Who here is a radical for capitalism, and what does it mean to you to be a radical for capitalism?

[Sebastien]

"We objectivists are not conservatives... we are radicals for capitalism."

Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal

 

I would like to open up discussion on what it means to each of us to be a radical for capitalism.

I have some ideas of my own, which I am willing to share if others take interest in this conversation.

[Doug Morris]

As I  understand it, she was saying that we reject conventional wisdom on a level much deeper than politics.  It doesn't have to mean any more.  Some people might give it an additional meaning that is significant to them personally.

[Sebastien]

Radical means "to the root." Ms. Rand truly was a radical for capitalism because she grasped the essential nature of capitalism as lying in the essential nature of man and his requirements for living in society. So she went "to the root."

[dream_weaver]

An interesting thing about "roots" is how they spread out and go in different directions on some plants, while others rely primarily on a "tap root". While examining the root(s) of morality, she indicated where man needed morality the most, on a desert island, where neither a thriving economy based on a division of labor or the political system needed for it to function within were present.

An island is pretty concrete. I might consider as a plausible argument that an island could be considered as a first-level concept.

"You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it."

To put this into surveyors terms, she has effectively staked out a plausible moral high ground. This is a [/the] prerequisite for "living in society". 

 

[happiness]

Being a radical capitalist means I champion the moral principle of individual rights in economics.