The chief troubles confronting this godfather were a dissatisfied wife and two unhappy adolescent children. If you were looking for traditional Mafia intrigue and action, it was a disappointment. But just about all humans have strong instincts for altruism, because our hunter-gatherer ancestors survived by banding together and sacrificing for the clan's good. Even Tony, a sociopath by others' standards, sees himself as an altruist making sacrifices to provide for his family.
Altruism gets tricky, though, when more than one family is involved.
But he also recognized that a guy like Paulie can't be generous to everyone at once. Groups that depend on tight cohesion and mutual sacrifice communes, convents, companies of soldiers, Mafia families tend to work best with no more than 150. Not coincidentally, that was the size of the typical hunter-gatherer clan when the human brain was evolving. People often try to imbue a spirit of clan altruism in larger groups, like unions that call themselves brotherhoods. Politicians call New York City a family when they're proposing programs to benefit the poor relations.