About FutureOfCapitalism.com

Goal: This Web site is created with the aim of helping readers understand the world around them and saving them time by gathering, processing, analyzing, and sharing news and information about the future of capitalism, and for providing a forum for comment and discussion on that topic.

Context: To oversimplify, but only modestly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the conventional wisdom was that Communism and socialism were on the way out, and that capitalism had won the debate. Economies would prosper. Sure, there'd be some government regulation and some complaints about income inequality and poverty, but basically the big argument had been settled. Now, a financial downturn — blown into a "crisis" in part by government regulators who called it that and helped cause a panic — has made the argument a live one all over again. In America, the government is taking over banks, insurance companies, and automobile manufacturers while also aiming to increase its role in health care. Are we sliding toward socialism? Would that be good or bad, and why? This site aims to ventilate and illuminate these questions by using detail and example.

Metrics: The success of the site will be measured by traffic (unique visitors and page views), numbers of people who sign up for the e-mail feed, citations in the press and links from other Web sites, and revenue (please see the How to Help page).

Editor: The site is edited by Ira Stoll. Stoll is author of JFK, Conservative (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) and Samuel Adams: A Life (Free Press, 2008). He was vice president and managing editor of the New York Sun, which he helped to found, from its debut in 2002 until its demise in 2008. Before that he was a consultant to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, North American editor of the Jerusalem Post, editor of Smartertimes.com, Washington correspondent and then managing editor of the Forward, and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He is a graduate of Harvard, where he was president of the Harvard Crimson. He lives in Boston.

Audience: Readers of all ages and backgrounds are welcome. Comments are welcome using the comments function on the Web site. Comments are moderated by the editor and are subject to editing.

History: The site was publicly launched on September 9, 2009 after a period of operating in stealth/beta mode that began on May 21, 2009.

Contact: If you have a comment on a specific item, the best way to make it is by using the comments function on the Web site. To contact the editor:

E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 617 325 0193