Gilder’s idea:
‘That capitalism is chiefly a knowledge system, rather than an incentive system.’
On Gilder’s thinking, people are learning and suffering from their own mistakes, more so than they would otherwise. The capital being invested into the acquisition of knowledge is ideally risked by those whose money it is, not politicians who trade money for votes, and have their own goals (when was the last time you saw a politician not just as interested in perception and re-election rather than principles and ideals?).
Politics and political incentives are usually a few times removed from what’s going on in a society, and in my experience perhaps somewhat analogous to the HR department in your company (Addition: Responsible for human capital yes, but arguably non-essential, often beholden to upper management, with incentives to enforce and create more internal regulations.
Also:
‘What Wall Street likes, a lot of the time, is volatility and instability, and they want the downsides protected by government guarantees. That’s why there is this tension between Wall Street and Main Street and Silicon Valley, and why I think one of the tragedies of the recent era has been Silicon Valley’s defection to the government side; Silicon Valley now is oriented toward getting government guarantees for their green projects.”
The society isn’t just less wealthy by allowing green thinking and green ideals to be the highest things around, and even arguably less moral because the government has used the example of force to affect outcomes, but the whole society tends to be more closed, less able to adapt to events, and less dynamic.
Related On this Site: As someone interested in the humanities, I don’t want to leave the matter solely to venture capitalists, nor charter schools, nor Continental philosophies, nor the religious, nor the postmoderns by any stretch, but I do want to resist the institutionalized Dewey do-gooders and secular abstract idealists and humanists that lead to all those people and groups free-riding on the public good. Does that really best serve our children from lower ed to higher ed?; Jerry Bowyer At Forbes: ‘A College Bubble So Big Even The New York Times And 60 Minutes Can See It…Sort Of’… The libertarian angle, getting smart, ambitious people off of the degree treadmill: From The American Interest: Francis Fukuyama Interviews Peter Thiel-’A Conversation With Peter Thiel’ I think it’s going too far, trying to apply libertarian economics onto education, but Milton Friedman on Education is thought-provoking.
A Few Quotations From F.A. Hayek’s: ‘Why I Am Not A Conservative’…Friedrich Hayek Discussion On Bloggingheads
-A link for Michael Lewis’ article about California politics, public pensions and Schwarzenegger’s time in office.
Big cities, especially New York, tend to over-regulate business, you can hope for efficient corruption: Richard Epstein At Defining Ideas: ‘City Planners Run Amok’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas: ‘California’s Kafkaesque Rent Control Laws’
Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution: ‘Death By Wealth Tax’……Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution: ‘The Obamacare Quaqmire’
In the interests of intellectual honesty I think George Gilder should have acknowledged the source of his ideas on capitalism and knowledge as being Hayek. In the interview he mentions Hayek but only in passing. Hayek’s seminal essay on ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ was published in 1945.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
One basic core principle of libertarian thought is that groups don’t have rights. Any group -the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts or the US government- is no more nor less than the individuals who comprise the group. Groups get whatever legitimacy they have from the individual members, and thus have no rights to do anything any individual wouldn’t be allowed to do.