No ethical billionaires. Nobody comes by that much money honestly.
While I don’t think it’s true, I could accept the idea that it were possible to make that much money ethically. However, having that much and not doing good with it? To me that’s the bigger evil. Billionaires should be extincting themselves.
Entertainers could be an exception to the evil billionaire rule, but even Swift was doing things like renting out her jet, and her shows have a huge carbon footprint as well.
If she were paying for the pollution, the profit margins wouldn’t be so high.
Also we just need to tax most of the income over $1 million a year. Like we did before the 80s greed is good bullshit started.
Also there’s the whole “stealing the surplus labor” of the many people she employs thing.
Like this, it should just be harder by the mechanics of the game to just keep amassing dollars. Sure, you can have massively successful concerts and live an amazing life. Just pay for them in what it actually costs to society.
Here’s a quick and simple example of how much $1 million ($1,000,000,000,) is compared to $1 billion ($1,000,000,000,000.)
1 million seconds equals 11.57 days. 1 billion seconds equals 31.71 years. Days v.s. YEARS!
The different between one million and one billion is about a billion
Nobody earns a billion dollars. Imagine it’s October 12, 1492. One of your ancestors is so excited about Columbus landing in America, that he starts putting aside the equivalent of 5000 dollars every single day. And through good fortune, every heir continues to do the same. 5000 dollars added to a pile every single day for over 530 years. 5000 dollars is more than most people make in a month and it accrues every. single. day. There is no interest on the money, but at the same time there are no taxes and nobody spends it on frivolous stuff like food or shelter or education or healthcare. And now, after more than 531 years you inherit it all and realize you’re not a billionaire. I know it’s an unrealistic thought experiment, but to me it shows that no billionaire ever earned their money.
You’re really close to $1B. I’m not actually sure what is thought provoking about this.
I also don’t know why it doesn’t show that a billionaire hasn’t earned their money. If Taylor Swift gets 10 million people to pay her $150 to go to her concerts in her life time, and her expenses are $50 per show, is she not a billionaire that earned $1B?
10 million tickets is only 400 shows if she’s filling 25k seat arenas.
None of this is actual math, but it’s not insane to me that someone could earn a billion dollars.
What is insane is that someone would sit on a billion dollars like a dragon on their pile of gold.
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Yeah, I think if we had hyperinflation, you’d see the scaling back of the “there are no ethical billionaires” umbrella shorthand that sort of simultaneously gestures towards and obfuscates the rent-seeking behavior and owning of capital that’s really being lambasted in that statement. Regardless of whether or not the speaker knows it, the speaker might just be spouting shit. We’d probably see “there are no ethical hundred-billionaires” or something instead, anyways. It’s just a kind of oversimplification, common to like every stupid slogan in which we are condemned to do all political discourse, compounded by people taking everything hyper-literally and uncritically reading everything as though their own set of definitions is the absolute merriam webster set.
I dunno, I wonder if that’s just the kind of horribly stupid strategy that social media has foisted upon everyone, with character limits and short-form content. And then character limits means that everyone can browse through a much broader pool of stupidity at once, absorbing all of it, understanding none of it, and then regurgitating it into whatever new form will reach as many people as possible by the same token.
I think ever having that money, unless it’s just shit into your lap for some reason, precludes you from being the kind of person who can do that good. It takes a level of cutthroat and a degree of psychopathy to accumulate that much wealth in a single lifetime. So in essence, having and making that much are both fucked.
Bill Gates is probably the better billionaire of the bunch, but I can’t tell if he’s against the anti-billionaire tax policies because it would take away his privilege or if he believes he does more good with the money providing medicine in Africa than the government would do with it. Depending on his answer he’s just as bad as the rest of them.
He’s evil with billionaire PR and he actually wants to be thought well of. Don’t be fooled.
There can also be flawed but not evil billionaires.
He’s helped more people in impoverished nations than any other person I know of to have ever walked the earth. It’s estimated his charity programs saved 122 Million lives directly with medications, antibiotics, and vaccines. That is in addition to the indirect help from creating herd immunity and eradicating diseases in places that otherwise had no chance of controlling outbreaks. He’s been promoting CEPI and funding pandemic response efforts since the Mers and Sars outbreaks in the Middle East and further over a decade ago.
If it were discovered he butchered 15 people in his basement he would still be the best billionaire by a long stretch.
What if the actual crimes are even worse? What about the impacts of his company, his all-consuming brand? How many people have been killed as a result of the business practices that one HAS to employ in order to acquire that absurd level of wealth?
The real danger with billionaires isn’t them directly. They’re usually not so bloodthirsty as to directly kill people. That’s bad for the bottom line. But the simple fact is that getting to that point in the first place necessitates some fucked up shit happening, and at best donating all of his wealth may even the scales.
Not only is Microsoft not the monopoly that it is in the timeline where they obtained Apple and fought against Linux, but they also have very little negative impacts as a whole compared to larger hardware manufacturers. The majority of their income is from Office, Azure Servers, and Linkedin while minor contributions would be Gaming at 8% and Advertisement at 6%.
I absolutely support laws and systems that prevent Billionaires from ever forming to begin with, but the conversation I was having was that among all the Billionaires I think Bill Gates is top contender for good person status. I am also very apprehensive to right wing anti-Gates conspiracies because they’re very likely fueled by racists who don’t want to see him doing good things for impoverished in Africa, the Middle East, or Asia.
