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How did J. K. Rowling, Michael Jordan, or Jerry Seinfeld f* a lot of people and exploit the system's loopholes?

by mrep 4y ago

lvass 4y ago
They gave people what they wanted badly enough to pay for, but not for free, like all evil capitalists.
- machina_ex_deus 4y ago
  "evil capitalists". This is ridiculous. It's envy rationalization at this point. There are plenty of truly evil capitalists if you want to look for them, but many just aren't. Economy isn't zero sum game, like the truly evil communists would have you believe. Capitalism let's people vote continuously with their wallets. J.K. rowing might have gotten a big paycheck from everything, but much of the economic value dispersed to everyone else. And people wanted those resources in the hands of people making the movies. Nothing is free. There's always a price, and many times the margins of profits are just the margins required for stability anyway. And stability always comes with a price for risk, and it's always the investors paying the risk. What turned out as positive outcome could come from a negative expectation value distribution. There's nothing morally wrong from making a profit especially if you took a risk with negative expectation outcome. You expect these people to give you for free, but if they gave you for free on success they have negative expected outcome and they will never do it. That's like expecting people to give you money, and that's rude.
kstenerud 4y ago
They acquired far more resources than they could ever need, while others around them lacked even the most basic resources necessary to life. This is a systemic failure to be sure, but a failure nonetheless. The end result is these people ending up with massive surpluses of resources and power that others desperately need, simply because they have accumulated a larger amount of "money" from the luck of their circumstances. In the old days, these failures were mediated by debt jubilees, potlatches and such. More recently, we've moved on to wealth taxes, although these are a poor shadow of what we had before to ensure a minimum level of equality in a society.
- Joeboy 4y ago
  So, why are so many people against them giving away that money in pursuit of a fairer world? Is it just frustrating to see the rich (aka evil) give away money consensually rather than it being taken by force? I totally get it if the donations aren't actually doing anything good, but most EA donations go to global health initiatives that save lives, in quite large numbers (I think SBFs did not, however). Edit: I would also get it if donations were being used as an anti-tax argument, but I don't see that being the case? I've never seen any billionaire say their donations should make them exempt from taxes. I believe eg. Gates and Buffet both favour higher taxes for the rich (publicly, at least). Sure there are anti-tax billionaires, and billionaires who make large charitable donations, but I'd guess the correlation between the two things was actually negative.
  - kstenerud 4y ago
    It's not a problem of giving away to charity; It's a problem of people reaching this level of wealth in the first place. In the early days, people who became too wealthy were killed by the rest of the villagers. Potlatches were a natural response to this because equalizing society reduced the resentment and also raised the prestige of the givers. Charity giving is the modern equivalent of this, but in a severely watered down form (they still get to spend their entire lives in unfathomable wealth). With 2 million USD in personal wealth, you can dump it into safe, passive investment vehicles and life comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of your life in a first world country. Tens of millions or more is simply avarice, and needs to be discouraged in order to mitigate the steady slide into extreme inequality that comes as a natural consequence of unequal luck or opportunity over time.
    - Joeboy 4y ago
      So many people seem to leap into this "billionaires are bad" rhetoric when EA is mentioned. I mean, fine, but it's not really an answer to what I said. I think it's maybe an example of the "Gordian Knot" mentioned upthread. I'm not asking whether billionaires are bad or not, I'm asking why so many people would prefer that billionaires keep their money, rather than the money being used to save lives. Can you make the case for me that eg. 250k preventable deaths is a better outcome than accepting a billion dollar donation from a very rich person?
oh_sigh 4y ago
Jerry famously hosed over the other primary cast members on residuals. Didn't matter much for elaine, but George and Kramer didn't come from a family of billionaires. Michael Jordan thought selling shoes was more important than making a statement denouncing a racist man running for office in his home state. JK used her money to stifle fans free speech and fair use with lawsuits galore if she disagreed that they were "true fans". Those are the worst things I can think of for those 3. I don't think it rises to the level of psychopathy but it certainly is questionable behavior.
- boxed 4y ago
  Except for Jerry, those are random stuff done WITH the money they earned. Not something they did to get the money in the first place. So you're just off topic.

