Well, Well, Well. MrBeast is in the News again.
Remember talking about MrBeast and moral theory in February? Good times.
Well, he got in the news again.
He built 100 wells in Africa. Here’s the video:
And here’s how CNN covered it:
MrBeast builds 100 wells in Africa, attracting praise – and some criticism
There was, of course, the usual “he’s not addressing the *STRUCTURAL* problem” criticism. There was the usual “he’s doing it for clout, not to help people!” criticism. And, inevitably, there was also The Discourse:
Saran Kaba Jones, founder and CEO of FACE Africa, an organization working to improve water infrastructure and sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa, told CNN: “I’ve been doing this for 15 years, but we’ve been struggling to continue the work because funding, awareness, and advocacy all take work.”
And then, she added, “overnight, this person comes along, who happens to be a white male figure with a huge platform, and all of a sudden, he gets all of the attention. It’s kind of frustrating, but it’s also understanding the nature of how the world is.”
A handful of intrepid internet junkies immediately did a deep dive into FACE Africa and found the following:
Revenue of about $130,000. Salaries of about $83,000. That’s about 64% of the money going to overhead.
One of the local politicians also complained about MrBeast:
Aspiring Kenyan politician Francis Gaitho criticized Donaldson’s video, saying on X that it perpetuated the stereotype that Africa is “dependent on handouts…and philanthropic intervention,” though Gaitho’s comments attracted criticism of their own.
Which, once again, puts us in the weird moral theory place where it’s more important to *BE* good than to *DO* good.
Good write-up.
This sometimes feels like an odd modern offshoot of virtue ethics that’s been beaten, stabbed, and thrown off a bridge with a brick tied to its leg. The highest moral good is to embody the ally and advocate who talks a lot about structural problems (and for the right, just reasons, of course) without actually doing anything to ameliorate them.
I’m not the biggest Mr. Beast fan in the world (I don’t like this style of content, and I am innately unnerved by unlimited money trees), but I would much rather that the wells be built than for children to get cholera. But that’s just me.Report
Yeah, MrBeast strikes me as a knucklehead. I mean, his early videos are PG-rated Squid Games and if you’re into that, well, I guess he makes the most accessible ones.
But he gets much more scathing criticism for actually helping people than he gets for being a knucklehead who makes PG-rated Squid Game videos.
He digs wells for people in Africa and the criticism is that these wells will need to be maintained? What the heck?
“While it’s true that this is superficially beneficial, entropy exists.”
It’s mind-boggling.Report
I think it highlights how much online discourse, especially on the far left, is clout sharking rather than a serious discussion about anything.Report
This made it to CNN, though.Report
I would never say no one who hasn’t built 100 wells in Africa has standing to criticize this. I would say that all of the people who appear to be criticizing this have no standing to do so until they build 100 wells in Africa.
The identitarian angle from that woman is also risible. I guess good deeds only count if they’re done by a nonbinary women of color who identifies as a piece of limestone or something.Report
I’m trying to think of how thick her bubble must be for her to think that *THAT* comment was the right play.
“But everybody I know talks like this!”Report
Pretty thick i’d imagine. North and Lee are IMO onto something with the… unfortunate way the NPO sector is going culturally and politically.
I also think Chip is right that there’s a certain paradox in becoming wealthy on charity, and also maybe something about Matthew 6:3 worth pondering. But these are all things that if raised are best done so privately by a confessor, or whatever close personal version of that is in MrBeast’s life. Not these bitter, unhappy people. They are just embarrassing themselves.Report
Sure, but I’ll go back to Jay Smooth’s video on the whole “what you said” vs. “what you are” issue when it comes to racism.
Allowing the topic to get dragged into the issue of whether or not MrBeast is a good person will get us into weird places.
Instead of going for the whole “what you are” topic, it’s best to stay on “what you *DID*”.
What MrBeast did was charitable.
Though I can understand why people who do less than MrBeast might want to switch to the topic of who is a better person deep down in the core of their being. Hell, *I* am a better person than MrBeast down in the core of my being. Just ask me!
