if you seek reassurance that your wants are shared by millions of other people, look out the window of your car at all the other folks who buy and fuel their own, expensive private cars so that they can sit in traffic in LA rather than sit in traffic in buses in LA.

Everyone is selfish to some extent. Your view probably makes you more selfish than people who would be happy to ride a train with every class - but still less selfish than people who insist on a private car. Up to you what level of selfishness makes someone a bad person.

Bad is subjective. Implicitly in this, you want to pay money to avoid seeing the problems of other people instead of seeking to fix them. That might be worth thinking about.

There's no easy fix. Americans pay more than enough money in taxes alone for the problems to be handled better. The issue is political, legal, and cultural; and it's systemic. There are plenty of countries that treat their mentally ill populations more humanely while also maintaining much cleaner and more comfortable public spaces.

I don't see what's wrong in pointing out the obvious. If public transit organizations are prevented from even recognizing the issue because of misguided shaming, they sure as heck won't lure more drivers to public transit. And we can't expect people to fix all the world's problems before we allow them to address their immediate issues.

In my opinion the best long-term solution to poverty and mental health (which are often related) is technology. I could quit my job and dedicate my life to being a social worker or to working for charities, and those would be good and noble things to do. But I firmly believe that an affluent global society where the essentials in life are so cheap that they are essentially (if not literally) free is the best way to fix those problems.

So, I think by being a technology working I am doing my small part in helping, and I don't think not wanting to feel threatened on my commute contradicts that.

I think the long term vision for the future free of these problems is an interesting conversation to have. The challenge inherent in getting there is being aware there is a problem and working towards fixing it.

By advocating for legislators and public administrators to hide the problem from their constituents, you create a situation where "out of sight, out of mind" takes the pressure off the government to solve the problem at all.

This is independent of personal occupation or hobbies. I'm not impugning your goals of solving the problem through your career in technology. It's about enforcing the accountability of the people who have the ability to make the changes to solve the problems at scale.

How is he, personally, going to fix those problems? Those problems are only "fixable" (or ameliorated) by societal action, which basically means you need government social services.

As far as we know, he might vote for candidates who promote such social services at every election. But there's nothing he can do if the politicians don't do what they promise, or other voters vote for politicians who work against this goal.