folio

YouTuber spends $40,000 on original iPhone in unopened original packaging. He subsequently opens it, so he can’t sell it on, and discovers it doesn’t work.

I think to myself, “$40,000 would be a big deal for the local homeless shelter; I hope he match-funded to assuage his guilt.”

But his fans remind me he is worth $45 million. Hence the yawning disconnect between the mega rich and ordinary folk. For all we know, he may well be donating millions to charity unseen.

Still, it remains the case that $40,000 would be a gift for so many frontline charities working with the vulnerable. The optics of blowing that kind of money on a piece of tat — yes, even a one-of-the-kind collectors item — just doesn’t sit right in hard times.

Another YouTuber, making a living from filming himself pressure washing people’s drives for free expresses surprise that an elderly homeowner initially rejected his offer.

But once more, here is that disconnect between the well-to-do and the down-and-out, for missing from his free equation are the gallons of water and power required for the job.

Perhaps the homeowner, living on the edge paying bills in times of high inflation and spiralling debt has reason not to be enthusiastic about this offer. Or perhaps they have been the past victim of the vicious scammers that prey on the elderly daily.

In the end, no harm done. The YouTuber got his video, half a million views plus ad revenue, and the homeowner got a clean concrete driveway. Hurray! It’s win-win all around. Maybe there’s something beautiful about these acts of semi-charity.

Some of the mega rich YouTube fraternity have found a way to balance both squanderful exploits in the name of entertainment and investing their mammoth profits into philanthropy.

What does it matter, ask our kids, if their favourite YouTuber blasts $200K for a night in a luxury hotel for his latest video, if they’re digging life-saving wells in Africa? Perhaps they have a point.

Access to great wealth increases opportunities to do good. For some of us, living modest lives working in public service, the lifestyle of the mega rich seems perplexing. At what point does their great wealth become problematic?

The moment they spend the annual salary of the average American on a boxed phone that would have cost $599 at launch? Even that price would have been out of reach of many living in fragile economic circumstances.

There is a disconnect between the mega rich and the rest of us. Many attracted to the charitable impulses of faith turn away repulsed at the sight of super rich Gulf Arabs importing $2 million sportscars to drive around Knightsbridge every summer, given such widespread poverty in the Muslim world.

Some may say these playboys also give freely of their wealth unseen. Allahu’alam. One thing is certain, for the masses, living in abject poverty, these vulgar displays of excess ooze poor optics at the very least.

How much better for the mega rich to invest their stupendous wealth in public welfare, than in frivolous and ostentatious exhibitions of just how hideously out of touch with the masses they really are. It could be said that the optics really matter.