Instead they'll say, those rationalists are so heartless, attaching dollar signs to everything.

I don't particularly expect what I say publicly to reflect on "rationalists" because that's not a label I use much. "Engineers are so heartless", "French people are rude" or "Emile is a dick" would be more likely.

I don't think that using "rationalist" as a public identity flag is particularly necessary; it's a useful term when talking among ourselves, but I'm not sure it uses much value for an "external facade". In my experience, people who are good at getting shit done, changing their mind and listening to evidence have not particularly cared about labeling themselves as "rationalists"

As an analogy: many programmers have cared about how to get better at programming, and improve the discipline as a whole ... a lot of good ideas have circulated, yet there hasn't been a particular label of "good programmers" (or rather there have been a lot of more-or-less blushitty attempts at branding various packages of good ideas under "agile", "extreme programming", etc.). So you can get improvement without identity labels, just by propagating ideas.