 Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast. Oh, yes, Mr. Beast. Let's talk about Mr. Beast. So, I don't know how many of you know much about Mr. Beast. I mean, I didn't know anything about him until this controversy basically came to the forefront. But it turns out Mr. Beast is the number one influencer on YouTube. He has more subscribers than anybody else. He has made tens of millions of dollars on YouTube and all kinds of sponsorship deals and all kinds of deals that have come from his YouTube celebrity. He is only 24 years old and supposedly is worth 50 plus million dollars. 50 plus million dollars all from his YouTube activities and again sponsorships and related stuff. So this is not inherited wealth. This is wealth he has created by, I guess, entertaining people. It is truly quite a phenomena. You know, of course, he's not the only one. There are dozens of these. He started at the age of 12 and he quickly picked up subscribers. He hired his friends. He actually had his friends research what attracted people, what caused people to subscribe, looking at other people and just stunning the kind of success that he has had and the kind of wealth he has managed to accumulate. He has done all kinds of stunts. I guess millions of people saw him counting from one to ten thousand, which I think took him 40 hours or so. I don't know something like that. Anyway, just watched him count. People like this kind of stuff. I don't get it, but he's got 137 or something million subscribers. I'll take a fraction, tiny little teeny. So very impressive. Again, it started at the age of 12. He's 24 now. He's figured it out and there are a bunch of these. It's an interesting world in which you can get all these young people basically making a living by doing what I do on YouTube. Many of them are teenagers and younger and some of them are older, but a variety of different things and stunts and all kinds of things. Anyway, Mr. Beast done a lot of these stunts, a lot of different kind of projects. He gives money away. He gives cars away. He has a charity channel, which is focused on giving stuff away, but he's also done like a squid games. You remember squid games? That TV show that I really, really, really, really hated. Well, he did a whole thing where he actually ran real squid games but without the killing. It's always good. You don't kill people. And gave somebody a huge amount of money as a prize. He gives all the stuff. So he does these stunts and millions and millions of people watch him. I guess there's a show there just to talk about YouTube influences and what that means for the culture, what it means for jobs, and what it means for young people. I guess a lot of young people today think that this is a career. This is what they want to do. And that's great. And all the power to him. I think it's fantastic. I think it's weird that so many people are entertained by this kind of stuff, but that's true of almost all entertainment. Much of the entertainment is pretty low bar entertainment that generates huge returns. So I have no problem with Mr. Beast making the fortune that he has. The latest video that he produced that has created a lot of fury, a lot of fury, a lot of hype and people upset and people, but also people supportive. So just a lot of hype and a lot of viewers. I think he's had, this video said something like 60 million views, 60 million views. This is a video we basically paid $1,000 to, I guess a doctor, $1,000 per patient, I think it was, to basically do cataract surgery on patients who were going blind. So they basically found 1000 people who couldn't afford, I guess, to get cataract surgery themselves in the United States, but really all over the world. I think they actually looked in the United States and they couldn't find that many people in the United States, which is kind of interesting. And they ended up doing it all over the world. And they basically cured blindness for 1000 people, right? For 1000 people. And so they took 1000 blind people, gave them surgery and restored their eyesight. And as part of this, I guess Mr. Beast also gave one guy who had never gotten a driver's license because you couldn't see well enough. He gave him a Tesla. He gave somebody else like $10,000. He gave other people money. So during all this, he also was giving money and giving stuff away. But he basically paid for 1000 people to get eye surgery. So it was completely free for them. And the responses fell into, I think, three categories, three categories. Now, we'll talk about what I think about this and so on. But let's, so there were three categories of responses. One is, wow, this is amazing. Mr. Beast, you're the man. This is cool. You gave sight to all these people. Isn't that, isn't that great? You know, thank you. Isn't it great that you're using your money this way or whatever? So, so very complimentary, very positive, very supportive, and very exciting and supportive of Mr. Beast. By the way, Mr. Beast's name is Jimmy Donaldson. Jimmy Donaldson. We'll call him Jimmy. Mr. Beast is such a look. So Jimmy, so very complimentary to Jimmy. So that's one type of, here's an example, somebody on Twitter wrote, damn, as a person with total blindness and one eye, this may be tear up, this is the most moving act of charity I've ever seen. Another tweeted, people can hate on the high price of health care. I do more than anyone. But what Mr. Beast did here was astounding, powerful, and should be respected. But then the second type of response was, and this seems to have a lot of people