I've read the Dead Aid book years back, so I'm assuming the other books are of the same variety.
They're actually quite different.
"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" and "Winners Take All" focus on why corporate and wealthy donors only fund charitable causes that perpetuate the status quo and ensure their wealth will be maintained while regular people are fukked over.
"Toxic Charity", "When Helping Hurts", and "Charity Detox" focuses on how charity is done in a dehumanizing manner that positions the donor as a savior and the recipient as a helpless beneficiary, and why that actually does more harm than good in most cases and primarily just ends up serving the donor's agenda.
"Dead Aid", "Enough", and "The White Man's Burden" discuss why foreign aid on a large scale has not only failed to help, but often makes the long-term situation worse - and sometimes intentionally.
The common theme between all of them is that claiming "If it is charity it must be good" is a bullshyt narrative. Those authors come from very different perspectives, but they all agree that a lot of charity is straight up harmful, and sometimes intentionally so.
My take away from it is most people will agree that for improvement to occur;
1. Growth is needed
2. Aid isn't a path to growth
3. In some instances, aid may even slow that growth
However, what aid is is a stop-gap measure, designed to buy time and to mitigage death and suffering until development efforts pull people the masses out of poverty. In time, less and less aid will be needed.
Claiming that aid is a stop-gap that's less needed over time is disproven by the book, because what it shows is that aid often makes the situation even worse, not better, and actually results in real solutions being less likely and more and more aid needed over time.
One example in Ethiopia. A US law made it illegal to donate foreign grain with public funds, so only American grain could be used for famine relief. This made the aid far more expensive, so only 1/3 as much grain could be purchased and the grain took months longer to get there, and thousands of people died as a direct result of the law. But it was big profits for American corporate farmers, who advertized themselves as great saviors even though the reliance on them was killing people.
But it gets worse. When the famine hit north Ethiopia, there was still plenty of grain in south Ethiopia. The farmers just couldn't afford to transport it or give it away for free. But when free US Aid grain flooded the markets, suddenly the south Ethiopian farmers couldn't sell their grain to anyone. You can't compete with a free product. So they went broke, many of them were forced to plant less the next year as a direct result, and the famine hit WORSE and lasted longer than it would have with no US grain at all.
Back in the USA, the farmers who sent the grain are making massive propaganda drives positioning themselves as great benefactors to humanity, even though they were fully paid for it by US public funds and actually make most of their profits off of Aid grain. Meanwhile, the political lobbyists they pay for are the ones who pushed the law making it illegal to buy Ethiopian grain with US aid funds. Not only that, they also got a law passed that made it legal for the US government to aid any industry that could be a competitor with an American industry - meaning that it was illegal for US aid programs to create any sort of sustainable programs that helped Ethiopian farmers produce more grain, or improve their distribution networks, if the US farmers could show this would make Ethiopians competitive with American products.
My argument isn't that charity is always bad. My argument is that corporations explicitly design charity to be bad. So any charity driven by corporate interests is immediately suspect. And Mr. Beast's channel has been one of the most blatant examples of corporate interests.
Furthermore, that book is written by someone influenced by a strong background in western economics who calls out the corruption of many African governments for its misuse of western aid, while calling for a solution that heavily relies on the same government to completely overhaul itself and egraciate itself in a capitalistic global economy whilst overcoming its own corruption.
I agree with that much - she comes out of the Goldman Sachs / World Bank circles, so her solutions veer way too far into the pro-growth / pro-capitalism side. But she's smart and her analysis of the history is honest.
I included a variety of different perspectives - liberal and conservative, Christian and secular, private and government - to show that this isn't some biased narrative. These books were written by grass roots activists both Christian and secular, World Bank economists, New York Times journalists, and university professors both Christian and secular. They come from very different perspectives, but they all agree that the status quo of charity is mostly self-serving bullshyt that doesn't actually help people.
So is MrBeast solving the root cause issue? No, and I don't think anyone here thinks he is. At best he's a useful idiot for corporations, at worst he's a narcissistic a$$hole who gets off on having a God complex. I think its more towards former, but either way, expecting him to solve complex geopolitical issues is asinine.
In this much we completely agree.
However, since he's incredibly influential, and since he openly admits that he's using his charitable efforts to position himself for a future presidential run, why should we just ignore his impact?
