In a ten-player game, (a) stealing one utilon from everyone else and getting 20 for yourself is one kind of selfish tradeoff; and (b) stealing one utilon from everyone else and getting 5 for yourself is another kind of selfish tradeoff; and (c) giving one utilon to everyone else while gaining 10 for yourself is also a kind of selfishness.
Cheating is (b), driving is (a). (You seem to be arguing that driving is (b) - I disagree, but it's beside the point.) Capitalism mostly tries to encourage (c). We put some selfishness to work, yes; but we harness the selfishness of Henry Ford, and we punish the selfishness of Bernie Madoff.
The quantity means that (a) makes the world worse off and (b) makes it better off. That seems like a pretty significant difference to me.
> I never said my actions were capitalistic at all.
I got that impression from one of your deleted comments. Perhaps it wasn't intentional.
> If that makes me into an asshole and the world into a shithole, so be it.
That's not a "so be it" outcome, that's an "oh crap, let's try to avoid that" outcome. As a society, we try to avoid that by punishing (a). You can do your part by not doing (a) even if you think you can get away with it.
