Efficient markets are alienating if they inhibit us from caring about one another in our productive activities. I argue that efficient market behaviour is both exclusionary and fetishistic. As exclusionary, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care alongside their market behaviour. As fetishistic, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care in their market behaviour. The conjunction entails that efficient market behavior inhibits care. It doesn’t follow that efficient market behavior is vicious: individuals might justifiably commit to efficiency because doing so serves the common good. But efficient market systems nevertheless have significant opportunity costs. This serves as a corrective to the prevailing assumption amongst welfare state capitalists, liberal egalitarians and market socialists that resolving distributive objections to markets will resolve this relational objection.