[subradios]

It's not a recent myth, saying that the purpose of an organization or class of organization "is" something depends on legal and social context.

Friedman popularized the idea of fiduciary duty in the field of economics, and even popular left economists like Keynes didn't foundationally dispute that premise.

You can think it shouldn't be popular among economists for moral, aesthetic, or even empirical reasons - but to suggest somehow that the 1880s model of companies is "more correct" and assert it as truth is just as much a "myth" if you are framing these ideas about institutional purpose as "truth".

The robber barons you speak of have created the single largest reduction in poverty in human history. Most of the west, and even poor Americans are living truly historically blessed lives - and by letting the robber barons loose, the CCP was able to lift nearly 1b people to a standard of living unimaginable to Chinese people in 1970.

Capitalist thought and action is not immune to criticism, but the empirics are on capitalist ideas. Most of the common areas where Americans complain about "capitalist" processes are not capitalist under the hood at all.