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I have to admit, I don't care about other people as a general rule.
I care about some people: my wife and kids, my parents and siblings, close friends, social circle, coworkers (in descending order). Outside of that I care about people based on the value they bring. That can be direct value, e.g. the mailman who delivers packages, or indirect value, e.g. the people working at USPS's sorting center.
But I don't care at all about the people who bring negative net value. The homeless guy drugged out of his mind? If he died tomorrow I literally wouldn't feel sad at all. The single mother welfare-leech churning out 4 kids? Nope. Sam Bankman-Fried and his mother (who I consider her the upper-class equivalent of a welfare-leech)? Gone. Just fucking Thanos snap hordes of inner-city gangs and Women's Studies majors away.
I not only don't care about them, I fundamentally don't understand why people do. Does human life have intrinsic value? Yeah, some. But surely we all agree -- not that much right? Or else you would take all the money out of your bank account, go to one of the slums in India, and start saving lives left right and center at maybe $100 a pop? And at least that little kid in the slum has the potential to be the next Srinivasa Ramanujan, whereas the 65 year old homeless drunk who shows up to the ER every two weeks has no chance?
(Obviously this is not to say that I want those people removed -- that sets a dangerous precedent because who decides?)
Law professors at stanford are 'the upper-class equivalent of a welfare leech'?
"Surely we can all agree - we don't have THAT much responsibility to the environment, right? Otherwise we'd have to stop using lead paint, leaded gasoline, maybe stop dumping oil into rivers - and, wow, what a mess that'd be."
What even is this argument? Surely if going to india and 'saving lives at 100/pop' (givewell estimates it at $5k) isn't worth doing, it is so because of ... some aspect of those lives or what saving them entails, and not because we're not already doing it.
The difference is that saving the environment requires a coordinated action, but saving a kid in India does not. Any modestly well-off person from the U.S. can do it. So the fact that they don't is a revealed preference (vs. just a consequence of tragedy of the commons).
EAs use this contradiction to convince people to do more (by pointing out what you would do for someone in front of you). I don't have this contradiction -- I wouldn't do shit for many people in front of me either.
And yes, I stand by my assessment of Barbara Fried. Instead of passing a drug test to demonstrate purity of body, upper-class welfare leeches must pass a similar test put together by a granting agency to demonstrate purity of mind.
Here's her bibliography: https://law.stanford.edu/publications/?primary_author=Barbara%20Fried&page=1
... okay, and the revealed preference of conservatives and reactionaries is that they love porn. this doesn't tell us that porn is good the interesting claim isn't "do most normal people do X", because ... they're normal people, many just imitate what their friends or family or media does, some come up with their own ideas which aren't any better, the interesting claim is "is X worth doing". If the amount of value something has is determined solely by how much other people, at the present moment, value it - i guess handwashing in hospitals was valueless until semmelweis.
Those publications aren't inspiring at a glance, but they're probably better philosophy than the 75th percentile philosophy paper. And she spent a lot of time teaching law too (apparently they both stopped teaching after FTX) - which isn't particularly parasitic. I'm not gonna look too deeply into this, but even if she has much more prestige than she should for a law school teacher, that's hardly welfare leech
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There's a pretty simple explanation that already aligns with your stated values: Caring about the homeless guy on the street can convert him into a productive member of society (maybe one of the people working at USPS's sorting center).
There's certainly a fine line between "caring" and "enabling" that needs to be debated, but my impression of most of the YIMBY crowd is that their "care" for the homeless guy stems from the same rational self-interest that you're describing.
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In any society containing modern progressives (ie. postwar ones), you don't exactly get a choice on the matter. These people represent enemy civilians at best and enemy soldiers at worst, in a zero sum war against your basic rights and interests - to stop half way at indifference is to declare the bizzare position of neutrality towards yourself.
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Isn't this more or less what Effective Altruism is trying to do?
Notwithstanding the fact that the most dedicated EAs sometimes suffer burnout, it does seem there's at least some people putting their money where their mouth is in terms of valuing the lives of humans.
Yes, there's definitely some people that care.
But the vast majority just profess to care and their actions (i.e. revealed preferences) suggest otherwise.
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