this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
930 points (98.8% liked)
A Comm for Historymemes
1704 readers
848 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism, atrocity denial, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Lemmy.world rules.
Banner courtesy of @[email protected]
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Im no Swifty but has she ~~rally~~ really exploited people to get to this level of wealth?
Im just talking about the actual money here and not her carbon footprint or whatever.
Indirectly? Absolutely. Directly? Almost certainly, but it would depend on what you mean by 'rally'.
Apologies for the typo, I meant really.
As to my understanding TS made so much money cause she couldn’t get her masters and so re-recorded them herself and her fans bought them. Essentially taking the lions share which would normally go to the record companies. I don’t see how that is a bad thing, but I’m open to learning how it could be.
You could argue she enables high ticket prices for concerts or whatever but again the artist is as beholden to TicketMaster and RockNation as the fans are.
I don’t know much about her charitable work, but I think if you’re a billionaire you could always do more, that said aside from giving it all away at once it’s pretty hard to lose money once you’re that rich.
She can certainly do more to be eco-conscious though.
I actually sound like I’m into her, which I’m really not. Just wanted a discussion.
Personally I think of she did something to deal with the absurd amounts of eco problems caused by her concerts and general mass flights she wouldn't really have any issues, at least that I'm aware of. As far as billionaires go, not bad.
One hell of an environmental impact though.
To play devils advocate, if she needs to go somewhere for a concert, it’s not like she can just go to a normal airport like the rest of us. It would turn into an absolute frenzy and everyone would miss their flights.
Nobody doesn't get that. To me, the point is she'd have to have a slower, smaller tour and apparently she wouldn't accept that.
There's no "needs to go somewhere".
That doesn’t really solve the issue of literally millions of people wanting to see her perform. If she doesn’t go to them they will come to her, which obviously is not good for the environment either.
Lol no dude. I didn't really have strong feelings about it, but give me a break.
Good talk 👍
If a person takes two aircraft to a destination that's excessive. That's "fuck this planet and everyone on it, I've got mine and I'm fine" excessive
She could set her own prices for tickets on her personal site and tell ticket master to eat it.
Not really.
TicketMaster have a monopoly and with rocknation they control the venues too, so artists really have no choice otherwise they would be performing in local bars rather than arenas.
Cant remember which channels now but many people have covered this issue on YouTube and other places where you can learn more.
Yes.
Where does her money comes from? People who overpay for what she sells compared to what it's worth.
If they're paying for it, then that's what they think it's worth. She's not selling necessities.
By that logic, nothing is really a scam since people are just paying what they think something is worth.
Scams involve tricking people, and lying to them. Concert tickets involve saying "this is how much a ticket costs". They're not equivalent.
That's just tricking people into thinking a ticket should cost that much.
Okay.
Wrong, that's what they have been conditioned to believe it's worth because that's what things are priced at, it has nothing to do with their actual value.
You buy a Gucci handbag for 2k, it cost 50$ to make and sell, the rest is overhead going to investors. You think you paid a fair price because that's what these things sell for but if you remove the leeches that have nothing to do with producing the good then you're left with a 50$ handbag.
If someone is willing to buy something for $1 than it's worth $1. If someone is willing to buy something for $1,000,000 then it's worth $1,000,000. Even if it's a single potato chip.
If a company produces a bag for $50 and sells it for $2,000, then the materials and labor were worth $50, while the completed bag, because a single person was willing to buy it for $2k, is worth $2k (even if its only worth that much to that one person).
If all that overhead paying the "leeches" went away and someone was still willing to pay $2k for the bag, guess how much the bag is worth. Hint: $2k.
How do I know? Because, if a thing sells for a price, that's its price.
On the flip side, if all those leeches drove the price up to $2,001 and no one was willing to spend that much, the bag would not be worth $2,001 and the price would therefore have to fall. If the cost of the "leeches" was keeping the price above what people were willing to pay, the leeches would be fired and the price of the bag would drop, or the company / product will stop existing in its current form.
Are there more people who would buy a Gucci bag for $50 than for $2k? Absolutely, but why the hell would Gucci sell a bag for $50 when people are literally willing to pay $2k.
No one needs a Gucci bag, be it $1 or $1m. Gucci knows this, their customers (hopefully lol) know this, and yet $2k is still the agreed upon price, because it is paid by people willing to pay it.
You contradict yourself immediately in your first sentence. It can't be both worth 1 and 2000 at the same time. Someone willing to pay a high price does not set that price for others. We are talking about setting fair prices, not just for a single outlier.
Your definition equates to "my wares are worth whatever I can convince someone they are worth." Is that a fair way to set prices?
That actually hits the nail on the head and I believe that is a perfectly acceptable way to set prices for luxury items like a Gucci bag.
