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> solving hunger in Africa

I wish the billionaires were doing this. Instead they are hoarding wealth like angry dragons and comparing piles.






Be careful what you wish for. Being a billionaire gets you lots of ability to inflict unintentional damage because being a billionaire doesn't necessarily mean you understand how to best solve programs outside of your domain. There's also lots of people who will happily lead you to inflict pain on the world by convincing you that it's actually a solution.

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It's not impossible to begin to liquidate fractions at a time to both live on and make the world a better place instead of revelling when the line goes up. Somehow MacKenzie Scott has found a way to be both rich and provide large chunks of cash, over 10 billion now, to causes.

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Unpleasant, yes. True, no.

Africa isn’t one thing, so generalizations are dangerous at best. Lots of places aren’t run by feudal lords.

Africa is, on the whole, economically far more prosperous today than it was 20 years ago and foreign aid has saved millions of lives.

There’s more to the world of philanthropy than MrBeast.


Most philantropy is closer to what MrBeast does than everyone is comfortable admitting. Most times I decide to read into some public philantropy intervention or other, especially those that happen in remote/far off places, it turns out it was a disaster, nothing was achieved, funds were stolen, and the intervention ended up doing more harm than good. Except to the philantropist's brand, which always comes out on top.

I wouldn't use anything MrBeast does as evidence of anything.

Would you think his hundred clean water wells were all just theatre for a video?

It's definitely a PR campaign and virtue signal he is a good guy, but I wouldn't doubt his water wells are fake (or in your case, not valid evidence of anything).


i absolutely think they're 100% just theatre for video

and they may be real, but like a lot of feel good charity things, it's not about building them, it's building ones that are sustainable and that the locals will actually use.

beast shows up, digs some holes, gets some smiles, but all of those holes will require maintenance and tools for the local population to use. they may not be built to withstand local conditions, and don't have real community involvement.

in a year they'll just be another route for nasty shit to leach into the ground, and beast will be on to his next showboating bullshit feelgood episode


Sorry you're getting downvoted. I just saw a yt video about the Live Aid concert in the 80s and it was just sickening how much today's culture shits on them for trying to help. The comments section was very keen on using the failure as an excuse to not donate ("U2 are millionaires, they should donate instead of asking us to!") and using 40 years of hindsight to absolutely slay the musician who organized the event (Bob Geldof).

They raised an enormous amount of money that unfortunately was stolen by an African warlord, and the ones who's hearts were in the right place were hung out to dry over it. Stuff like that erodes my faith in humanity.


> Sorry you're getting downvoted.

Thanks. I knew I'd get downvoted for it. That's why I warned about unpleasantcy in my comment.

> They raised an enormous amount of money that unfortunately was stolen by an African warlord, and the ones who's hearts were in the right place were hung out to dry over it. Stuff like that erodes my faith in humanity.

Exactly my point, you put it better than my crude comment.




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