Let’s start with those that profit directly from human suffering.
So the entire Healthcare, agriculture, and processed food industries.
And obviously Ticketmaster.
Yeah for sure, but we can still plan for tomorrow.
Bread and circuses without bread and prohibitively expensive circuses brought to you by Ticketmaster.
Edit: I’m using him as an example of an other billionaire who is constantly defended even though he owns 6 mega yatchs and a few submarines costing him an estimated 75 to 100 million a year just in maintenance. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you presenting him as an example of a good billionaire? Cause still, nah.
It was not my intention, I edited my comment to make it clearer.
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.
To be a billionaire you need to be a dirt bag, it’s that simple.
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.
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.
Hi, Swiftie here 🙋♀️
There are no good billionaires. Taylor Swift is not a good person due to her business practices. I have no defense of her and I would never say “she is one of the good ones.” I and most of the Swiftie circles I run in wish that she would practice equitable compensation in her tours (where she gets the vast majority of her profit), among other areas.
Taylor Swift is a capitalist, and that’s bad. There are thousands of artists and laborers being exploited by her every performance. All those laborers, stage hands, designers, arena staff, etc should have a say in how the massive revenue generated is distributed, and they do not get that say. That is bad.
As a majority male space, Lemmy has a tendency to slide a bit toward dunking on women and majority women’s spaces because you may not be aware that many leftist Swifties are just as critical of Swift as other billionaires. This post is a good example of that. (If you feel bad or called out by this, don’t stress it. I just want to gently course correct the conversation a tad 🙂)
I appreciate you posting this, it was actually unexpected to see to me and was nice to know.
i appreciate you leaving the feedback! sometimes i feel like what i say lands on deaf ears so it’s reassuring that my experience can actually get out there :) cheers
I’m not a swiftie, and I’m male, so take my words as you will in that context.
Simply: IMO, it is possible to appreciate someones artistry while disliking their personal value system and actions.
Just because someone is a good artist, does not and should not imply that they are good.
Both liking someone’s music and disliking their decisions as a person, can both be true. I hate the plethora of false dichotomy arguments that you can’t appreciate music made by a person if that person is considered a bad person. One does not mean the other cannot be true.
based
I do agree with separating the artist from the art, but I also understand choosing to not support people whose values you disagree with. Because your money will end up being used to support those values.
So yes, I won’t say that I don’t like certain songs/books/paintings/etc. because of the artist, but I can refuse to pay for them or other related merchandise.
That’s fair. You can like something but refuse to support it.
I’m mainly taking issue with anyone who says that if you don’t like the artist, you can’t appreciate the art. I’ve heard it a few times (or some variation of it), and IMO, that’s far too common already.
false dichotomy arguments that you can’t appreciate music made by a person if that person is considered a bad person
For me this is more about making someone more popular and making them profits by listening to their music. And then there’s also a possibility that someone is considered a bad person for their views that are also displayed in their music, then I consider that I might start viewing their opinion as the norm, and also prefer not to listen to them.
All in all, I agree that the dichotomy is false, but I think it has some sense in some cases.
There’s definitely logic behind wanting to boycott their art so that you are not indirectly supporting their decisions by giving them the money to continue to do the things that they’re doing.
Of course, that is also a separate decision from whether you like the art or whether you like the artist.
Anyone trying to tie these things together is generally not someone I would want to associate with.
Oh, yeah, I kinda mixed together liking and supporting in the ‘appreciate’.
Wow, I could never listen to her, but thanks for a Swiftie with a reasonable take on this.
to reiterate: i’m not alone :) my positions mirror a ton of other swifties’ (obviously not all, but you do what you can)—they just have limited representation on lemmy due to gender and vibes
Why keep giving her attention? Why label yourself as a “Swiftie”? Why continue to consume her media? Are there no other artists?
once you’re a part of a cult of personality, it’s hard enough to become self aware of the fact, let alone to break free.
Why do you pay for gas? The world is ending due to fossil fuels.
If you do, why do you buy bottled water or cheap supermarket chocolate? Communities are being deprived and destroyed by companies like Nestle.
If you do, why do you own a laptop/phone? When it breaks, why do you plan to get a new one? That technology was developed off the backs of child labor.
If you pay for Spotify or similar, do you realize that those platforms often exploit and underpay the very artists you enjoy, ethical artists or not?
If you’re an American who pays taxes, some of that money has gone to fund a genocide and decades of warmongering. Maybe you should give up paying taxes…
Much to think about! 🙂
Yep, of all the billionaires, there are so many more men to choose from. So. Many.