Like Buffet, Bill Gates has been publicly supportive of increased taxes for the rich. One could argue that he should disperse his wealth without being forced to, but one could also argue that if every good rich person gave away their money, without the bad rich people being forced to, we would only have bad rich people controlling our politicians. One could also argue that a good rich person can invest in good things that the public run government would not be able to or willing to. For instance vaccinating the entire world to make tuberculosis extinct would never be supported by the US government as a majority of americans don’t care about the poor in other countries and don’t want to pay for it. I find the whole “all rich people are evil” arguement to not hold up to pragmatic logic.
One could argue that he should disperse his wealth without being forced to, but one could also argue that if every good rich person gave away their money, without the bad rich people being forced to, we would only have bad rich people controlling our politicians.
On this note, Bill Gates started a club for billionaires in which the only requirement to join was to donate enough of your fortune during the time you’re in the club that you’re not longer a billionaire.
So he kind of checks every box here in your sentence, for better or for worse.
Bill Gates supports higher taxes for the rich, that is true. However, he does not support a taxation policy that would eliminate billionaire status.
The argument is basically just that there’s not much of a way to make a billion dollars, as a relatively arbitrary metric, without resulting to unethical means, and trying to make up for it with ethical strategies afterwards is kind of a losing game, you’re starting from behind. There’s rent-seeking behavior and the ownership of the means of production yadda yadda ya, but really, it’s just that the rich tend to hold a large portion of undemocratic power, control over other people. You can maybe say it’s democratic on the basis that people “voted with their dollar” to make them rich or some shit, but that’s kind of a stupid chain of logic and I just want to bash it without contestation right now.
I think the counterpoint to “we would only have rich people controlling our politicians”, would be, we should not have lobbying, you know. Nobody should be controlling our politicians, sort of thing. Or, we should all equally be controlling our politicians, I guess. Which isn’t really something that I’ve seen any of these guys trying to get politicians to do, and I don’t think it’d be effective if they did, because it would be both against their own self-interest, so there’s a selection bias against that, and it’d be against the interest of the politician that wants to make money, so there would be a selection bias against that. You’re also getting a selection bias for the politicians and the rich in the form of, they both probably believe the system works, or, they both believe that money being allocated to someone generally means that person is capable, and is simply valuable to the economy. If they didn’t believe either of those, the chances that they find themselves in their positions goes down.
I kind of agree that many super rich get their wealth through unscrupulous means. As a counter point, there do exists many ways to become super rich that are not unethical. Divorce, inheritance, lottery winner, revolutionary technology, extremely popular book etc. Once a person gets a certain amount of wealth, simply not spending it too much and leaving it in the market will in the long term leave you one of the wealthiest people.
See this is the thing that always gets me about the critique, right, is, say you had this money foisted upon you. You could give it to the market, right, spend it all on random crap and just kind of leave it, but that’s obviously bad because the market sucks and that’s a pretty bad way to get rid of your money generally. You can invest a good chunk of it and be set for life/multiple generations, and that’s good for your own self-interest and those around you, but bad in the sense that you’ve taken this excess money or power and you’re not doing anything with it, you’re just throwing it at the market and kind of living off the return. Hands off capitalism, where you’re a hands off capitalist, so, you have the same problems with the system there. Go outside the market, then, start investing it in nonprofits and stuff like that. That’s bad, because you both make no money and nonprofits generally kind of suck, and you’ll probably drain your money pretty quickly hitting at the symptoms of problems, whack a mole while worse capitalists drain your wallet by basically forcing you to bear their outsourced societal costs.
I think maybe the best strategy would be to start a business in something that you actually give two shits about, maybe a co-op, not exploiting anyone, not leaving it to the market, and still investing your money, and then take any excess and pump it into unions, probably the thing you’d want is to pump it into the unions of your competition. Obviously unions can still be really shitty and union capture can still exist and be really bad, but I’m not sure how much you’re escaping that unless you’re donating to like, really really direct relief efforts, like housing the homeless (not a bad idea), or [redacted] which will get you killed. I think, certainly, starbucks union, or what have you, is probably better than not.
There are better ways to spend money, than what’s conventionally done, but there are not many good ways to spend money. I’ve not even seen anyone high-profile really attempt to spend money like that in a way that actually makes sense, so it’s either just, incredibly uncommon, or maybe we never hear about it, or all of the ideas to spend it basically just suck.
Any charity a rich person does is FAR better then giving it to the government to do something with.
I think it’s a mixed bag, but to each their own.
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You could argue most of the money some top athletes make is from advertising deals and you might see that as amoral. Being really good at running is impressive, but doesn’t inherently contribute hundreds of millions of dollars worth of value to society.
Brand deals with companies that sell stuff that’s probably made by slave Labor. Not so ethical.
And don’t forget taxes reduction schemes.
Is anything that any of us do in the western world ethical based on that though?
I mean who are to judge athletes for those brands deals when we’re buying those products, using those phones/computers to go on Lemmy etc.
I’d argue musicians/athletes that do this are not the most ethical, but it’s not this stuff that makes them the worst offenders.
They are famous people, if they advertised a more ethical brand, people would buy that brand instead.
Consumption in the modern world has inherent problems, yes. The ethical way to exist in a world that values consumption as much as ours does is to consume less. You still HAVE to consume. There’s a lot of stuff we either flat out need(food, water, shelter) or would be at SUCH a disadvantage without it becomes required (Internet, phone, car).
How you consume is important though. Use your phone until it’s a brick. Buy local, and cook your own food. Vet whatever you buy as much as you can.
