Social work is a very low paid existence and most of the social workers I know could easily have earned more elsewhere which they are pained to know but persist through regardless because they care more for living in a world with less total suffering even at the cost of their own.

I earned my MSc from the University of Edinburgh and interacted thoroughly with academics there and in the process of getting there. I know many people with their PhDs and have had personal friendships with professors, postdocs, and other researchers. I would agree that academic incentive structure have been made deeply dysfunctional and delusion abounds. Also that defection is common. I have known some of those evil actors (e.g. Sharon Oviatt) so I don't deny their existence.

The very premise of business is that it takes a profit from the excess efforts of labor. I'm not the ridiculous sort that fails to recognize that often workers productivity is both made possible and enhanced by the accumulated coordination and structure of firms and owners should capture some of that value. However, increasingly research is showing that the advantages of our society are being captured by firms. Meanwhile, too many owners are failing to responsibly reinvest in the population and have made religions out of not fostering true growth.

My claim is that multiple cultural norms live side-by-side and I'm trying to help you and others realize that different options are plausible and more advantageous. The cooperators learn self preservation and hiding while they are also harvested while and beyond doing so. My speculation is that the expanded belief holding of perspectives like yours decreases the size of that population which will be a downward spiral of inefficiency and impoverishment. I expect the bottom will fall out viciously if it gets to that.

My spending time on this conversation is altruism, what is it for you?