People care when their drinking water is contaminated with lead. They care if their medicines aren’t safe and effective, or if somebody takes all the money out of their investment accounts. Those things don’t make people happy. Yet it’s administrative agencies that are guarding against that and protecting their rights. So when the Supreme Court starts to dismantle important features of these agencies, it matters because it’s destabilizing a really important part of government
They have a conscience, they have empathy, it’s just that they only do for their friends, families or people in their social circles.
Most people act like this. There are people working in terrible conditions in Bangladesh or China to create stuff the western countries buy at Walmart, forever 21, Amazon… Where’s the empathy for them? Where’s the empathy for the guy that lost his job 6 months ago and has been sleeping in a tent since, and only got 75 cents after 2 hours of panhandling?
Individually, we can’t help everyone so we often look the other way. That doesn’t make us psychopaths.
Furthermore, saying rich people have mental illness frames the problem as a psychological one when in reality it is a socio-economic problem that requires a political solution.