90% or more people need to live in a country, and a world, that is not being destroyed by short-sighted individualism. Whether or not people use trains themselves, railways are one of the means of alleviating the environmental crisis. Think of people living near an inner-city trunk road who suffer the effects of pollution (reduced but not eliminated by greater use of electric vehicles), congestion, and the greater risk of accidents. They themselves might have little cause (or even money) to make much use of trains, but they would benefit enormously if much of this road traffic transferred to rail.
Transport is, or should be, a 'universal service', and rail is an important part of this. My analogy remains valid: it's as important for society to have a functioning transport network as it is for it to have an educated population or a healthy one. The NHS is another example: it too is under threat because of short-sighted individualism, but it really is important that life threatening diseases are treated, for the benefit of all and not just those – hopefully a minority – who suffer from them.