$500/ticket at the show in Vancouver.
How much does she need to feel like that she won ?
To be completely fair, ticketmaster takes 90% of that in fees 🙃
It’s not a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be ultra wealthy,” it’s a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be unacceptably poor.”
If our civilization can generate wealth at an astronomical rate, then there is no morally defensible reason for anyone to be homeless, hungry, poorly educated, lacking medical care, drinking unsafe water, worked to death, or any of a number of other baseline metrics of civilization. All of those ills exist because wealth is funneled upwards at an unbelievable rate, leading to the existence of billionaires. All of that wealth should be used to raise everyone’s standard of living, rather than give a handful of people more power and luxury than ever appeared in Caligula’s wet dreams.
Of course the way that you accomplish that is by an exponentially progressive taxation system, and that will… probably make it impractical to be a billionaire, but frankly I think that focusing on helping the bottom end of the economic ladder is more productive than just talking about how it should be illegal to have more than a given amount of wealth.
It’s not a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be ultra wealthy,”
It kind of is. the more wealth someone has, the more power they have over other people’s life. They can buy laws and regulations, or have them removed. This is never a good thing. Billionaires simply must not exist. In fact, billionaires only exist because we have so many poor people. They profit from other people’s hard labour and misery. If it was not such a historically charged term, I would call them parasites.
frankly I think that focusing on helping the bottom end of the economic ladder is more productive than just talking about how it should be illegal to have more than a given amount of wealth.
Agreed. Generally easier to sell to the public, too.
That said, there’s also a bunch of stuff that wealth hoarding and extreme capitalism will still cause problems with, which isn’t directly tied to people living in extreme poverty. Climate change is just one example. Infrastructure is another. There are collective challenges that we can’t meet because of wealth disparity.
Maybe we just need to assign billionaires goals to achieve. “Hey, Elno, reduce world hunger sustainably over the next four years by 15% or we take all your money. Jeffy boy, you’re on housing; get us to zero homelessness before 2030, or we’re nationalizing Amazon. Oil execs, you get to tackle greenhouse gas emissions (I mean, you made the problem, you get to solve it). We’re replacing half of the gas stations in the US with fast charging stations, and we’ll sell off 1,000 a year to private owners; get us to net zero emissions and you get to have whichever of them the Federal Government still owns by that point. Whichever one of you chuckleheads gets done first gets all the other guys’ beach houses. And go!”
Ideally you would set the oil companies against the car companies. Electric cars are a bandaid on a bleeding stump. We need mass transportation and efficient cities rather than suburbs. Busses, trains, and efficient last mile solvers like bikes are the goal.
Yes. And also there’s no way to reasonably do that anytime soon; our infrastructure just can’t turn on that dime. Electric cars are the bridge, particularly when charged via renewables.
I’m still surprised that taxing the rich is such a difficult bill to pass. Assuming we live in a democracy, the 1% shouldn’t be able to have such sway over the population.
Lots of people don’t understand taxes and lots of others think they’ll end up rich someday and then it will affect them.
Citizens United and Regulatory Capture.
Might have something to do with almost all relevant politicians being in the 1%. Maybe. Possibly.
The rich have special access to the legislative machinery that the rest of us don’t. The end of real democracy in this country began with the Supreme Court’s “corporations are people / money is speech” rulings. Ordinary people can’t compete with the influence that billions of dollars of bribes brings.
To be fair
He did get the steam deck made, so that was kinda cool.
But maybe owning 6 yachts is a little less cool.
Unless the sub and boats were like research vessels he funds, that would be cool
But they aren’t.
Why can’t billionaires dump their money into funding scientific research? It’s not like there aren’t scientists out there with plenty of research to be done.
Or even maybe wherever he lives, he could like, fund the entire county school districts for the rest of existence and no one would have to worry about taxes.
Or maybe regularly cancel the medical debt of Valve employees and their families.
Like how fucking hard is it to redistribute your own wealth?
Like fucking Christ, that’s the part I don’t understand. They complain about taxes and shit at the top, but they do absolutely fuck all to make things better for large swaths of people. Or if they do, it’s after they die and $200m gets donated to a university and it prevents next year’s tuition from increasing.
