Commentary from Auron MacIntyre:

Charity is not a universal value throughout history and the idea of giving to those outside your kin is mostly a Christian one. At one point charity was a very personal affair, you gave directly to those in need or to an organization to which you were an active participant like a church.

The gift was particular to your community and you knew the people it helped. As society scaled up and massified this work was mostly handed over to large bureaucratic institutions which were no longer accountable to specific individuals or communities. People who wanted to feel good about fulfilling the Christian impulse for charitable giving but could not be bothered to actually participate in a community with those in need could instead donate to a third party who would touch the unclean for them.

This separation between the giver, the organization, and the community it served introduced the principle-agent problem and made these organizations subject to Robert Conquest's second and third laws. Without direct individual or community accountability the power stored in these organizations both monetarily and in social credit was up for grabs.

The intermediaries managing these organizations became less and less interested in the stated purpose of the institutions and instead became obsessed with growing the power and size of the charity, which in turn increased their own power and importance.

The best way for these managers to grow their prestige and influence was to align themselves with the direction of the political zeitgeist. By linking themselves to the state, charities could become large beneficiaries of taxpayer funds when their allies were in power and havens for personnel and policy when their enemies won elections. These non-profits could also wield their power to circumvent constitutional restrictions on formal government branches. When their friends in government needed to push for censorship in social media but were restricted by the first amendment, they could instead funnel massive amounts of money into non-profits who would apply the pressure for them, all while maintaining the moral shield of charity.

Thus non-profit charities became an integral part of the regime while maintaining the moral and legal protections their status afforded. The artificial separation of the public and private sectors that has been erected in the American consciousness also allowed them to act as an arm of the state without constitutional restrictions. This is how the Total State is born. Managers assemble power across public and private institutions which they network to circumvent the ideas of limited government and checks and balances. The personal becomes the political because every private institution is in actuality a vehicle for tyrannical state power.

When you see Mackenzie Scott donate $640 million she is not giving it to the needy, she is giving it to the regime. She is pledging her support to the Total State.

Good problem to have

Correct take

Some folks might see sharing clips like this as a bit against the theme of the channel. "Mr. Daily Poor, I thought you were in favor of moderation. Surely, this individual is displaying the virtue of moderation by living in such a cramped abode. Is this not hypocritical? Are you not mocking their virtue?"

Ah, dear reader, you raise an interesting concern. If I were mocking a virtue, this would indeed be a grave error. But such a display is merely an appearance of virtue. They have mastered one pleasure, that of a large and luxurious home, but only because they are enslaved to the pleasures they obtain from city living.

See Socrates' discussion with Simmias in Plato's Phaedo for a short overview of this theme:

And, Simmias, does not what is called courage belong especially to men of this disposition?

Most certainly.

And the quality of moderation which even the majority call by that name, that is, not to get swept off one’s feet by one’s passions, but to treat them with disdain and orderliness, is this not suited only to those who most of all despise the body and live the life of philosophy?

Necessarily so, he said.

If you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange.

In what way, Socrates?

You know that they all consider death a great evil?

Definitely, he said.

And the brave among them face death, when they do, for fear of greater evils?

That is so.

Therefore, it is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.

It certainly is.

What of the moderate among them? Is their experience not similar? Is it licentiousness of a kind that makes them moderate? We say this is impossible, yet their experience of this simple-minded moderation turns out to be similar: they fear to be deprived of other pleasures which they desire, so they keep away from some pleasures because they are overcome by others. Now to be mastered by pleasure is what they call licentiousness, but what happens to them is that they master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others. This is like what we mentioned just now, that in some way it is a kind of licentiousness that has made them moderate.

That seems likely.

My good Simmias, I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that the only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom. With this we have real courage and moderation and justice and, in a word, true virtue, with wisdom, whether pleasures and fears and all such things be present or absent. When these are exchanged for one another in separation from wisdom, such virtue is only an illusory appearance of virtue; it is in fact fit for slaves, without soundness or truth, whereas, in truth, moderation and courage and justice are a purging away of all such things, and wisdom itself is a kind of cleansing or purification.