I think your comment reflects that you're waiting for someone to say or do something which will cause you to care. And that's effectively waiting to get something from them. You need to cultivate the sense that everyone in some sense has the same daily struggle, and be the bigger person who strives to alleviate some of that loneliness and suffering in others.

Canada's world reputation comes from the progressivism in the 60's and 70s, which has largely disappeared or failed (ecological science, multiculturalism). The undercurrent of canadian politics is just as neo-liberal as the US, and we differentiate ourselves on a facade of social progressivism. Canadians confuse their dont-rock-the-boat attitude with actual solutions to social problems. meanwhile they have similar political schisms as the US, just look at the Ford politial dynasty. Canadian niceness is mostly good PR.

A clear indicator is that Canada has consistently underfunded their military as a show of deference to our powerful neighbour. This is why all the bluster of Canadian politicians "taking a stand" against the US is theatre. The truth is in the state of our military and economic allegiances, which are mainly with China and the US, nothing nice about that.

I'm more saying there's a sort of historical inevitability in the whole situation and we might benefit by taking that into consideration. And that some degree of nuance and tolerance of unfairness might play into a realistic solution.

Regarding landlordism, it's another tricky issue where yes there are bad big landlords, but the policies I've seen that put in place to tackle them tend disincentivize renting altogether and the first ones out of the market are the little guys, exasterbating the housing crisis in most cities. It seems to me an area where tolerating the bad actors is necessary to avoid crashing the whole system, to my point.

If it's true that all these .001 percent of the population are indeed self-serving sociopaths, I'll eat my hat. But I just assume things are more complex than wealth = evil.

I could say with certainty that wealth magnifies the qualities and intention of whoever controls it. And we might argue nobody should have so much power. But I don't see why tremendous wealth could not also be good or neutral, and so with the accumulation of wealth.

- Though the bottom half of humanity may be poor, on average they have a quality of life that has risen dramatically over the past century thanks in large part to the deployment of technologies and aid originating from the wealthier nations.

- Historically the only time the trend of wealth accumulation reverses is during massive crises, wars, and civilizational collapse which make life worse for everyone and nobody with any sense would wish for.

- It seems to me a lot of people channel their unhappiness into resentment of the wealthy, based on this same flavor of folk economics as old as time "the rich get richer". And that unhappiness is usually uncoupled from their position in the economic ladder.

I think it's a bit different from developing taste, what you describe. It's more about finding out who you are. I would say once you know your baseline for what makes chocolate/coffee/etc enjoyable, then taste is about experiencing the nuances within that spectrum. Some people also have a greater tolerance for things that aren't really tasty due to coming up in a culture where things generally taste plain or bad (netherlands and UK come to mind).