Articles

Policy hackers threaten the economy

In a few weeks, a federal judge spurred by the Clinton-Gore administration will decide whether Microsoft should be broken up. If there is no settlement beforehand, the ruling could lead to appeals for years to come. But meanwhile, the message to the economy could be damaging: The government is willing to chance killing the golden goose of technology. George Gilder, Read More ›

What Does a 21st Century Defense Require?

Americans favor a strong defense. But a nation can be strong in the wrong ways. Since the 1994 election, there has been a growing debate over the condition of the American military. Unfortunately, it is the wrong debate, leading to the wrong conclusion-that America's defense problems can be solved by money alone. In reality, the present defense establishment is an Industrial Age organization struggling to adapt to two new worlds: that of the post-Cold War disorder and that of the microchip. This year, the American people will devote well over a quarter-trillion dollars to this increasingly obsolescent military structure. Because of mistakes during the post-Cold War builddown, some small selective, short-term increases will be necessary. But in the long run, the proper course is not to spend more. The proper course is to spend smarter. This Discovery Inquiry offers a conceptual tool for thinking about such change. Read More ›

Why Clinton Crime Bill Doesn’t Pay

President Clinton has vowed to veto Republican attempts to rewrite last year’s crime bill. The President says Republican “block grant” proposals could kill his plan to put 100,000 new police offers on the street. Republicans should welcome this challenge. Block grants will not only give states and communities more discretion about how to spend their money, as many Republicans have Read More ›

Mike Milken and the Two Trillion Dollar Opportunity

It’s time to deregulate America’s telecom infrastructure. And let the creative destroyers go to work. MICHAEL MILKEN IS BACK! Back, so the story goes, from the orgies of ’80s greed, back from the best-selling den of thieves, back from his preening at the predators’ ball, back from soft time at Pleasanton pen, back from prostate cancer and plagues of litigation, Read More ›

Don’t Tread On Me

Much hype and misinformation has been churned out about cyberspace and the information highway. While the mass media’s coverage of this new medium does not rival that of the O.J. trial, attention being paid to users and providers of computer networks and online services has grown intense during the past two years. Culminating this misinformation glut is legislation in Washington, Read More ›

Fetal Position

Since their dramatic election victory last November, Republicans have been urged to avoid getting “bogged down in divisive social issues.” Yet as the controversy over President Clinton’s nomination of Henry Foster for surgeon general has shown, Americans are more concerned about so-called social issues than media coverage and elite opinion would indicate. This is particularly true of abortion, ostensibly the Read More ›

A Happy Thought: Electronic Cash could Kill the Income Tax

Death and taxes are known as life’s certainties. Far less common, but much more enjoyable to contemplate, is the death of a tax.  In fact, a little-known technology may be about to accomplish what generations of Americans have joked and dreamed about — and both the new Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer and his predecessor, Chairman Sam Gibbons, Read More ›

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Fast internet connection with the optical fiber

Gilder Meets His Critics

This article was first published in Forbes ASAP, February 27, 1995. The article contains letters from various correspondents commenting upon a wide variety of issues raised in the series of George Gilder’s “Telecosm” articles which will be published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster, as a sequel to Microcosm, published in 1989 and Life After Television published by Norton in Read More ›

The Missing Link that Wasn’t:

When National Geographic published the first pictures of a fossil creature that looked for all the world like a bird-dinosaur, it was hailed as a stunning coup. But now the creature has been exposed as a hoax–the latest in a series of embarrassing reversals in evidence for evolutionary theory. The fossil, dubbed Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, was picked up at a fossil Read More ›