
George Gilder: Capitalism is based on information and knowledge, not greed - adrianscott
http://www.adrianscott.org/george-gilder-capitalism-is-based-on-informat
======
njharman
Sure, whatever. It doesn't matter what "Capitalism" is. Evolution has made
human-nature greedy. And all these systems (capitalism, consumerism,
socialism, communism, anarchy, have one overriding commonality; they're
implementors, regulators, and constituent parts are all human. Whom, in the
aggregate, follow human-nature (by definition).

No matter what system you think we have (or should), what system they tell us
we have, or what system people actually try to enact, human-nature morphs it
towards greed.

And if you're irrationally alienated by the word "greed", feel free to replace
it with the comfortable alternatives we've rationalized; "saving money",
"efficiency", "winning", "being successful". They and others are all rooted in
"getting the most for me" aka greed.

~~~
MaysonL
Instincts are all well and good. The problems arise when they get out of
control: whether it's the instinct for food, the instinct for sex, the
instinct for more, the instinct for curiosity. When you are in control of your
instincts, things work. When your instincts run you, you're headed for
trouble.

Greed, under control, can be valuable. Greed uber alles, leads to parasites
like Romney getting filthily richer by doing things like bankrupting KP Toys.

~~~
csense
> parasites like Romney getting filthily richer by doing things like
> bankrupting KP Toys.

If you're a major league batter, sometimes you strike out, but at the end of
the day you still get paid.

If you're a Senator, sometimes your bill gets defeated because your party
simply doesn't have the votes, but at the end of the day you still get credit
for fighting for it.

Beating up on Romney for not being able to bat 1000 as a consultant has always
seemed a little harsh to me. Sometimes in life, you're simply dealt a losing
hand, and nothing you can do will lead to the outcome you wish for. Without
knowing more details of the circumstances, I'm willing to give Romney the
benefit of the doubt on this one.

~~~
MaysonL
I'm not beating up on him for not batting 1000, I'm beating up on him for
being a looter. KP was a solid, profitable company. Bain bought it, saddled it
with debt (shame on the bankters, too), paid themselves massive management
fees and "dividend". They made lots of "profit" from this exercise, but left a
lot of people much worse off.

I have no problem whatsoever with people making a lot of money.

------
api
I have a very tough time rationalizing this guy's futurism with the rest of
his opinions. Of course, I guess compartmentalization and contradiction are
common elements of the human condition.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gilder>

~~~
irickt
In particular, [excerpts from Wikipedia] Gilder is a founder of the Discovery
Institute, the leading think tank of the intelligent design movement. Gilder
has written many articles in favor of ID and opposing the theory of evolution.

~~~
api
A lot of engineers don't get evolution because engineers tend to think there
is one best way to do something. How could evolution ever discover the
"answer," they think? This is endlessly reinforced in school. You get right
answers and wrong answers on tests, but that's because school tests are toy
problems not real problems. In reality there are better answers and worse
answers and worse-is-better answers and ugly-hack-to-ship answers.

But think about the Church-Turing thesis a bit, and universal computation, and
it becomes obvious that there are infinitely many ways of solving any
arbitrary problem. They aren't all created equal, but there are also paths
between them. Evolution works by discovering _one_ answer and then following
pathways through the fitness landscape to converge on better and better
answers. Sometimes it actually does discover global optimums, or sometimes it
just settles on something that works well enough given all the trade-offs. (In
some problem spaces there is no clear global optimum.)

But I see something more here. His opinions on gender are just batty. There is
evidence for gender dimorphism in humans, but he takes that evidence and does
a Forrest Gump run with it all the way off the field and into the bleachers.
He also ignores huge numbers of counter-examples to his thesis and mistakes
statistical means for universal laws.

~~~
pi18n
Also; engineers should be aware of genetic algorithms which work so well they
are used by NASA ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna> ). Anyone
who doesn't understand evolution is a fact is basically being willfully
ignorant at this point.

~~~
batista
OT, but: "[they] work so well they are used by NASA" is hardly an argument.

NASA can also use piss poor technology. Remember that Challenger disaster?

Plus, wasn't NASA that did the BS publicity stunt of the supposed discovery of
"life based on arsenic"?

~~~
api
They've also been used to design analog-to-digital converters that work better
than hand-designed A/D converters. The kicker is that we don't know exactly
how they work, nor have we proven that they are "correct." But we've tested
them enough that we're confident enough to ship them in products.

