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I'm not quite sure I agree with that - I think the preference for inaction results from the combination of prioritizing harm avoidance and a (nearly universal) moral intuition that not doing something implies less culpability than doing something, even if the outcomes are similar in human cost (e.g. very few people think the US withdrawing humanitarian aid, leading to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, is really equivalent to the US directly killing hundreds of thousands of people).
I confess that I'm also not sure what you mean by neoliberalism here.
I'm trying somewhat (maybe unsuccessfully) to see similarities in patterns that arc from local NIMBYism to limp-wristed international diplomacy in that we often find ourselves biased toward classes of answers that "sound nice", but in practice get taken advantage of by powerful actors (not infrequently masquerading as weak actors for sympathy) leading to worse outcomes for everyone else. Perhaps "neoliberalism" isn't quite the right term for what I'm looking to describe, but it's a related flavor.
I see this pattern all over the place: We can't build affordable market housing in California because it might obstruct rich homeowners' views. We can't build nuclear power plants because other countries have done it poorly in the past a couple times. We can't do anything about illegal immigration because it'd have bad optics. We can't reduce crime because it might require putting people in jail. We can't stop the flow of drugs in small boats because someone might get hurt. We can't automate our major ports and transit systems because unions might lose (economically-not-necessary) jobs. We can't means-test Social Security because (rich!) pensioners will go destitute. We can't do anything about foreign provocation against our friend nations and allies because it might escalate to war.
None of these things have easy answers. I won't even endorse any particular motion on any of them at this moment, but it feels like nobody in politics can: optics seems like all that matters, not outcomes.
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