ETA:
It can, because people value things differently. One person might not regard a single item as being worth $1 and $2,000 at the same time, but two people could. And, as long as both people exist, the guy who thinks it's worth $2,000 is who the company is going to sell it to.
I understand its based on perspective, I'm saying that you can't say an item holds a certain worth objectively. A Gucci bag is only worth 2000 if you can find someone to pay that. I think the word "worth" is doing extra work it doesnt need to.
We may have different understandings, be referring to different definitions of, or be applying our own connotations to the word "worth". I'm using it as a noun meaning "material or market value", while I think you may be thinking of it like "The quality that renders something desirable, useful, or valuable", or even as an adjective meaning something like "Deserving of or meriting".
If that's the case, I get what you're saying and agree, I don't personally think a Gucci bag is worth what people are willing to pay for it, nor do I think any part of its production justifies that price. Unfortunately, some people have more cents than sense.
Edit: added a word for grammar's sake
I think I'm assuming the majority of people use worth the way I am rather than you, but I have no evidence to back that up. Anecdotally, people around me seem to refer to inherent worth rather than subjective worth, but that doesnt make them right just because its common.
I think the problem I have with the phrase is when its used as an intrinsic value like you said. People justify buying things on sale using that logic, and dont realize they aren't saving money but spending it. Maybe thats a slightly different issue though.
I wonder what it is about humans that makes us want to put everything into such firm boxes, and ignore the nuance of things. It seems rare that things are truly without nuance so I dont quite understand the dissonance there.
That's where you're wrong. It's the frog in hot water thing that's happening, prices artificially increase to feed the leeches progressively enough that people just accept it.
You're a victim here and you're defending it, it's disgusting.
I'm not buying $2,000 bags lol
It's the same thing with everything that you purchase! 3$ for celery, the CEO is a billionaire the employees make minimum wage? How much do you think that celery cost???
We're not talking about celery, we're talking about a Gucci bag that no one needs. Food, water, and healthcare should be free.
Well it's fucking not and it's more expensive than it needs to be because of billionaires.
Just
Like
Everything
Else
But people pay for it so by your logic then the price is fair, right? Unless all of the sudden you decide to go back on your argument, but you wouldn't do that, right?
Let me quote you before you say "but it's essential needs"
"even a single potato chip"
There, your said so, even for food, whatever people pay is a fair price in your mind.
lmao i knew you were going to bring up the potato chip with my last comment and you're right I used a poor example when I said potato chip, since it's technically a food item. I'll leave it as it is, but think of it more like like a "rock" or "bag of dung" or something and my point stands. I was literally just eating potato chips when I wrote that so it seemed convenient, and I don't really view potato chips as "food" in the same sense I would something like celery, but I see your point and admit I contradicted myself there.
As for this part:
We agree.
As I said further down to the other person. Artists are beholden to record labels, ticket master, and rock nation as the rest of us.
It’s the system that is broken.
Are you pretending she gives away her cut?
"Oh no, I have to keep these billions of dollars while the majority of people can't imagine ever owning the place they live in!"
Fuck off, stop defending rich people, they exist at our expense.
I’m not defending per se. I was trying to have a discussion on whether there are scales to these people.
Yes, there is. There's Elon who is worse than Taylor. Bezos, also worse. But there's more in common between swift and musk than between swift and her fans.
The answer is no, to become that rich you need to not care a single bit about the rest of humanity.
Or conversely you have to place your own self worth so high that I would consider it a mental disorder.
Not really. What about someone like Notch? Sold Minecraft for $2.5B and became an instant billionaire, no exploitation there.
Now he became an asshole after the fact, but there has to be some people who can become extremely wealthy without taking from others. Sure once you get there by luck and hard work then you should be giving back.
What about the guy that Elon had issue with on Twitter from Sweden who sold something to Twitter and become very wealthy but wanted to pay as much tax as possible etc and just be a nice dude.
Unless someone in their situation gets the money and just redistributes it all directly to people in need or to charities right away to then only keep what's needed to make them middle class for the rest of their lives, they're just evil.
"He wanted to pay as much taxes as possible!"
Sure, and then he's still rich while others are struggling.
How would you feel if I started a tire fire in my backyard?
Fine. It would be a literal drop in the ocean compared to the pollution of massive corporations.
Banality of Evil
How can I ever expect the masses to do anything about corporations when they're fine with their idols doing the same?
I don’t have idols, I was just interested in where people draw their respective lines.
You also excluded pollution as a valid criticism of her. Yes. Her CO2 footprint is a valid criticism.
I don't even certain friends anymore because I don't feel ok with burning that much fossil fuel just to have conversations that could be done online, but she's fucking around in a private jet?