So the entire Healthcare, agriculture, and processed food industries.

And obviously Ticketmaster.

Yeah for sure, but we can still plan for tomorrow.

Look I love Gabe as much as anyone but nobody earns a billion dollars

And the perfect counterpart is another rotund fuzzy tech guy, Steve Wozniak. The Woz, who isn’t a billionaire in part because when Steve Jobs decided to fuck over a bunch of Apple employees before the IPO Woz gave them some of his shares. Woz, who spends his time in part video chatting with elementary school classes and talking to them about technology.

To be fair

He did get the steam deck made, so that was kinda cool.

But maybe owning 6 yachts is a little less cool.

Unless the sub and boats were like research vessels he funds, that would be cool

But they aren't.

Why can't billionaires dump their money into funding scientific research? It's not like there aren't scientists out there with plenty of research to be done.

Or even maybe wherever he lives, he could like, fund the entire county school districts for the rest of existence and no one would have to worry about taxes.

Or maybe regularly cancel the medical debt of Valve employees and their families.

Like how fucking hard is it to redistribute your own wealth?

Like fucking Christ, that's the part I don't understand. They complain about taxes and shit at the top, but they do absolutely fuck all to make things better for large swaths of people. Or if they do, it's after they die and $200m gets donated to a university and it prevents next year's tuition from increasing.

Are you presenting him as an example of a good billionaire? Cause still, nah.

I appreciate you posting this, it was actually unexpected to see to me and was nice to know.

I'm not a swiftie, and I'm male, so take my words as you will in that context.

Simply: IMO, it is possible to appreciate someones artistry while disliking their personal value system and actions.

Just because someone is a good artist, does not and should not imply that they are good.

Both liking someone's music and disliking their decisions as a person, can both be true. I hate the plethora of false dichotomy arguments that you can't appreciate music made by a person if that person is considered a bad person. One does not mean the other cannot be true.

Yep, of all the billionaires, there are so many more men to choose from. So. Many.

I'm still surprised that taxing the rich is such a difficult bill to pass. Assuming we live in a democracy, the 1% shouldn't be able to have such sway over the population.

It’s not a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be ultra wealthy,”

It kind of is. the more wealth someone has, the more power they have over other people's life. They can buy laws and regulations, or have them removed. This is never a good thing. Billionaires simply must not exist. In fact, billionaires only exist because we have so many poor people. They profit from other people's hard labour and misery. If it was not such a historically charged term, I would call them parasites.

I recently had this conversation with my sister who's been a huge swiftie for years. Her reaction:

Disagree here. I'd argue being good and being a billionaire are mutually exclusive. You can be good before you are a billionaire (rare) but it's not possible once you enter that class.

As someone in the entertainment business, those performers don't like ticket master either. Or at least on the level I am at.

You're missing the point. The point is that people always defend TS because they like her but she is still a billionaire. You can't just snap your fingers and turn this into a conversation about sexism because that's not related to the point in the least.

If you have billions there are no excuses, dont defend this shit.

That person was already evil before they became a billionaire.

The amount of evilness from being a billionaire, separate from how they got there, is approximately the same for both of them.

Nobody "works for" a billion dollars.

Billionaires can't be benign. It's impossible to make a billion dollars in a lifetime without taking more than you deserve. Someone overpaid for the product or someone was underpaid for the work (probably both). Billionaires prey on that loss, and it's not as if they are Robin Hood giving back to the poor. If that's not malignant, I don't know what is.

Dolly gives free books to every kid, helped rebuild Gatlinburg after the fires, and is now helping rebuild East TN after the hurricane. Also, water is free at Dollywood.

She gets a pass, but she'll still have to give up most of her wealth when the revolution comes.

Taylor Swift is known very well for donating. She donates millions to food banks in every city she’s toured. She also donates on a lot of those gofundme fundraisers, one in which particular really moved her and she penned the song “Ronan”. An incredibly sad and tragic song that will make parents cry, knowing she’s singing about a baby that died despite medical complications, brought Ronan’s mom at some of her concerts, and of course donated to the cause. She regularly funds gofundme campaigns, so overall she seems like a pretty decent person.

I hate the use of her private jet and constant flights, but if you’re that big and hated by some people, then she can’t take regular airplanes because she can be assaulted and murdered. I wish there was some mega jumbo jet that was shared by the rich and did stops in certain cities, like as if it was “public transit” for the rich. That would be great because at least the uber wealthy would be a bit safer from being murdered that way while also certainly cutting down on significant emissions. I’d still hate it and want them to cut back more, but it would be no contest how beneficial sharing one jet versus 100 of them constantly flying everywhere would be. Some of these rich assholes fly insupplies from other countries, exotic food, etc. That pisses me off.

Taylor shouldn’t be a billionaire and I’d love for her to donate and help people out more than she’s already doing. Maybe one day people will see Swift is a bit better than other billionaires, having worked her ass off during the Eras Tour while also gifting millions of dollars to all the dancers and her staff that supported the concert. I went to her Eras tour concert with my spouse, and holy hell that was a phenomenal concert. She basically danced and sang constantly for the entire 3.5 hours or whatever. And she did that back to back for two years? Absolutely insane how much work that would take. I don’t think she gets enough credit, as I do love her music but she’s very hated for some reason.

Taylor should not have that much wealth. It’s insane. I hope she continues to give it away and donate even more than she’s already doing. Would love if she funded progressive parties and stuff like that, to give us more of a choice than the Democrats or the Pure Evil party. Maybe one day she’d be held in high regard like Dolly Parton, but let’s see. For now, I think she’s “one of the better billionaires”, but she shouldn’t be one. They shouldn’t have all the wealth.

Edit, made some slight corrections as I whipped this up on mobile.

You leave Dolly the fuck alone.

You hear.