I think part of it is the form that that wealth exists in. Not defending billionaires in any way, but they don’t have stacks of cash lying around. The way that they live is that their money is in various forms of equity that passively increase in value, like stocks and houses, which they take loans against in order to pay for things. Then, they take out more loans to pay off the previous and repeat until they die and the debt disappears due to legal loopholes.
Stuff like the yachts and all the other crazy expensive stuff is one thing, but to redistribute the wealth, it’s not as simple as handing out cash to everybody (and I think turning all their mansions into subsidized housing instead of selling them would be more beneficial anyway).
I think incentivizing them to do more useful things with that cash and disincentivize them from simply hoarding it in various forms would be a decent short-term solution to the issue without having to put in much effort on the government’s part, but I never expect to see that happen.
If they can leverage banks, and do all sorts of shit with their money (and debt) to make more money, then they can find ways to use it to benefit others.
Incentivizing giving it away is what we do now by providing tax benefits. We have seen the limitations of that.
I mean incentivizing them to invest it into things like public works and other beneficial things, but I also expect that that would go about as well as the current tax incentives do. It would be the thing that requires the least effort possible from the government, though, which I think makes it the most likely to actually occur. Actually taxing them more is pretty much a pipe dream.
This is misinformation. It takes 2 years proof of income to buy a house a bank bets you can afford. Billionaires have more flexibility, access and leverage than this with finances.
Yeah it’s like a sickness. They’re hoarders, but they hoard wealth. If I had over a billion dollars, I would literally not be able to give it away fast enough (I would leave myself with a cool $10 mil).
Which is one reason why I’ll never be one.
It is really hard to comprehend, seriously.
A guess I’ll venture is that the vast swaths of money are essential to retain influence, perhaps. The game stops being about money and starts being about power, and you lose your seat at the table unless you’re just hoarding stupid ridiculous amounts of money like the rest of the players.
I dunno, I used to think they do it because they’re terrified of slipping into having to actually work for a living instead of just making other people execute their maybe-good ideas. But that feels too simplistic for the uber rich, maybe it’s like that for the “petit-bourgoise” but not the mega-corp titans.
But yeah, they just couldn’t possibly spend themselves to a lower social class at this point, so there’s gotta be some weird motive at play. It boggles the rational mind. Like are Gaben’s 6 yahts “necessary” to wield influence at convenient locations and woo other industry titans? Dunno.
In any case, it’s stupid and wrong, I just wanna understand it.
Are you presenting him as an example of a good billionaire? Cause still, nah.
Guarantee we’re going to find out he’s a real dirt bag after everything is said and done he just keeps a tight circle.
I doubt it. It’s obvious from looking at Gabe that he hasn’t really changed who is he from before he made his money.
And his ethics at work with a flat hierarchy don’t scream over involved shitty boss.
Mind you by virtue of having all that money, he isn’t good, but I don’t think he is bad either.
It’s obvious from looking at Gabe
imo nothing is obvious about gabe. very little is known about him. we see what he wants us to see, nothing more.
We see how he runs Valve and how he interacts with customers. Both are pretty different to every other company. How many billionaires can you email to get help with low level account issues?
Oh fuck off dude, the guy is a billionaire that means anyone who makes a purchase on Steam is paying more than the games are worth because there’s a fucking leech at the top who wants to buy a seventh yacht.
paying more than the games are worth because there’s a fucking leech at the top
Where we at now…30% and probably climbing? Ugh.
They take their 30% cut, then the publisher takes another cut with another billionaire’s salary taken into consideration and then…
He’s greedy as fuck leech no argument.
But the dirt bag billionaires are the ones who it comes out allowed for a culture of fear, have sexual assault charges against them, power hungry manipulative fucks, etc. and I don’t see that coming out about Gabe.
They’re all dirtbags, the reason why people like you and me can barely afford to live comfortably is because of all the billionaires and multimillionaires. Just because they propose a nice product doesn’t mean they’re not responsible for much more harm than good.
To be a billionaire you need to be a dirt bag, it’s that simple.
It was not my intention, I edited my comment to make it clearer.
who the fuck is he and why does everyone know him by face?
i feel morally superior to all of yall who are star gazing all the time, fuck, why do you all know who he is
He is Gaben from steam. The picture is used a lot in article headers.
