The highest data point referenced in the article you link to is Monaco with $12.4M. Not sure where you are getting the $30M number.

Anyway, as I said, globally you and I most likely are in the 1%. Not in the US, a very wealthy country.

Edit: here is an interesting data point for you: Kenya is listed last on that graph with just $20K. Do you know how wealthy Kenya is overall? It’s at the 59th place globally. Out of 173 countries.

So yes, you and the majority of people posturing in these comments are the 1% globally. Enjoy this realization, fellow onepercenter.

I agree. In general, lobbying is a much bigger issue than the “billionaires”. Lobbying exists at all levels. You can have a dinner with a local politician for a very affordable fee ($3-5K), and meet the former or the future president (maybe even the current) for $200-300K. Lobbying is everywhere, it’s not limited to billionaires.

Being in 1% by income makes one barely a millionaire. Most likely not even that if they live in an expensive city and have a family.

No, I wouldn’t solely blame Kim Jong Un if a soldier from NK kills a member of my family. The ultimate goal of a totalitarian regime is to convince people that they are powerless, that they need a leader to guide them. This takes away all agency and responsibility (where it matters).

Don’t fall into the same trap. Everyone is an individual, everyone can and should learn. Everyone is ultimately responsible for their life (excluding situations where people are physically constrained by an abuser).

Blaming the “billionaires” is a fruitless endeavor. Do you think if we get rid of billionaires we will automatically live in a just society? There will always be people with more power, billionaires or not.

Worldwide, I am in the 1%. You are most likely too. For a lower class family in Pakistan you are a billionaire.

I would bet that on Spotify most people discover music by listening to personalized generated playlists and not by waiting for ads to guide them. Have you ever used Spotify?

After trying to find an app with something even close to Spotify Connect I gave up and switched to Apple Music and replaced my speakers with newer Denon that have Apple streaming support.

It was the choice between letting Spotify fuck me over again and again and spending a few hundred dollars on new speakers. Annoying but fuck Spotify and their relentless upsells, ads, podcasts, books, etc

(I feel pretty strongly about that because I used it daily since they released their beta version close to two decades ago).

That’s an odd take. You are conflating completely different things. It costs close to nothing for artists to get their music on Spotify ($25 a year for several releases if I remember correctly).

There is no promise from Spotify that they will guarantee discoverability. Tens of millions of releases are uploaded to Spotify annually, how do you surface that to users?

Paying for promotions is ads. Artists (or their labels) are fully responsible for buying ads. They are advertisers. They spend money because they want to become more popular.

Users, on the other hand, buy a paid product. When they become the product it’s not by choice and it’s not because that improves user’s experience.