> Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

It's important that it's economic.

If I work my median job, and live my median lifestyle, and I observe that people who don't work are getting more than I am, that's very challenging. I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't.

It makes it seem like the economic system is broken and unfair. As soon as that happens, there's no chance you will feel empathy to those people who are benefiting more.

Recognising that the economics is OK is therefore very important - it allows you to start to have empathy.

> I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't.

I already feel this to a shameful degree in regard to wealthy scions like the Walton kids, or children of mega hollywood stars. The economic system is broken and unfair.

Ah, yes, I agree the economic system is broken and unfair.

Unfortunately the way to fix this is not by giving you the wealth of the Waltons.

It's by bringing everyone else up to the level of personal security that you already have.

> Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

Enlightened self-interest that results in action is worth any amount of empathy that doesn't.

Empathy does not result in social change. Economy does.

Yes - I'm sure that's how slavery came to be abolished for example.

It was a significant contributing factor. Consider, for example, the American Civil War - the outcome would have been very different if not for the fact that the North's non-slave industrial economy worked.

This is in fact a highly interesting debate. Other than economic circumstances, I would argue that we have little reason to believe that human empathy changes substantially.

Slavery went away for farming and balancing reasons, child labour for productivity reasons and working women came for demand reasons (e.g. war).

Luck is applied probability. Good and bad happen randomly.

It's up to us to use the events around us as tools to shape reality and the future into patterns of events that we want. While we cannot influence all cosmic events related to ourselves and others, we can still influence some.

> Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy

My guess would be that the "formerly homeless" of Medicine Hat, appreciate the "roof over their head", much more than any amount of "empathy"

>It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism.

Does it do the same to women?