Look I love Gabe as much as anyone but nobody earns a billion dollars
Especially when steam could have a sliding scale for fees where developers with fewer sales could earn more profit from the sale which would greatly benefit the indie developers.
Instead it has the opposite structure where fees decrease as you sell many millions in revenue which has the opposite effect.
He owns 6 yachts! What a waste of money, resources, and imagination!
You can only be on and enjoy a yacht one at a time so the other 5 are just there while other human beings in the world suffer.
Pure greed
And the perfect counterpart is another rotund fuzzy tech guy, Steve Wozniak. The Woz, who isn’t a billionaire in part because when Steve Jobs decided to fuck over a bunch of Apple employees before the IPO Woz gave them some of his shares. Woz, who spends his time in part video chatting with elementary school classes and talking to them about technology.
What does Taylor spend money on? Since she’s still a billionaire I’m guessing she doesn’t give it all to charity.
Private jet rides for her friends.
As a swiftie, I can say you’re right. However, there’s also no such thing as a purely good or purely bad person, and liking a billionaire does not make someone good or bad. People, it turns out, are complex.
I can love Taylor’s music while also criticizing her for her excessive personal jet use and massive pollution problem.
I think if we stop making it a binary decision that more people will start opening up about changes need to make. In Taylor’s case, most Swifties would never dare say anything negative about her for fear of others in the fandom thinking they aren’t true fans, and vis versa, I’m sure people here will read this as I must support billionaires because I like her music. No, complex multifaceted opinions are valid.
I think we should abolish ICE vehicles. It doesn’t mean I think I need to yell at family members who pull up in their 02 Camry because they can’t afford to upgrade.
and liking a billionaire does not make someone good or bad.
Buddy we all make mistakes. Liking a billionaire is simply not good don’t try to hide yourself behind an excuse. The world has much better artists and music to offer.
So what as soon as a musician or artist hits a big enough line in the sand we all have to stop liking their music?
Musicians and artists are people who focus on music and art. Billionares are businessmen who focus on making money. As many others are highlighting in the thread a billion dollars is a ridiculous amount of money that you don’t simply hit, you have to seek profits above everything else and work your way up there.
I agree, but you said I need to stop listening to her. I disagree with that. I can still listen to her music and enjoy that while also at the very same time think that she is a billionaire who should be giving most of her wealth away.
I didn’t say you need to stop listening to her. I encouraged you to listen to the much better artists and music that the world has to offer.
That goes into opinion. I personally really like her music, I listen to a lot of others too, but I’m not going to stop listening to my favorite.
Hi fellow Swiftie! Thanks for sharing your thoughts 💃
Hello! If you aren’t aware we do have a community over at [email protected] if you’d like to join! Always happy to have more!
Disagree here. I’d argue being good and being a billionaire are mutually exclusive. You can be good before you are a billionaire (rare) but it’s not possible once you enter that class.
100% agree.
For anyone who may disagree, consider thinking of excess wealth as excess food.
If you were in a stadium full of people that represent all of humanity, and you have more food than you could ever even eat in multiple lifetimes are you not an evil person for not sharing with those who are literally starving to death?
These are people with the amount of wealth who could easily subsidize paying a team of people to plan out how to appropriate give away most of their wealth so they don’t have “excess food” by the time they die - and not have it impact their day to day lifestyle. Instead they let others starve.
These are people with the amount of wealth who could easily subsidize paying a team of people to plan out how to appropriate give away most of their wealth so they don’t have “excess food” by the time they die - and not have it impact their day to day lifestyle. Instead they let others starve.
Exactly. If we only had one or two billionaires do what they do in the Maya Rudolph show “Loot,” we could probably provide housing for every homeless person in America.
someone of her unique status cannot fly scheduled commercial flights without causing significant disruptions everywhere she travels to and from.
Pfff, yeah, sure. In my country the ex-president was stupidly popular, like 80% approval popular and 99% of the people knew him. He still traveled, always, in commercial flights, economic class, basically each weekend. Taylor Swift just doesn’t wanna deal with normies.
You need to be evil to accumulate billionaire levels of wealth, no one forces her to be they wealthy, she could give hundreds of millions to MSF and other reliable charities and still be richer than 99.999999% of people on earth.
