this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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How does she represent a broken system? People, of their own free will, pay money to go to her concerts. Are you saying they shouldn’t be allowed to do that?
I get the issues around for example Amazon and its algorithmic price fixing and monopolistic behaviours, or with oil companies destroying the environment. But all this woman does is go around playing music that her fans love.
Her concerts aren't how she makes all her money, but even then her private jets are awful for the environment, and her band does not make anywhere near the money she makes.
She has merchandise, stocks, REIT, etc. All of those have their own baggage and unethical aspects. I'm so tired of you people treating her as an exception. Nobody can become a billionaire without exploiting the labor of vast amounts of other people, including Taylor Swift.
But even if you want to argue music, she's not a sole instrumentalist and producer. She has a production team. She uses session musicians. All of those people are exploited labor.
Of course her fans should get to see her perform. She should not be allowed to be a human Smaug, and accumulate inconceivable amounts of wealth because of it, especially when the system begets even "individual producers" to exploit the labor of swaths of other people.
Well, the communists who usually want to kill the billionaires would say "yes, they shouldn't be allowed to do that, because money shouldn't exist and she should be touring for free." They want to abolish money entirely and run the world off "the love of the game" alone.
To them, all voluntary transactions are inherently exploitative by virtue of "money," if it exists someone will have more than someone else and thus a hierarchy is born, whether they're actually exploitative in any other sense is of no consequence, simply having "more" than another in any capacity is enough.
McCarthy called. He wants his personal privately owned red scare back.
"Communists want to abolish money" is ridicolous. And the straw men of going from abolishing billionaires hoarding obscene wealth to "everyone should be doing everything "for free"" is the size that it could feed an entire farm.
Well if they don't want it they should stop saying they want it.
It’s easy to see how that falls down though. If everyone’s in it for the love of the game then lots of people are gonna want to be up on stage, like Taylor the superstar, not cleaning the outhouses like Bob the maintenance guy.
And people will say Bob is being exploited, of course, but Bob did choose to take that job. Of course Bob needs to eat and to pay rent and pay for health care and entertainment and to send his kids to university and all that. But let’s assume we take care of all those other things Bob needs the money for, would it still be exploitation if Bob was willing to accept some amount of money (less than what Taylor gets paid for the concert) to clean the outhouses?
I don’t think so, and I doubt Bob would either. I think he would be unhappy if his choice to accept payment for that job were taken away. I think Bob would say the job doesn’t bother him as much as other people and that he benefits from having a stronger stomach (or a weaker sense of smell) from everyone else. Just because we find the job intolerable and disgusting doesn’t mean Bob does. And that’s one of the limitations of empathy (which is so often brought up in these discussions).
Oh I know that, I'm not one of the "kill billionaires" guys, I've just unfortunately spoken to way too many of them over my 4y (or whatever) on this tankie refuge we call a reddit clone and that's what they say. They also say "well someone is going to want to clean the shitters for free because they'll smell otherwise" in response to what you said. They're mostly a collection of willful ignorance and hatred. But personally I can't imagine there's enough coprophiliacs out there to sustain an entire waste management industry.
Yes, they’re fueled by resentment and righteous indignation. They see the world as a terrible place and demand that it be fixed for them. They also take for granted all the ways in which the world sucks so much less now than it did for most of history.
Sure, but you can't just resent your way into the impossible becoming possible. Under no circumstances will "everyone just does what they love for free bro" ever pan out to anything more than a pipe dream. Until we get unlimited energy, food/stuff replicators, and are in a completely post-scarcity world anyway, which is just as much of a pipe dream at the moment. Just because they're angry about X, that doesn't excuse them for not thinking solution Y through fully, y'know?
Couldn't agree with you more though!
Of course we'll never see a world where "everyone just does what they love for free bro." However, that does not mean that we shouldn't demand a world where resources are not hoarded by the few. Too many have too little, and too many are without. There's no excuse for that. Yes, some of these people are misguided, but I have far more respect for them for questioning the current system than those who are fine with the way things are.
