Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky problem solvers and

misfits. I'm your host, Andrew Heaton. There are only three ways to get people to engage in pro-social behavior.

That is to say, behavior which benefits others outside of our own self-interest or that of our immediate friends and family.

Just three things.

For reasons of, love, fear, or money.

That's it.

Love and inner inability are the best, I think. I think we can all agree on that. This is when someone is moved to a selfless act by affection or loyalty or some

form of inner nobility, sheer laudable altruism. Volunteering, for example, donating to charity. By far, my favorite

motivator and the world would be much, much better if everyone in it, certainly including me,

probably including you, more selflessly contributed to the welfare of others. That's the best

motivator. But there's a big problem with it, which is that

people tend to act selflessly more towards other people they know and care about, and are

increasingly less selfless towards strangers. And finally, least of all, for strangers in foreign lands.

And we can view this as some kind of deep human moral character flaw,

but I'm inclined to chalk it up to evolutionary psychology.

Homo sapiens are not wired to understand all other human beings as equally valuable individuals.

We can arrive at that conclusion through philosophy and morality

and religion, but biologically, we understand the people in our immediate tribe, however we define

that tribe, about 150 people, as fellow individuals. But our brains understand everyone else

as an abstract concept, as a statistic, as something other than an individual.

Functionally speaking, that means that when your sister or your best friend calls you up and asks if they can borrow your car, where they really need $6,000, or for our purposes today, they need one of your kidneys.

Likely, you would jump at the chance to help them. You would care about them in their welfare,

...