socio-economic life

why are some things important and others not? why are the majority of us concerned with the latter? a small idea that is not mine:

if we take 1000 people across the globe at random and put them on a scale to measure their mass and then add the world's heaviest man we change the meter-reading by about 30 basis points. The exception is of negligible importance to a fairly small sample.

if we take that same sample and measure their wealth a sample of a thousand people is probably worth £1-2m. the richest man in the world is worth over £50bn. The movement is not 30 basis points, it is 500,000,000.