Yes, but you and I are reasonably intelligent people with a grasp of enlightened self-interest. These are selfish, small-minded people who can only manage to get a fucking MBA, for Ifni's sake.
They have no problem not seeing the big picture, nor with flushing the rest of the world down the toilet as long as they get to stay on top of their particular little dungheap; FFS, most of them can't see past the tip of their own penis anyways.
mnem
Rant "ON":
Yes, Adam Smith was dreaming with his idea of "enlightened self interest".
Those who are at the top of the heap just hear the last two words.
Socialists know people are horrible, & somebody is going to be screwed, but try, not very successfully, to make the screwing a bit less specific to the poor.
(I'm not talking about Soviet style, which was just another way of screwing those elements of society without any power.)
It seems that powerful people often pine for a feudal society----witness billionaires with their mansions & servants, or the Party bosses in the old Soviet Union, with their "Palatial Dachas", again with servants, albeit paid by the long suffering taxpayer, & called "Comrade"!
The silly thing is such a society, when it really existed, stifled progress, & it wasn't until ordinary stiffs started having actual disposable income that industrial progress really took off.
The aristocrats in feudal times lived in cold, damp piles which stunk, the roads their carriages travelled on were pretty much dirt tracks.
They couldn't really do much for entertainment, except harass their "underlings", get drunk, go to church, & fornicate.(Not all at the same time!)
Once upon a blue moon, they got to visit the capital to grovel before the king. (Whoopee!)
As the majority of people get poorer, tax intake will fall, roads will deteriorate, other utilitities will fail, till today's "Lords & Ladies" will reside over a "train wreck" society, just like the one their predecessors "enjoyed!"
Rant "OFF"