I feel the reason she is being used as an example isn’t because she’s a female billionaire, but because she is a billionaire who receives adoration. The meme points out that even the “good ones” shouldn’t be billionaires.
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I think the difference is that Swift is in right now.
You mean like Bruce Springsteen? Michael Jordan? Cristiano Ronaldo?
Yes all very current names lol.
and how many of them have such a large cult of personality? it must be nice, to be able to use gender as a shield from any sort of criticism.
Brava!
How do you reconcile the understanding of her not being a good person and doing harm to the world with being a Swiftie? That’s a genuine question, I find identifying with the group supporting or admiring the person or idea I myself am opposed to on the ideological level hard to imagine. I can understand it being the case if one is defending the lesser evil, as they are coerced to do so by implied existence of the greater evil, but while I’m not well versed in the Swift lore I believe there isn’t any evil twin running around that she needs to stop. Unless.
That’s not an attack, I believe that being a Swiftie might mean something else than what I understand by this term and I am making a fool out of myself. Still, it does seem to mean supporting what you’re opposed to. How do you resolve that contradiction?
Thanks for your question! It’s a good one.
Short answer: I don’t
Long answer: @[email protected] explains it super well so I won’t rewrite their excellent comment: https://lemmy.cafe/post/10463918/8811775
Parallel example but chronically fandom answer: Swift has also made a lot of really shitty decisions regarding relationships that I strongly dislike, including dating freak weirdo misogynist Matty Healy. 🫤 I don’t think we could ever be friends, or whatever, because of these flaws to her character. I don’t try to reconcile her flaws at all. I just like most of her music a lot and keep myself honest about the rest of it. 🤷♀️
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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.
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.
Might have something to do with almost all relevant politicians being in the 1%. Maybe. Possibly.
Lots of people don’t understand taxes and lots of others think they’ll end up rich someday and then it will affect them.
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.
Citizens United and Regulatory Capture.
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.
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.
You need to be evil to accumulate billionaire levels of wealth, no one forces her to be that 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, loved 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 bur instead gives a few thousand to food banks. Like I said, people can hold 2 opinions.
I recently had this conversation with my sister who’s been a huge swiftie for years. Her reaction:
u and ur sister hella based 🙌
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.
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!
Shits a cult aye
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.
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You throw out large amounts of table scraps and leftovers daily.
But of course you make sure to poison them so the dog can’t eat it
You decide not to feed it because it’s not your dog - it’s not your problem. But your whole house is completely stocked with food. You throw out large amounts of table scraps and leftovers daily.
How many people would consider that to be evil?
Internally the person can justify his actions “You feed a stray dog one time, it will nag you forever, maybe call up his buddies because there is free food, and now suddenly you have a pack of stray dogs on your farm that are causing all sorts of trouble”. Such nuances are always present(I will stop with the dog analogy, because your original example and my addendum, dehumanizes people in need to dogs). but such is the harsh reality, that often arises with a direct personal transfer of wealth, people tend to form a dependency on the table scraps and those that provide them(even though they are losing literally nothing) resent it.
The solution you may ask to greedy billionaires and hungry homeless people, SOCIETAL or GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION, think about it, its the failure of whoever the fuck is in charge that a select few of their citizens have exploited the system so well that their wastage is equivalent to the GDP of a small country, and similarly there are many people that only dream of a roof over their heads!!
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It’s nice to say no, but across history there have been so so many societies that have allowed exactly that at similar scales.
I totally agree, but also the pop star billionaires are the least offensive type. If you’re targeting them before the other billionaires, you got played and are doing it wrong. The richest most politically powerful billionaires are the biggest threat to freedom.
strat is to target all billionaires equally
^ This right here.
I’m so tired of “leftists” focusing on inoffensive targets in the middle of the spectrum when the real problem is far to the right of it.
To me this is the silliest possible counter propaganda. They want to get people fired up about a super popular billionaire that actually works really hard and over pays her people. So then they can paint a picture of radicals who’d have everyone living in the slums no matter what they were able to do with their talents. They won’t even wait to see the real responses. They’ll put their own in, grab the screen cap and deride us all as anarchists.
See that picture of the homeless man on top? Bill Gates has literally saved hundreds of thousands of men like him through his charitable foundations. It depends on the person not the size of the bank account.
You know what would help them?
A house.
That wouldn’t help, as they wouldn’t have the means to furnish it or maintain it or pay the taxes on it. What they need is medical care for the sizeable portion that have mental illness keeping them down. And all of them need an economic system that doesn’t let hard luck cases get thrown under the bus.
You wouldn’t believe how many of them have jobs and just need a house. It’s the majority actually.
