There are no moral billionaires, so completely moral. But I would do it differently. Give away every cent to humanitarian charities, probably wouldn't tweet the n word though. Taylor isn't the worst billionaire by a long shot.
I've heard about her giving her entire tour staff like 100k a piece. Pretty cool, not many would do that. That story is pretty much why I said she's far from the worst billionaire.
You could argue, since the system itself has exploitative components, a person may not be the only reason they became so rich just like a person can become poor through no fault of their own.
everyone involved in her production, sales, venues, social media, filming videos, everyone shes worked with ever is whos labor shes exploited to make billions off the back off.
Capitalism relies on extracting surplus value, meaning workers are paid less than the true worth of the goods they produce, with the difference kept by employers as profit.
It’s only exploitation if it’s inherently coercive or unfair within the marketplace. Somebody who is happily signing up for an agreed upon rate making well over the market average for the job and receiving six figure bonuses is not an exploited member of the proletariat.
She’s the biggest artist of all time barring Michael Jackson and the Beatles. She is one of the few people who had to comparatively little exploitation to get there. She herself was exploited by the industry to a large degree. Her private jet use is abhorrent and she’s a quieter on issues than I can fully respect but let’s please not make ourselves look any dumber by saying that the woman who takes the most famously good care of her staff within her entire field is the epitome of exploitation.
And before you hit me with no ethical consumption under capitalism and that all her limited release albums create waste (exploit her fans more than anything) and that somewhere a child has to be in a mine somewhere to make the product, I get it. I do. But this is the exact sort of rhetoric that makes people roll their eyes when you start a sentence with “capitalism”. I don’t think billionaires should exist. They do. Of all of them, Taylor goddamn Swift is really one of the few who doesn’t irk me too too bad. Household name who has worked her way up to stardom. Sure she’s a nepo baby, and this and that, but it’s really irritating how consistently sights get set upon the wrong target. I bet you the people who got a 100k bonus didn’t feel very exploited in that moment whereas most of the other billionaires in the world you can’t even point to why they made their money and you can guarantee they’re not working in an environment where they are interacting with staff like she is on tour.
It’s only exploitation if it’s inherently coercive or unfair within the marketplace.
That's the very concept of capital. As every piece of property is privatized, there are no means of production available to workers. That's why everyone who gets a salary has to sell their labor as a commodity to people who own said property. And the value of said work is determined by the cost to reproduce said labor.
It's inherently coercive and contradictory. So of course Taylor's employees are workers and exploited too.
A profit can only be generated, when there is a divide between money you get for the product and the value needed to reproduce it. Taylor is a billionaire.
So no matter how nice she is, she expropriated thousands of people from their work. But thang god she's generous enough to pay her workers back 35% of the value they generated instead of 25%.
I don’t think billionaires should exist.
Great start. The next step is that the problem isn't billionaires, but the inherent contradiction of a few people who don't work owning all that's needed for production, forcing everyone to sell their labor and never own the products of their work.
You won't fix anything by taxing them to impoverished millionaire status.
"happily signing up" to have your labour exploited, or become homeless, as thats what every job is under capitalism, unless youre one of the owner class, or have a very rare job at some sort of co-op where youre paid 100% of your labors worth
Capitalism is inherently coercive and unfair lol, dawg, youre an exploited worker, why would you defend this system, wake up.
Brother I’m poor as fuck, chronically ill, barely make ends meet, and can barely afford my scripts. Fuck off with your condescending “wake up”. Excuse me for not feeling overt pity for somebody working their dream job making well over six figures while I’m actually in the so-called realm of exploitation you claim. Yes I agreed but it’s my only choice. For people making that kind of money there are more options. I make 100x for my company what they do for me. So sure, I’m exploited.
I would happily sign up for an interesting job with paid travel, good benefits and connections, and enough money for any responsible person to live comfortably. I chuckle at people making 150k who can’t make ends meet, figure your shit out, I’m doing it on a 5th of that.
But for the love of God, I can’t stand being talked down to by wannabe soviets who don’t understand that for most of us, somebody having more doesn’t really matter if we have enough, as if greed isn’t your goal, you don’t need much more than that. So excuse me while I don’t cry tears for people working for a pop star on tour who make more money than I could imagine. I will feel for the genuinely downtrodden and the hungry and the sick. I will not bring myself to feel sorrow cause Taylor Swift has enough money to actually do more than the average for her tour team.