and gain a lot of traction and get a lot of positive responses. It was basically, why isn't the government doing this? Why does some rich guy have to do this? The government should be doing this. How come the government isn't giving all these people, I mean, it doesn't cost that much money. He did it. How much money could it cost? Why isn't the government providing, isn't, don't people have a basic right to see? And if so, and if it's so cheap, why doesn't the government just provide this? So it was, you know, here's the two, here's one tweet, the many, many, many like this. Why don't governments step in and help? Even if you're thinking purely from a financial standpoint, it's hard to see how they don't return investment on taxes from people being able to work again. Right? So second response, and he says over and over and over again, that why don't we have universal health care? Indeed, one of the proposals was to make Mr. Beast, to have Mr. Beast run for president, and they did a poll and everybody voted for him for president. And the idea was that the first thing he would do as president was bring universal, here it is, in one of the timelines this tweet will be the beginning of Mr. Beast becoming president and finally, finally bringing universal health care to the United States. So response number one, very cool. Response number two, why isn't government doing this? This is just an example of the evil of the system in which we live in. And then the third criticism of Mr. Beast was, Beast was, he's just doing this for the views. He's just doing this to increase subscriptions. He makes more money off of a stunt like this than he actually gives away. This is him just trying to get attention. Here's a Twitter one tweet about this. It's the never ending cycle of content creation makes Mr. Beast feel insidious. The underlying notion that if the camera wasn't on to feed the machine, nothing would happen. The dystopian thought we're reliant on YouTube views instead of competent government for assistance. So this combines the two. Or somebody else wrote, there was something so demonic about this, that I can't even articulate what it is. It's demonic for a rich guy to help a bunch of people regain their sight. And somebody actually tweet, he called the video amidst the beats doing this charity porn, charity porn. It shouldn't be charity. I mean, these billionaires shouldn't have billions. Their money should be being taxed away from them a long time ago. They should never achieve the status of billions. We should just have a wealth tax, take that money away from them. And then the government can provide all of these things. It's long to have the billionaires provided. So I mean, I think the video and all these responses are fascinating. And a really an interesting opportunity to discuss altruism, to discuss altruism and the culture, discuss what altruism is. And I think how altruism feeds into this. And why to some extent altruism feeds into Mr. Beast's success, at least success with those videos where he's giving away stuff, and so on. So we're going to talk about these three categories, if you will, of responses to Mr. Beat. Again, what Mr. Beat did is Mr. Beast, I keep saying beat Mr. Beast, I need to call him Jimmy. What Jimmy did is basically pay for 1000 people to get eye surgery, so they could see. Alright. So first thing, you know, I want to clarify is what is, what is altruism? And here I want to go to what the root of altruism is, not what altruism is in the culture out there because, you know, the culture out there interprets words, interprets its concepts in all kinds of ways that do not necessarily connect it to reality. Altruism is a term that was invented or come up with, if you will, by Augustine Comte, the French 19th century, early 19th century philosopher, who basically, you know, he didn't come up with a phenomena. He coined it. He coined it. But the idea is, the idea is, to some extent, it's Christianity, it certainly is in Immanuel Kant. But the idea that of what Comte is articulating here is altruism being self-sacrifice, altruism being the service to others, sacrifice to others with no gain to oneself, no benefit to oneself. Indeed, both Kant and Comte say that to the extent that there's a benefit to yourself, it doesn't count as good, it doesn't count as moral, it doesn't count as ethical, it's fine for you to do, but it just doesn't count in Morale, to be moral, to be virtuous, to be good, and in this context to be altruistic means that you do not benefit from the act, that the act is a hundred percent self-less. If it makes you feel good to do charity, it's out as a moral activity. If you gain views from giving to charity, it's out because you have benefited from it. If you make money from giving to charity, if you achieve prominence, if you achieve great reputation, if you gain anything, anything, it's outside of the realm of morality, it doesn't count towards being a good person, being a good person means to be altruistic, which means ultimately to be self-less, not to think about self, and it is the best way you can illustrate to the world out there your selflessness is to suffer, is to lose, is to lose, not just not gain, but actually lose, and the more visible you can make those losses, I don't know being nailed to a cross is pretty visible, then the more virtue accrues to you, the more virtue signaling, the more goodness accrues to you, the more real goodness accrues to you, altruistic goodness accrues to you. Altruism is not what most people think it is, just