[pryce]

> if everybody tries to improve their bottom line then everybody wins

This idea is given fairly often as a rationale that economies should be organised around capitalism, yes.

Whether the principle holds up in practice seems, to me, the kind of question that would be answered best by seeking a very wide range of data, rather than by attempting to draw conclusions from a handful of news articles.

Some areas of the economy that are often proposed as counterexamples to the above principle include healthcare and the environment, where critics claims that 'everybody trying to improve their bottom line' results in inefficiencies & unnecessary complexity, socialization of costs (eg pollution, morbidity & mortality), or in some cases direct harm.