Right. Bill Gates is horribly evil and rich, and like many people in his shoes, he decided to be a philanthropist to fix his image. What if millions of other people had gotten that money instead of him? What if Windows hadn’t been monopolistic? What kind of world would we be in today? A better one, most likely.
Agreed. Any downvotes you got/get are simple shills of the mindsets “rich people bad” and “Windows bad”, both of which are very prevalent here. Multiple people here (not all) throwing those downvotes around would be doing the same shit if they were billionaires, or worse.
Wish we could all be like Pepe.
Idk, when you move from normal wealth to exorbitant wealth AND you’re a international pop star who very clearly has THOUSANDS of workers supporting each show it seems kinda hard to ignore the people who’s work is providing your stage to excess.
They all are a symptom of the same disease, some of them are the disease as well.
Pop stars are just the pretty faces in front of the behemoths that are the music labels. These labels are absolutely very politically powerful. Do you think Taylor Swift for rich by paying her staff fair salaries? The cleaning people from the concert venues, the bartenders, the people taking your tickets, etc, they all earned little crumbs while Swift, the venue, and the label made the big bucks.
No one becomes a billionaire by paying fair wages.
Most of those people work for the venue though, the performer doesn’t control their wages.
Taylor Swift has the power to demand basically anything from the venue.
Taylor Swift has the power to demand basically anything from the venue.
Expecting a performer to go to lengths like that just isn’t realistic, they’ve got their own job to do.
You can say the same about mega corp CEOs. Poor them, they are so busy with their own job.
Those billionaires are being propped by stupid people buying exorbitant ticket prices to see their idols dancing from a mile a way. I blame the populace for this. you can make them irrelevant without even spending a penny.
As someone in the entertainment business, those performers don’t like ticket master either. Or at least on the level I am at.
I guess that’s the difference between me and Taylor Swift.
TM decimates every show i am involved in
Basically the only way for a professional touring musician except those like her at the top to make money is to sell merchandise at this point. Either that or play small clubs which don’t use Ticketmaster and get a small take of the door. It’s ludicrous that so many very talented people can’t make a living as musicians anymore.
This being said on the same platform that basically every third person believes voters aren’t responsible for their votes.
We can always assume people will be stupid, so I don’t think they’re gonna all stop wasting their money. Even if half of them did TS would still be a billionaire
If every single one of Taylor Swift’s concerts were free, past, present, and future, she’d still probably be a billionaire. Artists don’t really make that much on ticket sales, the ticket vendors and venues are the ones making all the money. Swift’s net worth mostly comes from the value of the rights to her songs, not ticket sales.
I think you would be right in a lot of cases but does that apply when you routinely sell out these extremely expensive shows like are being discussed here?
Taylor Swift probably has it better than most artists, considering she’s probably the most famous music artist on the planet right now, and even if you only make a small percentage off of ticket sales, a small percentage of an astronomical number is still a big number. I’d still be willing to bet the bulk of her net worth is in the rights to her music though.
In the face of exploitative capital, blaming the consumer is on the same tier of nonsensical rhetoric as victim blaming.
It’s not the fault of people buying bottled water for Nestle’s human rights violations, nor is it the fans’ fault that Swift’s business model is exploitative and nonethical.
You are telling me you can’t live without going to a Taylor Swift concert. Capitalism is the origin of many pains, but this one isn’t one of them.
I am not telling you that. Blocked :)
As an INTJ I also don’t like most people, because as you said people are stupid
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.
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.
It’s a start for sure. Just think of the windfall of cash that could be funneled to the DoD! Think of how much money could be unaccounted for during the audits.
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?
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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.
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.
There may not be good ones, but like everything there are different grades.
Someone who became a billionaire selling weapons to conflict zones after pushing them into conflict is a lot worse than an artist that is popular and actually works for their riches.
If you have billions there are no excuses, dont defend this shit.
That person was already evil before they became a billionaire.
The amount of evilness from being a billionaire, separate from how they got there, is approximately the same for both of them.
Nobody “works for” a billion dollars.
Yeah, and every day they don’t give back and horde more than they could ever spend, the more evil they are.
Getting some Pol Pot vibes from this. Ideology can lead to some really weird conclusions.
Somone like Taylor Swift isn’t destroying people’s lives and she’s not overworking other people to make that money.
Sure she has too much money, but that can be solved by having more sensible tax policies. Show me where she’s bribing congress and donating to the GOP to keep her taxes low.
These kinds of memes only exist to prove how edgy people are but they don’t accomplish anything. Saying “I’m so hardcore I even hate the billionaires people like” doesn’t do anything other than push people away from whatever movement you claim to support.
