Industrial Age politics were formed around tremendous investment in capital equipment that could not be easily moved. Factories, mills, assembly lines... The robber barons quickly turned to statism and statist ideologies much the way the landed aristocracy in Germany created a welfare state to counteract the new labor politics of blackmail, the sit-down strike, and fundamentally scary ideologies like Marxism and Anarchy. Since the capitalist elite were small in number and like Lincoln, essentially unconnected to the tradition of American Conservatism, the state became the most powerful entity, similar to German Industry capitulating to the Nazi's to prevent a Red take-over.
This political equation existed until the 1950s when there was a tax rate of 93% on the profits from big business. At that time, with the USSR and Europe in ruins, there was simply no place else for capitalists to go.
Information Age politics will feature an end to urban areas that are unsafe and un-defensible (witness 9/11)and logically, a return to the localism paleo-cons so desire. The question is, will it be a violent transition or a peaceful one.
No doubt it will be violent.
Improved flow of information will only serve to make the "masses' increasingly aware of economic disparity and fuel their dissatisfaction. It will not inspire them to be more educated, thoughtful and philosophical about their perceived condition.
The economic elite will typically seek to impose "order" by force, with typical resistance by those who physically outnumber them.