She portrays business leaders as heros, creative doers. But that's not always the case. That's the problem. In fact, my impression of the culture of most large corporations, based on first hand experience, is that they are no better than gubmint.
The C-level executives are just overpaid bureaucrats. Unless they are the founder of the company, they didn't create anything. Just like with gubmint, they are playing with someone else's money. And just like with gubmint, they lie and steal.
You're average C level exec comes in, rewrites the mission statement, the vision statement, etc. Stays holed up in his office with the lawyers and the accountants, and leaves after a few years, well paid, and someone else gets to deal with whatever mess he left behind.
And down the ranks, it's also quite like gubmint. VP level execs, and directors, are all motivated to expand their budget. Just like in gubmint, they have to make sure they spend every dime of last year's budget, often times just blowing it at the end of the fiscal year, so they make sure they get the same budget, or bigger, next year. They build little fiefdoms, try to take on new employees, not because they need them, not because it helps the company, but because it helps them accrue power and get to sit on on all the big meetings and feel special.
In short, the problem is a human problem, and business is far from immune. In my view, the only businesses that you can really hope to trust at all are the small businesses, where there isn't so much political BS. Where they are spending their own money, not shareholder money, and where the leaders of the company actually care about their core business, and aren't merely raping a company for a few years and then moving on.
Corporate culture, in the main, is sick. The only reason they are competitive at all is because all the other corporations suffer from the same disease. I saw it myself in many places, in various industries. And that's why Rand's idealistic notion of The Businessman is fatally flawed.
I am going to borrow some of your words (for use in my own little world) because they are pin point accurate in so many ways.
It's been a few years since I reread it, but I'm having a hard time thinking of many of the "business heroes" in Atlas Shrugged as working in a non-entreprenurial company. In fact, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Dagny Taggart. Everyone else either started the company or bought/inherited a company and vastly grew it. Characters like James Taggart and Orren Boyle are examples of your "overpaid bureaucrats".
But not all of the business leaders in her book are heros. She portrays many different types. Those like Reardon..who live to create and build. Then there are the weak ones, who inherited (like jim taggert) but don’t know how to lead or run anything. Then there are those that would fail if not for them running to the government to get help in making everything fair (like forcing the achieving business to cut production, give up the patents etc. I found as many businesmen to disike and I did to like in this book.
I would say that your issue isn’t with “The Businessman”, but the government schooled people he is forced to hire because the pool of creative thinkers is so shallow.
I appreciate your thoughts on Rand as I am attempting to read her for the second time. In the short span of the book I have read so far, I am in agreement with your thesis of Rand's flawed vision of the capitalist as Hero. While I am only a short way into the book, I have begun to find it a little tiresome. In some respects, I understand she is trying to draw a sharp contrast of self-interest over collective interest in order to advance her philosophical concepts. However, she presents the capitalists as being without human flaws and the collectivists as the sum of their flaws. This does not ring true to the reality we experience daily, as your post points out.
I do not intend, however, to allow this distraction to keep me from my appointed goal to complete the reading of this book.
Interestingly all of the ‘trust fund babies’ in her book, except for Dagny and Fransisco, sounded like the spoiled brats of today. James Taggart had obviously gone to the correct colleges, as were the heirs to 20th Century Motors.
Others have already pointed out that the heroic business people in “Atlas” were not bureaucrats but the ones who created and/or sustained their businesses through their drive and inspiration. But in a broader sense, Rand inst just saying “saavy and rich business man = good”. She includes others in her list of heroes. For example John Galt, who is not a business man at all, but an engineer as was Quentin Daniels. Richard Halley was a conductor. The common denominator wasnt wealth but drive, ambition, and creativity. And government, by attacking wealth, was also killing drive and ambition, even in those who did not have wealth (though aspired to it).