Entertainers feed into this lifestyle. They become the thing to consume. And that’s OK in moderation, but not to the level that they become worth hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. That’s excessive.
A world tour like that requires a shit ton of labor, sure it’s less straight forward to decide how much surplus value of that labor goes to her, but I would argue it’s certainly not negligible
If she had to do everything by herself, the world tour would consist of a few one-woman-gigs at local bars.
That’s a great way of putting it. Side note, it’d also mean no private jet.
Like all things, there’s a middle ground. No, don’t do everything yourself, but give back proportionally. Swift is better than most in that regard, sure, but she can clearly give more if she’s encroaching on being with 10+ digits. This is the problem.
That was exactly what I meant. I chose the “Taylor Swift does everything on her own” scenario to disprove the notion that she does all or most of the important work on a show.
Just the handful of concerts I’ve been nominally involved in settin up… there’s hundreds of security staff. 20-50 semi trucks for the stage, a hundred or so roadies. Dozens of forklift drivers. Traffic direction.
And that’s ignoring increases staffing/labor by cities and neighboring properties (increased cops, paramedics, increased security adjacent to the event…)
Like.
It’s far from negligible
There is an option other than lowering ticket prices. And that is to pay the workers more.
This is the way. A billion dollar net worth is at least 900 million in surplus labor that should have already gone to the workers. Probably closer to 999 mil.
She could also pay her employees a lot more.
Their money comes from the same place it does with the ones you already label as shit. They’re just the pretty, personable face that you see. You cannot get to that level of wealth in a single lifetime without a whole slew of fucked up shit. Doesn’t matter if it’s directly or only complicit, earning that much in a lifetime is problematic at the absolute best.
Are you actually that far gone?
No, but you seem to be.
For those unaware
From 2022:
Taylor Swift’s plane was identified by the report as the “biggest celebrity CO2e polluter this year so far,” racking up 170 flights since January with emissions totaling more than 8,293 metric tons.
A report published last year by Transport & Environment, a major European clean transport campaign group, found that a single private jet can emit 2 metric tons of CO2 in just an hour. To put that in context, the average person in the E.U. produces about 8.2 tons of emissions over the course of an entire year, according to the report.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021_05_private_jets_FINAL.pdf
So the average person was responsible for 8.2 and Swift did 8.293 in flights?
Swift’s flights were responsible for a thousand times more C02e than an average EU citizen. One has a comma, the other has a dot
Aha, I see that now. Good thing I phrased it as a question.
How much more economic activity than the average citizen?
Anyway I suppose flying commercial and accordingly taking on a less aggressive tour schedule would help her reduce her footprint. I only know a few her hits (mostly that are more club friendly) personally but acknowledge she’s going to be responsible for more of everything in the aggregate. Way more environmental damage. Way more endorphins.
So back to “how can she reduce her footprint” while still doing her Swiftie thing? Sure there are plenty of ways.
She might do more economic activity but for who? Organizers? Herself? Scalpers? If she has that much money to be considered a billionaire maybe she could do something to cover her footprint. Plant some trees or donate to some organization that occupy with saving the planet.
Fly commercial. Drive as much as possible. I assume she rents it out when she’s not actively using it. Stop doing that.
No, a single person is responsible for 8.2 tons and Swift’s JET ALONE did 8.293. That’s not counting all of the OTHER carbon footprint that swift undoubtedly has.
Edit:uah, even worse. It’s 8 THOUSAND tons for her jet, and 8 tons for the regular person.
Right. Her jet alone released the same carbon as 1,000 people. Of course, she’s far from the only wealthy person doing this.
How can someone be this bad at math…
Mistaking a comma for a decimal point isn’t really what I’d call ‘math’.
Also in some countries the comma, not the dot, is the decimal separator, so I can see how somebody from such a nation who has also been exposed to the use of the dot as decimal separator, might thinl they both can be used like that and mean the same and not be aware that in English-speaking countries the comma is never used as decimal separator.
Edit: A lot of people seem to have no idea what carbon offsets are. Here’s a reasonably quick rundown:
Basically though, they are tge best market solution we have thus far yo the climate crisis. We need government to do better but in that absence, this is the closest we hve to a free market solution. While appealing, solutions like “bitching online that people should just go back to pre industrial era lives” or “hoping everyone will just vote correctly next time” are definitely fun solutions, carbon offsets have the effect of actually doing stuff in the meantime.
If we’re crucifying people for things they are expected to have, are you pure evil because the phone youbhad undoubtedly used cobalt mined by children who occasionally lose their arns mining it?
A cursory google search showed that she paid double her carbon offsets for the current tour. While imperfect, carbon offsets, and people voluntarily paying into them is how we move through and past our current carbon intensive lifestyle.
carbon offsets
they are tge best market solution we have thus far yo the climate crisis
Bullshit. Carbon offsets is mostly a scam where polluters “offset” real emissions with potential if not purely theoretical mitigation. The reforestation that companies claim offset their emissions would fill more land than there is on earth in total.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry, to name the worst problem humanity has, is emitting MORE than ever while using the Carbon Offsets scam to greenwash their killing millions of people a year while being the main cause of climate change.
The best solution is, has always been and always will be to emit less pollutants.
Literally all your complaints call for better regulation rather than abandonment of the carbon offset program… Such regulation being enabled by, you guessed it, high profile folks buying in!
Yes, no emissions would be better but until we’re willing to chastise everyone for not eating vegan, it seems pretty silly to get annoyed for someone who contributes less to climate change than say, a mcdonalds.
