You aren't selfish because you don't give money to lazy beggars, but use it to help people to improve their lives by working.
I don't go out of way to hunt for merited posts like some users, but I will merit anything I come across that I think is deserving. I took heed of
theymos' post a few months ago to increase - since I increased my base merit award from 1 to 2, my amount of available sMerit has been steadily decreasing from above 100 to the 50 or so it is at currently. As you say, I don't see the need to start meriting subpar posts just because I've been named and shamed as being "selfish".
It's not gonna be thousands.
I was including source merit in my statement. There are currently 22 users who have given out over 1000 merit, and many more who have give out hundreds. If OP somehow obtained data regarding source merit and edited his list to reflect this, many of these "most generous merit senders" would appear on his list as being selfish.