Yeah exactly, but even then there will still be scarcity of land. I’ve been a lifelong Trek fan and I’ve come to see all the holes in that universe. I think even the most diehard post scarcity believers understand that not everyone gets to be Captain Picard. But what about Picard’s family wine estate or even Sisko’s family restaurant? Not everyone gets one of those either.
The best we’ll manage is a tiny living quarters with a replicator and great public transit.
The economic system should not permit such extreme wealth accumulation. It is damaging to society.
But the question is: how? If you look at every other system that has been tried you see the same results or worse. Many systems just end up picking a different set of winners.
I’d like to try LVT because the arguments for it are pretty strong but you never know until you try it and see what happens. I’m far more concerned about mass homelessness and people struggling to afford rent than I am about billionaires. Unless of course those billionaires are corrupting the political system like Musk and Bezos are trying so hard to do.
But those issues are connected. Even billionaires who don’t go as far as Musk are still sucking up the political oxygen and disempowering marginalized people. They are buying up finite resources like land or prime real estate in city centers or media time and space.
I agree that the how is an important question but I think there are many options and it’s worth it to keep trying despite some past failures. Extremely high tax rates, decaying currencies or negative interest rates are some possibilities. Or just build an alternative free economy that doesn’t involve money. I’d like to try as many things as possible to see what works best.
Ah so you’re saying that it’s perfectly fine to have billionaires?
If you can’t see what is wrong with a system that creates billionaires then there isn’t much left to talk about.
I think the main difference is she is mostly a billionaire via her own productivity. Everyone else on the list got there because they are capitalizing on other peoples labour, doing little to no actual work themselves.
She still reaps the benefit of other people's work, but she is essentially still the product of her own labour.
No, not through her own productivity. At the start of her career, she had numerous song writers who were arguably exploited in that they are not getting a cut of her earnings. Even now, she doesn't play every instrument on a track. She has a whole team of producers. In concerts, she plays with a band. None of those people are making a fraction of the ludicrous money she's making for "her own product".
But beyond that, like the other commentator said, she has tons of staff of whom are exploited at a paycheck.
And beyond that, all of the merchandise she puts out employs many, many different exploited individuals to make.
Ah but she is capitalizing on other's labor, she 100% has employees in at least some fashion, be they housekeepers, pilots, tour bus drivers, shirt makers (probably literal sweat shops contracted out tbh), vinyl pressing plants, CD pressers, printers for the art for those, probably a roady or two to hump equipment of some sort, she is employing some people. Some of those are likely third parties who are in turn exploited by their boss capitalizing on their labor, making her a degree of separation from the exploitation in that case but still she benefits and profits directly off of their exploitation.
Just so you know, this is a textbook straw man fallacy.
Sounds like you need to look up the meaning behind what a strawman argument is because you’re way off.
You asked the question with specific emphasis that sets it up to be easy to argue against.
For example using the words 'perfectly fine' when you should very well understand from their previous statement that they don't think that to be the case, you exaggerated their stance in order to misrepresent it. This misrepresentation allows you to frame their position with a question that is easy to defeat instead of actually refuting their claim or answering their proposed question.
You also loaded the question, implying their position within your question and reducing their possible responses to extremes.
This is a high school debate club 101 straw man question, I was just letting you know, so hopefully in the future you can structure your arguments better.
For example, if I responded to you saying "so you think everyone who calls you out, just doesn't understand what a straw man is?"
It's exaggerating and purposefully misconstruing the point in order to ask a question that is easy to rebut.
And here's the definition: an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.
It’s a system where we’re free to give money to whoever we want in exchange for goods or services. Maybe you’d prefer a system where we all are forced to get the exact same thing!
How about a system where those who earn more pay their fare share of taxes? Eliminates the billionaires and still let's swiftys swift.
Unless you’re talking about a 100% tax rate beyond a certain point, then you’re still going to have billionaires (or whatever other arbitrary number you want to choose).
I personally think we should abolish all these complicated taxes and go with land value tax because the increase in the value of land is unearned wealth and the current system leads to gross inefficiency, not to mention tax loopholes.
There are a large variety of ways to tax the wealthy. I am no econimist and will not be able to tell you which is best. But honestly, if they are paying more than billions in taxes, then I am OK with them still being billionares.