‘Defense of Corporation’ Help Requested

From Atlasphere member Nigel Richards:

Australian Objectivists are urgently seeking financial assistance to advertise ‘In Defence of the Corporation’, a one-day conference for CEOs to be held in May 2008 in Sydney.

Conference speakers include:

· Two Ayn Rand Institute speakers: Dr Edwin Locke, author of Prime Movers, Traits of the Great Wealth Creators; and Dr Andrew Bernstein, author of The Capitalist Manifesto;

· Mr Ron Manners, former chairman of Croesus Mining, De Grey Mining, and the Australian Mining Hall of Fame, and founder of the Mannkal Institute;

· Dr Alex Robson, lecturer in economics at the ANU.

These are the conference topics:

· The moral right of corporations and their shareholders to maximise their profits, and the importance of speaking out for this right.

· The enormous contributions that corporations make to our standard of living.

· Why CEOs do deserve multi-million dollar compensation packages.

· The heroic qualities of great business leaders.

· The types of attacks: the media, NGOs, existing and impending legislation.

· The source of the attacks: the anti-capitalist mentality, environmentalism, traditional morality.

· A contrasting code of morality: one that sees capitalism as the only moral social system and money-making as a noble endeavour.

· A strategy for resisting these attacks.

Supporters have so far contributed $1,150. We need to raise $1,980 by Thursday the 29th November for a quarter-page display on p.5 of The Wentworth Courier, a suburban weekly with a readership of 99,000 in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs.

Following is the proposed text of The Wentworth Courier ad, which is designed to attract wealthy Ayn Rand fans willing to sponsor the conference.

AYN RAND conference for CEOs

Sydney May 2008.

In Defence of the Corporation

Dear CEO,

The time has come to take a stand.

You are under attack from all sides. You – who through your daring imagination and risk taking, have built products or services that enrich us all – endure constant criticism from the greens, from the media, from the unions, from the social welfare lobby. Instead of gratitude for your inspiring achievements – which continue to raise our standard of living – you face threats from politicians to shackle you even further.

The time has come to take a stand. The time has come to sharpen your intellectual spears. The time has come to look your attackers proudly in the eye, convinced of your own moral stature. The time has come to mount effective arguments against the moral premises of your critics. The time has come to speak out for a moral code of rational self-interest.

Intellectual ammunition will be provided at a one-day conference in Sydney in May 2008.

[Speaker list to follow]

This conference cannot proceed without your financial support/sponsorship.

For more information: contact Nigel Richards by email at info (at) enterpriseethics.com.au or on 0417 065 047.