Dr. Ridpath names the ethics of altruism , which advises not benevolence toward others, but self-sacrifice . The altruist ideal of unrewarded service to others motivated the acceptance of the perfect competition model and its use as a standard of antitrust. The root reason the lawyers, economists, politicians and businessmen accepted this model and hold it as a virtually unchallengeable standard is that the conduct it depicts is perfect according to the altruist morality. This is the moral meaning of the standard used by modern antitrust. Businessmen are being persecuted for not being sufficiently identity-less, passive, altruistic servants of consumers.
Altruism is incompatible with any defense of capitalism and only inspires attacks against it.
The rational purpose of economics is to identify, interpret and explain the results of a free economy's operation. Altruism assured economists in advance that those results were evil. The consequence has been . . . That it's considered ideal only by reference to an anti-capitalist ethic. Yet it has real, concrete consequences.