Enough with the “your point is only valid if it’s 100% and mine’s valid if it’s 0.1%” bullshit.
You just want to pretend that the scam is working and will work more if it’s expanded rather than do what every single scientist with expertise in relevant areas and without tons of conflicts of interest say is the only real solution.
Which one of your complaints wasn’t about how a carbon offset system should be implemented rather than the notion itself is bad?
To say that it carbon offsets can be gamed and thus the entire system is awful is a little silly. It’s sort of like saying “too many people cheat on their taxes, we shouldn’t have taxes!” Instead of, y’know, better regulation and enforcement.
In this case, you have one of the most PR savvy people on Earth, I’d be surprised if her team didn’t find a legit carbon offset (which is exactly how we say, compensate farmers for not burning the amazon for the lucrative farmland etc.)
As for the only real solution, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note most of those scientists have for years suggested a carbon tax as a way to transition to net zero. Well, in the face of government inaction, carbon offsets are the free market filling the gap in the meantime. Are they imperfect? Absolutely! But are programs like this how we fund and develop the transition to net zero? Also absolutely!
The system is designed to be gamed, it’s working as intended. It’s a complete bullshit sham that isn’t doing a single thing for the climate
Here’s a list of projects from just my province.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/public-sector/offset-portfolio
They include implementing new technologies which would otherwise not be cost effective for companies, upgrading older technologies before their phase out date or just interesting projects like diverting methane from landfills to be used as natural gas.
A weird take, but ok… Are you a “swiftie”? Going to bat for a rich popstar is a little weird.
Going to bat for a rich popstar is a little weird.
Reality should be reality, regardless of the subject.
Edit: At least 9 people disagree but so far, the closest to a substantive reply is essentially “she’s rich, why do you care?”
What?
I dunno, read again?
I explained things pretty well in my original post. If you have questions or trouble understanding, I’d be happy to explain.
It’s ok if you’re a fan of hers, but her carbon footprint is much more impactful than a regular individuals. Paying into a carbon offset account actually doesn’t offset anything. It’s PR at best. The environmental damage she does just by flying to get lunch is outrageous.
I listened to her music voluntarily for the first time earlier this year, not my style.
That being said, paying into a carbon offset is the best way to advance a regime that actually transitions us to a green economy.
Are you a vegan who doesn’t have a car and won’t have children? That’s the best way to reduce your emissions. If not, are you as similarly unethical? And if it’s a scale issue, given the fact she makes so many people happy as evidenced by their willingness to pay seemingly infinite dollars to see her, well, I’m curious as to whether you feel you think you make a fraction of as many people happy?
It’s easy to pile upon the rich but compared to most of the world, you are the Taylor Swift of the world. So these “no no, she costs a thousand times more!” Arguments don’t really hold, medium income westerner is responsible for a boatload more emissions than a poor third worlder, so why shouldn’t you be held to a similar nonsensical standard? At least Swift is contributing to the things that help us, what similar contributions have you made?
Well if you really start looking into it, carbon offsets are mostly a scam.
For instance just declaring: “I will cut down this forest” without ever having the intention to do so, and then not doing it counts as a carbon offset. This is what abgreat part of companies are doing. Just saving forests that nobody wanted to cut down in the first place from being cut down. This they then sell to the consumer as a carbon offset.
John Oliver had a great segment on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0
Ahhhh, the John Oliver effect. I knew there was a reason people were furious without quite being able to articulate well!
If you pay attention, you’ll note that Oliver’s problem with carbon offsets is that the system is too easy to game, which is fair!
But to say that means the entire notion of carbon offsets is nonsense is a little silly. It’s sort of like saying “too many people cheat on their taxes, we shouldn’t have taxes!” Instead of, y’know, better regulation and enforcement.
In this case, you have one of the most PR savvy people on Earth, I’d be surprised if her team didn’t find a legit carbon offset (which is exactly how we say, compensate farmers for not burning the amazon for the lucrative farmland etc.)
I didn’t know you could pay money to reverse the damage you have personally caused to the climate crisis
You can’t. But in the real world, we aren’t going to stop using planes, cars and heaters in the next few months.
The best thing that aids a transition are carbon offsets that help subsidize the very technology upon which a Green revolution depends.
Ironically inconvenient truths for the armchair environmentalists.
Besides, I suspect if one gave them all a winning lottery ticket we could observe how quickly their attitudes change.
Nevertheless I could think of probably hundreds of individuals far less ethical and far more responsible for global catastrophe in this day than Swift. So as far as billionaires go, she’s not all that bad. Let’s perhaps focus more on Musk, Bezos, the Waltons, etc…?
hundreds of individuals far less ethical and far more responsible for global catastrophe in this day than Swift
Yeah but hating on those folks wouldn’t be as cool as hating on someone the normies like!
…/s
I wouldn’t be surprised if this outrage is astrotrufing from righties because they’re scared how powerful Swift is in mobilizing Voter registration for the left.
Someone else pointed out there was a John Oliver segment about carbon offsets (in which he pointed out that they aren’t well regulated and are subject to abuse.) I think people forgot the specifics and just remember OFFSETS = BAD, rather than the appropriate albeit more nuanced “like most things, these are vulnerable to abuse and should probably be better regulated.”
Combine that with hating mainstream pop culture with a chance to condescend and you have a perfect storm of toxicity.
