But like holding this idea in your mind is too hard. It's hard to say "Even though this person over here is a good person, and I understand their plight and what they're going through, I'm going to make the hard decision to allocate resources away from them" instead you have to create a world in which this person is actually bad, or that empathy itself is the problem, and that way you can sort of feel good about taking resources away.
That would be an interesting debate, but it would not go far enough for the current political moment. The current era demands more than shifting resources, as demonstrated by the fervor to deport legal immigrants who are paying taxes that cover benefits for which they are largely ineligible. A pure resource allocation calculus doesn't explain why those people have to go, so the narrative has to be expanded beyond allocation alone.
I don't think this is true. I think the parent is more correct that the tacked-on "oh, and they're also bad people" is mostly explained by simple psychology.
The resource allocation calculus doesn't have to be true to stand on its own. It's too complex for that. There only has to be a perception that it is likely true.
But that argument is a strawman because a huge amount of resources are moved towards increasing already wasteful military spending and reducing corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthiest without a coherent economic argument while everyone else is left fighting for scraps.
The only reason the argument is being had in the first place is because it is a distraction so that we don't argue about deeper structural issues which a lot of people in power have no intention on changing.
One of the criticism that Joe addresses in that book, is that if he used the term "The sin of anger" no one would critique his claim since we don't hold anger on a pedestal, even though there is righteous and sinful anger, but we have exhalted empathy so much that anything that says we shouldn't adopt "untethered empathy" is looked upon as a attack on all empathy.
It looks like this is one of those attacks that tries to totally discredit the idea that our compassion should have a basis in truth, and when we abandon that basis we are in fact committing a sin.