Completely agree. Went to her show, lived it. She’s donated to every food bank in each city she’s stopped at, but I don’t think it’s nearly what she could be doing. She has “put an actual dent in climate change” money bomber gives a few thousand to food banks. Like I said, people can hold 2 opinions.
Shits a cult aye
I recently had this conversation with my sister who’s been a huge swiftie for years. Her reaction:
u and ur sister hella based 🙌
I just think that at $1BN net worth or whatever, you start getting taxed on 99.99% of everything you earn or gain in worth after that.
This way people still get stupid rich, and if someone ever has $10bn you can easily just sound the alarm then and there and say nope, fuck this guy.
The tax curve just just be exponential and it should be basically vertical at $1bn.
Along with some restriction to their wealth relating to where the money was earned, so they can’t just leave the country with it all.
10 million is fuck off money. We don’t need to go another 990 million dollars. Just set it to 10 million dollars.
I mean yes and no.
Yes, no one needs more than $10 million. But there are legitimate use cases for wealth far beyond that. Let’s imagine someone develops an immutable cryptocurrency tool that is used globally to track political spending and keep governments honest. Hypothetically, this tool revolutionizes transparency and unravels corruption on a massive scale. Shouldn’t the creator of something so transformative be allowed to enjoy significant wealth—enough to provide for their family, loved ones, and even those who helped them along the way?
That kind of lasting wealth—the kind that lets someone own $10 million estates worldwide, fully staffed, with taxes paid indefinitely—is realistically covered at $1 billion. It’s feasible at $100 million, but it’s not at $10 million. A $10 million cap is “personal freedom money,” but it’s not “dynasty money.” And while dynasty wealth can be problematic, it’s also worth acknowledging the good that such wealth has sometimes enabled.
I love it when athletes, for example, use their success to buy their parents a million-dollar home or fund life-changing initiatives. If we cap wealth at $10 million, it prevents figures like LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo (love or hate him), Serena Williams, David Beckham, or even Rob Dyrdek from reaching the level of wealth where they can fund truly transformative projects.
Allowing higher wealth ceilings enables people who do reinvest in society to make a broader impact. Sure, some of these incentives are tax-driven, but the outcome still benefits society.
I get that not everyone uses their wealth for good. But there’s a meaningful gap between a $10 million cap and a $1 billion cap where good things can and do happen.
Can we negotiate to $500 million as a compromise?
Can we negotiate to $500 million as a compromise?
As soon as all the homeless who want help get help then sure.
As soon as workers are paid fairly and not exploited.
As soon as people aren’t dying because they can’t afford life saving medicine.Look, the rich spend their excess money on stupid shit.
Like Gabe Newell owning 6 yachts.
Like that story of Kim Kardashian flying to Paris just for some cheesecake that she really likes.
Like Nic Cage spending millions on a T-Rex skeleton.All that money could have went to food banks or social programs.
So, rewarding inventors and company founders with excess wealth
doesn’t benefit society and it really doesn’t benefit them other than
their ego.Yeah I’m down with that concession.
Let me say fuck anyone really who can’t get here?
I’m allowing more than I am comfortable with on lyrical of argument.
500M is not only ridiculous but achievable given our agreement.
10 million is significant wealth that provides for family and loved ones. Unless maybe you’re the Duggar family.
The great thing about a 10 million dollar cap is it doesn’t prevent you from getting more money. You just have to shift money first. And if you can’t shift it fast enough then the IRS steps in to do it for you.
No compromise because you didn’t give any example where 10 million isn’t enough.
Up until the 70s or 80s I think, in the United States, the top tax bracket was 90%.
And lo and behold, the greatest period of prosperity in American history. In the 80s, Ronald Reagan cranks it all the way down to 25%. One two skip a few, now we live in a corpo hellstate where no one can afford anything except the nobility who live in a state of extravagant grandeur many exponents removed from the common man. The correlations are obvious.
High percentage high tax brackets are not the single cure-all silver bullet for all of America’s woes, but it gets us pretty damn close.
You could also argue there are no good millionaires by the same logic.
The existence of billionaires is a systemic problem, largely not a personal failing.