I think people tend to dismiss carbon offsets on the basis that they are a free market solution to a problem that the free market has (mostly) caused. You could maybe blame government for lacking regulation on the free market in like the 19th and early 20th century, but me and I think most people would probably think that’s full of shit and kind of kicking the can down the road, foisting the responsibility on the government and not the corporate world for basically no reason, other than that we would expect the corporate world to be a bunch of little scamps or something. I think it would be better off blaming the government for basically just being in a revolving door sort of affair with corporations, but then, I think the answer to that wouldn’t be like, dismiss the government in exchange for the free market, but instead more along the lines of, you know, as you’ve said in response to carbon offsets, more regulations against such things.
And before you come at me for wanting top down government solutions because they’re “unrealistic”, and also thinking that bottom up political activism is “unrealistic”, I dunno, like. If your solution is just kind of to believe in solely the free market, I really wonder what leftism you’re doing there, especially if you’re bringing up cobalt mines with children losing their arms. That’s some iphone venezuela latte level shit, there, that whole deal just seems like nihilism. Like we all get that you can’t ethically participate in capitalism, but that’s not really a good argument to double down on capitalism and be like “well, if I have to…”, because it’s seen as “more realistic”. By even that logic, it would be better off if most of us just used our excess finance to stop contributing to the climate crisis directly in our own lives, but then I dunno whether or not I can predict your response to that, based on your disdain for cobalt mining. If you don’t like electric cars on that same basis, and you don’t think top down or bottom up government intervention would be likely to happen, then there’s not gonna be many solutions, for you, for getting rid of your own carbon emissions even from a car, outside of maybe a really shitty ebike with lead batteries that probably won’t be able to take you 30 miles to your job because we live in a suburban hellscape shithole america, or whatever.
I dunno, I gotta go walk my dog. I think the most obvious solution here is just for her to not like. Fly around in a private jet everywhere. Even trucks, which would probably be the other solution, would make more sense, and for the rare inter-continental flight she could probably just take first class with like, a mask and some sunglasses on, and I dunno if anyone would give two shits about that. There’s not really any reason she needs to have a private jet in the first place, so this whole argument is STUPID and DUMB.
Lots to digest here!
I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make in the first paragraph though. Intuitively, I blame corporations but don’t fault them. They are behaving in line with their incentives. It is up to government to create incentives that ensure good behaviour. So to me, the real blame does lie with goverments’ inability to create and enforce a carbon tax (which is generally the agreed upon best way to transition to a carbon neutral economy.)
I think bottom’s up political activism is essential. But also kind of doomed. If those under 35 voted at rates comparable to those over 65 (and yes, that includes in primaries), we’d be approaching the end of Bernie’s second term and democrats would be arguing about who was best suited to carry on his legacy.
Not sure what the iphone venezuala comment is? I bring up the cobalt mines simply to say that it is easy for us to forgive our own sins but castigate those wealthier than us. (Also an example of us just being conditioned to shrug and say “that’s inevitable.” No it fucking isn’t! If we as consumers actually cared about real things, like those children, instead of whatever comedian we’re policing on twitter or whatever, we would have ethical mines just as we have ethical clothes, ethical foods etc. But, people’s morality tends to go right up until those morals would become slightly inconvenient.) To the rural citizens in impoverished nations who are already suffering climate change, our desire for plane fueled vacations seems just as unnecessary as Swift’s use of a jet to get to her concerts. In the meantime, paying double the carbon cost to developing the technologies or supporting the agriculture necessary to get us to net zero, well, while there’s room for manipulation and badness, it’s not the worst thing.
I agree that this whole thing is stupid and dumb. There isn’t any reason any of us need planes, to eat meat etc. The things that actually solve this crisis are bottoms up politicial activism rather than whining about a celebrity who is doing their best to offset their carbon emissions and supporting a nascent program that is exactly the type of program that gets us to net zero.
Like we said, stupid and dumb.
I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make in the first paragraph though. Intuitively, I blame corporations but don’t fault them. They are behaving in line with their incentives. It is up to government to create incentives that ensure good behaviour. So to me, the real blame does lie with goverments’ inability to create and enforce a carbon tax (which is generally the agreed upon best way to transition to a carbon neutral economy.)
I’m not sure what the distinction is, there, between blame, and fault, so, constitute a distinction between those two. I would also blame the government partially, yeah, we’re in agreement, but I can also like. If we are seeing the reasons why the corporations are acting out of their own short term self-interest, then I can do the same for government, and basically just find fault with nobody, right? That’s the only difference I can really come to, there, is that the corporations have a clear chain of causality as to why they might act that way, and the government’s is maybe a little bit more obfuscated, or something, but I can still understand the incentive structure there, so I can’t really find fault, if fault is like, who is the cause of all this. I guess I’d fault grug, for making fire, or like, god, or the british, or something along the domino chain there. Probably the british.
I think bottom’s up political activism is essential. But also kind of doomed. If those under 35 voted at rates comparable to those over 65 (and yes, that includes in primaries), we’d be approaching the end of Bernie’s second term and democrats would be arguing about who was best suited to carry on his legacy.
