The Ambiguity of Business

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand clearly distinguishes between real business people and those who simply got the title because they are located in a business. What makes this distinction really difficult is that there is not a pithy name for the latter.

Real business people engage in production, trade, and competition. Those riding on the coat tails of business want to avoid competition. They do produce something, but it is clearly not like real business. In Atlas Shrugged Paul Larken and Mr. Mowen produce. The kicker is not that they do it in a mediocre fashion, but in their reasoning about the whole process. Rand is merciless with the Board of Taggart Transcontinental because they spend their efforts on anything but production.

The reason I point this out is many accuse Rand and Radical Capitalism of being pro-business and then cite the worst of the lot as evidence that such a theory is ludicrous. Not everyone who is called a "business" person really is. That's her point. There is a difference between extant businesses and the practice of business. For instance, recently Fed Ex and UPS were engaged in a political battle over the laws of unionization - each trying to get laws passed that hurt the other. They are businesses, they are engaged in business, but this mutual predation through the political process is not business. (Note they are not simply trying to protect their own - they are trying to hurt the other as well)

An equal mistake would be to say that everything a man parent did in the home was fathering. This is palpably false. Yet, people are willing to believe that everything that is done within the firm is business.

To understand Radical Capitalism is, I believe, to understand the difference between real and fake business.