West Valley College's Sandra LaFave does a great job following this line of thought and pointing out why it doesn't work. The basic claim of egoists, LaFave notes, is that people "always and invariably act in their self-interest". However, most moral codes call for altruism, which, in egoists' account, is "demanding the impossible". Moral codes, so egoists' thinking goes, should not demand "the impossible", so we should take up a "more realistic" system such as – ta-da! – ethical egoism.
To accept this conclusion, you have to accept the premise that psychological egoism is a given fact in the first place. To date, neither Rand nor anyone else has been able to prove definitively that the proverbial soldier who dives on a grenade acts selfishly, not altruistically.
---SPSmith
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