Also this, I think it’s kind of essential to understand this, and your last paragraph about people whining about a celebrity. A lot of it is kind of this social media cynicism that has consumed everything. You know, can’t vote for bernie, have to vote for hillary, because splitting the vote would be bad, so there will only ever be establishment candidates and nothing ever changes at the federal level except on an extremely incremental scale as people vote in local and state level elections, which all tend to have the same problem of fptp systems and the same problem of partisanship. And so it’s very easy for people to just look at that, and then either go for damage mitigation, or, depending on how much cynicism they have for lobbied to shit free market liberal dems, or just give up entirely and only focus on local issues and basically damage mitigation on that scale, you know. Can’t organize some sort of alternative local system for dealing with any of this shit, without registering as some sort of corporation or nonprofit or co-op, and then you’re subject to the same forces that end up fucking everyone else over, even if you can gain traction, so people would rather just volunteer at something that already exists and kind of say they’ve paid their dues. Anything worthwhile is anti-establishment, and if you’re anti-establishment, you will probably get killed or arrested. Or you’re just a skateboarder, I guess, which is still pretty sick. Or, MOST things that are worthwhile are anti-establishment, I guess we still have costco.
Not sure what the iphone venezuala comment is? I bring up the cobalt mines simply to say that it is easy for us to forgive our own sins but castigate those wealthier than us. (Also an example of us just being conditioned to shrug and say “that’s inevitable.” No it fucking isn’t! If we as consumers actually cared about real things, like those children, instead of whatever comedian we’re policing on twitter or whatever, we would have ethical mines just as we have ethical clothes, ethical foods etc. But, people’s morality tends to go right up until those morals would become slightly inconvenient.) To the rural citizens in impoverished nations who are already suffering climate change, our desire for plane fueled vacations seems just as unnecessary as Swift’s use of a jet to get to her concerts. In the meantime, paying double the carbon cost to developing the technologies or supporting the agriculture necessary to get us to net zero, well, while there’s room for manipulation and badness, it’s not the worst thing.
People usually bring up the whole cobalt mine thing as a “gotcha” moment for like, any level of leftist action. uhhh you’re using an iphone so you can’t be a moral beacon! you can’t have any opinions on what’s right or wrong! sort of thing. It’s also a mistake of scale, the relative scales at which, say, 71 companies 99% of pollution yadda yadda, it’s way different, the level of fault there, compared to like, the person who has a 3 year old iphone SE which was maybe constructed with a lithium cobalt battery from some imperial african child slave mine. Or people obviously bring it up as a way to disparage the adoption of electric cars, usually from the position of “electric cars suck” rather than “we should have better public transit and bike everywhere”. I dunno I’d probably set something up that like, increases tariffs on shit like that, or maybe just fund the shit out of the FTC so nestle goes out of business, or whatever, but as an individual consumer there’s really not much you can do. It’s much easier, or “more realistic”, I suppose, for most people to get off their 9 to 5 of shithole labor, and then just like, buy whichever water is the cheapest, buy whatever choccy milk is the cheapest, rather than looking into the rather hard to parse information of which company’s using the most child slaves, or what have you. Because they’re basically all doing it, and, say, in the case of a car, it’s not much like you can live without one. It doesn’t even have to be impossible, really, it just has to be extremely difficult, which, in most cases, it is. It’s not realistic, in my opinion, to expect everyone to suddenly pivot to like, supporting more ethical companies and voting with their dollar when most people are put upon enough already, and the american economy is fundamentally built so it’s like 3 steps away from slave labor, and if any of us did anything different then the economy would crash, the companies would get bailed out, and we’d all be forced to bite the bullet, like what’s happened every single time. Not that any of that would necessarily happen but that’s kind of the chain of logic of the american mind.
Anyways, I gotta go feed my dog, and also join a CIA honeypot whatsapp group for leftist activism, cya.
The neoliberal levels are through the roof!
As are the childlike “I refuse to acknowledge how to actually make things better but complaining on the internet is free and easy!” Levels.
Ahh yes, the woman who wanted to… (checks notes) hmm copyright a fucking date because she used it for an album…
Ffs there is no such thing as an ethical money hungry person.
She did actually get those trademarks:
- https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86369161&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
- https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86363039&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
- https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86838684&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
Trademarks for years (and others shit) like that are pretty common. Like this one for 2023: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77026303&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
Here is one for “LOL”: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77669187&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
She doesn’t own the year, I think she is just the only one allowed to use it for merchandise, albums, and a bunch of other stuff. Basically no one in the USA is allowed to make a T-shirt with 1989 on it. Maybe it would be fine if the t-shirt has no other connection to Swift. Dunno.
She has a fuckton of trademarks. Just search for "TAS RIGHTS MANAGEMENT, LLC " on https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-information
jfc, it’s actually worse than I thought
I mean, there’s probably a ton of crap on her. I have no idea, I haven’t read up on her, but I would assume that every billionaire has a lot of smoking guns with regard to pollution, bad work conditions and unethical handling of capital. But if the worst you have on her is that she attempted to copyright ‘1989’, it doesn’t really seem too bad.
Her private jet has the most CO2 emissions out of any celebrity. She defended that by saying she rents it out, so it wasn’t all her; as if that changes how much the private jet she owns has emitted. As far as the rest of her environmental impact, it is likely no worse than other performing celebrities so not great but in larger amounts than other celebs.
She does seem to do well by her support staff. She gave out $55m in bonuses to everyone who worked on her last tour.
She has donated a lot, but I couldn’t find out if she has donated over the deduction cap or if she claimed the donations. As far as I can tell the majority has been given to food insecurity charities and disaster relief. So even if it is a tax scheme, she seems to be giving in the right direction.
I am not a fan of her music, but she doesn’t seem like a terrible person except that she has unimaginable wealth, a massive platform, a highly influential brand, and isn’t doing as much as she could to help others.
There’s no pleasing some people, is there?
