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this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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Put simply, there are no "good billionaires".
The irony of "all billionaires bad" is that Taylor Swift earned that money through album sales and live touring. She wasn't actively exploiting the labor of workers in order to be rich, she is just that popular.
And before everyone jumps down my ass about my opinion sounding too conservative for Lemmy, I invite you to check out my post history.
The thousands of people making those records sell and shows happen:
There is no self made billionaire, a billion is an absurd amount of wealth a singular person cannot actually earn or be worth.
"To make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe" ~Carl Sagan
People payed $2,000 a ticket to see Taylor perform... that was their decision.
He's talking about all the people working at the label and concert agency. Do you think the technicians and riggers whot take care of all the audio, light and show effects get more money at her concerts? What about the people doing the security, check-in, cleaning and so on?
Try having a concert without any of these. There is hundreds of people working to make stadion concerts happen.
... they do that for all the acts... doesn't have much to do with how rich any particular performer is.
it absolutely does. every single worker that works under any labor agreement is making less than what their labor is worth. capitalism only works when you can make money off of how much someone is worth and not pay them the full amount. there is no incentive in capitalism to pay people what they are truly worth because that would mean no profit. she also profits off of countless years of technological advancements made by underpaid workers that allow her to have the production value and presence she has. i really find it hard to believe that people can't just see the plainness of how this labor thing works. why would anyone start a business if they couldnt profit off of their workers?
What you are saying is generally true in practice, but not an absolute feature of labor agreements. In the simplest case, two people working together can create more value/profit than each working individually.
A genius programmer and a genius game designer will do better together than apart, and there are a lot of reasons why they might organize so that one owns the business and the other takes a paycheck. Add in a graphic artist, an audio engineer, etc, and they are probably not all interested in becoming part of the business.
On the other side of the scale are publicly owned corporation where holding stock has nothing to do with generating value or profits. That is the heart of what makes capitalism capitalism, when the possession of sufficient capital produces leverage over workers and inherently unfair compensation.
Your arguement was, she wouldn't exploit other peoples labor. But in fact she does very much so.
She would be nothing without the labor of all those people, yet they see scarps of what she makes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2023/08/04/taylor-swift-says-thank-you-to-eras-tour-workers-by-handing-out-checks/
She has a specific reputation for supporting the workers who work her shows.
She gave checks to 50 truckers and not the thousands of people making it happen.
She in fact didn't pay the people working her shows but the people driving her show around.
With just seconds of followup research into a link in that same article you would have found: "..initial report states that Swift's benevolence has extended to every corner of her touring ensemble. From backup dancers to caterers and audio technicians, it seems the singer was good to everyone working on the shows."
I know it's very easy to hate her but she is about the most generous of them.
You don't amass a billion dollars by being the most generous. She can give money to everyone on tour with her and not get all of the people not on tour with her. What about the people working parking at the stadiums? What about the construction workers who built the structures she uses? What about the people creating the equipment she uses?
She gives money to the people she sees and you give her accolades for hoarding wealth.
So she went from taking advantage of all workers to not giving bonuses to enough workers even though she has been more generous than any other performer. Why is she even being talked about in this context when she should be the last to be mentioned on this subject? Pick literally any other performer and they have treated their workers "worse".
I never said all workers. I commented that your source was about 50 truckers and not as many as you implied. You then later talk about how it's just so many but again it's a fraction of the labor she leverages to make millions.
She's not going to send you feet picks for defending her on Lemmy. I'm used to billionaire boot lickers on Reddit but here it's just fucking cringe.
you think she get's that $2000? how naive.
Does she get more than a performer who's ticket is $100?
i have no idea, but it's not Taylor swift that's selling those tickets for that much, it's ticketmaster/stubhub and the like. she likely gets X amount from the venue to play there and the ticket sales all go to the venue. that's the way it worked at the 4 day music festivals I've worked at. we paid the performers X amount, that had ZERO to do with how much we were charging for tickets. They got no portion of our sales.
That's how it is. Artists from the calibre of TS get a fixed amount of money for a complete tour contract from the tour management. Regardless how many tickets are sold or whatever the tickets cost. The tour management is responsible to manage everything with the venues, the ticket sale companies, and all subcontractors like stage riggers etc.