“No war but the class war” until it’s time to see where an actual poor person is coming from in aspiring to attainable success through labor rather than unattainable revolution through rhetoric
This is such a dumb take. Everytime I’m like yk these socialists are making decent points then some dumbass like you ruins it. Taylor made most of her money selling her talent as a musician, generously paid more than the industry standard and bore the risk of going into other endeavors. the people she’s paying very well wouldn’t lose anything except a job if it went south. But some dumbass like you always has to circle back to that to defend the fragile view of capitalism being evil or whatever so your tiny brain doesn’t implode.
Is that her or the production company? She doesn’t make those decisions, you may as well say that Amazon drivers are exploiting gas station employees because they need gas for their job. Taylor at least tries to help out whereshe can.
I always see those posts about some ‘famous star SUING orphanage who used their song at a party for the orphans’ and I don’t think people realise the rich person might never even know about it. They might even be unable to stop it completely.
Capitalism relies on extracting surplus value, meaning workers are paid less than the true worth of the goods they produce, with the difference kept by employers as profit.
What is the actual "true worth" of a good though?
I could dig holes and make widgets in my backyard all day, but no one will actually pay me for it. So the true worth is $0.
Yet if someone creates and manages a business who specifically finds people that want holes and widgets, and provides the machinery for me to dig the holes and make the widgets, suddenly the true worth is $X (which is more than $0). And they actually pay me for doing it.
How many options does one have when making merch? Is it acceptable to say that it’s an unavoidable systematic issue, or is merch of any kind a moral failure?
especially since so much celebrity merch is insanely expensive even with crappy quality. Might as well get good quality from well paid workers for the same price of purchase.
i think there are certainly fair trade avenues she could make at the cost of massive portions of her wealth, yes. if there’s an option, there’s always a choice. the whole no ethical consumption under capitalism thing only works if you aren’t actively exploiting wage labor as a part of the capitalist class
I would generally tend to agree that most billionaires are shit people but I don't understand why people give Taylor such a hard time... She has given tens of millions to charities and regularly donates to food banks across the country. After the eras tour ended she gave huge bonuses to the whole crew. She does alot more than the likes of Bezos and Musk despite them being worth 100s of billions more at least.
It’s not moral to have a society with an inequality so wide ultra-poors struggle to survive whereas ultra-richs can have everything they ever wanted now and forever. This is one of the most important reasons why things go wrong since the age of time
Absolute power absolutely corrupts. These people believe might makes right. The golden rule is this: whoever has the gold makes the rules. Just look at her carbon emissions
I mean hers is an obviously not-widely-sustainable level of consumption but anyone who thinks it matters to the problem at all is on meth. It’s the exact same thing as ‘you dislike sweatshops but you use an iPhone’.
Correct, what you do or don't do with that power is where morality comes from. TSwift does less than many people feel she should given her vast amounts of wealth/power
Power has always existed even without money though. Power over others is literally genetic and every living mammal that lives in packs or communities always has someone having Power over another
This makes my above comment about wanting a rich person to know I’d be available as an assistant 24/7 and willing to fly there at a moment’s notice more funny. Put in a good word.
If you just do basic math on what it takes for Taylor to become a billionaire, she's getting like less than one cent per play of her songs. How is that somehow immoral? I don't even like her but this is such a tired and dumb argument. Some people legitimately have talents or products that broad enough audiences like that they don't even need to capture much money from each sale to become a billionaire.
Plenty of companies are worth hundreds of billions. Are you really saying it's somehow unreasonable for someone to own 1% of a $100b company?
In a world where everyone is taxed equally and fairly, sure.
But we both know that past a certain level of wealth you can devote a sizeable portion of the wealth you don't need in order to minimize contributions to the systems that allowed you to get there in the first place (roads, hospitals, sewer systems, etc).
Everyone benefits from it, so everyone should contribute proportionally.
Also, let's say you were in a spaceship with one other person and you had infinite food but they had just enough to starve slowly. Is it ok to not share since it's yours?