------
_delirium
I'm not sure this random collection of quotes is a great starting point for a
discussion as broad as what "capitalism is". Especially quotes that come in an
election year from a non-economist mainly famous for his GOP activism.

If you do want an argument in favor of the information-aggregation view of
markets, and what is required for them to work in practice, F.A. Hayek
provides a better analysis.

~~~
michaelty
Some places to start:

The Use of Knowledge in Society:
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>

Economics and Knowledge:
<http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Thirlby/bcthLS3.html>

------
mxfh
I disagree. Capitalism in its current state is heavily based on securing
advantages, meaning it's only fair in areas which are new and not saturated by
established players.

~~~
csense
Three beautiful words to a capitalist: "Sustainable competitive advantage."

> it's only fair in areas which are new and not saturated by established
> players.

What is your definition of "fairness," and why should we care whether it is a
property of capitalism?

I think you're saying something like "capitalism encourages incumbents to
build fences to keep newcomers out."

That's true. Antitrust law exists to discourage certain types of fences that
we find undesirable.

But other types of fences are perfectly OK -- for example, AMD and Intel spend
hundreds of millions, if not billions, every year on R&D to keep raising their
technology head-start fence, to keep competing chip vendors out of their
markets. The result from the consumer's point of view is a virtuous cycle of
continually improving products at the same price point from these industry
leaders, with a "long tail" starting with successively older generations of
obsolete processors on the secondary market, down to much cheaper ARM's which
have much lower performance but are perfectly adequate for many applications.

If incumbents can always build fences so strong that they are invulnerable:

How did Google win against Yahoo?

How did cable providers win against over-the-air TV networks?

How did Netflix kill Blockbuster?

How did Microsoft triumph over IBM?

When incumbents fence themselves in, times are good for them for a little
while -- but usually the incumbents end up as slow, fat targets for fast-
moving, lean startups.

This is especially true once the management team that established the
incumbents has moved on or retired, and their replacements listen when the
accountants tell them how much money they can make if they raise prices, cut
costs, or reduce their investment in fences.

~~~
mxfh
Yes, there is no right for resting on your past achievements, there is
arguably a fair way of getting advantages secured for a limited amount of
time: innovation, adding to others innovations, combining others works,
opening new markets. And the other "unfair" way: patent-abuse, monopolies,
cartels, copycats with no added value, lobbying for the gains of a few who are
already better off. Some of that has been made illegal some of it just feels
morally wrong. Basically it comes down to moral norms, which society can turn
into laws if considered important enough by a majority. Its all comes down to
finding a balance, economics will never be perfect or fair for all, but I
consider it the goal of politics to be getting it closer to that ideal state
which should be beneficial to all in the long run.

------
mtraven
He gives the game away in the second sentence:

> But greed, in fact, prompts capitalists to seek government guarantees and
> subsidies that denature and stultify the works of entrepreneurs.

Yes, that is how real, as opposed to theoretical, capitalism works. And
communism is all about selfless cooperation in theory, but in practice works
out to something quite different.

Speaking of communism and information, I can't recommend too highly the book
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, which is about the efforts by very early
cyberneticians in the USSR to create an economy which was managed by
information without greed.

------
notlisted
It sure is. Sometimes this information is in the form of insider knowledge
shared within the old boys network, or misinformation spread to the masses to
pump and dump a stock (hello facebook), or tell everyone to buy a house with a
white picket fence (take on that mortgage, it's the best investment evah), or
market "derivatives" that are "too complex even for the sellers to fully
understand". We also have the knowledge on how to patent stuff so the hoi
polloi don't get their grubby little fingers on it...

It's all about the CONTROL of information, making use of it to enrich oneself
at the expense of others.

Let's not kid ourselves, it's not about sharing sh*t. It's about doling it out
piecemeal and selectively, or obsessively, to control opinion and/or maximize
profit.

Perhaps not zero-sum, but there are lots of bags held by the partially
informed and the less-informed.

------
ollysb
"In capitalism, the winners do not eat the losers but teach them how to win
through the spread of information."

This certainly casts patents in an anti-capitalist light...