“Did you dig 1000 wells?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything!”Report
I guess I see that as a strange way of looking at the world. Beliefs aren’t totally irrelevant to character but at the most basic level we are what we do.Report
OK, I’m Pinky, so we know where I’m coming from, but this is an awful take. The article said that he had a fundraiser that brought in over $300k, and yeah, the average aid worker can’t do that. Also, she went on to say:
“the issue is sustainability. It’s one thing to go in and install the well, it’s another thing for us to go back to three, four, or five years from now, and see if that well is still functional….60% of wells are broken, and people go back to drinking from the creek because there was no infrastructure put in place for follow-up for maintenance for repair”
So she raised seemingly valid concerns that CNN included but you left out.Report
So he dug wells that are good today but maybe they will have problems in three, four, or five years if they aren’t maintained?
“Sure, he bought those people a car… BUT IT WILL NEED TO GET ITS OIL CHANGED!!! AND WHAT IF THEY HAVE A BABY THEY WILL NEED A CAR SEAT!!!”
I’m beginning to understand why so many NGOs just don’t do anything but give speeches and release reports about Gender Equality.Report
If he’s able to do these things more efficiently, then good for him. Others should start to follow the model he uses. If he’s not providing the infrastructure and presence that’s needed, then kind of good for him, but not great. Maybe his fame in doing projects is a net benefit even if he does them in a sub-par way. Maybe he wouldn’t get the support if he were just fundraising for an NGO that was more efficient. But I personally don’t know, and I’m not going to write her off. Also, there may be organizations in Brussels that only give speeches about gender equality, but there’s a pretty good chance that a group in Africa deals with real problems, and in an environment where gender inequality isn’t merely a claimed pay gap. It’s wrong for first-worlders to pretend that they face serious difficulties, but it’s also wrong for first-worlders to pretend that third-worlders don’t.Report
The problem seems to be that he’s able to do them at all.
If he were just stuck back in the US with an NGO that didn’t do anything, he’d be much more insulated against criticism.Report
It would be better if the NGO’s had to help with maintenance on wells that exist than talk about the problem of maintaining wells that don’t exist.
But, honestly, the well maintenance issue is pretty small… you have to maintain the tank and about every 5-7 years the well pump needs to be replaced… that’s it. This really isn’t hard. The well itself will last 100-years+ — ours has, anyway.Report
It would be fair for the NGOs to say ‘if you are going to do this please set aside a fund for x to maximize long term effectiveness.’ Even being charitable that doesn’t seem like what’s going on.Report
No… not really.
The NGO’s should do what they think is beneficial, if that overlaps… then good. If they don’t want to address maintenance of the wells… that’s fine too – I’m sure they have lots of things they might or might not do. They don’t own or regulate anything.
My point is that Mr. Beast simply changes the reality on the ground… there were no wells that needed to be maintained, now there are… that’s a net good and there’s no downside.
Seriously, it’s not hard to maintain a well, especially a community well. It’s hard to drill a well, but not hard to pull the pump and replace it. This is a non-issue here.Report
Maybe some of the smaller NGO’s who cannot afford to drill new wells could take on the tasks of helping maintain the wells.Report
The being good is more important than doing good always seemed like part and parcel of Protestant morality. It problem comes from Calvinist pre-destination theory in some way. You can see a lot of this sort of behavior from Protestant charities during the late 19th and early 20th century that put applicants through a lengthy process to determine if they were deserving poor or not. Catholic and Jewish charities tended to give much more freely. What we are seeing is basically the secularization of something that always existed.Report
So MrBeast is the Jewish person and Saran Jones is the Protestant? It’s a pity that she went full “from the river” on the water issue but if you remember the televangelists, unsurprising.Report
Ugh, that cost breakdown for the non-profit makes my teeth itch. I am not quite to the point of fearing that the non-profit sector is to the left as the Christian mega-preacher movement is to the right, but I worry that the two are at least nodding acquaintances.Report
Non-profits might be the liberal form of grift.Report
Mr.Beast seems like a good egg.Report
Mr. Beast exemplifies the dilemma of philanthropy itself.
Like most philanthropies, both individuals and organizations, he does help people who otherwise wouldn’t be helped.
And, also like most philanthropies, he gets helped the most. His philanthropy earns him over 50 million dollars per year and he has a net worth of 500 million. (That’s one thousand times what Ms. Sarah Jones earns).
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/much-does-mrbeast-much-does-050300091.html
So its fair to say, there is big money in poverty!
Again, this isn’t bad, its just demonstrating the dilemma which is that we just casually acknowledge, and never stop to question, that there exist only two options: One, let starving people starve or two, let some people run charities and get paid gobs of money to do it.
