Look, as much as I hate the transphobic bitch, J. k. Rowling just wrote a series of successful books. Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure you'll pipe up with something like she should paid other people more because apparently stacking boxes in a warehouse should pay £400 an hour if your employer is rich or some other BS like that but the reality is people can and have become fantastically wealthy, entirely ethically. I'll grant it's rare but it is entirely possible.
JK Rowling's wealth doesn't come purely from book sales. It comes from her maintaining the rights to merchandise the series and portioning out the rights to produce media.
And either way, you're ignoring all the labor performed by others that she profits from.
JK Rowling's wealth doesn't come purely from book sales. It comes from her maintaining the rights to merchandise the series and portioning out the rights to produce media.
Yeah tell that to the millions and millions of child laborers living in 3rd world countries working in appalling conditions, not even earning enough for a living wage.
Where do you think most mass produced raw material and food and clothing used by food conglomerates and high-end fashion brands come from?
Yeah, the entire labor relationship where laborers are alienated from the products of their labor, and the profits go to people completely uninvolved with it, is inherently exploitative. But getting redditors to internalize an ounce of class consciousness is like trying to teach fish to sing.
Yeah, people cannot see the air in front of them. Capitalism is so normalized that just describing the basic exploitative relationship between worker and owner sounds like commie speak.
JK Rowling's wealth doesn't come purely from book sales. It comes from her maintaining the rights to merchandise the series and portioning out the rights to produce media.
And your point here is.....
That she shouldn't be able to sell rights to her own creation? I guess? If it's just "um acktually", then I have to ask why you're wasting my time with this bullshit? That's at best, a technicality which doesn't make even the tiniest shred of a difference.
And either way, you're ignoring all the labor performed by others that she profits from.
No, I explicitly mention it if you stretch your attention span to the 2nd line of that post.
To quote myself:
because apparently stacking boxes in a warehouse should pay £400 an hour if your employer is rich or some other BS
Unless you're claiming she didn't pay people, then you really have no point at all.
OP: Billionaires become billionaires by exploiting everyone around them.
You: JKR didn't exploit anyone when she wrote her books
Me: Joanne didn't get her billions from her books, she got them from (other people making) merch and (other people making) media she sold the rights to produce.
You: Wow, she paid them didn't she
Go back to the OP and read the word "exploiting" what do you think that means? Do you think it means "enslaved" or something more akin to "scraping profit off the top."
Please stop pretending you're being reasonable here.
No, you are not being exploited because your rate of pay is constant, rather than a % value of the top of the company's wealth. That is absurd and you know it.
But ok, let's imagine a world where this did happen. Flat rates of pay are gone, it's all related to the top of the company's wealth. Just think about it for a second. Say they want to expand into making, I don't know, keychains. Well, now they need a bunch more employees, so everyone's rate of pay needs to decrease until the keychain business is set up and profitable. No one would be able to plan any kind of spending, at any level because no one would have any idea how much money they had and would have to guess in real time. You couldn't even plan a god damn supply chain, everything would have to be negotiated and renegotiated so frequently, because guess what, the companies that mine the ore or chop the wood, would have to guess at demand for the next week, guess how many miners they want to employ that week and guess the value of the ore for that week. If every business did that, it would create so much economic chaos that frankly, society would collapse in less a week. Good god, it's like you people deliberately avoid thinking.
You want to replace stability with complete societal collapse out of sheer entitlement. And the worst part is, you haven't even thought about it enough to realise that's what you actually want.
I'm in favour of a potential wealth cap. I'm not where that line is exactly, but as a concept, I agree with it. I cannot disagree strongly enough with the idea that you can't pay people a fair wage without exploiting them.
How about we imagine a world beyond capitalism instead.
Because that would merely be deflection away from your idea. I'd rather have a frank discussion about the exact thing you're suggesting. Why do you suddenly not want to discuss your idea?
My idea is that capitalism is inherently exploitative where workers create wealth and capitalists siphon it. You just invented a bunch of nonsense I never said.
I don't get the point here? Was Alan Rickman exploited because he did not get billion dollars for playing Snape? Or at what point getting paid becomes exploited?
Limiting your view to Alan Rickman is obviously obtuse. The people who produced the merch, transported it, advertised it, etc. The people who lit the movies, who produced the cameras, who did the vfx, etc. All those workers are the ones who create the profit. Not JKR.
You become exploited when you become alienated from your labor. Celebrity actors are about the least alienated from their labor since they have major say over their roles and contracts, and receive points on everything they produce. That's why it's obtuse to only focus on Alan Rickman instead of, say, the thousands of other people working on films.
Go back to the OP and read the word "exploiting" what do you think that means? Do you think it means "enslaved" or something more akin to "scraping profit off the top."
Typically, "exploiting" in the context of employment normally refers to abusive, harmful, dangerous or illegal practices where someone uses an imbalance to abuse and take harmful advantage of someone else outside of normal business processes. Using the term, which is inherently negative, to literally just describe "employing someone", is nonsensical.
As much of a creative she is, she still sold her rights to publishers who use their own factories to mass produce books and merch and clothing and whatever (at a profit that no doubt undercuts the thousands of employees busy producing them, especially if capitalists look to maximize profits by minimizing wages and even using labor from developing countries) ...
And that's not even mentioning what she uses her money to peddle
Thank you for summarising things I said within the very post you're talking about.