~~~
michaelochurch
I don't actually agree with that. Capitalism is ruthless. The winners _do_ put
the losers out of business. That's the moral justification for IP: without
regulatory intervention, the winners are often not the generators of the IP.
That has become more true in the age of the Internet, where a lot of natural
monopolies are emerging, but it was probably always true. Size begets growth,
coalition-building is inevitable (leading to conglomerates) and those who
can't make nice with the big players often get crushed.

The problem with capitalism is that it's not stable. People who become rich
and powerful (and their generally useless heirs, friends, and hired-gun
managers) don't actually want to live in a capitalist world, so they use their
social connections to build a private safety net, which hampers innovation.
Corporate bureaucracies have more in common with the Kremlin than a Silicon
Valley startup, and even Silicon Valley isn't _that_ innovative, because it's
increasingly controlled by a well-connected VC/media social elite. Most people
wouldn't want to live in pure capitalism, and the corporate elite especially
doesn't want it. They want to keep what they've got.

The problem with the problem with capitalism (or the problem with not-
capitalism) is that every alternative to an at least mostly capitalistic
economy is terrible. Command economies are not desirable.

Most thinking people are essentially (small-l) libertarian. My use of this
word has nothing to do with the current usage (conservative who likes pot). By
libertarian, I mean the opposite of authoritarian: belief that people should,
all else being equal, be free to do as they wish rather than controlled by a
governmental or corporate authority. (Authoritarians believe it's
intrinsically impossible for most people to do anything good unless told to do
so by a central authority.) The problem is that libertarianism begets
capitalism begets conglomeration begets corporatism. It's the Iron Law of
Oligarchy. The only solution I can see is the Western European social
democracy (i.e. a socialist infrastructure to provide a safety net, but a
capitalist engine for innovation and to maintain individual freedom). You need
enough of a welfare state to keep people from being exploited by emergent
corporate power, but enough capitalism (economic freedom) to keep innovation
alive.

~~~
gokuknows
Michael, I live in Silicon Valley and grew up most of my life in Israel and
Europe (France). All I can say is honestly Americans don't even know how good
they have it. France is doing so bad I don't even know where to start. They
barely have any innovation and whatever they have comes from companies that
have been in power for decades. France made it so easy to get welfare and
taxes so high (40-50%) that it's better to collect welfare then actually do
any work (I have friends there in their 20s actually doing this). What I love
about Capitalism is NEW wealth and power is created every 10 years. Where was
Facebook, Google, Salesforce and Twitter 10 years ago? (this is a short list
there are many smaller multi million dollars companies created in the past 10
years in the US). I know you see this as something normal or not such a big
deal, but in other countries this never happens, the same companies stay in
power. What I am trying to say is that Capitalism WORKS very well, the wealth
in America changes hands very rapidly and there are endless opportunities to
create more wealth. Did you ever think of the impact that
Facebook/twitter/reddit had on the world? Helping the Arab spring, flowing
information freely etc. I am sure you will find holes in what I said, all I
can say is that I am a huge fan of what this country represents (capitalism)
and if you stray away from this system that has made the US what it is trust
me we will fall hard. What I think is happening in the US is a bunch of lazy
people who want something for nothing are rising up. They hate the 1% (which
created a lot of jobs and innovation) for no good reason. I hope Capitalism
gets more "sexy" and gets great new representatives who defend it not retards
like Paul Ryan and Romney. I think it will make everything a lot better :)

~~~
csense
> They hate the 1% (which created a lot of jobs and innovation) for no good
> reason.

Envy and covetousness aren't "good" reasons, but they are certainly reasons
humans have used to hate each other throughout history.

> France made it so easy to get welfare and taxes so high (40-50%) that it's
> better to collect welfare then actually do any work

Romney's ad criticizing Obama's rollback of the requirement established under
President Clinton, that welfare recipients must actively look for work, speaks
to exactly this point.

I wonder if technology will ever make this model sustainable -- if we have
most of our farms, factories and mines run by robots and computers with
minimal human intervention, could we produce enough food, clothing, shelter,
and basic necessities for everyone if the only people who work are those who
wish to do so?

The reason Republicans have produced mediocre candidates for a while is that
the party has too many constituencies: You have the religious right (mainly
concerned about moral decay and social issues, think Huckabee), the neocon
faction (pro-big-government and foreign policy hawks, think GWB), and the
libertarians (Tea Party, Ron Paul -- mainly in favor of smaller government and
lower taxes).

