'The last gasp of the dinosaurs': publisher and flat-tax Republican Steve Forbes on 1930s-style economic policies, the news industry, and the future of the GOP.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: Interview

IN THE APRIL 1996 edition of reason, then-Editor Virginia Postrel wrote a column arguing that "Steve Forbes is a serious candidate" for president. "Not because he's a rousing speaker," Postrel observed, "but because he believes in the open-ended future, in the creativity of free people, and in the importance of clear, simple, limited rules within which individuals can shape their own decisions."

Of those "clear, simple, limited rules," the most famous was a flat and reduced personal and corporate income tax, an idea that, while never coming close to adoption at the federal level, nonetheless propelled a long-shot magazine publisher with no political experience into a third-place finish in the Republican primaries, including wins in Arizona and Delaware. In 2000 a flat tax song and social conservative dance helped Forbes whisk into second-place at the Iowa caucus, but he quickly dropped out after finishing third in New Hampshire and Delaware. In 2008 Forbes was a strong backer of the doomed Rudolph Giuliani.

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr., 62, is the third Forbes to publish the successful business title of the same name. Founded in 1917, Forbes has gleefully billed itself as the "Capitalist Tool," lionizing the entrepreneurs who make the world a richer place. In addition to producing its signature lists of the country's (and globe's) richest capitalists and companies, the 900,000-circulation magazine has been a staunch opponent of antitrust enforcement, an aggressive supporter of anti-totalitarian movements abroad, and a stubborn purveyor of a sunny, market-based optimism. Last November, at the height of political panic over the financial crisis, Forbes put Forbes himself on the cover, explaining "How Capitalism Will Save Us."

In July, Editor in Chief Matt Welch interviewed Steve Forbes at the annual FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas.

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reason: People know you as Steve Forbes, flat taxer and presidential candidate, but you're also publisher of Forbes magazine in an era when magazines are struggling. How is Forbes responding to the economic crisis, the publishing crisis, and the transformation of the print industry?

Steve Forbes: When you have a severe recession and you have something transformational as we now see unfolding with the Web, you have to do two things. One, you have to address the immediate circumstances, which means belt tightening, which we did--and we did after 2001, when the economy also went temporarily off of the cliff. But at the same time, you have to invest for the future. And thankfully, 12 years ago, when we went online as did everyone else, we did not make the mistake that many print publishers made, and that was to think you take the printed page, throw it online, and have your electronic publishing. When Thomas Edison invented movies, some people thought you'd film a stage play and that was a feature film. No. It's an entirely different medium.

We've always focused on entrepreneurs, on investors--on capitalist people who want to get ahead, people who want to do things in business. So we saw the website as another platform to reach the same constituency. Our value added is information, insights, and analyses, plus our profound belief in the moral basis of capitalism, which is meeting the needs and wants of other people. If you have that, you don't get hung up on what the particular platform is.

reason: David Carr had a piece about you guys in The New York Times--a little snarky, but it was interesting. One thing he posited is that in 2009 this whole "Capitalist Tool" stuff is out of fashion; it's out of step with the times. What's your broad response to the notion that your stance or ethos is out of step and anachronistic?

Forbes: Well, capitalism--entrepreneurial capitalism, democratic capitalism--always goes through phases where it's, quote, "out of fashion." And it's usually because of catastrophic mistakes made by government. The victim is blamed for...