Not when you’re a billionaire buckerino. Taylor swift might be a slightly more ethical billionaire than the rest, but the fact that she is a billionaire at all is a symptom of the underlying systemic problem - the ideal number of billionaires in our world in its current state, is ZERO. Nada. Null.
You can sit there and sigh all you want, but a billionaire who’s even slightly morally upright won’t be a billionaire for long.
The only billionaire I’ll ever consider as even slightly ethical, or as someone to look up to, is Chuck Feeney, god rest his soul.
It must be exhausting being like you.
It must be exhausting making excuses for people hoarding unfathomable amounts of wealth, or are you paid to do that?
Won’t someone think of the billionaires?!
Second of all they’re right. It IS exhausting being like this, but someone has to do it. Because if people aren’t being exhaustingly fed up of the status quo, billionaires will keep fucking us up, down and sideways. I almost wish I COULD be like Ilovethebomb. Ignorance, willing or not, is bliss afterall…
or are you paid to do that?
No, winding you up is something I do for fun.
not if people like them. I like them.
Copyright is often quite context sensitive, it doesn’t mean nobody can use that date, they just can’t name an album after it.
This is, unironically, the best meme about leftists ever made.
In my experience, leftists are like Star Wars fans, in that no one hates leftists like other leftists.
I always wonder why the workers of the world don’t rise up together. We could easily take over without any violence.
Then I remember we all hate each other and refuse to work together and it makes me sad.
Because it is hard for the individual to risk being destitute if he rises up and no one follows.
The petite bourgeoisie has become invested through 401k’s and healthcare benefits in the system.
You’re dead right, this comment section is one of the most tragic things I’ve seen in a while actually.
She’s a talented performer, presumably a very hard worker, and they’re seething because she… Has money? From proving entertainment, which is a completely optional thing to buy, and by no means an essential service.
There are ethical billionaires, but nobody would have heard of them because they do not advertise and show off how much of a good person they are for donating. A good person do not look for validation. Charles Feeney comes to mind who donated 90% of his wealth and died with net worth of $1 million. He also lived in a rented apartment despite having become a billionaire for managing Duty Free.
Edit: okay some have been pedantic on here about Charles Feeney and his wealth, and some of my figures have been wrong, but the overall point still stands. He was worth $8 billion, donated over 99% of his wealth and spent the rest of his remaining days with $2 million.
Incorrect. The only way to acquire a billion dollars in net worth is to exploit labor.
Doesnt matter if they donated to charity. Its a tax shelter for them. Im sure Feeneys employees would have preferred to be paid higher wages.
Maybe. But we don’t know how he managed his business. His wealth was, after all, came in the 1960s and 70s at the height of air travel which he sold his items to travellers, unions were also powerful and the world was operating under the Bretton Woods agreement.
What if someone suddenly inherited 1bn from an estranged relative, or if they won the lottery? I’d say that’s an ethical way of gaining that much wealth
I think what defines an ethical billionare from one that isn’t, is how much they share with everyone else and how much they consume for themselves. Spending that much money properly would take time. They’d have to vet charities, hire people to help them spend it on the best things, research where to invest in (i’m talking about things like green energy) etc.
Just food for thought. I tend to like looking for exceptions to rules (idk why)
There is no ethical billionaire because to amass a billion dollar means other people that produced that much value did not get paid properly. Simple as that. If you inherit a billion dollars, it was still made on the back of workers.
If you’ve got no power to stop the estranged relative exploiting other people and their environment to acquire the money you’ll later inherit from them, then inheriting it won’t be unethical when it happens. There might be milage in the idea that it would be unethical to not give it to the people whose labour was exploited by the dead relative, but they’re not necessarily the most ethical option for donating the money once you’ve got it.
That’s just not true.
Let’s say a person became a billionaire running a consulting firm. The going rate for consultants at every other consulting firm is paying their employees $100/hour. Our billionaire paid their employees $200/hour.
Are you saying that wouldn’t be ethical?
No because if a person a billion dollars by paying someone 200$/h, it means that the worker produced way over that in value for the billionaire.
That’s fine that a company takes a cut on that, but to get to a billion dollars, that means that the the company brings in way more than that.
Usually, the salary of someone is roughly half the cost of the employee, so let’s say it cost the employer 400$/h for one employee. If the employer add a profit of 10% on that which is pretty reasonable, it would take 25 000 000 man/hour to get a billion dollars in profit. Or roughly 2800 years working 24/7, everyday of the year.
For a more realistic scenario (40h/week, 52 week a year), that’s 12 000 years.
That’s a scenario where there is only the billionaire employer taking a cut. Add other C-suites taking a chunk too and it gets more ridiculous.
It’s not because other companies pay less that means that the company paying more is ethical.
Yes, that wouldn’t be ethical. It’s not a question of paying more than others, it’s a question of taking more for yourself personally than the value of the work you personally do.
Let’s skip the consulting firm thing because that sort of business has a lot of ethical questions inherently, and just say they became a billionaire selling widgets. Let’s also posit that widgets are a useful, quality product that enhances the lives of those who purchase them in some way. And we’ll stick with your proposition that they pay $200 an hour to their employees.
If they became a billionaire, it is still unethical. It means two things: their employees wages should have been even higher, and/or their product should have been less expensive. It’d have to be more than a vague hypothetical to pinpoint where the most unethical stuff is happening, but it IS happening, because a human is not capable of doing work worth a billion dollars in their lifetime.
