My son has been on a kick lately of watching Mr. Beast on YouTube, and I have caught my fair share of videos now. Mr. Beast is a young guy who has about 100 million subscribers on YouTube.
As the money rolling in from his YouTube ad revenue has expanded, Mr. Beast has expanded the amount he spends on each video. Sometimes he does challenges for people where he gives away insane amounts of money.
It has also been common for Mr. Beast to just randomly give money and expensive things away to people. He bought all of the cars at a used car dealership and was practically giving them away when people came to shop for a car. Mr. Beast and his friends also drove for Uber and gave cars away to their customers.
Some of the people get quite emotional. Imagine getting an unexpected check for $10,000 or getting a free car when going to the car dealership. There are many people struggling financially where this kind of thing makes a profound difference.
There was one video where one of Mr. Beast’s friends had a very minor car accident in a parking garage. There was a minor scrape on one of the cars that was parked in there. They waited all day until the owner of the car came out. They told the guy what happened and said they felt bad. They gave him $9,000 in cash on the spot. The guy said his car isn’t even worth that amount. He actually felt bad taking the money. Maybe he won’t feel bad later on when he realizes that this is what Mr. Beast does.
Mr. Beast has also been known to go into stores and buy all of the merchandise in the entire store. He has no problem spending $100,000 or more. He’ll typically donate the items to a food bank or some kind of charity store afterwards. While it might be aggravating for a customer who walks into the store afterwards and finds everything is gone, it does provide entertainment and most of the stuff is donated.
An economist might ask: Is this the most efficient way to help people?
My answer is, probably yes. The reason it is efficient is because it is providing entertainment for tens of millions of people while also randomly helping people. If Mr. Beast made videos where he interviewed people and reviewed their financial situation to see how deserving they are of money, it might get rather dull quickly. And without the views on YouTube, there wouldn’t be money to give away.
There was one episode where Mr. Beast and his friends had a $100,000 bowl of ice cream. He actually sort of apologized at the end of the video because he knows some people will say it is wasteful. He said he makes some videos like this so he can keep his channel going strong and to bring in more money so that he can give away even more in the future.
He also talked about certain videos where he doesn’t run ads because some people will comment that he shouldn’t be running ads for certain content. But he said that it kind of makes more sense to run ads because it enables him to be even more generous to other people. Still, I guess he doesn’t want to hear it from his critics.
Mr. Beast is touching lives and making them better, but he is just one man with a team, and they can only do so much.
Think about the numbers. If he gave away $330 million, that would be about one dollar for every American. In other words, it would make no difference. It also wouldn’t be very entertaining to watch people get surprised with a gift of one dollar.
When you watch people get surprised with a gift for $10,000 or $50,000 for winning a crazy competition, it means something. It is emotional for the person getting the money because you know it makes a meaningful difference in the person’s life. It is more entertaining to watch.
Good Money and Evil Money
When I was watching Mr. Beast, I thought about people with greater wealth than him who end up doing damage with their money.
If you have a businessman or entrepreneur who is getting rich by providing a demanded service in the open market place, then this is a sign of the person benefitting others.
Think about Jeff Bezos and the many tens of billions of dollars he is worth. Most of his net worth is from his main enterprise, which is Amazon. Amazon has made the lives of hundreds of millions of people better. Most people I know shop at Amazon. It is amazing that you can order something from your house and see it appear at your door a day or two later. And it oftentimes is at just as good of a price as you would find going to a store (if you can find it all).
Amazon has also benefitted many small business owners who can sell their products online. It also makes it easier that you can use Amazon’s services so that you do not have to individually ship your products. You can send them all to the Amazon warehouse and they will take care of it for a fee.
And let’s not forget about authors. Amazon started as an online bookstore. It has enabled authors and would-be authors to have a platform to self-publish books. In fact, Amazon can just print your book and deliver it whenever someone orders one. The author doesn’t have to handle anything once the book is digitally uploaded.
I have no idea where Jeff Bezos stands politically, but I do know he gets his share of criticism. I would much rather him spend his money on yachts than on buying failing newspapers that spread propaganda. I would prefer it more if Bezos kept making Amazon better or making other businesses in the same model that benefit so many people.
Then there is someone like Bill Gates. Almost everyone with a corporate job uses Microsoft. There may be some arguments to be made that Gates got rich by using patent and copyright laws to his advantage. I also have many issues with Microsoft and the Windows platform. But I also have my share of praise for certain software like Excel and Word.
Of course, the main problem with Gates isn’t the money he has made from Microsoft. The problem is that he uses that money for evil purposes. He seems like a mad scientist. He is a massive funder of the W.H.O., and we know he is a big pusher of vaccines. He has also had some crazy plans for supposedly mitigating climate change. Whether he is a crazy depopulationist trying to kill off a large portion of humankind or not, he is still using his money for evil purposes.
What if Bill Gates were just like Mr. Beast but on a bigger scale? He could actually be helping people. If I had a few billion dollars to give away, I’m pretty sure I could find more effective ways than giving it to a corrupt organization that supposedly is in the business of public health. I can’t think of anything more against public health than the W.H.O.
Unfortunately, Warren Buffett fell into the trap of donating to the Gates Foundation. I have no problem at all with giving money away, but the Gates Foundation pushes Gates’ crazy agenda. They aren’t giving away free cars to people as far as I know. I don’t even think they are providing food and drinking water to children in Africa. Instead, they are trying to inject people all over the world.
Even if you think vaccines are great (they aren’t), it isn’t a lack of vaccines in Africa that make them unhealthy compared to the West. It is the standard of living. People in Africa need economic freedom. From that, they will get a better standard of living, better sanitation, and less disease. They don’t need more vaccines.
It’s important to realize that there are many wealthy people who do not have bad motives. They do not want to depopulate the earth or to control the actions of others. They may enjoy the power of having money as far as being free to do what they want, and that is fine as long as they aren’t doing harm to others.
Many people obtain great wealth and they don’t know what to do with it. They may feel guilty because they became so wealthy, even if they did put in a lot of work to obtain it. Sometimes it is the ones who feel guilty who do the most damage because they get involved in causes that the establishment tells them they should be part of.
For the wealthy people out there, whether you feel guilty or not, be more like Mr. Beast. If you aren’t going to use your money to expand your business and benefit the human race in that capacity, then find ways to give it away without doing too much damage.