This is one of my pet peeves. The so called "selfish merge" is not selfish.

"Selfish" mergers use all of the available pavement until it is necessary to merge. Whether the merging occurs at the end of the useful pavement or 1/2 a mile earlier is irrelevant- it's the same volume of traffic squeezing through the reduced number of lanes.

Where selfish merging really helps traffic is when they take down the cones, signs, and other paraphenalia denoting a work area. The crews start at the front, where they are working, and work their way to the back picking this stuff up. The selfish merger who gets to the front may find the obstruction is already gone and has just helped everyone by removing himself from the traffic backlog.

One day I was on the Beltway around D.C where there were many signs proclaiming "Left lanes closed ahead- all traffic merge right". As a selfish merger, I moved to the far left lane and covered almost two miles at 60 mph while the lemmings in the right lanes were essentially parked. When I got to the construction site, they were done for the day and in the process of taking down the forward signs- both left lanes were 100% open.