How did J. K. Rowling, Michael Jordan, or Jerry Seinfeld f* a lot of people and exploit the system's loopholes?

by mrep 4y ago

How did J. K. Rowling, Michael Jordan, or Jerry Seinfeld f* a lot of people and exploit the system's loopholes?

lvass 4y ago

They gave people what they wanted badly enough to pay for, but not for free, like all evil capitalists.

machina_ex_deus 4y ago
"evil capitalists". This is ridiculous. It's envy rationalization at this point. There are plenty of truly evil capitalists if you want to look for them, but many just aren't. Economy isn't zero sum game, like the truly evil communists would have you believe. Capitalism let's people vote continuously with their wallets. J.K. rowing might have gotten a big paycheck from everything, but much of the economic value dispersed to everyone else. And people wanted those resources in the hands of people making the movies. Nothing is free. There's always a price, and many times the margins of profits are just the margins required for stability anyway. And stability always comes with a price for risk, and it's always the investors paying the risk. What turned out as positive outcome could come from a negative expectation value distribution. There's nothing morally wrong from making a profit especially if you took a risk with negative expectation outcome. You expect these people to give you for free, but if they gave you for free on success they have negative expected outcome and they will never do it. That's like expecting people to give you money, and that's rude.

kstenerud 4y ago

They acquired far more resources than they could ever need, while others around them lacked even the most basic resources necessary to life. This is a systemic failure to be sure, but a failure nonetheless. The end result is these people ending up with massive surpluses of resources and power that others desperately need, simply because they have accumulated a larger amount of "money" from the luck of their circumstances. In the old days, these failures were mediated by debt jubilees, potlatches and such. More recently, we've moved on to wealth taxes, although these are a poor shadow of what we had before to ensure a minimum level of equality in a society.

Joeboy 4y ago
So, why are so many people against them giving away that money in pursuit of a fairer world? Is it just frustrating to see the rich (aka evil) give away money consensually rather than it being taken by force? I totally get it if the donations aren't actually doing anything good, but most EA donations go to global health initiatives that save lives, in quite large numbers (I think SBFs did not, however). Edit: I would also get it if donations were being used as an anti-tax argument, but I don't see that being the case? I've never seen any billionaire say their donations should make them exempt from taxes. I believe eg. Gates and Buffet both favour higher taxes for the rich (publicly, at least). Sure there are anti-tax billionaires, and billionaires who make large charitable donations, but I'd guess the correlation between the two things was actually negative.
- kstenerud 4y ago
  It's not a problem of giving away to charity; It's a problem of people reaching this level of wealth in the first place. In the early days, people who became too wealthy were killed by the rest of the villagers. Potlatches were a natural response to this because equalizing society reduced the resentment and also raised the prestige of the givers. Charity giving is the modern equivalent of this, but in a severely watered down form (they still get to spend their entire lives in unfathomable wealth). With 2 million USD in personal wealth, you can dump it into safe, passive investment vehicles and life comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of your life in a first world country. Tens of millions or more is simply avarice, and needs to be discouraged in order to mitigate the steady slide into extreme inequality that comes as a natural consequence of unequal luck or opportunity over time.
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    So many people seem to leap into this "billionaires are bad" rhetoric when EA is mentioned. I mean, fine, but it's not really an answer to what I said. I think it's maybe an example of the "Gordian Knot" mentioned upthread. I'm not asking whether billionaires are bad or not, I'm asking why so many people would prefer that billionaires keep their money, rather than the money being used to save lives. Can you make the case for me that eg. 250k preventable deaths is a better outcome than accepting a billion dollar donation from a very rich person?

oh_sigh 4y ago

Jerry famously hosed over the other primary cast members on residuals. Didn't matter much for elaine, but George and Kramer didn't come from a family of billionaires. Michael Jordan thought selling shoes was more important than making a statement denouncing a racist man running for office in his home state. JK used her money to stifle fans free speech and fair use with lawsuits galore if she disagreed that they were "true fans". Those are the worst things I can think of for those 3. I don't think it rises to the level of psychopathy but it certainly is questionable behavior.

boxed 4y ago
Except for Jerry, those are random stuff done WITH the money they earned. Not something they did to get the money in the first place. So you're just off topic.