People are more likely to have good intentions when they expect a good payback (including non-monetary as well as monetary ones) from the good intentions they gave out. It's more of a trade than care.

Organisms on this planet require resource to survive, but resource is limited. The nature is fundamentally a zero-sum game so that's what everything tends to fall back to when hard time comes. This is so predictable, played again and again, like we're cogs in a machine. Well, maybe we really are.