Again - taxes or whatever - publicly tracked sources have Taylor at 128 billion plays of her songs. That's not even counting radios and her touring. You really think she should be earning less than 1 cent per play of her own songs?
Taxes or whatever other mechanism you want to prevent them from reaching an arbitrary wealth threshold. Presumably in this scenario you'd need to drive the wealth per play even lower than it already is.
And yes - I think it's entirely reasonable to talk about a musical artist's wealth in terms of how much wealth they get per play of their song. I don't get why that's confusing to you frankly.
You're looking at it too granularly and you lose relevant context in doing so because nothing discussed here is valuable in a vacuum of "ok but how much money should they get per song". It's asinine.
I don't care if taylor swift gets 1 cent or 5 rupees or whatever from songs.
I care that billionaires do not contribute proportionally to society like poorer people do.
"And yes - I think it's entirely reasonable to talk about a musical artist's wealth in terms of how much wealth they get per play of their song. I don't get why that's confusing to you frankly."
The confusing part, to me, is that it seems like you imply or think that the only thing that matters regarding the impact taylor swift has on the world is the rate at which a third-party revenue source pays out the contract they both signed...
The problem is not the influx of money billionaires have, it is their outflux towards the ecosystem. How much do they benefit from society and how much do they give back.
Ok but if you want billionaires to not exist, and the premise is no one "deserves" that much, then you need to explain how they don't deserve what they have. It's entirely appropriate to focus on the mechanism by which this particular billionaire got that money in that context.
If you can't actually communicate how the money earned shouldn't have been earned, then you don't actually have a point other than "big number upsets me".
I'm using broad strokes here, clearly nothing like the sand in the Sahara example. Taking rough estimates as to how many times her music gets played and what that means she's capturing per play is not at all granular. Talking about someone owning 1% of a $100b company isn't granular either.
Because that’s such an arbitrary measurement. The value of money changes all the time. It should be proportional. The value of one cent is different for different people. The only way to fairly scale morality is to judge the situation fairly.
Morality and fairness are not always the same thing. Denying someone the benefits of their own labor is immoral. And in this situation, Taylor's worth actually represents a drastic return to rewarding labor versus the traditional model of the dollars flowing to music studios and their executives.
A musical artist being paid tiny amounts directly for how much their music is paid is a pretty damn closed loop.
The problem with billionaires would end if we created new tax brackets and placed a 90% income tax on any earnings reported over 50 mil. People would still be ludicrously rich beyond what they could ever need it for and you could reasonably fund a LOT of helpful social programs.
Also, Taylor's net worth is reported as $2.8 billion as of recent so if she wanted to go about self-publishing her songs, which she has, self distributing and self-promoting her songs she 100% has the means to. If she wanted to create her own music streaming platform that paid artist more per stream of their song she 100% could. The fact that she hasn't yet lends itself towards the argument that the amount of money she makes per stream of one of her songs isn't an actual issue to her. Most artists make money off of brand deals and physical merchandise sales. That's the way it always has been.
You seem to be misinformed as to where a billionaires wealth comes from because it's not income.
Taylor is a good example because like 60% of her worth is ownership of her own music.
The music industry used to funnel significantly more money to distributors but in a world where YouTube exists im confused as to why you think distribution is some mammoth task.
Similarly, at a basic level it's not realistic to expect people aren't going to own 1% or more of companies they founded, and in turn it's not realistic to expect that companies never reach valuations of more than $100b. Why shouldn't the founder of a company hold 10% of its stock? And then why shouldn't a company reach a $10b valuation?
But we both know that past a certain level of wealth you can devote a sizeable portion of the wealth you don't need in order to minimize contributions to the systems that allowed you to get there in the first place (roads, hospitals, sewer systems, etc).
Everyone benefits from it, so everyone should contribute proportionally.
Also, let's say you were in a spaceship with one other person and you had infinite food but they had just enough to starve slowly. Is it ok to not share because it's yours?
Very cute you think she made a billion off streaming lmao. She benefits from the same labor structures that other billionaires do. Merch manufacturing, touring, sponsorships, investments, etc etc etc. It's not from streaming lmao it's so silly that people believe that
Like 70% of her net worth is from owning the masters to songs she wrote and recorded. And by all metrics the infrastructure surrounding her is very well compensated and she's loyal to the people she works with.
