Talk:George Gilder/Archives/2014

scaring Gilder out of his apartment

"In the 1970s, Gilder worked as a spokesman for the liberal Republican Senator Charles McC. Mathias as anti-war protesters surrounded the capital, some eventually scaring Gilder out of his apartment." What? He never left his apartment before? This incident needs to be expanded to explain better what it means. GangofOne 21:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Disc Inst. origins

"He helped found the Discovery Institute with Bruce Chapman. The organization started as a moderate group which aimed to privatize and modernize Seattle's transit systems but it later became the leading think tank of the intelligent design movement," That's not the impression I get from the Disc. Ins. article about transit coming first. Maybe it's right tho'. These articles should be uniformized and checked for historical correctness. GangofOne 21:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Wealth & Poverty

Very biased article. Almost completely negative and full of unproven criminal allegations. No mention of his classic work Wealth and Poverty, one of the most influential conservative books of the last century. Also, what is this "tried to learn how to write" nonsense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Corlet (talk • contribs)

Why not add something to the article instead of just complaining? GangofOne 08:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

It appears that your sources are all anit-George.

Reads like a hatchet job

Communicates very little about who the person is, instead providing just gathered dirt and anecdotal crimes in the style of the SPLC or a typical "enemy's list" biographer. Pervasive jaundiced tone, e.g. summarizing the NYT Book Review letter as "expressing sympathy for supporters of Islamic Jihad against the West" -Housewares 06:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikify template

Is the wikify template still needed? It was added in October 2006, but in its current state, the article has plenty of outgoing wiki links. Ehn 19:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Important details

This article seems to be lacking a number of important details, like what Gilder majored in at Harvard (appears to probably have been Political Science), when and for how long he was in the Marines, and so on. This prevents the article from forming a cohesive biographical picture. Hrafn42 07:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Supply-side economics

I think it is incorrect to say that Gilder "pioneered" supply-side economics. Jude Wanniski doesn't mention Gilder at all in The Way The World Works (1978). What Gilder did was write Wealth and Poverty (1981).

Gilder was not at the Laffer-curve lunch. Wanniski writes that the curve was drawn first by Laffer for "an aide to Gerald Ford." Bob Bartley in The Seven Fat Years writes that Wanniski claims it was drawn for Dick Cheney (the Ford aide), while Bob Mundell thinks that it was first drawn at Michael's (the hangout of the Wall Street Journal edit page crew in Manhattan).

I'm going to correct the Supply-side economics paragraph unless someone can refute my research.ChrisChantrill 13:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Violation of Wikipedia "Biography of living persons" standards

As in:

• "NPOV"
• no "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material"
• "Do no harm"
• no "titillating claims"
• "written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy"

So here's what I propose to do.

• relabel "Antifeminism" section as "Critic of feminism" and rework to make clear the order of events. Did Gilder testify before Sexual Suicide and the Harper's article? I'll include the arguments of the books since I own Sexual Suicide, Visible Man, and Men and Marriage.

• rework the "American Spectator" section. Gilder bought the magazine because it was failing (due to the problems with Tyrrell's Clinton investigations. IRS audit, and attendant publicity). But does the reader need to get a POV treatment about Scaife and dirty work? Peter Huber did not actually coin the term "junk science" according to Wikipedia's article.

ChrisChantrill 19:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

New Bio source

I've found a profile of Gilder by Larissa MacFarquhar "The Gilder Effect" published in <boldtype> in 2000. It has more detail than the Discovery Institute bio, including family names, David Rockefeller stuff, Gilder a "bad student", and so on. And it introduces the interesting notion that Gilder was fired from the Ripon Forum for his criticism of feminism. So I want to update the bio with this new info.

This is good because a lot of the info on Gilder comes from Faludi's Backlash which is not good because critics are not supposed to take over a BLP.

ChrisChantrill 22:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Intro Paragraph

I have added a Wealth and Poverty sentence to the introductory paragraph. I think it should also include the two other things for which Gilder is notable: his 1970s critique of feminism and his 1990s activities as a technology enthusiast. Any thoughts?

ChrisChantrill 18:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Tone of Article, Lack of Criticism

I differ from certain other commentators on this article, in that its tone seems as if written in self-loving attitude by Gilder himself. Did not Gilder in Microcosm proclaim utopia with the buildout of broadband? He seems to have been taken in by the 1990s hubris of perennially developing technology that led to the stock market decline of 2000 and the recession of 2001. Was he not interviewed in Wired about 2002 when he was essentially broke? Perhaps his career should be reassessed in the article in the light of the economic pothole he apparently fell in.

Grantsky (talk) 03:12, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Johngelles (talk) 02:17, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the tone (particularly "speaking arrangements") is a tad congratulatory. Reads like a press release. Bartleby (talk) 03:34, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

This article from Wired (2002) provides some information about how he dealt with the aftermath of the popping of the 2000 dotcom bubble. "The markets listened to his newsletter, and followed him into the Global Crossing abyss." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.96.19.109 (talk) 01:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)