being nice to people. That's just being nice to people. It's not charity. Charity is not necessarily altruistic, it depends on how painful it is to the person giving. If you enjoy the charity, if charity is the pursuit of your own values, if you're getting notoriety out of charity, you're making money off of charity, you're gaining views out of charity, whatever, then again, it's not altruistic. It's charity, but it's not altruistic. So I would first say that what Mr. Beast has done is does not strike me as altruism. It doesn't mean it's egoism, it doesn't mean it's self-interest, because I don't know, I don't know enough about him. I don't know what other options he had to do with the money. I don't know how much value he got from this. I don't know how important it is for him. I don't know how rational he was in making these decisions to be self-interested, to be selfish, means to be rational. So the only way to evaluate something as yes, that's a self-interested action is not to look at the consequences, but to look at how the decision was made. Did he, was it rational? Was it a rational action to take? And I just don't know. I don't think it's non-self-interest. I just don't know. I don't know what motivated him. And I don't know what the process that he engaged with in deciding to use his money in this way is. But it suddenly does a strike me as altruistic. Like the options in life are not just altruism selfishness. Those are not the only two options. There are lots of other options. Lots of other options. Just being irrational without sacrificing yourself is not selfish, but it's not altruistic either. So it seems likely, so it's not altruism. Why do we say it's not altruism? One is this is how he makes a living. That is his stick. The way he, you know, the way he accumulates followers, subscribers, the way he gets money through, I don't know, his his sponsors is by having more and more subscribers, the way he gets money from my guests's YouTube advertising or Patreon or whatever it is, however he raises money. It has correlated directly with the number of subscribers, the number of views. And this video got a lot of views and maybe gained him a lot of subscribers. He clearly benefited from the 100,000 or 200,000 or whatever he paid for this seems like a small price to pay for the kind of visibility that he has gotten. And again, you don't just measure one video out of context, but even if you lost on this video it is one on a stream in a stream that, you know, has gained him the reputation that he has, has gained him the wealth that he has, has gained him the position and prestige that he has. So you can't say there's no, he didn't lose anything here. The fact that he helped somebody else doesn't make the act altruistic. The fact that he helped someone else makes it maybe charitable, but it doesn't make it altruistic. And for, you know, for objectivism, it's not any wrong with being charitable. There's something very wrong, evil, immoral, about being altruistic. Ooh, Gian Niccolini says that Mr. Beast once commented on one of my videos. I wonder which video that was. That would be interesting. Ooh, you know, that's quite a celebrity. Um, maybe, maybe I'll have me on. Maybe we'll do a gag together. Um, so the first thing to point out is no, this is not altruism. He doesn't get any altruistic pseudomoral credit for this. This was a business transaction. You know, I can't say again that he was egoistic without knowing more about what he did, but it surely seems egoistic. It seems self-interested because it adds to his business. And I think that's what bugs people. That's what bugs people about charity, they call it charity porn. That's what bugs people by there is something so demonic about it. It's the idea that he helped people and got something out of it. When morality, ethics suggests that if you're going to help people, you shouldn't get anything out of it. So it offends the true altruists. It offends the people who take morality seriously. It's, wait a minute, you're trying to get me to give you some kind of moral credit by being this nice guy helping people. But my morality tells me I can't. And indeed, I think the people condemning him are some of the more honest people, honest in a perverse way, because the text from reality, but consistent with their own philosophical ideas, consistent with their own altruism. And so what is this, when this guy says it's an ever-ending cycle of content crease and makes Mr. Beast feel insidious, what's the insidiousness? It's the self-interest. It's the fact that Mr. Beast benefits from this act. Note that these people don't care one iota about the people he cured. They don't seem to care one iota about the thousands of people that now can see. I mean, I think that's amazing that he helped a thousand people see. Good for him. And he figured out a way to make this a win-win transaction, where he helped them and he got helped as well. His business thrived as well. So it's, it's the altruism that's causing people to resent him, because he's not suffering. Right? He's not, his standard of living did not go down one iota because of what he did. And that is what they resent. They would admire him much more if he actually suffered, if he actually lost something. But then another level kicks in, right? So the first level is, wait a minute, he's making money. And he seems like he's having fun. And I don't know what wonder Friedman on the chat is going on and on about feeling. Is that commentary on something I said, or commentary on something on the