Their traditional base is dwindling; a near-majority of people don't pay any
federal taxes, so can't be bribed by tax cuts and are very uncomfortable with
social-program cuts. Religion is on the decline. We haven't suffered any major
terrorist attacks lately, and GWB's wars have left many interventionists with
a sour taste in their mouths. So they're trying to reach out to new
constituencies; in this election cycle, it's immigrants and women, judging by
the convention speeches.

We need a strong candidate who can fix the mess before we become locked
circling the drain that France has gone down. It's hard to see this candidate
coming from either party.

------
fastball
"Far from a system of greed, capitalism depends on a golden rule of
enterprise: The good fortune of others is also your own."

So... when competition puts your company out of business, that's a good thing?

It was beneficial to local grocers when their businesses were bankrupted after
being undercut by Walmart?

~~~
adrianscott
Yes, it gave them an impulse to find areas where they could do something that
people judged valuable enough to part with their money. (e.g. learn how to
design web pages and make bad flash animations ;)

It also did help people who buy groceries, including poor people.

~~~
fastball
But now the people who worked at the small town grocer are out of a job, so
you are left with _more_ poor people.

~~~
theorique
It's all good ... they can retrain in Ruby On Rails or Objective-C and become
app entrepreneurs!

------
e12e
Isn't Capitalism based on... capital? Investing in production in such a way
that you increase your profit rate -- with the inevitable result being
consolidation of capital, and therefore power over the means of production --
or in other words the consolidation of power?

With globalization this becomes an even more serious problem, because the
entities that control the capital are extra-national. So from the joyful
history of the East Inda Company to the merry state of British Petroleum today
-- you have entities that cannot on the whole be held accountable to one set
of laws, because no (functional) jurisdiction exist that cover their entire
area of operations.

Even when regulation seemingly works, as with Microsoft, Netscape and the
browser wars -- they fail. Microsoft won that one, despite loosing.

~~~
adrianscott
"Microsoft won that one, despite loosing." (sic)

please explain?

~~~
cedmart
I read it as: "By bundling IE with Windows, abusing (illegal) the Windows
monopoly (legal) MS managed to basically kill Netscape... Despite losing the
legal battle and being --forever-- regarded as a company that did abuse its
monopoly to drive out a competitor".

It's not about IE vs Chrome, it's not about IE vs Safari. It's not about
whatever-MS-mobile-OS vs Android vs iOS.

It's about IE vs Netscape and MS (illegally) "winning" that war despite losing
in court.

~~~
e12e
Yes, that sums up what I meant.

Also, if you look at browser stats even today, arguably IE has an "unfair"
share of the market -- but such things are hard to be certain of ("What is a
'fair' market share for the now much, much improved IE browser?").

The biggest thing MS did was probably to give away the browser for free,
subsidizing the development of the browser, with profits from windows
licences. That dumping effort effectively killed the market for (paid for)
browsers -- eventually even Opera gave up charging end users for its browser.

------
T_S_
Not much content in this blog piece. Couple of isolated quotes from a Forbes
article from a with no tl;dr on offer.

Instead of "Capitalism is...beautiful" ideology it would be worth focussing on
when it works and when it doesn't. Seems that there is strong evidence that
capitalism harness human nature, property rights, and incentives to enable
production. That's great. There is a lot less discussion about what it takes
for markets to allocate resources efficiently. Two of the bigger prerequisites
are "no externalities" and "symmetric information". Capitalism has no built-in
mechanism to establish these conditions. A lot of our problems today go right
to those factors. We could do something about it if our politicians would stop
playing to the cheap seats. Sorry capitalism, you're ok but not that
beautiful.

------
jberryman
Flagged for being overly partisan political, and bringing little value as a
launching point for discussion.

------
squonk
Data Points:

Since 1970, global population increased by 91% Since 1970, global aggregate
GDP increased by 540% (in constant $)

I think that means that 540/1.91 = ~2.8x increase in per-person productivity
on a global basis over the last 40 years. I would contend that capitalism
drives productivity increases to a greater degree than communism or socialism,
simply based on the fact that 8 of the top 10 economies in the world are
arguably capitalist. (counting France as socialist and China as something
else, not sure what at this point).

A better statistician than I can weigh in with wealth distribution, and I am
betting that the average world citizen is better off today than 40 years ago,
primarily due to capitalism.