No other options are considered viable.Report
Say what you will about Saran Kaba Jones, she got less than $50K.Report
Mr. Beasts entire platform is based on his very public persona of being a Good Person. He is inviting us to judge him, to evaluate his personal character and pronounce him a “good egg” or at least a fascinating and watchable one and keep our eyes glued on his channel.
His Good Person persona is what sells the merchandise, what draws eyes to the Youtube channel and lures advertisers and keeps the entire enterprise running.
Its not really any different than a church that runs a soup kitchen based on revenue that comes from Reverend Bob’s spectacular spellbinding sermons that get the faithful rolling in the aisles.
Is any of this wrong? Not necessarily. But here is the thing- why should anyone consider Mr. beast or Reverend Bob a “good person”?
What are they doing that is any different than say, a UN or World Bank agency that digs wells, and whose director is paid a handsome salary of millions of dollars?Report
What are they doing that is any different than say, a UN or World Bank agency that digs wells, and whose director is paid a handsome salary of millions of dollars?
Well, if I were to compare him to Saran Kaba Jones, I’d point out that he actually dug the 100 wells.
Would you call Saran Kaba Jones a “good egg”? Here’s her Wikipedia page.
One of the dynamics that I think is interesting about the “what they did” vs. “what they are” argument is that we’re chock to overflowing with people who are very good deep down but forgot to get around to the part where they actually did some good in the real world.
Leaving the void for people that we know aren’t really good, deep down, to fill by actually doing the good in the real world.
It’s a shame, really.Report
I didn’t ask about Ms. Jones.
What are they doing that is any different than say, a UN or World Bank agency that digs wells, and whose director is paid a handsome salary of millions of dollars?Report
Yeah, you asked about some theoretical person that we don’t even know whether they exist.
I brought us back to the actual people we actually have (ones that actually have wikipedia pages and everything).
What are they doing that is any different than say, a UN or World Bank agency that digs wells, and whose director is paid a handsome salary of millions of dollars?
For one thing, I’d say that the scale of 1000 wells can be pointed to as actual things that happened rather than merely theorized. Here’s the webpage for the World Bank‘s charitable partnerships.Report
What are they doing that is any different than say, Achim Steiner, head of the UN agency that provides assistance to developing countries and who receives a salary of probably less than 50 million dollars?
https://www.undp.org/our-leadership
Again, nothing against Mr. beast, or Mr. Steiner for that matter.
I’m just pointing out that we think about Mr. Beast quite differently than we think about Mr. Steiner.
Is the Mr. Beast method of aid superior to the UN method?Report
I don’t know. How many wells is Steiner responsible for?
Your webpage doesn’t say.
I went to the “What We Do” link and it talked about, and I’m copying/pasting this:
“The Paths to Equal: Twin Indices on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality”
“2023 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
Unstacking global poverty: Data for high impact action”
“Human Climate Horizons Data Platform”
So, if I had to say, I’d say that when I look at MrBeast’s wells, I’d say that one difference between MrBeast And Mr. Steiner is that MrBeast dug 100 wells.
Though, I’ll grant, he did *NOT* put out a report discussing Women’s Empowerment and Mr. Steiner did.
So that’s one difference, I guess.Report
My take is that humans are social apes and are primed to look to people like MrBeats as a good person rather than a grey autonomous agency. Plus people are more likely to give to charities with a charismatic and famous spokesperson than grey autonomous agencies.Report
That’s the dilemma, that assistance to the poor almost always involves a heaping helping of self regard, self interest, and self righteousness, both on the part of the charismatic leader and the vicarious self regard of the donors.
I don’t see any evidence that Mr. Beast has solved the problem which bedevils most aid agencies, which is that you are pouring money into a region which is poor because it is dysfunctional, and often the money acts like a fuel on an already raging fire, no different than driving through Skid Row handing out five dollar bills to the addicts.
The advantage of the lets call it, the “Charismatic” model of aid like Mr. Beast and Reverend Bob, is that they can raise a lot of money very quickly and distribute it efficiently.
The limitation is that they answer to no one but themselves and almost inevitably the flood of cash invites malfeasance because as you note, we are social apes who very much like an extra helping of banana.
Further, again because of our social nature, all stars fade over time. Mr. Beast and Reverend Bob have only so many tricks and stunts and spellbinding sermons and at some point the novelty wears of and the cash dries up.Report
I don’t see any evidence that Mr. Beast has solved the problem which bedevils most aid agencies
Instead, he solved the problem where 100 wells weren’t there.
