> Are you under the illusion that greed and selfishness is a vice unique to the 21st century?

That's a strawman. I'm pretty darn sure they're not claiming it never happened in the past. Only that it is becoming significantly more widespread than it used to be.

I think you're going to have an incredibly hard time making a compelling case that no such trend exists, given the statistics (even on this particular issue in the article, never mind other issues) would very likely strongly suggest the opposite.