Yeah, I talked about the economist's conflation between self-interest and selfishness in my earlier, longer article on economics. Have a look at the dictionary definition of "self-interest." It means "regard for one's own interest or advantage, especially with disregard for others," or "personal interest or advantage."

I'm aware that economic rationality is mainly about consistency. But while the models might technically allow for consistency in altruistic preferences, the invisible hand principle would be overthrown if individuals were assumed to be selfless.

Suppose everyone in society were members of a cult and they chose to buy or sell things based on their reverence for the cult leader. They might be instrumentally rational in their deferential consistency and in calculating costs and benefits, but the economy would effectively be centrally planned, because the population would defer to the leader. For the invisible hand to work, the members must be independent, which means they can't act out of empathy since empathy is a form of deference. The models imply, then, that the economic man is self-interested rather than selfless. Otherwise, you lose the magic of the invisible hand.

The AEA issued guidelines on disclosing conflicts of interest. How do we know those guidelines aren't as toothless as the SEC? The guidelines say, 'In cases of uncertainty regarding whether to disclose a particular relationship, a guiding principle should be the answer to the question: "Would I or my institution or a reasonable person be embarrassed if I had not disclosed this relationship and it was subsequently discovered by a journalist, colleague or university administrator?" If the answer to this question is "yes," the relationship should be disclosed.'

So this is a "guiding principle." What's the penalty for failure to disclose? Who investigates the possible failures? Even if the disclosures are made, they're made in the small print, which doesn't remove the conflicts of interest.

Anyway, your response to those links is obviously inadequate. The conflicts of interest are there, just as the documentary showed.

https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/policies/disclosure-policy/disclosure-examples