He could have avoided the problem that bedevils most aid agencies by, instead, making another Hunger Games video where he had 50 kids vs 50 adults having a mashed potato fight where the winners got a car.Report
Total Mr. Beast Revenue/ 1000 wells = ??? per well
What would be a comparable program?Report
I don’t know. I’m the one saying “it’s good that he dug 100 wells”.
I’m not the one saying “but he didn’t solve entropy”.Report
I’m sure that the UN, the US government, the World Bank and Ms. Jones do a lot of good things too.
Maybe its not important how much it costs to get it done.Report
Actually, by the numbers, Ms. Jones doesn’t appear to do a lot of good for anyone other than Ms. Jones. It seems unfair to the UN, the US Government and the World Bank to lump them in with Ms. Jones.Report
“Actually, by the numbers, Ms. Jones doesn’t appear to do a lot of good for anyone other than Ms. Jones.”
Which numbers? Why are we assuming she’s ineffective?Report
I don’t know about anybody else but *I* would assume that she’s ineffective based on her comment in the CNN story.
Here it is again: “overnight, this person comes along, who happens to be a white male figure with a huge platform, and all of a sudden, he gets all of the attention.”
My prejudice is that I automatically assume that people who are effective talk differently than this.Report
36 cents (Max- they probably spend money fundraising too) out of every dollar that goes to her organization maybe goes to the cause it ostensibly serves. The rest goes into her pocket or the pocket of her crony employee. That’s classic nonprofit nest feathering.Report
It’s not promising, to be sure. But I’m more interested in how many people are being served per dollar. Or clean gallons per dollar, or whatever the proper metric is. I don’t care if she’s a resentful white-man-hater if she runs an effective aid program.Report
She’s around double the max that a normal non-profit ratio is considered acceptable at (35%) so unless she’s getting an absolutely staggering return on the pennies she’s throwing at water efforts, I’m not abashed to call her a grifter.Report
Let me know when you manage to figure out the social ape problem.Report
First World nations have largely figured out how to provide infrastructure like water and sanitation, in ways that doesn’t rely upon a millionaire Jesus helicoptering in and providing them.
Rural Americans and Europeans don’t rely on philanthropy for their water or electricity,. It was provided by the government and most people just take it as an entitled right, not something for which they need to kneel and weep tears of joy on someone’s sandals.Report
This goes back to the criticism that MrBeast’s charity perpetuated stereotypes.Report
You need to argue with whoever is criticizing him.Report
“You need to argue with whoever is criticizing him.”
and you’re…not criticizing him?
like, pointing to the world bank and saying “well I’m sure THEY do PLENTY of charity and without faffing around making silly videos either” is not a statement of criticism?Report
Pointing out that the World Bank does in fact finance a lot of worthy projects isn’t a criticism of Mr. Beast, or Ms. Jones, or any other aid agency.
I’m saying that all aid agencies run into similar problems in delivering assistance, and Mr. Beast is no exception and doesn’t appear to have any answer which is better than any others.Report
I heard about the wells. To the extent I heard “discussion” of the wells, it was about how Mr. Beast made stuff happen pretty quickly while other millionaires and billionaires who talk about charity seemingly made no wells.
If we think the criticism is dumb, maybe we should stop amplifying it.
Even here, this post talked about more “the discourse” then the wells. If you think Mr. Beast ought to be celebrated for the wells maybe, just maybe, celebrate him for the wells.Report
Would that we had news articles that focused on the wells and the good that the wells were doing.Report
“And here’s how CNN covered it:
MrBeast builds 100 wells in Africa, attracting praise – and some criticism
There was, of course, the usual “he’s not addressing the *STRUCTURAL* problem” criticism. There was the usual “he’s doing it for clout, not to help people!” criticism. And, inevitably, there was also The Discourse:”
You only talked about the criticism. Why?Report
Because I was hearkening back to when we discussed him last time in February.
He helped 1000 blind people to see.
Among other things, it resulted in me watching The Good Place.
Welp, he’s back in the news. And the discussions around him being in the news were followed, once again, with discussions about how he wasn’t doing *THAT* much. I mean, entropy still exists.Report
Heh, Dudes posting their W’s.
Hopefully he’s learning the virtue of Magnanimity, which you can only become by being magnanimous. It’s not the only virtue… so being magnanimous doesn’t make him ‘good’ … but it is good for us to recognize Magnanimity.