I’m not a swiftie, but the message here should be “We need better redistributive institutions” or “We need a new economic system”, not “Artist being an unexceptional artist (in terms of industry behavior) is BAD because she is one of the more successful ones”
You could also argue there are no good millionaires by the same logic.
Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!
Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!
Careful, the middle-class socialists on Lemmy who dream of owning a nice house will get mad.
But more pertinently, the argument can be applied to anyone as long as there is suffering in the world and unnecessary luxuries. And while I think most of us here agree that there is a structural issue with that, I’m far less fond of the idea that Joe Schmoe working a soul-crushing minimum-wage job should never do anything other than work, sleep, and donate every spare penny to charity because keeping or using wealth while others are suffering would make him a bad person.
I know you’re being a little facetious but you raise a good point. As you start talking about a net worth more like 5-10 million, there’s a lot more people in that class. I think then it’s more about things like, do you have one fairly nice house, or one nice house and a half dozen shitholes you rent out, or a couple nice houses that you move between? Are you a business owner who pays well in a field that is profitable or are you the proud owner of a handful of subway or McDonald’s locations?
It’s something that always hits me acutely. I grew up in a poor area, with a family from a different but equally poor area. The total net worth of the past three generations of my family, combined, at their peak and adjusted for inflation just for fun, from grandparents and great-uncles down to me, wouldn’t break a mil. Yet I also recognize that people can own a house worth a million or even two without being absurdly wealthy, or even more than just middle-class.
On one hand, when people start wringing hands and crying about their taxes going up on their million-dollar house, I get the emotional urge to sneer and spit at their feet. Poor babies! On the other hand, I do try to recognize also that all wealth is relative, and that we, as human beings, should not and cannot be judged solely on how we try to make our own way in this miserable world, but rather on how we interact with others. Even I am extraordinarily wealthy, as a disabled man who ekes out a below-poverty line existence in the US doing clerical work, compared to someone doing back-breaking labor to provide for their family in Mali.
The condemnation should not be when we buy a nice meal for ourselves, but when we refuse a loaf of bread to a beggar, sort of thinking. And above all, most non-ultra-wealthy people are not making decisions that explicitly hurt others for their own gain, nor even that deny help to others for their own convenience, but simply buying themselves little luxuries to forget the misery of existence. That’s… just how human beings work. And the solution is in structural reform, not condemnation of people for trying not to go crazy in a universe whose laws were not constructed to suit thinking beings.
Should billionaires exist? No, fuck no. But of the people who are billionaires, “I lucked out in a field I’m legitimately talented in, and it scaled to the tune of billions instead of the normal artist existence of ‘barely surviving’” is probably one of the least objectionable. In Swift’s place, most of us probably wouldn’t be much different. One can argue, and not incorrectly, that the activities of billionaires is disproportionately more damaging than us lowly thousandaires with a PC and a bicycle, but the fundamental principle of selfishness behind taking an uber for non-essential round-town travel and taking a private plane when a few well-planned train tickets would’ve done just fine is the same. We differ from THOSE billionaires not in nature, but in scale. It’s a scale that MUST be reduced for the survival of both the planet and the polity, but it doesn’t spring from some essential evil in the individual - unlike, say, some cunt jacking up the price of life-saving medication so they can buy a third yacht.
Ultimately, a billionaire like Swift is the rare creature who DOES perform legitimate labor, whose actions do not fundamentally come at an increased cost to people just trying to survive, and largely no more exploitative than any other musician or participant in the industry or wider economy (which is a condemnation of the industry and our economy, arguably, but neither here nor there), just one who has managed success on a more massive scale than her peers. She SHOULD be brought down to a reasonable level of wealth - but she’s not some demon who deserves the guillotine. Just massive asset seizure. She’s probably a pretty ordinary human being, as far as human beings go.
There’s also no good 100thousandaires because wealth accumulation is bad
Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!
Your failure to reply to an official party summons for comment during the last 3 hours has been noted. As such, we have determined that the proper procedure will be re-education.
All right kulac time to surrender your phone / PC. It’s a clear sign of your wealth hording.
If you don’t see the difference between me who owns a gaming PC and lives in an apartment and a multimillionaire that could have a gaming PC in every room of their house that’s way too big for their needs then you’re not worth engaging with.
