George Gilder

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Business Section, October 19, 2003
The Revolution Is Coming, Eventually
By KATIE HAFNER

SHORTLY before noon on a drizzly day in late August, George Gilder had a
housekeeping announcement to make during his annual technology conference
at the Squaw Creek resort in Lake Tahoe. The weather forecasters had been
dead wrong, he said, taking some obvious delight in this pronouncement.
Lunch would be served indoors.

Mr. Gilder's swipe at the meteorologists wasn't just an opportunity to
elicit a few chuckles from the audience. It was also a subtle reminder to
the 350 or so faithful in attendance that he is not the only one who can
botch a prediction.

Then again, few people have ever lost their shirts betting on the weather.
Investors who believed in Mr. Gilder's wildly optimistic predictions about
the telecommunications revolution, on the other hand, spent the last few
years watching their portfolios unravel.

(clip)

Back in the salad days of early 2000, Mr. Gilder also decided to buy out
his two partners for $10 million. Although he managed to pay all but $1
million of that, one of the former partners - Chuck E. Frank, a
restaurateur from Los Angeles - now holds a lien not just on Mr. Gilder's
house but on the 100 acres it sits on as well.

The lien on his property has been the ultimate insult heaped upon injury
for Mr. Gilder, who grew up in the modest yet comfortable house nestled
idyllically against the Berkshire hills. It is the farmhouse in which he
and his wife, Nini, raised and home-schooled three daughters and a son.

How did Mr. Gilder get it so wrong?

Mr. Gilder's critics say he was too focused on technology at the expense of
business realities. Others, farther to the left, question his complete
embrace of free markets.

"He doesn't trust the government but he does trust free markets," said Tom
Frank, an outspoken Gilder critic who is editor of The Baffler, a journal
of cultural criticism. "That's very curious to say in the aftermath of the
catastrophe that befell his portfolio."

Mr. Gilder looks out the window and appears to be pondering a cow as it
grazes nearby, but is actually deep in thought over this question.

The one thing he did not foresee, he says, was the effect of what he calls
"this incredible morass of regulations" affecting the telecommunications
industry. "I knew the factors, but I kept believing technology would
triumph over them." He said he still believes it will, eventually.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/business/yourmoney/19gill.html

Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.