I’d even go so far as to say that many of the philanthropic projects aren’t really magnanimous in that they are more about control than the people they hope to help much less virtue.Report
There’s probably a story here about ‘how’ he was able to drill 100 wells in 3 or 4 different countries.
-Did he bribe local officials?
-Ignore local officials?
-Simply fill out the paperwork?
-Are there no regulations at all, and all he had to do was drill?
-Was he only able to bribe officials for 25 inconsequential (to the aquifers) wells per country?
-Who owns the water in the aquifers?
-Diamon Mines?
-Moneyed interests?
-Agriculture?
-No one?
-Did he chose 4 countries so that none of the wells would have a noticeable impact on the aquifer?
-Was he oblivious to the power dynamics that prevent drilling companies from drilling in certain areas?
-Or did he simply pay a price that requires capital the communities can never come up with and there are no power/ownership issues to even consider?
-Will he someday disappear having meddled with ‘the way things are done’ in a far away land?
-Are NGO’s more interested in maintaining clout with power structures that enable them to do their work–but also control how/where for whom they do their work?
-Are there good lessons learned? Bad ones?
Seriously, some of you are so blind with bizarre American partisan-brained pseudo-ethics that you can’t even see well enough to ask good questions.Report
P.S. I’m surprised no-one has faulted him yet for giving an entire village bicycles — but apparently no bicycle helmets? Surely there’s an international tribunal we can get him with?Report
Yeah. Like, there seem to be two stories here.
A knuckleheaded American just barged in and dug 100 wells.
Why in the heck was there room for a knuckleheaded American to barge in and dig 100 wells? Why are the local governments failing so completely on this? Why haven’t the other NGOs done whatever the heck it is that he did? Graft/Corruption? Some weird idea that you can’t dig a well until you’ve solved the problem of maintaining in in five years? Some even weirder idea that you can’t dig a well until you’ve solved the problem of institutional racism/colonialism?
There was room for him to do this.
How in the hell was there room for him to do this?Report
“When I drill 1000 wells they call me a philanthropist. When I ask why people are thirsty, I am called a meddling liberal.”Report
“Why are people thirsty?”
“Pick up a shovel.”
“No. I have to solve the *REAL* problem.”
(two years and three million dollars later)
“Turns out, it’s entropy.”Report
So like, if people are poor, instead of writing books about the pathology of poverty and dysfunctional culture of fatherless households, we should just send them money.
OK, I won’t argue.Report
“Pick up a shovel.”
“I’d rather send them someone else’s money.”Report
That’s…exactly what Mr. Beast is doing.
You didn’t think he was ever holding a shovel did you?Report
He was certainly savvy enough to film himself overseeing the work, rather than writing a check to a congressman who sent even more money to Saran Kaba Jones and whatshisname at the UN.Report
Do you think we, the world bank, NGO’s and other philanthropic organizations send money without strings attached? Or are good strings invisible strings?
Might even be an interesting follow-up question whether, say, Uganda, is having funds withheld for dysfunctional culture reasons. I notice Mr. Beast built wells in Uganda… is that problematic?Report
I think your comments, and the many criticisms of First World philanthropy in general, are valid.
My position is that we seem to limit the options to either A) Philanthropy or B) Nothing.
Imagine for a moment if we apply this logic to America.
*Texas electric grid fails*
“Welp, nothing we can do except hope a kindly billionaire will helicopter in and donate a thousand portable generators”.
*Earthquake strikes Los Angeles and the I-10 freeway bridge collapses*
“Oh, whatever shall we do! Maybe a Chinese church group will send a bunch of teenage missionaries to repair it while we stand around in slack jawed amazement!”
The formula for widespread prosperity is known. It was proven forever in the 1990s that the combination of regulated markets and liberal democracy produces the optimum range of freedom and prosperity.
And it has also been proven that the current model of First World philanthropy has had only marginal success in raising people out of poverty. NAFT, GATT, and the global outsourcing of manufacturing have lifted billions of people where endless eager missionaries have failed.
This is a hard, hard truth because it suggests that it is the lack of political organization in the global South which keeps them poor, not a lack of kindly billionaires with mosquito nets.
