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Ayn Rand's "shruggers" weren't primarily business leaders. They were the real creators, the real doers inside businesses. The CEO isn't usually that. A lot of Ayn Rand readers seem to miss that. There aren't really that many doers. Does the CEO of Enron know both where and how to drill for natural gas? Does the CEO of GE know a dot product from a cross product? Does the CEO of GM know how to start up the CAD program on his desktop? Doers know these things, these are the John Galts who work for the CEOs.

I agree completely!

Ayn Rand often said "capitalism" when maybe she should have said "free enterprise." Capitalism, as I understand it, is just a way to make money by already having money.

A free-enterprise economy might have capitalists in it, but the heroes in Rand's novels are more like enterpreneurs and inventors. They were heroes because of their individualism and their prowess as productive visionaries, not because they had big piles of other people's money and talked like winners(except maybe Midas Mulligan).

Paper-shufflers, conformists, smooth-talkers, schmoozers and posers were generally the bad guys.

I think I agree with you, but I would say it the other way around. Capitalism assumes, among other things, a free market or free enterprise economic system. But it cannot succeed on that alone. History seems to demonstrate that a cultural commitment to civil liberties, a shared morality and a common language are other necessary ingredients.

You're correct. Capitalism is not the best word to describe our economic system.

After 30 years since reading Atlas Shrugged as a 17 year old (and after buying countless copies since for younger brothers, friends, and co-workers as gifts) I finally picked it again up this Summer. It's true, you have to wade throught the first 100 pages. Then it's great.

That said, I agree that "capitalism" is not the best term. After all, Karl Marx, the enemy of capitalism, popularized the term. That's like the supply-side economic school deciding to be known as the trickle-down economic school.

I try always to use the term "free economy" while I debate (well, argue) with my liberal "friends".