I feel like part of the author’s point was that the well-digging thing is a long and tired example of attention-hungry rich outsiders prancing in to “fix things” and not caring about (or considering) the long-term consequences of their ideas. Even the really good development organizations are constantly learning lessons about unintended second- and third-order consequences: it’s particularly cynical, then, to make a spectacle out of doing the naive thing that seems obvious but that we already know doesn’t really work well.

Doing something pointless with your lavish resources is insulting when, with the same resources and the humility to study what works and ask for good advice, you (or the local population) could instead have done something sustainable. It’s putting your ego and your public profile ahead of the very real material needs whose egregiousness you’re profiting from.

It’s bad enough when it’s nonprofits just making their (sometimes lavish) salaries off the pointlessness. In this case, the man has made a career out of directly turning people’s disability and economic disadvantage and suffering into his primary product that he profits from. His $750-million company got that way entirely by exploiting people’s misery for views and profit. By selling the idea that the problems aren’t all that real, that all it takes is a rich dude with a magic wand and some righteousness. “Fixing” 100 people’s problems and pretending you fixed a society’s worth.

And his little treatise that leaked a few weeks back makes his logic explicit: do the minimum to sound flashy.

> He argues that it is far cheaper and funnier to offer a prize of five packs of Doritos a day instead of $20,000. Then one section asks “What is the goal of our content” before replying “the goal of our content is to excite me”.

At least an evil capitalist WellCorp, Inc. would have to dig wells that keep working after the camera crew leaves, if it wanted to stay in business for very long!