------
robmiller
Capitalism is based on there being a customer. All the capital in the world
doesn't do any good if there's not a buyer on the other end. Another argument
for a strong middle class.

~~~
darrencauthon
Capitalism is not based on the existence of a customer. It's based in freedom,
in the right of every individual to do what he or she wants to do with his or
her own life and property.

Of course, if there is no customer, there can be no sale. However, the sale
itself isn't always the point. Sometimes people do things just for the fun of
it -- and that's capitalism, too.

------
ThomPete
Capitalism as described is yes, but humans are based among other things on
greed and they are part of the system.

Please don't make the mistake of confusing the system with the agents in the
system.

------
ilaksh
Capitalism is only possible where knowledge is shared unequally. For example,
if many people knew how to obtain the proper license or whatever and where to
go to buy wholesale, then they would bypass retailers entirely. Similarly, if
many people had knowledge about how to start a business and knew several
friendly venture capitalists or bank officers, many of them would start their
own businesses and there would be few people to do the actual work.

Having said that, I think its important to emphasize some of the things that
capitalism gets right: it is still a relatively open and distributed system
that is able to evolve more freely than systems that are less so. Open in that
many people can actually apply for loans etc. and start their own businesses.
Distributed in that there are numerous options and usually no single point of
failure.

I don't think that greed is necessarily fundamental to human nature. That's an
oversimplification. Humans do need to compete sexually, but I don't think that
extreme hierarchies are necessarily a requirement for that. Much of what is
considered human nature is just the current state of our culture.

I think its hard to create a system that operates consistently and soundly as
a whole but at the same time is robust, distributed and free to develop in
different directions.

However, I believe sure that we can improve our current situation by injecting
a more egalitarian belief system as well as more science and technology into
the power structure and its operating principles, which means the financial
system. For example, "economics" is now mainly gaming strategies for
maintaining point (monetary) counts and the power that goes with them. But
because economics is so critical to human decision making, it must at some
point incorporate human needs, social science, and physical science such as
ecology. There is a false belief that somehow these monetary gaming strategies
and point/goods exchange systems (the economy) incorporate scientific
knowledge, measurement, and technological knowledge automatically. That is not
the case currently.

One of the problems with all of the systems, capitalistic or anti-
capitalistic, is the tendency to move, either quickly or more slowly, towards
centralization. When wealth/power as well as goods and services production
concentrates it leads to vast inequality, poor distribution, stagnation,
inability to cope with local conditions, etc.

I think we need to do a better job of centralizing information schemas and
holistic knowledge but do that in a way that does not compromise the ability
to evolve those knowledgebases and distribute production or lead towards
centralization of power, etc. Its not easy, but I think its a technological
problem we can solve.

~~~
csense
> Capitalism is only possible where knowledge is shared unequally.

Not true! If everyone had access to a magical worldwide pool of all the
economically relevant information that exists in the mind of any member of the
human race (along with a search engine or something to let us index and query
the data for effective use), there would probably be more trade, not less --
it would be easier to identify opportunities and connect buyers and sellers.
The Internet did this, to a first approximation -- there are all kinds of
niche products you can buy on the Internet.

> For example, if many people knew how to obtain the proper license or
> whatever and where to go to buy wholesale, then they would bypass retailers
> entirely.

Sam's Club, eBay, Newegg, overstock.com -- there are lots of ways for ordinary
people to avoid paying retail. Many people do frequent these websites; retail
is dying.

> Similarly, if many people had knowledge about how to start a business and
> knew several friendly venture capitalists or bank officers, many of them
> would start their own businesses and there would be few people to do the
> actual work.

For the first 100+ years of America's existence as an independent country,
most Americans were small businesspeople -- farmers, mostly. The notion that
working for someone else is the norm, and having your own business is the
exception, only happened with the Industrial Revolution, when new technology
shifted the economy toward businesses that required lots of workers and
capital.

Since the Internet/software world is one of the major growth areas of the
economy, and doesn't require any capital investment beyond a computer, an
Internet connection, and (rather optional) formal training in the field, we're
seeing that many people are choosing to start small businesses as individuals
or small teams with minimal capital.

------
cynicalkane
Capitalism is based on information, knowledge, greed for money, greed for
ownership, desire for accomplishment, and a lot of other things. Information
is one of these things. Information is a means to a lot of other ends as well.