My apologies comrade druge. I can see that the only moral abortion is your abortion. I did not realize I was addressing Stalin himself comrade.
If you follow your own line of logic, the mere fact that you have electricity puts you well above many people in developing countries, let alone the fact that you have a personal dwelling in which resides a personal electronic device to utilize that electricity. If you haven’t figured it out by me calling you a kulak yet you may want to look up what would qualify a peasant farmer as a kulak. Hint it would be anybody that is middle class. Sounds like you would be a passive kulak.
I think you missed the last part of my message so I’ll be blocking you now
Ta ta 👋
I think it is 100% realistic for Swift (and similar wealthy artists) to one day realize that her business model handed down to her is unethical and exploitative and take steps towards making amends. It’s mostly a matter of getting her exposed to the right conversations, either through public pressure or interpersonal relationships. Like how she started buying carbon offsets for her jets.
I also (naively?) hope/feel that there will be a domino effect. Once one massive touring artist starts making equitability moves for their staff, other artists might follow. Doesn’t even have to be Swift tbh, Coldplay or Bruno Mars or someone could set it off.
I mean, if memory serves the staff she actually employs herself is pretty well-compensated. The issue is that the industry as a whole is borked, and paying the staff of other fuckwads in the industry just means that those fuckwads start planning to stiff their employees by planning around the gratuity of successful artists.
Nothing less than structural reform will even dent the injustice of it.
Yes. It would be quite a task to do, and certainly couldn’t be done instantly or perfectly in short time. Nonetheless she and other artists should start trying. Coldplay is getting pretty based with their environmental stuff, they should work together or something.
A picture can express a thousand words, and leave out a billion others.
The statement about billionaires is true, but also the reasons that people end up living on the streets are extremely complex and I’m not sure this sort of thing helps us actually talk about the real problems.
For instance, a lot of homeless people in the US are foster children who aged out of the care system:
Nationwide, the data show that an estimated 50 percent of the homeless population spent time in foster care.
Money could maybe provide more resources to care for people, but the core issue here is that adults who were foster children lack the support of a family - which no amount of money can fix.
A more useful question to address homelessness would be “why do so many foster children struggle to become self-supporting adults, and what can we do to prevent that?”
Money could maybe provide more resources to care for people, but the core issue here is that adults who were foster children lack the support of a family - which no amount of money can fix.
billions in dollars taken from billionaires to help them for a few more years would absolutely help. maybe not all of them, but any that it does help would be well worth it. billionaires don’t need more than one yacht.
if the world weren’t so hostile to normal humans then not having the support of a family would not be as devastating
I’m not sure that I agree… a family is a lot more than a source of economic support. No amount of less hostile world can substitute for the social, cultural, educational or psychological functions of a family, and becoming a self-supporting adult has a lot to do with mental well-being (in addition to the economic aspects).
Maybe if there were less economic pressure overall there would be more functional families and ultimately fewer children in the foster care system… but that’s really just conjecture and I’m not sure how you’d go about trying to support such an argument with research.
I’m also curious how you define “hostile” and “normal humans” in this context.
Ok, so Taylor Swift seems to get the billionaire hate here. I’m wondering, when it comes to successful artists, what’s the opinion on Dolly. She’s not a billlionaire, but she is worth several hundred millions, so it’s close enough. She seems to be beloved by almost everyone.
Dolly gives free books to every kid, helped rebuild Gatlinburg after the fires, and is now helping rebuild East TN after the hurricane. Also, water is free at Dollywood.
She gets a pass, but she’ll still have to give up most of her wealth when the revolution comes.
You leave Dolly the fuck alone.
You hear.
My best friend is her cousin. He still hasn’t introduced me, and if she does before he does I’ll never forgive him.
That said, accumulation of wealth is bad, et cetera. But dolly is the absolute best of what that class can offer.
Taylor Swift is known very well for donating. She donates millions to food banks in every city she’s toured. She also donates on a lot of those gofundme fundraisers, one in which particular really moved her and she penned the song “Ronan”. An incredibly sad and tragic song that will make parents cry, knowing she’s singing about a baby that died despite medical complications, brought Ronan’s mom at some of her concerts, and of course donated to the cause. She regularly funds gofundme campaigns, so overall she seems like a pretty decent person.
