rougy,

you will need more than a bare assertion to convince anyone of the idea that because something has not ever happened to date, it never could. Politics is driven by ethics, and ethics is driven by philosophy. Everyone has one, whether they can verbalize it or not. And most of the masses get theirs from their peers, and parents, all of whom get theirs from their teachers, who get theirs from the intellectuals who pass on the ideas of the philosophers.

That is why Objectivists debate with ideas in lieu of demonstrating with placards -- and the reason why they have been invisible to you for 50 years. Today, the numbers grasping the efficacy of her ideas all or in part are growing exponentially. Her political principles will never be effected by a government until an Objectivist ethic will be dominant in some particular geographic region of the planet or universe. It is impossible to predict when or if that could ever occur, because it depends on the volitional choices of individual human beings. It could be in 10 years or it could be in ten thousand years.

If one does not agree with her philosophy and wants to help stop its burgeoning influence now, it is not her or her followers you must attack. It is the power of her ideas that you must deal with by offering cogent alternatives to her reasoning. It is too late to be hoping that empty assertions and unsubstantiated characterizations with emotional connotations will stop the growth of her influence. Those who persist in such impotent tactics are starting to look like those proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

danny

"Perhaps if i was able to have a conversation with someone who knew it back to front, then i would be able to give a better opinion on whether or not it would work."

Go ahead, ask any question you want. I will converse with you. I don't know everything about it, but I have agreed with and advocated it without regrets for 43 years.

But first be clear that you are only dealing in this particular issue with one portion of her philosophy, politics. And that politics is not a stand-alone set of principles. Its validity depends entirely on the more fundamental branches of Objectivism that define the nature of existence (metaphysics), the nature of our means of grasping and retaining our knowledge of existence (epistemology), and given the nature of those and of human beings (in principle), by what standards we should measure our choices of thought and action in our quest to survive and thrive in accordance with our nature as the beings that we are (ethics).

That is just a peek at the monumentality of the subject. But you do not have to be an Olympic swimmer before you can wade into the shallows. Also, it doesn't make any difference where you start. If you have an open, honest mind, it will take you where you need to go.

Since politics is at the top of your present interest list, start here:

Capitalism is not right because it works. Rather, it works because it is right. It is right because it is derived from and dependent on a proper definition of the nature of human beings. To wit: Life or death is the fundamental alternative for all living entities. Humans are the only living beings that cannot pursue either alternative by their automated bodily functions alone. Our unique means of survival is our capacity to know the nature of existence and to choose the actions we take to deal with it - i.e., we are rational, volitional beings.

If one chooses the alternative goal of death, no ethical or political system is needed. But if one chooses to live -- to survive and thrive -- then life itself becomes ipso facto the standard of measure for all of your choices of how to think and act and what values to pursue - your ethics. If you lived outside of any society, your ethic -- your moral rights and wrongs would be your only governor. You would succeed or fail in accordance to how correctly or incorrectly your ethic was defined and implemented in your daily life.

But when humans live together in a society and interact in long term relationships, a problem arises. The volition that enables us to choose, inherently enables us to err. The autonomy one would have over one's own life outside a society can be destroyed in a society by the sole enemy of freedom, physical force. Therefore, in order to extend a proper human ethics in the context of the life of an individual into the context of a society of men, coercion by physical force must be removed from human interactions and all exchanges of values among men must be voluntary.

Now re-read the defining principle of Rand's radical capitalism as I stated it in my comment above. That is a moral principle. If you can undermine the logic of the morality underpinning that principle, we can begin to talk about capitalism not working. But, if you can't, you should begin to look deeper into it than you have. For if autonomy is a moral prerequisite, then our present political system that condones the use of coercion by majorities to take what they want from minorities is the system that does not work. It does not work primarily because it is immoral. And the left and right are equally guilty. Only the kinds of tyranny they favor differ.

Note also, that it is a dangerous leap from being unable to imagine how a system you understand so little would function to the claim that it simply would not work at all. Your intolerance of bastards is a suitable example. What Rand achieves in her system is that bastards may continue to be bastards in spades, because they have in her system no access to power. The government in her system has but one job and no other: rid the nation of coercion. No one can acquire anything from anybody in such a society without enticing them to trade it to them voluntarily.

And keep in mind, that autonomy is the freedom to exercise your own volition, which is a freedom to be fallible yourself that you must grant others as well. To be a good capitalist, you must tolerate the absolute right of others to be as irrational as they want so long as they do not force it on you or anyone else.

danny

"The system would only work if everyone was perfect "

This doesn't even make plain sense. Why would anyone need to have a "system" to govern a society of perfect people? Her brand of radical capitalism is in fact based on the assumption that all men are volitional, and therefore all are fallible. And since the success or failure of our lives depends on how well we think and choose and act, we need above all to be autonomous in our choices of what to think and how to act. And if we claim that right for our own lives, we must consistently grant it to all others.

Since the only way to interfere with that autonomy is with physical force, her system calls for the government to withhold all physical force from human interactions and to use it only to prevent, stop, or punish its use. The central principle therefore is:

No person may initiate the use of physical force to gain, withhold, or destroy any tangible or intangible value created by or acquired in a voluntary exchange by any other person.

This principle seeks to guarantee that all human exchanges of values shall be voluntary. It does not demand that anyone be rational or perfect. Everyone is free to do whatever they want as long as they refrain from using force to get what they want.

Under such a governmental system, coercive monopolies like the government's forced monopoly over our roads, water, education, postal system, etc. could not exist. No private monopoly could come into or sustain existence as such except by the voluntary choices of consumers to buy exclusively their products. And if they did choose those products voluntarily, by what standard could you or anyone else claim the right to forbid it of them.

In attempting to judge such a radically different system of government, you should be careful to avoid making assumptions of consequences based on what men do now with our present mixture of liberty and tyranny.