Agreed with the title and some of the broad sentiment, but two things stood out.

> I can't delegate my capacity to sit with someone when they're confused or scared or just need to feel known

Plenty of people rely on therapists and/or chat bots to listen to them. Not everybody feels comfortable burdening their friends and family with their problems.

> We possess the means to care for everyone -- yet choose not to

There is a trade-off between social services in a broad sense and the ability to pay for them. The stronger the social safety net, the more people at the margin will choose to work less, earn less, make less of an effort. In turn, the tax base becomes smaller, and thus unable to maintain those same social services.

For example, the vast majority of people choose to retire once they reach the age where they are able to collect enough from their pension that they no longer need to work in order to get by. If we lowered the age of eligibility by a year, most people would retire a year earlier. Just like we see people retiring later in countries that have moved the eligibility to the age of e.g. 67.

With this I am not advocating to increase or decrease the current social safety net in whichever region you, dear reader, are living. I am simply pointing out some of the real-world effects of moving the needle in one direction or another.

Thus, yes, in rich countries we have collectively decided that "caring for everyone" is not the best way forward, because we see that it becomes unsustainable when you go too far. Where exactly we place the needle varies from place to place, obviously. Thinning the social safety net too far also has massive societal and economic consequences.

>For example, the vast majority of people choose to retire once they reach the age where they are able to collect enough from their pension that they no longer need to work in order to get by

Part of the problem is that the current system doesn't provide a great way to taper off, at least not by default. I suspect there would be a lot more people who'd keep working if it was simple to get a comparable job at 30 hours per week 25 weeks out of the year. But for those who are traditionally employed instead of contracting, the choice is often between full time or nothing.

The tax base shrinks but does company revenue shrink? History so far says no, so perhaps that's where we can look for the tax dollars.

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