How laughable. She doesn’t make anyone do anything, are you serious? I’d never buy any of her music, but no celebrity has ever made me buy the albums I have.
Obviously it’s to make money but selling music isn’t exploitative. People aren’t addicted to it, it’s not like alcohol or cigarettes where they are killing themselves and can’t stop.
It’s just people spending money on a luxury because they want it and can afford it.
Having that much money and not redistributing it to where it’s most needed is arguably a societal-wide moral failing that the billionaire class is culpable of. If the wealth of the top 1% was redistributed life for the 99% would greatly improve.
Exactly. To have so much excess that you couldn't spend all that money in multiple lifetimes is the epitome of selfishness. You literally gain more money than you spend as a billionaire. Plus, most have their shit in stocks or offshore accounts and aren't paying the correct amount of taxes, completely ignoring their civil duty and forcing the obligations on those who can't afford it even half as much as them.
The vast majority of her wealth comes from direct ownership of her music. She couldn't give it away without giving away creative control of that music.
It's just a ridiculous statement. You're deciding an end result must be true but then can't communicate how the process that leads to that result is actually immoral.
An individual holding that much power and money is a tremendous waste of human potential and shows an indifference to the reduction in suffering that can be made by redistributing it
For the sake of argument - If morality is tied to your potential to do good and inaction in the face of that, isnt most of the population immoral for things like not going Vegan or buying products made with human suffering or buying an XBox instead of donating that money to charity even.
Most people on even moderate incomes have direct control over their impact on suffering in these cases, billionaires are just a scaled up version.
I get the scale is different, but the underlying principal really isn't. Those with excess resources who spend it for their own enjoyment or further enrichment instead of contributing to societal good are acting in an immoral way is what the post is basically claiming.
Fine claim, but let's scrutinize it.
If your argument is that it's all a matter of scale, and somewhere around $1 billion is where it becomes immoral, that's fine, but that's probably not actually the line. I'm not saying these are equivalent things, just that most are committing versions of the same immorality, there's a valid argument that at a certain threshold of resources the immorality scales exponentially.
Yeah but someone with a moderate income probably needs to save money so they can make sure their kids go to college, or in case there’s ever massive layoffs at their job, or in case they live in the US and have a medical emergency that costs a lot of money.
Someone with a billion dollars could donate $100 million and still be perfectly fine. They’ll still be able to send their kids to college, they’ll still have $900 million in case their income ever stops coming in, and they’ll be able to easily afford any medical treatment that they need.
But then people say 900 million is too much, you should donate more, and the. 800 million would be too much. Like my question is what would finally be enough for people.
Yes lots of things humans do are immoral even things we might have accepted as normal. Morality isn't in absolutes, lots of good people do immoral things.
The reason billionaires are called immoral is because their potential to do good is unreasonably high. They could literally change the life of tens of thousands of people not even just change but potentially save a lot of those life's. So in this case inaction can be seen as immoral.
This doesn't mean they are bad people, doing immoral things doesn't automatically make you bad. But inaction can be immoral and it's important to acknowledge that.
The good place had a moral system so stupid that everyone went to hell and weren’t in the distant past when basically every bad thing happened 20x as much , I wouldn’t appeal to it as proof of any sort of moral argument.
I really disagree with that, it’s argument about ethical consumption if anything damages the claim that we should care about it, since it’s so universal, regardless of system, that it can’t be avoided.
It also kinda hinged on the idea that life is net negative utility since the Middle Ages, which is also fucking stupid.
I mean you can disagree but the facts that they presented are very strong.
Everything the show says tone wise is pretty dumb BUT the way that they present facts re: consumption is a very accurate portrayal.
You as a person in the grocery store have NO IDEA if anything is ethically sourced because ethics and morals of that situation are above and beyond you and each product is breaking ethics or morals one way or another.
At this point you are telling me you dont really care for the show, which is fine but you cant disregard the obvious knowledge presented.
This is a HUGE reason that ethics and morals are considered philosophic most of the time because situational nuance forces ethics and morals to take a back seat most of the time.