And for those reading between the lines, it has grim implications for America’s future.Report
Yes, I think you’ve hit on the big problem with global poverty. I took some development economics in Uni and it made for grim reading. The simple truth is that philanthropy won’t accomplish much in a place with insufficient state capacity, and in the the presence of state capacity such philanthropy is generally unnecessary.
And yes, I think it’s worth worrying about this when it comes tot he US, and probably a few other countries as well.Report
Sure, but Mr. Beast cannot establish a liberal democracy in African Nations (and I imagine he’d get a lot more criticism if he tried). He can pay for wells, though.Report
I’m not sure why you’d see only two options?
If anything, asking rich people to practice the virtue of Magnanimity would be a whole new thing… more Oprah, less Foundational structured giving.
Mr. Beast isn’t shaming NGO’s… he’s shaming rich people. As I’ve said in the past, the real problem with Billionaires isn’t that they have too much, its that they spend too little.Report
In that vein, yesterday a tweet flitted across my timeline. I’m not going to link to it because it’s pretty horrible but, in the tweet, a man they said was a Ugandan Mayor was tied to a tree. The tweet said that this Ugandan Mayor diverted money that was supposed to go to a well for the village. The other people in the footage went on to beat the guy tied to the tree with switches. I didn’t watch but more than a few seconds of it so I don’t know how long it went on.
If we assume that the tweet was not lying, that’s one potential answer to why MrBeast was able to drill a well.
He simply drilled it instead of diverting the money.
I suppose the question is whether this is also the reason that MrBeast succeeded where NGOs have failed.
Assuming that the tweet wasn’t lying, of course.Report
Sure, assuming that particular story is true… but one of the things my friends running charitable orgs tell me is that follow-up on grants is both one of the most important things that a reputable org does, and one of the hardest. In the opinion of one person deep in this, international giving is orders of magnitude more difficult to track, and in his opinion, not a good use of funds. Too many layers, too little accountability. So, I’m inclined to believe it is plausibly true.
That’s what makes the Mr. Beast story ‘fun’. He just went and built wells… he didn’t have his foundation solicit proposals and listen to people tell him how his money would be used… he used his money and did a thing.Report
Step 1:
Have a culture where people don’t divert money from stuff like digging wells
This one step would probably do a good job of preventing the need for cis-het white males to come in and suck all of the oxygen out of the room.Report
What do you mean “he just drilled it”?
Like, there are no police or government forces in control of the area where he drilled?
No property owners whose permission was needed, no equipment suppliers who needed to be contacted, no import firms or geotechnical engineers to decide where to drill?
He just drove randomly through Uganda and pointed to a spot and said “Hey, lets drill here!” And of course, all the Ugandans just nodded and said, “Hey thank you Bwana for giving us the gift of water!”Report
What do you mean “he just drilled it”?
Is that what I said? If you quote the entire sentence that I said, you may find that it contains the answer to your question.
Or leaves you with a much better question than that one.Report
“He simply drilled it instead of diverting the money.”
You wrote that, not me. How did he do this? What did he do differently that other NGOs don’t?
Did he pay the drillers directly? Did he get permission from the property owner and local government, or did he sidestep that part? How much did he spend per well, compared to what an NGO would have?
I don’t expect you to know this which is why I find the certainty of the “simply drilled it” stuff baffling.
You don’t know that did in fact “simply drilled it” or if instead he followed some circuitous path of bribes and payoffs and permits.Report
Well, the most important thing, was *NOT DIVERTING THE MONEY*.
You may not see this as an essential step but, I assure you, it apparently is one.Report
How do you know?
Maybe Mr. Beast paid 500,000 per well to a local political bigwig, and he paid 50,000 to a drilling outfit and the rest to cronies and family members.
You’re just taking this whole thing credulously without asking any questions.Report
Well, for one thing, the wells got dug.
That puts the wells in a different category than the wells that did not get dug due to money being diverted.
“Why do you think that there are wells that did not get dug due to diverted money?”
This goes back to the comment that contained the line that you quoted. If you read the whole comment, instead of just the line that you quoted, you may see my focus on this.
Seriously, the existence of the wells is a very, very important distinction that I see between the wells that get dug and the wells that don’t get dug due to the money for the wells being diverted and I find myself wondering exactly how willing you are to pretend that you don’t see this distinction.Report
“Look this California city built a bunch of homes for homeless people!”
“But between taxes, delay, union labor and red tape they cost $700K per unit!”
