Milton Friedman on "self-interest"

I don't suppose it is any surprise that capitalism is often characterized as the enshrinement of greed. As soon as you hear that you know that you're shortly going to be told how to do it better. But the history of the world shows no evidence of there ever having been a system that did it better, only systems that did it differently and generally with worse results. Freedom coupled with capitalism unfettered by oligarchical practices has shown itself time and again to offer the best hope for raising the most people out of abject poverty to a life offering the prospect of achieving excellence. The pursuit of happiness (or felicity) requires freedom and part of freedom is the freedom to enjoy the fruits of ones work.