Inheriting a billion or more is not inherently unethical because you didn’t necessarily have a hand in accumulating it. However, few people will remain ethical after that, because it is difficult to possess that level of wealth without some of it being used unethically. Perhaps if you converted it all to cash and put it in a money bin, Scrooge McDuck style, you could know that your wealth isn’t out there doing unethical things, but there’s few other ways.
I hope you try to practice what you preach brother, and not just type down long winded comments on lemmy on why your brain is smarter and your heart wider than all the rest of us sinners.
What are you babling on about. I am not a billionaire and will never be.
You have jack shit to say to you resort to insults. I’ll go low too, go back to sucking the dicks of billionaire and justify their horrid impact on human misery.
A billionaire that runs a consulting firm undoubtedly caused wages to stagnate, overworked employees, exacerbated inflation, and cost people their jobs. Consulting firms are parasites that leech off the economy to the detriment of workers.
Have you even read the comment you are responding to?
Also, no idea what consulting firms do, clearly.
You have no idea what billionaires do, clearly.
Ethics within the concept of Production of Commodities (consulting is a commodity in the form of a service) isn’t determined by how much someone gets paid with respect to the median or average within said field, but by who owns and controls the wages, via ownership of the firm itself. It doesn’t matter how nice the boss is, if the firm isn’t democratically owned and operated, there is still a fundamental unchallengable hierarchy.
And in my scenario the person who owns and controls the wages isn’t taking the stance of paying the lowest wage the market will bear.
Let’s push this a little further though. Let’s say the company paying $100/hour is ethical by your definition. And by your definition the comoany paying $200/hour cannot be.
I would argue the second is still the more ethical company, especially when you consider the community it’s within. There would be more resources for more people.
Sure, if you want to imagine an impossibility. The reality of the matter is that those who control and own the Means of production will always act in their own self-interest, the “good men of history” idea is Utopian, and still anti-democratic.
Your argument is akin to saying if a Dictator is really nice, even if there’s no democracy, it’s fully ethical. The lack of ability to contest even a benevolent dictator means the foundation giving the dictator power is itself unethical, even if the way the dictator treats his subjects is ethical.
That’s reeeeeeally far from a billionaire. If he donated 90% and died with a million, he died with 10% so he had 10mil.
Look things up before being pedantic about them.
If you want to be pedantic about it he ackchyually lived off $2 million. Still gave away $8 billion to charity. (and actual charity, not “a charitable organization” that is mostly a tax shelter for the family’s wealth)
His donations are estimated at $8 billion. The 90% figure is wrong, not his wealth.
You’re right but that’s just being pedantic and my point still stands that he donated vast majority of his wealth. As of 2016, he was worth $2 million. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/nyregion/james-bond-of-philanthropy-gives-away-the-last-of-his-fortune.html,
Bill Gates is much the same, he’s given away over half his net worth to charity at this point.
He’s not the worse billionaire, but still done enough to get two episodes on behind the bastards: https://youtu.be/lFS9DFXtj1M
I domt think so, we have evidence of plenty of unethical practices he did when he lead microsoft in the early days.
Dunno about you all, though I’ll take the slightly less villainess billionnaire that might have a positive impact for $500, Steven. Cause fuck if I won’t side with the potential enemies of my enemies at this stage. Playing it cool and acting like we’re doing fine doesn’t seem to be doing much after all.
nah, fuck em all. I don’t trust that nepo baby psycho
If I have to see this little capitalist darling at another football game trying to secure the young female demographic for the NFL again I’m going to vomit.
You can choose not to see stuff.
As an Eagles fan, fuck all of that. She’s not even dating one of our players. She’s dating his brother, and we still have to hear the national announcers go on about how their mom hangs out with Swift and how they’re all going to Tinseltown together.
At least Merril and Mike don’t spend any time on it.
That’s not their point, they just don’t want girls in the tree house.
Fully extend right arm, lift arm 15 degrees, rotate wrist 90 degrees to the right. Resume.
In my experience, people don’t respond very well when you try to cut their arm off
I think they were aiming for the neck
I was for sure aiming for the neck 😂
Ah, that makes more sense. Much more efficient kill, just have to do it quick so they don’t have time to react.
Pfft…they just don’t understand
Keanu Reeves is pretty cool. He’s not a billionaire though
That’s why he’s pretty cool. Also he’ll probably never BE a billionaire, because he’s pretty cool. The two rarely meet.
He would probably stop making money at some point because he felt he didn’t deserve more.
“That is too many zeros, I just want the SAG minimum and to have fun making this project with you. Just spread the difference among the other staff as a bonus, I’ll match it so they can have a great Xmas.”
An ethical billionaire is impossible. Hoarding that much money in itself is unethical.
Isn’t she constantly screwing her fans over with Ticketmaster and stuff? Why do people think she loves her fans?
She doesn’t seem like the most evil billionaire but she definitely likes to squeeze people for cash. The blame just lands elsewhere.
She has absolutely zero control over how her show is run or sold.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift–Ticketmaster_controversy
Isn’t that just deferring the blame
She chooses who to associate with She’s the person holding all the power. She could easily cut out Ticketmaster if she actually wanted to. It’s just easy to defer the blame on a rando corpo group that’s running everything behind the scenes while she’s making billions from it.
Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with most venues. Do you really think that not having tours is what any manager will allow a music artist to do?
Then don’t play at those venues or get them to bend over.
It sure seems like she isn’t putting in effort to evade Ticketmaster. They actually seem to love it
Lol you have no idea what you’re talking about. There aren’t many non-ticketmaster venues big enough to accommodate the amount of fans she has.
