolution: "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "survival of the muscle", just whatever's best at passing on DNA.

The marketplace is a terrible mechanism for truth-finding except for all the others. What's your proposed alternative that doesn't just relocate the problem to whoever gets to be the arbiter?

Wouldn’t say it’s a liberal idea. It was a foundational argument in jurisprudence, from Holme’s dissent in the Abram’s case.

Let's clarify, maybe the best ideas would win out in the "level marketplace", where the consumer actually is well informed on the products, the product's true costs have to be priced, and there was no ad-agencies.

Instead, we have misinformation (PR), lobbying, bad regulation made by big companies to trench their products, and corruption.

So, maybe, like communism, in a perfect environment, the market would produces what's best for the consumers/population, but as always, there are minority power-seeking subgroups that will have no moral barriers to manipulate the environment to push their product/company.