“Look, the important part is that the homes got built and I find myself wondering exactly how willing you are to pretend that you don’t see this distinction.”Report
What’s the argument?
“I could have built those homes for $400,000 per unit!”
“I could have not built anything but diverted the money for it into my private account!”
I submit: I think that the former is a pretty good criticism. I think that the latter is a pretty bad criticism.
I’d call it a strawman EXCEPT THE SUBTHREAD BEGAN WITH A DISCUSSION OF A UGANDAN MAYOR WHO WAS BEING BEATEN BECAUSE HE DIVERTED THE MONEY TO DIG WELLSReport
The argument is that since you don’t know how the wells got dug, whether a lot of money got diverted or not, it makes no sense to claim Mr. Beast is somehow more effective than any other NGO.
Based on everything you’ve said here, its entirely possible that Ms. Jones, however few wells she dug, may actually be delivering aid more efficiently than Mr. Beast.
You have no way of knowing. Just falling back onto “B-but the wells got dug!!” doesn’t mean anything since that is entirely orthogonal to whether money got diverted or not. Both things can be true.Report
He’s certainly more effective than the mayor who got beaten.
Is your criticism that we don’t know that he could have drilled 2000 wells instead of 1000 wells?
That’s an interesting criticism.
But I don’t see how it lets, for example, Saran Kaba Jones off the hook.
Perhaps you could explain how much better the UN is at releasing Gender Equity white papers than digging 1000 wells.
That white paper only cost pennies on the dollar! That same paper would cost you five times as much in Georgetown!
Seriously, this criticism might make sense if there were other people digging more wells for a lot cheaper.
But there aren’t.
There are, instead, people stealing the money set aside to dig these wells.
And MrBeast is upsetting the apple cart by merely *NOT STEALING THE MONEY*.Report
My argument is that you’re repeatedly making assertions for which you have no support.
You have no idea what other NGOs are doing or how much it costs per unit;
You have no idea how Mr. Beast compares to them and in fact whether or not he is diverting money or burning 99% of it on bribes.
Yet you are doggedly insisting he is somehow doing things better than them.
Just repeating “B-but he dug a lot of wells!” is true but irrelevant.Report
Here is my support:
There was a tweet out there that alleged to show a mayor of a Ugandan village being beaten for stealing money intended to dig a well.
I linked to a video showing MrBeast standing next to a well that was being dug.
In the second case, the well existed.
In the first case, it did not.
If MrBeast stole money, he left enough money for there to be a well dug anyway.
The Ugandan Mayor, if the video was accurate, stole too much money and, thus, the well was not dug.
You see the fact that MrBeast dug a well as irrelevant.
I see it as THE FREAKING RELEVANT POINT BECAUSE THE COMPARISON IS TO PEOPLE WHO STEAL THE FREAKING MONEY INSTEAD OF DIGGING THE FREAKING WELL.Report
I don’t even need to refute this. It stands on its own.Report
Much like the wells, it exists.
Your refutation had its funding stolen.Report
Given Mr. Beast’s profile, I have to imagine his non-profit is scrutinized with great interest.
I pulled the 990 from 2021 (easiest I could find) and they disbursed $1.59M with a Total Compensation structure of $410,962. Only the Executive director on the board took a salary ($88k). Other compensation is presumably schlubs doing stuff. He, his mom, and cousin are on the board at $0.
$588k for Operations ($142k legal / $132k Building) the rest small regular costs.
$1.56M disbursed
$410k Compensation
$588k Operations
$418k rolled-over for 2022
~60% disbursal ratio.
Not great, but also not bad given how small the charity is — there are baseline costs that would remain fixed for much larger sums. So donate to get the ratios down!Report
“Maybe Mr. Beast paid 500,000 per well to a local political bigwig, and he paid 50,000 to a drilling outfit and the rest to cronies and family members.”
I did click around a bit to see if Mr. Beast(TM) commented on this. They said the cost of drilling ranged between $5k and $20k per well, depending on the depth. That’s a bit less than what it costs to drill a well in VA… you’d budget $15k – $30k and hope for $10k. It’s literally a pay-go contract… you pay them to start drilling and when to stop, if they don’t hit water. There’s no guaranty of water, and the bill simply reflects the depth of the hole (plus minimums and set-up, etc).
Of course, no word on any necessary bribes, so we can’t see the ‘all-in’ cost. But we also can’t rule out that some chucklefuck from North Carolina with a lot of money and who didn’t know better just paid drillers to drill and didn’t pay any bribes at all.