I look dimly on people who say "Capitalism is driven by X" where X is some
narrowly defined band of things. From Rand to Marx, theories that look like
invariably turn out wrong, sometimes disastrously so. In economic speak, an
incentive is anything that a person in question might want. The desire to
acquire information and the rewards of using it are one kind of incentive.
It's common for random econ pundits to try to redefine "incentive" as "greed",
and this should be the first clue that they either don't know or don't care
what economists actually think.

------
iAinsley
huh? Capitalism is about risk and reward. Capitalists look to government for a
number of things:

a) Infrastructure b) Political stability c) Market Regulation (e.g. fair
competition, orderly markets, currency,etc) d) and risk reduction

Capitalists are free to asks for any other thing that decreases risk, it
doesn't mean the government has to respond in all cases. I disagree with
George, there is not direct path between incentives and socialism.

------
001sky
_The competitive pursuit of knowledge is not a dog-eat-dog Darwinian
struggle._

This is demonstrably not true in the presence of _Firms_. _Agents_ in the
markets are hierarchies, and the internal competition in a hierarchy is very
much darwinian. This second tier of this two-tiered chess game is not without
consequence.

------
zby
Wow - this is so close to the FLOSS ideology! I'll need to read that book.

------
Tycho
It's based on individual property rights, trade and reinvestment of capital
accumulated due to said rights.

------
ktizo
So, the claims are that capitalism is based on information and knowledge and
not greed and that greed leads to socialism?

Is certainly an interesting opinion.

My first thoughts were that he seems to be confusing motives and methods.
Information and knowledge certainly flow through a capitalist system and are
definitely required in order to do well, but they are not the motive for most
capitalists, In fact I can think of very few millionaires who are in business
for the learning and philosophy, whereas the desire to own more stuff or money
often is a driving force.

As for saying that socialism is the end product of greed, and that it is greed
that leads to a socialist welfare state, well. Someone should definitely tell
this to some of the various murderous dictators that have been propped up by
capitalists in the name of stability, security and favourable trading
positions. They'd have a pretty good laugh about it while checking their
numbered accounts.

Also, if greed leads to the creation of welfare for the poor, presumably this
means that the problem is the greedy poor. Which given that by definition they
cannot be very good at being greedy as they have no stuff, makes me doubt that
it was their greed that led to the creation of welfare, and that maybe having
less than 100% employment might have more to do with the massive mechanisation
and export of labour.

------
michaelochurch
Capitalism has its problems, but its critical selling point is that, if it
works well, you don't need official approval to do business. In the USSR, it
was a crime to compete with the one established business: the state. Fusions
of state and business power (whether from the left, as in communism, or from
the right, as in fascism) are almost always bad. The major win (practical and
moral) in capitalism is the right of the individual to interact with the
market without official approval.

If you look at corporate hierarchies, however, you see that they're run
internally like command economies. Headcounts and projects are written up and
assigned by gloomy, bureaucratic committees detached from the actual heartbeat
of the business. You're assigned a role, and if you try to "compete" by
seeking a different role or starting a skunk-works project, most companies
will fire you or otherwise work to shut you down. Companies are statist in the
extreme.

Corporatism is a system designed to give the best of both systems (capitalism
and socialism) for a well-connected, parasitic social elite (called "the 1
percent", but really they're about 0.2%) and the worst of both for everyone
else. You see this, for example, in commercial air travel, where you get
Soviet quality of service but the bizarre, unpredictable pricing you'd expect
from a runaway market (that is actually not so much a "market" as an algorithm
designed to fuck you over).

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...or from the right, as in fascism..._

Fascism was (by modern US standards) a center-left ideology. It emphasizes
collectivism/corporatism, authoritarianism and nationalism.

You are also using the term "corporatism" incorrectly. Corporatism is a
political system which elevates the rights of privileged corporates (a better
modern term would be "special interest groups") above the rights of
individuals. A good example of modern corporatism would be disparate impact-
based policies - e.g., "we shouldn't allow this neighborhood to gentrify
because a privileged corporate might disproportionately move out of this
neighborhood."