chat? I have no idea, but it's feelings are not philosophically correct. Feelings could be justified or unjustified. They can be consistent with your values or inconsistent with your values, consistent with your philosophy or inconsistent with it. But they are feelings no matter what they are. But I'm not sure where that's coming from. I don't know what, who's actually, who's actually stimulating wonder Friedman to engage in this discussion. I don't think it was me. Maybe it was. If it was me, then I'd like to clarify. Oh, the idea that they don't get credit because they enjoy it. That's right. They don't get credit because they enjoy it because it's a plus. Because it's the enjoyment that is wrong. It's not about the feelings. They're not against feelings. Because what they're against is, what they're against is the positivity of those feelings. And when you see him in the video, he's having fun. He's giving away stuff and he's having fun and it's cool and it's friendly and it's, he seems like, you know, this nice young kid doing something nice for other people and being happy about it or rewarding himself by it and and he's also making money at the same time. Yeah, that's offensive. But then they take it to the next level and they say, look, and this comes across in all the advocacy for government intervention. This is, I mean, the attitude basically, this is not what they say to themselves because I don't think they think this deeply. But basically what they say to themselves is, look, if we leave it up to the private sector, charity, private entrepreneurs will always use charity in some way that is beneficial to themselves, in some way that they gain from it. And that's just, that's just wrong. That's demonic as one of the people says. There's something wrong with that. There's no nobility in that. There's no virtue in that. There's no morality in that. And of course, we then have to trust the self-interest of the entrepreneur, the businessman. We have to trust his self-interest to actually provide these goods for people. But altruism tells us that the standard of morality is their well-being. The standard of morality is the other, the suffering. And the more suffering, the more they deserve. And isn't it really selfish and self-interested to leave that decision on who to help, how to help them, how much to help them, when to help them, to private individuals and to private incentives? Altruism demands that these people be helped now at whatever cost necessary. So why are we sitting around waiting for rich guys, and in some of the tweets it has mentioned, rich white guys, to choose to help them? When it shouldn't be a choice, they should be helped. And since we know that the money resides with these rich guys, isn't it more noble? Isn't it more moral? Isn't it more virtuous just to take their money? Yeah, it'll hurt them, they'll suffer. Good, that's what they're supposed to do if they're engaged in a moral activity. And just start figuring out how we can help the most people with that money the quickest in the most expansive way. And since the only entity that can actually take these people's money away from them and do this big kind of coordinated effect is government, let's have government just take the money from these rich guys and start eliminating blindness from the world. But wait a minute, there are also some poor kids and there are also some kids who are starving in Africa and then there are some people who have ear infections and I mean then government is going to have to prioritize and decide who and we'll just have to take more money from those rich guys and they'll have to suffer more. But that's okay because again that's what morality requires, it's what morality demands. This is just an inevitable consequence of altruism. So I don't like it, a lot of times you hear libertarians say altruism is fine. The real problem is forced altruism, it's cursed altruism. And my attitude is no, no, no, no, no. Altruism is evil and wrong and immoral no matter whether it's forced or not. This beginning of morality is not force. This is the non-aggression principle and indeed the argument is that once you embrace altruism you cannot defend the non-aggression principle. Why not aggress against rich guys if it helps poor guys? If altruism demands that you give up all your wealth for the sake of the poor, the hungry, the blind, then why can't I use force to take it from you and give it to them? It's what's right anyway. Altruism necessitates violence, necessitates force, necessitates growing government. And that's what so many libertarians and I think beginner objectivists don't get. Altruism is the morality of force. There is no voluntary altruism, not at the end of the day, not once you can convince enough people to vote with you to take his stuff. Even if it's encouraged, it's evil. Even if it's just held by individuals, it's evil. Because it's anti-life. Anybody. Force is not the marker of immorality. Force is not the marker of evil. The marker of immorality and evil is pro-life or anti-life. Egoism is pro-life therefore it's good. By definition that's what egoism is. It's pro-my-life. Altruism is anti-life by definition and therefore altruism is evil. It's wrong. Whether they engage in force or not is not the point. Morality is about you as an individual but it always involves engaging in force. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to www.uranbookshow.com. I go to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. 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