There’s an ideological quirk that I’ve observed. A cognitive tic baked into the psyche of the progressive left. In Chpt 41: Lasting Damage I referenced a heatmap that made the rounds online. It came from a 2018 Nature article titled “Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle”, and we almost all interpreted it slightly differently. Perhaps I was wrong in my initial article. Perhaps there’s a better way to interpret how self identified conservatives and liberals view this moral circle.
Most of us used the heatmap as evidence that self identified liberals cared more for those we could consider morally distant or at least tribally remote, than they did for their own tribe. However the true answer might just be worse. They believe in Santa.
Finite Bandwidth
I truly believe that humans have finite bandwidth for empathy. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed a concept called “Dunbar’s Number” in the 1990s, arguing that humans can maintain stable, meaningful social relationships with about 150 individuals, something I’ve referenced before. Beyond that number of people it’s names and faces, not feelings. It’s literally impossible to feel empathy for the entire world. It’s an abstract concept. Caring, visceral empathy hits a wall. Evolutionarily, this makes sense, our ancestors cared for their 150 strong band, not distant tribes. Mirror neurons fire for the familiar, not the faceless.
To claim to have empathy or compassion for billions of people would be aspirational, not literal, but certainly it is performative rather than plausible. Psychologist Paul Slovic (Psychic Numbing) would flag it as delusional to claim universal empathy or compassion for billions. His “collapse of compassion” shows we shut down past a handful of victims, 2 billion is a number, not a feeling.
Psychic numbing kicks in when the numbers are too big, and the people too distant. Paul Slovic also shows that empathy peaks at one victim, add more, and it flattens. For 2 billion, it’s not even a trickle; it’s a statistical haze. Brain-wise, your medial prefrontal cortex, which glows for a friend’s pain, barely flickers for millions, studies like Kogler et al. (2020, NeuroImage) confirm this drop-off.
“The belly has no ears when it’s full.”
Plautus, Roman playwright, The Captives, c. 200 BCE.
Where this becomes pernicious, is when this performative moral grandstanding is followed with an attempt to redistribute the worlds wealth to aid this nebulous group of people they claim to hold unlimited compassion for. In a time of perceived personal abundance in the west, it is easy to throw money around without too much care about where, or who, it is coming from. When times run lean (relatively speaking) it is only then that people start asking where their tax money is being spent, and who’s spending it.
Santa’s Coming!
To be clear here, you, the taxpayer, are Santa in this scenario. The money spent furthering special interests causes throughout the world are the presents, the supply is infinite and created from thin air. Everyone deserves a gift! Everyone deserves abundance and happiness! This is Santa-ism (nothing to do with Anton Lavey). Sadly, however, the money isn’t infinite, but then socialists never really understood how wealth is created, how money or economies work, and why charity should be voluntary, not compulsory.
What’s even worse is that the intended recipients receive only a fraction of what might have originally been intended for them. It’s a system that doesn’t even work for the people it purports to want to help. This is something that really has only been visible very recently. The information was probably always available, but the political will was not there to perform a forensic audit of the money trail.
“I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.”
Milton Friedman
In the US, about $68.2 billion in aid was promised for the 2023 fiscal year, the most recent fully-reported year. The United States gives foreign assistance to provide humanitarian aid and support peace, security, and economic development around the world (supposedly). This is spent by the State department and agencies like USAID. However the USAID’s own inspector general found 43% of 2017–2019 awards flopped on half their goals, money spent, but not landed. Almost half of the money used by these agencies remains within the US, creamed off the top, with at least 20% of the federal funding not even leaving the US.
Of what does leave the US, NGOs and contractors take their cut. The Center for Global Development says only a third of aid is “country programmable”, meaning it’s even eligible to reach recipients, and just 20% of bilateral aid (non-multilateral) is managed by recipient governments. Prime contractors like Chemonics (which got $6 billion for HIV/AIDS) keep 50–70% for salaries, overhead, and swanky “fundraising galas”. Sub-contractors, local NGOs or charities, skim more, leaving maybe 30–50% of the initial grant. By the time it hits the ground, a $10 million project might drop to $1–3 million, per Government Accountability Office’s slow disbursement tracking (only 7% of 2022–2023 earmarks fully spent by FY23).
Corruption is the final thief. Haiti is a poster child: post 2010 quake, relief cash vanished into elite pockets, with estimates as low as 5–10% reaching people. Most of money “foreign aid” ends up at in-country offices, local staff, NGO expense accounts, or offshore banks, not overseas hands. “Santa-ism” wants you to believe it’s all goodwill; reality says it’s a leaky sleigh.
G5 playa
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said the U.S. government was spending “too much” overall on foreign aid, according to a March 2023 AP-NORC poll. Asked about specific costs, roughly 7 in 10 U.S. adults said the U.S. government was putting too much money toward assistance to other countries. About 9 in 10 Republicans and 55% of Democrats agreed that the country was overspending on foreign aid. Recent disasters in North Carolina and the woeful response from the then Democrat led FEMA really laid this out in full, with local residents left homeless yet still paying property taxes, all whilst the government was happy to dedicate further tens of billions overseas.
In reality, the US federal budget spends very little in percentage terms on foreign aid, it is less than 1%. But 1% of a 6 trillion dollar budget is still a lot of money. Money that taxpayers are finding is being siphoned off by a growing class of unproductive workers within society. Money that very rarely reaches the intended recipients. The number of people in the US who work directly for the government is about 25 million (Federal, local, military, postal etc), or about 12% of the working age population. If you include all of those supported by NGO’s, as consultants, non-profits, grant employees, researchers, and directors, this increases by another 4-5%, or another 9.8m people.
This is the shadow payroll, and being in the charity game pays very well. Almost all of the charity and NGO administration is performed in Washington DC, and Washington DC has the highest per capita GDP in the US, at nearly $260,000. For reference, it’s more than $100,000 higher than Luxembourg—the richest country in the world by the same metric.
“Yes. A G5 airplane—playa—and lots of money.”
Tropic Thunder
Within the halls of government, this Santa-ism has champions. AOC’s “healthcare for all,” border chants of “no one’s illegal,” aid ballooning, $61 billion proposed for Africa in 2024, all assuming goodies materialize. $135 billion for illegal immigrants (FAIR, 2017–2023), flows not from personal wallets, but taxes, funneled through left-run NGOs like Open Society Foundations to out-group favorites, migrants and minorities, but with a healthy cut off the top for the administrators of such spending.
Individual Americans countered with personal charity, $319.04 billion in 2022 (Giving USA), their own cash, given freely, as charity should be.
Conclusion
Those who believe in Santa are happy to continue sending gifts overseas to nebulous billions. This caring, is theater. The strains are beginning to show. The shadow payroll is slowly being exposed for the grift that it is. The heatmap’s red glow isn’t real empathy, it’s a fantasy of infinite feeling, like infinite presents.
Whilst the Republican support for Musk’s involvement in exposing this grift might be waning slightly, I still believe it is necessary. It has spurred on those in the UK and the EU to start digging into the support networks used by left wing activists to fund special interests projects around the world, paid for by us.
For those who are looking closely, Santa’s sack is almost empty and he’s very angry.
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