I think what you meant by "corporatism" is actually "cronyism".

~~~
_delirium
On purely economic grounds, I could see that characterization, but fascism's
principal features don't have a lot of support among centrists or leftists. It
emphasizes a unified ethnic culture (which includes opposition to
multiculturalism and a general xenophobia), a military-first policy, and
national-greatness/exceptionalism, all of which are typically associated with
the right.

In a U.S. context, rural conservatives share many more of those features than
either urban conservatives or liberals: they combine a mild economic populism
with opposition to multiculturalism, strong support for American
exceptionalism, suppression of "deviant" individual behavior (porn, profanity,
blasphemy, homosexuality, etc.), support for a strong military, etc. A closer
but now largely defunct analog might be the old Dixiecrats.

In Europe you commonly find descended ideologies in the far-right parties. In
Denmark, for example, the Dansk Folkeparti combines support for a social
welfare system— _for Danes_ —with strong opposition to allowing non-Danes to
enter the country, exclusion of immigrants from social-welfare benefits,
legislation in favor of protecting Danish culture and combatting the
importation of foreign cultural elements, banning mosque construction, and a
strong military to fight Islamism worldwide.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Sad fact - fascism and virtually every other ideology of 30's incorporated
racism. Racism was just an easy way to garner support. It's also a sideshow to
the intellectual basis for fascism, which is collectivism and
authoritarianism. (The name is derived from the word "fasces", which is
Italian for a bundle of sticks.)

That said, fascism isn't all that accurately classified as left wing either.
While modern left wingers do embrace the collectivism that fascism is based
on, fascism doesn't care much about "social justice", "inequality", or any of
the other big left wing buzzwords.

Similarly, fascism cares very little about various other right wing values,
e.g. traditional protestant values or whatever. They are a convenient way to
convince particular corporates to join your syndicate (making it stronger),
but that's all.

This is why I characterize it as "center left" - it doesn't fit easily with
any mainstream ideology, but collectivism does point more left than right.

Racism is also irrelevant when attempting to determine where fascism lives.
Racism is split pretty evenly across American political parties, and it is not
a significant part of any major American ideology:
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/rac...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/racism-
by-political-party.html)

~~~
_delirium
I don't think it's so much _racism_ per se as a militant nationalism and
national-exceptionalist view, as the key defining feature (we are the best
nation and will build a glory that will shine for the ages).

Before Hitler forced him to pass anti-Jewish laws, Mussolini wasn't
particularly racist, just nationalist. His thing was the eternal greatness of
Italy, the connection to ancient Roman glory, the new legions of Italy
rebuilding the Roman empire, reorienting society on martial and patriotic
lines, etc., etc. The collectivism basically stems from that: the Nation above
all. To me, that's a very right-wing sort of collectivism, whereas both the
left and liberals have more of an internationalist and multicultural
orientation.

It's true that it's not libertarian (either right-libertarian or left-
libertarian). But I don't think it's too alien from cultural conservatism and
"national greatness conservatism", which also places a high emphasis on
patriotism and the nation, and is highly critical of individuals who deviate
from what they see as the good of the community (hence the traditional
conservative support for censorship of blasphemous, prurient, and seditious
literature, as they believe it's the government's job to prevent this kind of
deviance). As one litmus test, we might look at which parts of the political
spectrum support mandatory Pledge of Allegiance recitation, in order to train
the youth to put their Nation first.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I also don't think it's too alien from modern American liberalism, which
similarly places a high emphasis on patriotism and national greatness.
Remember when we used to be the greatest manufacturing power, with a glorious
middle class? The state can bring our next golden age.

Similarly, "Nation Above All" sounds a lot like "Ask not how the State can
serve you, ask how you can serve the State" (JFK's verbiage tweaked only
slightly). "All within the state" sounds like it describes the "Life of
Julia".

I'd really like to know what modern conservatives you feel embody the
"Nation/State Above All". Isn't Romney's slogan these days "we [individuals]
built it, not the state?"

As for punishing those who deviate from what they see as the good of the
community, most major ideologies favor that. It's nothing unusual, which is
why there is also traditional liberal support for censorship (of slightly
different topics).

------
batista
"Capitalism is based on information and knowledge, not greed"

Really? Then someone please inform the capitalists.

So when, for example, a large multinational executes workers demanding better
pay and conditions in third world country factories, it's all about
information and knowledge.

Mainly, the knowledge that killing those guys will send a message to the rest
of the workers, and keep the factory costs down.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind-
Favorite/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind-
Favorite/dp/1583334068)

Just an example. There are million others, from lobbying and having special
laws made for them in western countries, to setting up governments of people
they approve and taking down governments they don't like in so called "Banana
republics".

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind-
Favorite/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind-
Favorite/dp/1583334068)

