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There's another comment referring to Elon. I'll leave that aside, but I think the same analysis can be done for him. Clearly the population is split on wether

There's another comment referring to Elon. I'll leave that aside, but I think the same analysis can be done for him. Clearly the population is split on wether or not intent matters when it comes to philanthropy. Some people say, it is only respectable if you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart, not for some ulterior motive (like repairing/boosting your image). On the other side, you could argue that the majority of philanthropy is done for image improvement, and without that benefit millions of people would be left without help. Hoping for "true altruists" to save us is probably never going to work. True altruists that can gain enough power and resources to make a difference is a paradox. I need 10 billion dollars before meaningful impact happens (random number, but the point stands _a lot of money_). That's more money that any altruistic person would ever get to, since they'd start donating at the 100million or less mark. The closest we have to a true altruistic person with power is someone like Mackenzie Bezos. No derision here, but she didn't have "what it takes" to get there, but she does have the desire to help. Which is also why we don't hear much about her donations, compared I Mr. Beast, despite her giving orders of magnitude more money away. And more correctly. Then, we could look one level higher, how do these people acquire their wealth? Clearly selling garbage food to kids, creating fake giveaway videos, and other things isn't exactly helping the world along the way. Making electric cars cool / hip? That's pretty good. Embrace, extend, extinguish? Terrible. Holistically, Mr. Beast is earning his money off of children and "legal scams". Then, fixing his reputation by donation pennies on the dollar of that back to the world. Overall, probably not a great person. Couple that with how conscious he is of what he's doing based on various leaks, and is say definitely not someone I'd categorize as deserving of any adulation. Obviously not actively evil, but definitely overall harmful to society in his pursuit of fame and wealth. Aside: how isn't this titled "MrBeast's Faux-lanthropy"?

neom 2y ago
Do you think also part of it is that to amass that amount of wealth is to extract that much money, I wonder how many "true altruists" would even play that game to begin with?
- _factor 2y ago
  How is value created? Every accumulation of wealth is countered by an equal loss of wealth somewhere else. If you’re in a service industry and devise a process that saves $20 per transaction for a customer, then charge $10 for it, you’re making $10 per transaction in efficiency gains. So that compensates and is still altruistic. Not all businesses work this way of course, but there are ways of extracting wealth without leaving the other side worse off.
  - dragontamer 2y ago
    > Every accumulation of wealth is countered by an equal loss of wealth somewhere else. This fundamentally contradicts mainline capitalist theory. People only trade / exchange money when they believe the service (or goods or whatever) is worth the money. IE: someone pays $20 for X because they believe X is worth $30, $40, or $100 to them. If X were only worth $19, then they would reject the deal and walk away. -------- Case in point: if gasoline doubled in price, would you still drive? How high would gasoline prices have to get before you stopped driving?
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      Wrt the capitalist theory: the (paraphrased) quote of "don't expect someone to understand something, if their paycheck depends on them not understanding it" is very much on point here as well. The accumulation of wealth really does impact the economy negatively - as it's (by definition) not being spend, otherwise it wouldn't accumulate. The reason why the theory is generally correct is because money that has been spent isn't gone, so it's once again available for the next trade. But in today's economy it's effectively false because the accumulated wealth is instead funneled into property acquisition and similar expenditures, which effectively becomes rent seeking that's ultimately just syphoning wealth from the population/damaging the economy at scale
      - dragontamer 2y ago
        Accumulation of wealth is simply trading today's money for promises-of-tomorrow's money. You fight the over-accumulation of wealth by making an inflationary environment (ie: create policies that explicitly make tomorrow's money worth a little bit less than today's money). Or use wealth taxes (or other forms of taxation: promise to take away money in the future if it is not spent today).
ibash 2y ago
The split isn’t on intent. It’s on effectiveness. In one camp is ineffective philanthropy pretending to be effective. In the other camp is actually effective philanthropy. What makes is problematic is when the ineffective philanthropist is using the philanthropy to line their own pockets.
- atoav 2y ago
  I think the split is different one. It is between people who want to live in a world where they can imagine themselves being the generous philantropist and people who would like to live in a world where philantropists aren't needed because the need for them does not arise. We have halloween coming up. Imagine one kid taking all the candy first and then acting as a "philantropist" by giving out a fraction of what would pass as a fair share to other kids — oh and he is making videos of it — and he selects who gets something and who doesn't. Very "effective", especially compared to all kids just getting their fair share. As a parent I'd go with my kid to a psychotherapist if it did that, because it is not normal. Now that is of course an analogy and things are more complex in a capitalist world, but being an arsonist working in the firebrigade doesn't turn you into a hero even when you risk your life to extinguish the fire.
  - thunky 2y ago
    > fair share Fair share doesn't (or shouldn't) mean even share because that's just not possible. Everyone has the same opportunity to do what Mr Beast is doing (and many try, some pretty successfully).
  - em-bee 2y ago
    that's not what mr.beast is doing. he is taking money from google and advertisers. and yeah, he is not redistributing all of it, pretty much like any other business that donates some of their money for tax reasons. that mr.beast is heavily promoting his philanthropy is simply because it is part of his business model and it earns him more money from ads. he is producing entertainment, no more no less. morally questionable, maybe. but no worse than most entertainment.
- deleted 2y ago
dtagames 2y ago
Let's not forget that the product itself is demonstrably terrible. The man is purposely aiming to lower the bar as low as possible, producing content strictly for its addictive qualities and appeal to teenagers. His business plan not only produces vast wealth for him and showy but ineffective pseudo-philanthropy (also highly clickbait-y, like the content), it fills the media space and the viewers' attention with garbage.