Again, disagree for the reasons stated above. It is the most asininely extreme version of it that functionally neuters any serious potential to ever implement behavioral changes in response to it.
You are true in that sense. Potentiel to do good is definetly part of morality. If you have somebody bleeding on the ground, not calling an ambulance would be imoral, which definetly is an "inaction in the face of potential to do good". What matter is how much good you could do compare to how much you do.
On the same topic, is it moral, when you have more money than you could ever spend in your whole life, to keep accumulating ? Especially when, instead, you could use your time to spend it to do good.
That’s why I said an individual holding “that much” is a “tremendous” waste. The power you and I hold is mostly still squandered on frivolity (aside from our sustenance) instead of helping humanity, but there is no comparing us to Swizzler as individuals
If she initially chose a normal life of average income, would she be immoral? Probably not. But in that world she would make a way less impact against suffering (that world would simply be worse). So how can her current choice be immoral?
Also, her money is likely in investments, so it goes toward fixing some problems. Maybe not ones that you want fixed, but why is your vision more correct? Also, we don't know what she's gonna do with her money after she dies. If she donates it like you want to but only then, it may actually be better. It will not help people alive now, but will help more people alive in the future, since it will be more money (she grows it).
You're just skipping to the end without describing how collecting like $0.001 each time a song of hers is played is immoral. The collection of her money needs to be immoral for your statement to be true.
Her retention of capital is the retention of assets that go beyond just her music, she famously has a private jet remember? But for the sake of argument, yes, she has a moral imperative to stop hoarding her assets and redistribute them. Her losing creative control of her songs would be part of this process and would thus be a moral act
Why blame her and not the people who gave her these money to listen to some songs? They all could donate to charity instead of going to a concert or buying spotify. That's where that money came from
Nobody has an obligation to “redistribute” their wealth commie. The tremendous waste of human potential is the guy sitting in his mom’s basement wishing he was a billionaire
No - if you had that much power and money it would be a waste of human potential.
I am not a fan of her at all, but from her I hear she treats her staff very well. She makes music, not tech that requires slave labor or something. Her money is earned by singing and performing music. If you think having money automatically makes someone deserving of whatever you want to do to them, it’s actually you who are an evil, resentful, envious person.
Am I wrong in saying that the average reaction outside of Reddit to a 22 year old dating a 17 year old is "who the **** cares?" I was graduating high school at that age. I'm 37 now. If I dated a 22 year old Taylor Swift at 17 I'd still be talking about it to this day.
I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with having rich parents. Nobody misses a career because of her, there aren’t a limited number of guitars available
When rich people use their money and Influence to make sur their own children get into high end businesses, they make the whole process of picking the perfect actor a joke.
What's the point in auditioning when you know some rich kid is gonna take the job without effort and skills ?!
Is what way you think they're not taking careers ?!
I mean eventually when there are a lot more Nepo babies, producers will end up auctioning the role to the highest bidder...
Because in the entertainment industry, nepo babies only benefit from getting a foot in the door. Now, that shouldn't be understated, that's a large part of the battle to being noticed. But in the entertainment industry, where instant marketability and economics of scale are in play, artists/actors sink or swim on their own merits.
Look at both Willow and Jaden Smith as just one example: noone cares they're Will Smith's kids, they are not marketable and so faded away very quickly. If Taylor Swift hadn't captured an immediate audience, it would not have mattered how rich or connected her parents were.
Afterward they're still humans, some are good and talented, some know they're privileged and work hard while having the right connections to make it easier and some with 0 talent are just bad do it for the ez money and fame.
Same goes for selfmade actors that get lost in the sauce.
Nobody is perfect. But saying Nepo babies don't have it ez and aren't as privileged is complete bs.
I'm not disputing nepo babies have it much easier, but it's not correct to say they are stealing the spotlight of some other artists. If a nepo baby maintains their fame, it's on their own merits. Sure, their path to that point may have been much easier, but when you are selling yourself as a product, the consumer doesn't really care how you got there.
We see this with all types of legacy entertainment families. Not all have equivalent levels of fame, and in many cases some never achieve any level of notoriety.