But congratulations, you’re the edgiest socialist edge lord on the internet. That sound you hear is the Swifties (who might otherwise care about the issues you care about) heading towards the door.
People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump divide people so they don’t think about what they’re doing. You’re helping them.
bvbv
and don’t stop to help and the person would have lived if you stopped but instead that person dies then yes, you are evil
Also that’s actually a crime in many places. Well here in Finland at least. You have a duty to render aid if no-one else is there. Obviously you can just drive by an accident if someone is already helping but if there’s no-one else around, you’re required to stop to help, by law.
Ahhh yes. Celebrities can just magically end world hunger and stop world suffering
No, they can’t. They’re just the canary in the coalmine, so to speak.
The point isn’t “Taylor Swift is immoral”. The point is “the system is immoral and the evidence for it can be seen by looking at, for instance, Taylor Swift.”
Being against billionaires doesn’t mean one is genocidal ffs.
People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump divide people so they don’t think about what they’re doing. You’re helping them.
No U, bootlicker.
“Kill all billionaires” isn’t a genocidal statement, since it’s not based on genetics, language, or culture.
I think it’s a bad plan, but we shouldn’t conflate genocide with mere mass murderous intent. (Also, “all billionaires” is only like 10k people at most, so it would be a very small mass murder compared to most genocides.)
If people criticizing your favorite celebrity makes you stop caring about social issues, then you never really cared about those issues in the first place to begin with.
The only smart guy in this thread⏫
These kinds of memes only exist to prove how edgy people are but they don’t accomplish anything. Saying “I’m so hardcore I even hate the billionaires people like” doesn’t do anything other than push people away from whatever movement you claim to support.
So true. Learn from the edgy George Floyd protests and the Palestine protests, which at best accomplished nothing and more likely played a key role in cutting off formerly-rising popular support for the causes they were advocating. Being edgy feels good to the person doing it, but it makes everyone else say “fuck that guy and whatever they’re in favor of.” Be smart not angry.
These meme would be far more effective if it didn’t have the bottom picture at all.
lol at “rational lib”
Such a normie reaction. I just wanna differentiate myself from all the NPCs who have let ideology replace their reasoning capabilities, as well as “rational centrists” who consider conceding to irrational Republican arguments to be a form of rationalty. If I’ve said something irrational, you can feel free to call me out on it. My username is an invitation to do just that.
“I’m a rational person, and as a rational person I think it’s normal to dismiss people with opinions I don’t like as unthinking automations because it’s impossible for me to consider that someone else might legitimately disagree with me.”
Except I am careful with this. It would be a valid criticism if the opinion I don’t like wasn’t “lol at rational lib”. That is fairly described as an NPC opinion, unless you care to help justify it as something deeper. Rationality is not concession, bad opinions should be called out as such. And by the way, it’s not just people I disagree with - after all, this whole thread is me criticizing people who agree with me that billionaire wealth is out of control for choosing shitty argument tactics.
The only people who use the term “NPC” or “normie” are those who realize they aren’t special, and detest that fact. That you’ve used those terms, and have called yourself “rational lib”, tells me you’re male, lonely, and dealing with subconscious feelings of inadequacy that you can only deal with by dehumanizing other people.
I’m sorry I made fun of you, and I hope you end up getting help.
Don’t be sorry, be self-aware. You can look up my comment history, I don’t use this kind of language with everyone, but when in Trollistan, I speak troll.
As far as the Dr. Phil stuff, you’re describing a typical Lemmy user. Of course I’m male, only had about 98% odds with that one. Am I lonely? Occasionally, but less than most. Not that there’s anything wrong with being lonely, which is a very common emotion even among popular people. Subconscious feelings of inadequacy are references to psychoanalytic concepts that have long since been debunked. Dehumanizing? Quite the opposite. I’m trying to persuade the online masses to free themselves from the automated thought process of ideology.
“I’m very careful about who I dehumanize so it’s okay.”
That is fairly described as an NPC opinion
bad opinions should be called out as such
The who pronoun is entirely inappropriate here
Which world do you live in? People voted for Donald Trump, a guy who wanted to shoot BLM protestors and says he’ll let Israel do whatever they want.
The edgelord bullshit only makes you popular with people that agree with you. It has demonstrably failed to bring people to the causes you care about.
I think the person you are replying to agrees with you
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Looks like your stats are a bit out of date, Swift is in first place again: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/10/08/taylor-swift-becomes-worlds-richest-female-musician-heres-who-is-right-behind-her/
But you bring up a poignant point. Maybe some of it is because of the whole jet thing from some months ago, those discussions were really raging on here and so it’s probably echoing forward.
