


Testimony prepared for delivery to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
From the automobile to the television set, technological breakthroughs often have demanded legislative breakthroughs. This is an era of profound and far reaching breakthroughs in wireless communications. I congratulate Senator Pressler for rising to this technological challenge by providing the necessary legislative breakthrough: a set of proposals for spectrum reform that will go far toward opening the way to dramatic advances in spectrum technology. I fervently support his five major initiatives — spectrum privatization, spectrum management cooperatives, spectrum bloc grants to states, federal spectrum convergence under the FCC, and most important of all, flexible frequency sharing, as opposed to exclusive frequency assignments. A crucial complement to the Pressler proposals is is the conversion of broadcasters — now endowed as spectrum Read More ›

Geniuses From Abroad
The current immigration debate founders on ignorance of one huge fact: Without immigration, the U.S. would not exist as a world power. Without immigration, the U.S. could not have produced the computerized weapons that induced the Soviet Union to surrender in the arms race. Without immigration, the U.S. could not have built the atomic bomb during World War II, or the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s, or the MIRVs in the 1970s or the cruise missiles for the Gulf War in the 1990s. Today, immigrants are vital not only for targeted military projects but also for the wide range of leading-edge ventures in an information age economy. No less than military superiority in previous eras, U.S. industrial dominance and Read More ›

The Roots of Black Poverty
Dinesh D’Souza is currently the perplexed benificiary and victim of an uproar over his book “The End of Racism,” which emerged in the midst of a momentous furor over the centrality of race in America. Except for the always bravely Olympian sage Thomas Sowell, even conservative blacks have fiercely renounced much of his argument along with his intemperate language. How can anyone deny the power of racism in the face of the taped ruminations of Mark Fuhrman, the rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan the indignant voices at the Million Man March, the radical split between the races reacting to the acquittal of O.J. Simpson? I know how Mr. D’Souza feels. In 1979, I published a book called “Visible Man: A True Story of Post Read More ›

The Bandwidth Tidal Wave

Auctioning the Airways

The Issaquah Miracle

Into the Fibersphere

George Gilder and Brian Lamb on Microcosm

Vintage Gilder
Playboy: In the recent past, your ideas and writings have enraged feminists and political liberals. Today, those ideas seem to be among the guiding principles of a changed political climate in Washington. We’re going to ask you to summarize the major themes of your books. But, for starters, just what is it you believe in? GILDER: I believe in a free capitalist system in a larger cosmic order, founded on absolute truth. I believe there are such things as absolute truths and that society will necessarily reflect those truths, over time, in its organization and behavior. PB: Tell us an absolute truth. GILDER: An absolute truth I propound in Wealth And Poverty is “Give and you will be given unto.” Read More ›