Extreme wealth selects for a certain mind: high ability, a focus on systems, the abstract over the person in front of you. Systemizing and intuitive empathy sit at opposite ends of one scale, in a theory tested on half a million people. Power does its own work. Galinsky showed that feeling powerful makes people worse at taking another’s perspective. Add incentives that pay for self-interest, and indifference at the top is no puzzle.
In a clip More Perfect Union posted, Marc Andreessen says he has “zero” introspection and that the idea is a modern invention. The history is wrong, since Augustine’s Confessions are sixteen centuries old. He may have meant rumination. Introspection is the first act of reflexivity, which is most needed at the top and least seen there. Power removes the correction that teaches it: nobody tells the richest man he was wrong. The clip says nothing about his empathy, and I will not guess.
Both sides fire at this. To the Left: point taken. This is not a moral excuse, only a lens on why extreme cognition plus incentives amplify indifference. To the Right: not an endorsement, only an analysis of the traits and systems that produce the outcome.
Humility is reflexivity’s price. The people I see paying it get corrected for a living. The remedy is rules, and no one person should own the fix. Leaders need edge and decency, and the market already pays for the edge.