I was also amused to stumble across a literal Drilling Industry Podcast (you know, there’s a podcast for everything) and I watched to see if they were horrified, bemused, or indifferent. I’m surprised to report that they were enthusiastic!
Of course, The Driller only sees market upside to drilling fresh water wells… so, take their enthusiasm with a grain of salt.Report
The central claim here is that Mr. Beast is somehow doing things that others can’t.
So how much each well cost, how they were dug and by whom at at whose permission is exactly the point that needs to be answered if we are to take him seriously.
How did he manage to bypass the customary corruption endemic in Third World countries? Did he just say “No thank you, we don’t wish to pay any bribes today” and the officials said, “Oh, OK please proceed”?
The answers to these questions either support or destroy the assertion and there is a steadfast refusal to even ask the question, much less answer it.Report
No, no, no.
The central claim is that he is doing things that the others *DIDN’T*.Report
As I said above, good questions… I’d journalist the heck out of that if I were a journalist.
I’m curious myself!
I probably wouldn’t write about white jesus, structural racism, and ‘how dare he ignore the NGO hierarchy’ though.Report
The charitable interpretation of “he did was they didn’t” is “he did what they couldn’t”.
The uncharitable one is “he did what they wouldn’t”.Report
Digging around earlier, I found an article from last year that about his work digging wells in Camroon. He was working with what appears to be a local nonprofit, CDTVA. I can’t speak for any other places, but this suggests he might not just be running renegade and doing whatever he wants.
https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/mrbeast-new-charity-project-cameroon-1829188/Report
Thanks, yeah… looks like that was maybe the pilot project that kicked off the idea. The two-well video was published May 2022… the ‘completed project’ video Nov 2023. Somewhere between the two the team did 98 other wells.
There’s likely an interesting story behind each well… maybe journalists will explore that. That’s what I mean when the questions should be… what did he do and how did he do it? Are there good lessons learned? Bad lessons?Report
And I would start with “What was preventing the Ugandans from creating a modern water system like they have everywhere else in the world?
They have drilling rigs, they have geological experts, they have plenty of manpower and expertise. So why were these people in such need?
Next, I would look at the dozen or so NGOs who are currently creating water delivery projects across Africa and ask what makes Mr. Beast any different than them.Report
If you want.
But for me? First? First I’d just say good for this guy for building 100 wells.
Second I’d ask what lessons were learned and how do we make this repeatable.
Third, I’d ask your questions.Report
Here’s the thing, Chip:
You can just say “it’s money”.
You don’t have to play cute games, you don’t have to try to do the lead-the-horse-to-water-so-the-cussed-thing-thinks-drinking-is-its-own-idea, you don’t have to do the Socratic Dialogue thing. You know, all that stuff you guys claim you hate when Jaybird does it? You don’t have to do that.
You can just say “the same number of wells would have been dug if the dude had just written a big check to an NGO, more of them probably since they already knew how and where to dig wells and already were buddies with the local governments and didn’t need to spend money on process development and surveys and bribes, and in places that genuinely needed wells rather than places that were easy to get to and looked good in a video”.
Right? You can just say that.Report
” Did he get permission from the property owner and local government, or did he sidestep that part? ”
it’s amusing to see you suggest this as an extremely important step without which wells should not have been drilled.Report
If Nonprofits Were Honest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAf62-VFFs&ab_channel=HonestAdsReport
Incidentally, here’s some other guys who founded a charity musing about how important the “management and stewardship” aspect is, a level beyond simply “buy stuff and hand it out”:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2023/11/13/the-before-timesReport
The local grocery store had MrBeast Halloween chocolate bars on sale for 70% off in the days after Halloween. Get a bag of $5 chocolate for only a buck-fifty? Heck yeah!
Bought it, brought it home, shared it.
There were 3 flavors: Milk Chocolate, Crunch, and “Deez Nuts”. Sigh.
Well, the fact that this candy was 70% off and they still had some should have been an indicator. The first bite of Milk Chocolate was… odd. Maribou said that tasted like coffee-flavored chocolate. It had a weird bitter undercurrent. Crunch and Deez Nuts were a little bit better, but not by a whole lot.
The entire taste-test was those three fun-sized bars and then I brought in the rest to work and threw it in the breakroom when I came in this morning.
I just checked the breakroom. There’s still half a bag in there.Report