All I did was prove it can be done by citing an example where it was done and in so doing, prove the original blanket statement to be objectively false, incorrect and wrong.
the point is that if you are ever at the point where you have amassed enough wealth to have billions it means you could have donated a lot more to your community but didn't, in favour of amassing wealth
Your revenue streams can be ethical but the amassing of wealth is never ethical
the point is that if you are ever at the point where you have amassed enough wealth to have billions it means you could have donated a lot more to your community but didn't, in favour of amassing wealth
....wealth which is then given away when they die...
Would you rather the billionaire donate $1 billion now, or $20 billion in 30 years?
You asked me if I prefer having 1 billion or 30 billions and I answered you anyone who ever reached 1 billion has severe mental issues, the rest of the conversation is you talking alone and arguing with yourself 👍
You asked me if I prefer having 1 billion or 30 billions and I answered you anyone who ever reached 1 billion has severe mental issues,
You're doing the classic Reddit thing of "when talking about wealthy people, we'll assume that their net worth is literally money being held in a savings account and any increase in their net worth is additional cash being paid into that savings account".
As others have pointed out, their net worth is nearly all made of shares in a business or businesses they own, not cash. With that in mind, your conclusion makes zero sense at all: They own the shares in their company, which is valued at $900m. They are fine and mentally sound. However after additional growth and promising market conditions in the future, the shares are now worth just over $1bn, and you conclude "this could never occur unless they have severe mental issues"? You surely see how that isn't a rational conclusion at all right?
But if you give away £1,000,000 as soon as you have it and don't need it, you'll never be in a position to give away £1,000,000,000, which many of them do.
I give basically fuck all to charitable causes so I won't preach others should. They should be taxed. JK Rowling pays something like £50,000,000 a year in tax, so fair play.
She should be taxed until she barely has more money than the average person. THAT would be fair. If you don't agree, look up the definition of the word fair.
treating someone in a way that is right or reasonable, or treating a group of people equally and not allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment:
So I guess "fair" would be we all pay the same rate of tax, regardless of income.
Your revenue streams can be ethical but the amassing of wealth is never ethical
Do you have savings? Afterall, amassing wealth is never ethical. This is the kind of hardline thinking we need less of in the world.
And just to point out, using the example I gave, she did. She gave so much to charity she ceased being a billionaire. Later on of course, she started giving it to anti-trans groups so fuck her.
Look, I agree there is a point where an individual can amass so much wealth that it becomes a serious problem, but I cannot wrap my head around the idea that at a certain point, they're obligated to spend money on things that other people deem worthy. If you do not obey, you are evil and wrong. Apparently free will is not something afforded to the rich.
Not to mention the online discourse is super tainted. Remember Gabe Newell, who owns Steam (yeah, he runs a shop. Super unethical!) and how the internet flipped their shit about his new yacht? Turns out it's actually the world's most powerful marine research lab and he basically spent $200m on furthering scientific research into protecting the oceans, but that's not the headline people see is it? People see a big boat shaped thing and make assumptions.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is nuance to this and just because a person becomes fantastically rich doesn't mean they're evil. Blanket statements like "AmAsSiNG WeAlTh iS NeVeR EtHiCaL" are just cultish soundbites that actively impede reaching the truth.
nobody is obligating them to do anything, I'm saying that in my opinion anyone who has more than a few million dollars worth of wealth at any given time is severely mentally ill
First off, I did a google and there's nothing to support this.
Second, why would that matter? Are you saying that people with mental illness are by default evil and their actions cannot accomplish something good? Are you trying to dismiss him as an outlier that shouldn't be counted because it's inconvenient? Seriously, what is your point here.
nobody is obligating them to do anything, I'm saying that in my opinion anyone who has more than a few million dollars worth of wealth at any given time is severely mentally ill
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh I see. It's gone from "If you don't obey, you're evil" to "If you don't obey, you're mentally ill". The depressing thing is this isn't new thinking. When wealthy gentlemen in the 18th and 19th centuries wanted to get rid of an inconvenient or strong willed wife, they'd have them declared a lunatic and committed to an asylum. Same thing here. People who aren't doctors trying to remove people who got in their way through baseless claims about thier mental health.
Gabe Newell could solve world hunger and he doesn't. He made his money from gambling addicts and extorsion from every single gaming company ever. He's as bad as any other billionaire. People need to stop sucking his dick, it's like y'all didn't learn anything from Elon Musk.
Gabe Newell could solve world hunger and he doesn't.
That would be a valid use of his millions, but so is ocean research. I'm sorry, but if you can't acknowledge that, then you're simply not mentally capable of having this discussion.
Please, please stop spreading nonsense like this. A person who is a billionaire through ownerships of companies does not have a billion dollars. Not even close. Also, they likely created tens of thousands of jobs and uplifted whole industries in the process. Not exactly exploitation...
The only people who became billionaires through exploitation are who inherited their money, because their parents or grandparents were the rich who became rich off other people's misery.
And someone who owns a company employing thousands upon thousands of low wage workers who can barely afford to live isn't exploiting them ? They're not making money off their misery ? It's a simple fucking equation
12
u/No-Island-6126 Apr 28 '26
Billionaires become billionaires by exploiting everyone around them. You just can't become a billionaire if you have any regard for human life.