"I should definitely explain things to my family and also my lab but I want to have a better sense of the implications for them, me, and the world in general first. Also now that I know you have fifty years of work on how to do this I really really want to see it."

Economics!

Lev has unknowingly reinvented quite a lot of economics while trying to work out how best to give children Christmas presents that make them happier.

"This is really cool! And way better methodology than a lot of social sciences stuff. Are there, like, entire elf think tanks for post-scarcity economics and Christmas policy?" Oh man, a society of long-lived individuals could (controlling for interspecies psychological differences) reveal so many things about how societies work, starting with whether science really progresses one funeral at a time.

"Uh, no, just me."

"That's really impressive!" And kind of intimidating. Bruce has met people with fifty-year-long research careers but never had this long of a conversation with one. He reads some of the analyses on optimal presents. "Are all your studies purely observational or with interventions consisting of presents or can you do, I dunno, telephone polling? I'm wondering how much you have to rely on revealed preferences assumptions."

"Can't do telephone polling yet, although as Santa you could authorize it."

"Go ahead! Uh, if you can do it without breaking the masquerade, I would rather do it in a cleaner way than confusing telephone calls. But that doesn't sound like it would be hard."

Bounce bounce.

"Thank you!"

Lev bouncing is adorable. Is that a weird thing to think? Probably. Is it weirder than most of the other things he's thought in the past hour? Probably not.

"Any other experiments you want to run? Also, is there a fully fleshed-out optimal Christmas present plan in here and can we get it implemented by this Christmas?"

"Not the whole thing, but-- at least we can switch a lot of the toy factories to making vaccines and medicines, and give the rich Christian kids a smaller Christmas this year."

"Sounds good. It would have been nice to get it all done the first year, but the rich kids won't miss it and it's definitely better than waiting. Hmm, and we should have a plan for communicating with everyone afterwards, both the case where someone immediately sends a reporter to the North Pole and the case where they just run around being confused."

"...if we're going to come forward we should probably explain ourselves to the Council of Fairytale Beings."

"That sounds like something I should be thoroughly briefed on." Especially since one of them is Death.

"Yes. Yes, you should."

Lev gives an explanation of their personalities, known likes and dislikes, and holiday preferences. Apparently all Fairytale Beings get their jobs through murder. Interesting fact. 

"...And there's one you're really not going to like."

"Is it Death? Because, I gotta say, not a fan."

"No, actually, she's pretty cool. Deaths tend to be cool because they're all people who respond to dying by attempting to murder Death. It's Krampus."

That makes a lot of sense, actually, though it might also suck for the Deaths. "What's Krampus' deal? Also something Christmas-related or at least wintery, right?"

"So, Krampus is-- the spirit of punishment and vengeance. He worked a lot with the last Santa because... he wanted to specialize in punishing children."

"Yikes." He understands the evolutionary biology behind the vengeance instinct and the ways in which it's sometimes game-theoretically optimal, but, yikes. "Why children in particular?"

"Well, if you punish naughty kids, they'll grow up to be good people."

"Well that's just not true! Kind of the opposite actually, I've seen studies on it--I guess it's a better motive than 'because I like hurting people who can't fight back' because there's a chance he'll listen to reason."

"The humans do studies on that?"

"Observational studies only! But yes."

"Humans are so cool!"

"Thanks! So is this Council more like a social club or a legislative body or what?"