neom 2y ago

Do you think also part of it is that to amass that amount of wealth is to extract that much money, I wonder how many "true altruists" would even play that game to begin with?

_factor 2y ago
How is value created? Every accumulation of wealth is countered by an equal loss of wealth somewhere else. If you’re in a service industry and devise a process that saves $20 per transaction for a customer, then charge $10 for it, you’re making $10 per transaction in efficiency gains. So that compensates and is still altruistic. Not all businesses work this way of course, but there are ways of extracting wealth without leaving the other side worse off.
- dragontamer 2y ago
  > Every accumulation of wealth is countered by an equal loss of wealth somewhere else. This fundamentally contradicts mainline capitalist theory. People only trade / exchange money when they believe the service (or goods or whatever) is worth the money. IE: someone pays $20 for X because they believe X is worth $30, $40, or $100 to them. If X were only worth $19, then they would reject the deal and walk away. -------- Case in point: if gasoline doubled in price, would you still drive? How high would gasoline prices have to get before you stopped driving?
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    Wrt the capitalist theory: the (paraphrased) quote of "don't expect someone to understand something, if their paycheck depends on them not understanding it" is very much on point here as well. The accumulation of wealth really does impact the economy negatively - as it's (by definition) not being spend, otherwise it wouldn't accumulate. The reason why the theory is generally correct is because money that has been spent isn't gone, so it's once again available for the next trade. But in today's economy it's effectively false because the accumulated wealth is instead funneled into property acquisition and similar expenditures, which effectively becomes rent seeking that's ultimately just syphoning wealth from the population/damaging the economy at scale
    - dragontamer 2y ago
      Accumulation of wealth is simply trading today's money for promises-of-tomorrow's money. You fight the over-accumulation of wealth by making an inflationary environment (ie: create policies that explicitly make tomorrow's money worth a little bit less than today's money). Or use wealth taxes (or other forms of taxation: promise to take away money in the future if it is not spent today).

ibash 2y ago

The split isn’t on intent. It’s on effectiveness. In one camp is ineffective philanthropy pretending to be effective. In the other camp is actually effective philanthropy. What makes is problematic is when the ineffective philanthropist is using the philanthropy to line their own pockets.

atoav 2y ago
I think the split is different one. It is between people who want to live in a world where they can imagine themselves being the generous philantropist and people who would like to live in a world where philantropists aren't needed because the need for them does not arise. We have halloween coming up. Imagine one kid taking all the candy first and then acting as a "philantropist" by giving out a fraction of what would pass as a fair share to other kids — oh and he is making videos of it — and he selects who gets something and who doesn't. Very "effective", especially compared to all kids just getting their fair share. As a parent I'd go with my kid to a psychotherapist if it did that, because it is not normal. Now that is of course an analogy and things are more complex in a capitalist world, but being an arsonist working in the firebrigade doesn't turn you into a hero even when you risk your life to extinguish the fire.
- thunky 2y ago
  > fair share Fair share doesn't (or shouldn't) mean even share because that's just not possible. Everyone has the same opportunity to do what Mr Beast is doing (and many try, some pretty successfully).
- em-bee 2y ago
  that's not what mr.beast is doing. he is taking money from google and advertisers. and yeah, he is not redistributing all of it, pretty much like any other business that donates some of their money for tax reasons. that mr.beast is heavily promoting his philanthropy is simply because it is part of his business model and it earns him more money from ads. he is producing entertainment, no more no less. morally questionable, maybe. but no worse than most entertainment.
deleted 2y ago

dtagames 2y ago

Let's not forget that the product itself is demonstrably terrible. The man is purposely aiming to lower the bar as low as possible, producing content strictly for its addictive qualities and appeal to teenagers. His business plan not only produces vast wealth for him and showy but ineffective pseudo-philanthropy (also highly clickbait-y, like the content), it fills the media space and the viewers' attention with garbage.