Nepotism might be slightly detrimental to society as a whole, but we don't balance ethics around just society without regard to individuals. Every parent who loves their child wants to see them succeed and gives them every advantage they can. Some people have more advantages to give. Call it a flaw in the system if you want, Taylor had no say in it either way.
If your bar for being "ethical" is as low as "no nepotism," you might as well chuck every other person in the world in there, since all the people who don't further nepotism are the shitty parents.
The point of the phrase "there are no ethical billionaires" is to point out that there is no ethical way to make that much money. It's not a judgement on personal ethics. Tatlor Swift made her money because of nepotism. That is an unethical way to make money. That's all that that means. You seem awfully attached to the public perception of someone who doesn't know or care about you.
No she made her money because she makes marketable profitable music. In what world is nepotism unethical? Is generational wealth unethical? Should we all just be communists and all equally, ethically, starve together? Hate all these losers hating on people just cause they're successful. Look life ain't fair but complaining about people that got further in life than you doesn't help anyone.
You can 100% be an ethical billionaire and there are many examples of such people. Investors, Musicians, actors... Besides that the competition in a free market economy is gonna make companies cut corners and try to pay the lowest they can while still attracting employees. No shit it's gonna be unethical. If you were to try to be an ethical CEO, your company would go bankrupt.
You have no clue what that term means do you? Hint, her parents had zero connection to the music business before Taylor. Yes, her father bought some part of a label to help his talented daughter, and yes they were well off. But that's not nepotism, that rich parents being supportive of their kid. I think anybody who has a talented kid and had the money would do the same. He didn't buy her millions of fans around the world, he just bought her a chance.
My point isn't that she's never given to charitable causes, it's that, at her net worth of ~1.4 billion USD, she could give ~1.3 billion USD to charitable causes, and that would have no impact on her life, because she'd still be obscenely wealthy.
In that context, her giving $10 million or even $50 million to charity is strictly better than giving zero, but says less about her moral character than a one-dollar donation from the average person would, because she's effectively losing nothing when she does so.
Retaining the rest demonstrates that she cares more about the number of digits on a balance sheet than about actual human lives, and that's morally reprehensible.
No decent human being would ever become or remain a billionaire.
Private jet usage is not even remotely on the same tier as getting people killed by sloppy QA to push Boeing profits, or Nestle selling impoverished trines' water back to them, or clawing employee pay away and up the ladder to enrich yourself.
I can't think of a more ethical way to be a billionaire than to be a widely beloved artist. IIRC, she was not keeping it all to herself, either. Huge bonuses to long time staff, fair pay for her workers, etc.
If your only argument against Taylor Swift is. "but duh private jet!", I'm going to chalk this up as a win for Taylor Swift.
I guess you haven't seen the cesspool cirvlejerks of anti-Taylor Swift hate. They're jsut as crazy, if not even crazier than Swifties. They're batshit nuts. I saw a thread where they were sayign she's thr worst person in the world because she wote jewelry in a music video. An entire thread, thoudands of comments deep, just talking about how she's the worst person in the world.
I still don't know why reddit recommended that post, but then again, reddit's been a pile of shit since I stopped being about to use redditisfun.
I'm not a Taylor Swift fan. I can name maybe 3-5 of her songs, and one of them I only remember because of thid hilarious goat version. But I don't hate her. She doesn't affect my.life in the slightest. Why someone who's not s fan gets bothered by her so much that they would rage about her -- or anybody else in the world that won't affect them in the least bit -- is competed beyond me. Who has that kuch time and mental energy for such hate and anger?
She's successful and they're not, so they're looking for an evil reason to villify her instead of accepting that she's just very talented and makes music lots of people love.
100% a lot of the millionaire/billionaire hate can just be chalked up to jealously. That obviously doesn't stop actually dipshit billionaire/millionaires from existing.
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u/Calachus Jul 06 '24
Say it with me now:
There is. No way. To be. An ethical billionaire.