I hate the use of her private jet and constant flights, but if you’re that big and hated by some people, then she can’t take regular airplanes because she can be assaulted and murdered. I wish there was some mega jumbo jet that was shared by the rich and did stops in certain cities, like as if it was “public transit” for the rich. That would be great because at least the uber wealthy would be a bit safer from being murdered that way while also certainly cutting down on significant emissions. I’d still hate it and want them to cut back more, but it would be no contest how beneficial sharing one jet versus 100 of them constantly flying everywhere would be. Some of these rich assholes fly insupplies from other countries, exotic food, etc. That pisses me off.
Taylor shouldn’t be a billionaire and I’d love for her to donate and help people out more than she’s already doing. Maybe one day people will see Swift is a bit better than other billionaires, having worked her ass off during the Eras Tour while also gifting millions of dollars to all the dancers and her staff that supported the concert. I went to her Eras tour concert with my spouse, and holy hell that was a phenomenal concert. She basically danced and sang constantly for the entire 3.5 hours or whatever. And she did that back to back for two years? Absolutely insane how much work that would take. I don’t think she gets enough credit, as I do love her music but she’s very hated for some reason.
Taylor should not have that much wealth. It’s insane. I hope she continues to give it away and donate even more than she’s already doing. Would love if she funded progressive parties and stuff like that, to give us more of a choice than the Democrats or the Pure Evil party. Maybe one day she’d be held in high regard like Dolly Parton, but let’s see. For now, I think she’s “one of the better billionaires”, but she shouldn’t be one. They shouldn’t have all the wealth.
Edit, made some slight corrections as I whipped this up on mobile.
Yeah I will agree I don’t think she’s spending all her time scheming on how to extract more and more wealth (her “stakeholders” likely are though)…there will be a natural point in “success” where it just keeps coming in by virtue of mass recognition, fandom, popularity, I don’t think that makes someone evil.
I’m not even a fan, she could probably be doing much better, but I think we need to make sure we direct our ire where it’s due, rather than being middle school kids who hate people just because they “got popular.”
There’s an entire class of folks who make their wealth directly off the backs of our misery, but I’m hesitant to demonize people just because they got popular or won the zipcode lottery.
Like I’d much rather depose our bosses than some random YouTuber that the algorithm blew up lol.
But that’s what scares me, the people are quickly reaching a point of becoming an indiscriminate mob. A direct consequence of the actions of the evil rich, surely, but mobs seem to direct their fury in a way where rhyme overrides reason.
The “elite” can stop this turn of events by changing course and humbling themselves, but that seems unlikely…
I like how part of the reason she got super successful is appealing heavily to the working class instead of pretending to be some monolithic impossible “you wish” standard of fame, money, and power, to self-destructively aspire to.
Dolly is based.
Billionaire: “So if they don’t exist anymore, I’m good? How many do I have to kill?”
But she’s a self made hard worker!
Sure the lowly paid worker cleaning the stadium she performs at is exploited and yes sure the factory worker sewing her next shirt is exploited, but Taylor earned her billions through her own hard work and she deserves it.
She would be the first to say she couldn’t do it alone. She massively over pays her staff. But she absolutely worked hard for it too.
Naw her music is over produced and follows the same formula the Beetles had. She had the money up front when creating the albums to have it tuned and mixed to sound better than it is. Also her songs all sound the same, bad.
Posting women as the targets is such easy pickings and it’s so fuckin lazy. Where’s the white guys? Why aren’t they the face of this, since they’re the hand choking the poor?
One could say that posting a man as a homeless is also ignoring countless homeless woman.
One of them just got shot, remember?
When your bank balance is higher than the GDP of a small country, gender is irrelevant.
You’re missing the point. The point is that people always defend TS because they like her but she is still a billionaire. You can’t just snap your fingers and turn this into a conversation about sexism because that’s not related to the point in the least.
You also can’t snap your fingers and take everyone off the street. Sure, you can pay for places and help, but people aren’t obliged to take it. Unless you’re arguing for forcing that situation?
I understand the argument is simply “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, but that’s a job for the government by way of taxation. There’s no reason to point fingers at TS, she sells something people want really bad for some reason. Instead, point your finger at any of your asshole friends who don’t vote or show up to help the cause.
