I think it’s part of the way we are socialized into a society based on economic competition. So it seems normal to us, but it’s just another way of saying “it’s not perfect, but it’s the best/only system we have!” as conservatives are so fond of saying. I don’t think it’s hardwired at all, but we’re intentionally taught that it is.

I took an anthropology class once and learned that there’s archeological evidence of early tribes taking care of disabled elderly (for the time) people. It would have taken a lot more energy to take care of a disabled person in a hunter gatherer society than it would now. I feel like a capitalist would have just left them to die in a cave because that’s what Ayn Rand would have done.

Soft-wired , perhaps.

The brain is a lazy thing. It falls into patterns easily, it takes mental shortcuts whereever it can. All that comes from our evolutionary history, where energy (literal energy for thinking) was limited.

Your subconscious mind handles all the everyday trivia to maintain your existence in a low energy way, and your mind is very quick to shunt things down that low energy path. That path is all our “instincts” (fight or flight, nurturing instincts, forming into groups etc etc ) and is based upon nomadic living in the savannah plains of Africa three million years ago.

If someone presents something in a way that can easily fall into one of our evolutionary shortcuts then your subconscious will run with it without you even realising.