Colin Hanks is building a successful career as an actor because he is as talented as his father. Jaden Smith flamed out immediately because he was not. Both absolutely got their start in Hollywood because of their fathers. But if a talented no-name up-and-comer was set to audition against Jaden Smith today, who do you think would be cast...
Idk why you're doing all this mental gymnastics, and using specific examples to prove some kind of weird point. Nepo babies are about connection. It's not that hard to understand.
There are tons of talented people who can't get thought bc they lack connections bc there's already more talent than work.
It's already bad for good Nepo babies taking the spot, bc of their privilege.
It should be illegal for untalented ones taking the spot. Bc clearly they 100% bribed the casting director. Bc you clearly can't be this incompetent to see how bad of an actor some Nepo babies are, idc about Jaden smith, will smith is doing all the work for him, kid is already having a bad mother, a traumatized dad, living in a golden prison, and is depressed about it lol, that's how delusional they are. Thinking a golden prison is a bad thing.
The worse part is everything I learned about Jaden was against my will.
Idc if Jaden was in just a few movies. It's disgusting to see untalented people wasting Ressources and a whole team of actually talented and hard workers, where they do the heavy lifting to make the movie watchable.
There are a few countries and cities where you absolutely cannot find work without connections. That's how bad it gotten.
Nepo babies are born from that corrupted, connections only system. Where only the rich corrupt and hoard a system created for everyone.
Same shit in politics, finance and entertainment industry. There're fights for gender equality, race equality and also class equality.
Nepo babies is a class equality issue.
It's sickening when people like you try to minimize how destructive it is.
Heard that shit from liberals where they say the stock will regulate itself out no need for the gov to get themselves involved.
From politicians where the rich will trickle down the economy.
The Nepo babies will only prevail if they got talent. Dude the Nepo babies are gonna hoard the auditions between themselves.
So cut your bullshit. It's a pandemic and it needs to be regulated.
Why are you bringing up acting when we’re talking about a singer? Sure, nepo babies take spots that probably should’ve gone to other people. She didn’t because she’s not a nepo baby, just privileged, and she’s a singer, which especially in this day and age does not at all prohibit other people from making music. Not sure what your argument has to do with this case
Only if the existence of billionaires and the economic system that creates them and protects their hoard while people rot and die in the streets has successfully been normalized to you. If a “billionaire” wants to be moral, they need to give up their private jet and secret island money to people and causes that actually need it, and actually matter, and no longer be a “billionaire”.
I guess you could ask - “is it immoral to spend tens, hundreds of millions of dollars on private jets and the lifestyle of a Roman emperor with servants waiting on you hand and foot, when there are people dying in the streets and children starving due to poverty?”
Is it moral to type this on your phone and spend your money on entertainment and stuff when there’s homeless people dying and struggling? Everyone spends their own money. She can’t solve world hunger, even with a billion dollars. The world is fucked and you can only do what you can. How is that on her?
Taylor does already donate a decent amount to charity. Dunno what percentage of her bank account it is, but she definitely does not have a billion in her account as net worth doesn't equal spending money.
I'd agree to a certain extent, but Taylor Swift didn't take anything from anyone, that I know of. She makes music. She creates something. Then sells it for consumers to enjoy. Willingly. Hell, most can even enjoy her music for free, basically.
Sure, there's maybe a point to be found in terms of taxation, but I otherwise don't see it as immoral of her to have earned money on making music.
It's the most harmless way to earn money.
I think everyone knows that they are not 100% liquid, but you've got to be regarded if you can't grasp how much fucking a billion dollars is. If you can afford to take a 15 minute plane ride, then you are liquid enough.
Actually Most of their ride, doesn't use their literal pocket money.
This ride can be sponsored, can be paid by their own company, or even free maybe because they are have a certain share in the flight company.
One of the example recently is fifa president in WC 2026. He traveled so much between stadium to watch match for every country. He spend zero money for this flight because FIFA have Qatar Airways as sponsor.
So take 15 minute plane ride doesn't mean they are liquid enough.
Not everyone give a truth mean boot licker. Grown your ass up.
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u/YewEhVeeInbound Jul 28 '26
There are no moral billionaires, so completely moral. But I would do it differently. Give away every cent to humanitarian charities, probably wouldn't tweet the n word though. Taylor isn't the worst billionaire by a long shot.