I've been around a few objectivists and Ayn Rand fanboys in my time, and though I don't subscribe to all of their beliefs, I have gleaned a few ideas, and overall I appreciate their brutal honesty and directness. Has anyone ever taken this approach in the debate?

I have said for a while now that [radical] feminists need to take a sales or marketing class, because they don't seem to know how to present themselves. Much of the time their argument is along the lines of "You should change your viewpoints and behavior. If you choose not to, I will make you feel bad about yourself."

If instead, from the beginning, MRA folks forced them into a bargaining situation, and accepted nothing less than "Here is what I want, here is what I will give to get it, are these terms acceptable?", I think the debate could be much more civil and productive. I will always be much more comfortable with cost-benefit analysis than arguing over morality and subjectivity. If both parties can agree to boil their argument down so simply that it can be plugged into Excel, the discussion could be elevated through beautiful, cold, unfeeling logic.

Has anyone ever tried this, and what were the results? I'd love to know if someone has actually used Excel like this.