Otherwise what? TS sucks because she’s disgustingly rich, and the only way out is to give it all away? And then of course all other billionaires will follow suit?
These posts really seem like nothing more than “it’s cathartic to yell at the sky, and it’s even better if some people like the sky”.
Man, sometimes people have a point even if other points exist. The point is that it’s a bad thing to ignore one example of badness because you want to. If you wanna paint this as a moral judgement of TS, ok fine, but my issue here isn’t so much with her but with people who want to have exceptions to their own moral code. And yes that moral code in this case is the job of the government.
Ok fair enough. That wasn’t my read of it.
As someone else pointed out a while ago, Dolly Parton isn’t a billionaire because she tirelessly gives away her wealth to the poor.
It’s not the same level, but there are other musicians who have fought to keep ticket price affordable for their fans, Minor Threat/Fugazi being the most notable but far from the only ones.
So… The endgame here is that billionaires CAN exist, but any of them who don’t give away their wealth are assholes? So are we all here on these posts just to peer pressure billionaires to give away money?
That’s certainly going to be a helpful approach.
Essentially yes. The ethical thing to do with that amount of money is to redistribute it to people that need it more. Whether that is by donation to charity, or raising wages and investing in worker protections in the company that you run, or funding schools and development in places that need them, or paying your fair share of taxes, emphasis here because most billionaires got that way by lobbying tax code in their favor - they’ve reached a level of net worth that genuinely boggles the mind and couldn’t be wasted in full in a dozen lifetimes if you tried to.
I’m fine with people being wealthy, keep a million in your bank account, hell keep ten million, I don’t care. But there needs to be a line somewhere. There needs to be a point where we can say, okay, well done, you have Won At Capitalism. Here is your medal. All further profits are taxed at 99% income. We cannot let individuals amass so much of the supply of money that the nation can no longer support itself, which is what’s happening. Money is the life blood of society and all that blood is being concentrated in particular spots, starving the rest of the body. Money needs to flow to create a healthy economy, but it’s stagnating.
I don’t fundamentally disagree with you. I would contend that the problem is not that billionaires exist, it’s that there is a legal path to becoming a billionaire.
This post is a combo shame of other poors like us who like a product generated by a billionaire and a yell at the sky because TS (and whoever the other person was) aren’t reading it anyway. You can be mad at billionaires who sit on their hoard and don’t give it to society for free, or we can all say enough is enough and make it a call to action to DO something. Like vote and participate in government for example.
Yeah and there probably is a gender cultural component to Dolly being so kind. But to the commenter I am responding to, I stand by what I said.
Let’s start with those that profit directly from human suffering.
Bread and circuses without bread and prohibitively expensive circuses brought to you by Ticketmaster.
So the entire Healthcare, agriculture, and processed food industries.
And obviously Ticketmaster.
Yeah for sure, but we can still plan for tomorrow.
Ask yourself how that billionaire was made first
The way every billionaire is made: ruthlessly exploiting the working class.
Not all of them. i wouldn’t call buying a concert ticket exploitation. Pricing them to astronomical heights, yeah. The only person responsible for parting with their moneys is the Self.
This comes up a lot. While Swift might not be able to control concert ticket prices as a whole, she certainly has the influence to make it better. She’s a literal billionaire with a very devout following.
If anyone could hold a concert at a non-ticketmaster venue, it’s her.
If anyone could pay her staff quintuple the going rate, it’s her.
If anyone could lobby cities that hold her concerts accountable for how they treat homeless people, it’s her.
I love Taylor Swift as much as the next person, but she has blood on her hands just like every billionaire. She may be one of the “good” ones but if anyone could afford to do better, it’s her.
And yet, you pay for her priviledge. Is your arm ever sore for the twisting of it?
And yet, you pay for her priviledge
??? dude who you talking to?
You, concert ticket buyer
Are you like a boomer that can’t understand you’re not talking to the same person with every comment? You know lemmy is the whole forum, not a user you’re replying to right?
Ruthless espolitation of the working class and then portected from said working class by armed guards (ploice) and their apparatchik (judical system) , paid for mostly by the working classes.