People have been hating Swift for decades now. They were hating her for writing too many relationship-related songs even before the American left revived.
She’s an easy target because her target demographic is teenage girls, and anything / anyone beloved by teenage girls MUST necessarily be gay and worthless.
See also: Justin Bieber, the Backstreet Boys, and the Jonas Brothers.
I highly suspect people joined the left and transferred their hatred from, “Taylor Swift the musician for stupid, hysterical girls, who I hate” to, “Taylor Swift, the billionaire,” without once examining the lens through which they first started hating her. And now she gets more “anti-billionaire” hate than Jeff Bezos?
It bothers me.
Misogyny is a tool of capitalism, and to quote Lorde: the tools of the master will never dismantle the master’s house. No one is destroying capitalism by weirdly fixating on Taylor Swift and her fans “because she’s a billionaire” while criticizing her more than basically all other billionaires.
I look forward to the day I see a leftist meme reminding me “you can’t love Bruce Springsteen (1.1b) or Jay-Z (2.5b) and still be a leftist.”
Until then, I’m not taking lectures on leftism from people who haven’t deconstructed their own feelings of hatred and superiority towards teenage girls.
Edit: I hope I didn’t come across as angry at you in particular. You don’t seem to be joining in the hypocritical, unnuanced hate.
I made a post about this a while ago! (edit: okay it’s not about this per se but relevant, inspired by Contrapoints’ video about JK Rowling.)
https://lemmy.cafe/post/3014506
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I’m glad you got a good upvote:downvote ratio for that post. It’s encouraging to know that people are at least willing to listen to a reasonable take on Taylor Swift.
thanks! i actually forgot how successful it was! to be fair, that was back when blahaj zone didn’t federate downvotes so the ratio must be taken with a grain of salt :)
They both got rich and famous with pop music, but Rihanna started making BANK when she made makeup for women of color. Crazy idea right? She noticed a hole in the market and filled it. That’s not talked about as much as entertaining us musically, so Swift is normally brought up before Rihanna. Swift has been touring more recently as well.
Paul McCartney catching strays out here… If anyone should be allowed to live a life of luxury, it’s the surviving members of the fucking Beatles…
Jokes aside, I do see a difference between people who became wealthy through art, than through straight capitalism. It’s still gross, it still shouldn’t exist, it is still a form of capitalism and exploitation, etc. etc., but there are levels to this.
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I was being a bit facetious, I agree with everything you’re saying.
“What about…?”
Weird, I feel like there’s a word for this. 🙄
I wouldn’t call her a good billionaire, but I think she’s as benign as billionaires get. At least she does things like pay her employees a good wage and gets people involved in the political process.
And, as far as I know, she isn’t responsible for anyone’s deaths.
I’m sure she still stepped on a lot of necks up the pyramid, but compared to a shit ton of other billionaires out there…
Billionaires can’t be benign. It’s impossible to make a billion dollars in a lifetime without taking more than you deserve. Someone overpaid for the product or someone was underpaid for the work (probably both). Billionaires prey on that loss, and it’s not as if they are Robin Hood giving back to the poor. If that’s not malignant, I don’t know what is.
“As benign as billionaires get” and “benign” are not the same thing. See also the “I’m sure she still stepped on a lot of necks up the pyramid” part.
Why do you think I said benign and not what I actually said?
I wasn’t arguing with you. I was supporting you. Weird of you to assume the worst?
Weird of you to assume the worst?
Welcome to the internet. First time?
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I’d settle for “less bad”. If Musk is a 10/10, she’s an easy 4/10, with the ranking based entirely on arbitrary numbers and few actual facts.
The thing with TS is that she is not supposed to be like other billionaires. Other billionaires, most of them, have a different motivation, this is, to make more money. They are supposed to be entrepreneurs but at that level they are more like gamblers. TS is supposed to be an artist and her motivation is supposed to provoke a reaction in people’s emotions through her craft, which is making songs. Hell, at this point she could be singing and composing for free and giving away money. She could just license her next album to some cause, like fighting against cancer, and just let them use the gainings to fight cancer. That’s why I don’t even give her words my attention. She demonstrated that her motivation seems to become richer and richer. As any other billionaire she has all the attention she wants and more, because in the end she is like any other billionaire, a hoarder forgetting about the importance of other people’s lives.
You are not talking to someone who thinks there is such a thing as a good billionaire.
No, I know. I guess, instead of replying I was using your comment to reflect on the idea of the billionaire-artist.
I don’t disagree.
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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!
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 👋
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.
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.
