George Gilder: Capitalism is based on information and knowledge, not greed

I disagree. Capitalism in its current state is heavily based on securing advantages, meaning it's only fair in areas which are new and not saturated by established players.

I don't actually agree with that. Capitalism is ruthless. The winners do put the losers out of business. That's the moral justification for IP: without regulatory intervention, the winners are often not the generators of the IP. That has become more true in the age of the Internet, where a lot of natural monopolies are emerging, but it was probably always true. Size begets growth, coalition-building is inevitable (leading to conglomerates) and those who can't make nice with the big players often get crushed.

The problem with capitalism is that it's not stable. People who become rich and powerful (and their generally useless heirs, friends, and hired-gun managers) don't actually want to live in a capitalist world, so they use their social connections to build a private safety net, which hampers innovation. Corporate bureaucracies have more in common with the Kremlin than a Silicon Valley startup, and even Silicon Valley isn't that innovative, because it's increasingly controlled by a well-connected VC/media social elite. Most people wouldn't want to live in pure capitalism, and the corporate elite especially doesn't want it. They want to keep what they've got.

The problem with the problem with capitalism (or the problem with not-capitalism) is that every alternative to an at least mostly capitalistic economy is terrible. Command economies are not desirable.

Most thinking people are essentially (small-l) libertarian. My use of this word has nothing to do with the current usage (conservative who likes pot). By libertarian, I mean the opposite of authoritarian: belief that people should, all else being equal, be free to do as they wish rather than controlled by a governmental or corporate authority. (Authoritarians believe it's intrinsically impossible for most people to do anything good unless told to do so by a central authority.) The problem is that libertarianism begets capitalism begets conglomeration begets corporatism. It's the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The only solution I can see is the Western European social democracy (i.e. a socialist infrastructure to provide a safety net, but a capitalist engine for innovation and to maintain individual freedom). You need enough of a welfare state to keep people from being exploited by emergent corporate power, but enough capitalism (economic freedom) to keep innovation alive.

"Far from a system of greed, capitalism depends on a golden rule of enterprise: The good fortune of others is also your own."

So... when competition puts your company out of business, that's a good thing?

It was beneficial to local grocers when their businesses were bankrupted after being undercut by Walmart?

Yes, it gave them an impulse to find areas where they could do something that people judged valuable enough to part with their money. (e.g. learn how to design web pages and make bad flash animations ;)

It also did help people who buy groceries, including poor people.

But now the people who worked at the small town grocer are out of a job, so you are left with more poor people.