Three of those billionaires made their fortunes by stealing other’s work and exploiting other’s labor. I might dislike Taylor Swift’s music but it is her music and her work that made her a billionaire. When someone stole her work from under her, she re-recorded it from scratch and then put on the most profitable tour in history with each show being 3+ hours long.
I’m not a Swifty, but I also don’t think she qualifies to join that evil as fuck trio.
Hey look everyone! This person’s a billionaire apologist!
I’m (mostly) joking.
You are correct that she is not on the aame level as the others but as a billionaire and member of the ruling class T-Swizzle has an elevated responsibility to the rest of the world. Instead of helping she continues her massive destruction of the climate.Until she is leveraging her wealth to make positive change she does not get a pass.
Oh and buying carbon offsets doesn’t count.
I’m not a fan of hers but they are still correct that she’s not nearly on the same level as the others.
Hey look everyone! This person’s a billionaire apologist!
What do you expect from somebody who uses a corporate logo (of a Texas gas station, no less) as their avatar pic?
(I’m (kinda) joking.)
I have avatars turned off.
But nice. lolTBF Buc-ee’s is one of the most employee and consumer friendly chains across the US. They publicly post their pay (this image is from last year) and it’s far above what most gas stations (or even retail stores) will pay
Sigh… yeah, I know. For what it is, Buc-ees is pretty great: very tasty food, very nice restrooms, good policies as an employer, etc. The only problem is that “what it is” – literally “the world’s largest convenience store,” a gigantic monument to car-dependency, fossil fuels, and lazy consumerism – is fundamentally pretty terrible.
This conversation is making me crave a pastrami reuben and some beaver nuggets, and I’m kinda hating myself for it.
I agree with you, 100%.
I still don’t understand what she allegedly does to provide significant harm to the climate.
Key word, significant. Every person in this discussion charged their phone this morning from energy that was not 100% renewable.
While I catch your meaning, cell phones aren’t the best choice for that comparison, they don’t use much electricity amazingly. Average phone may only take 4 kwh a year to charge. Where I live that would cost less than $1. While my electric bill is around $150, mostly do to air conditioning.
Mostly, the private jet. Idk if she has yachts or mansion(s) but those would also count. It’s not that ordinary people don’t pollute but the scale. The top 50 billionaires each on average pollute more every 1.5hours than an ordinary person does their entire life.
Approximately, 5840 peoples worth a year and they have the wealth to choose otherwise. People charge their phone largely because they have to to stay employed/connected nowadays.
When people have hoarded so much and actively make the world worse instead of better theres no option but to question their morality.
Of all the things to be wealthy for, making music and brining people a little bit of joy ain’t bad. Don’t condone the jet or the lifestyle. But I don’t think it’s fair to lump her in with exon and zuk
The men in the picture are the top 3 of the latest forbes list, Tylor Swift is not in the top 2,500.
Yeah I’m not a fan of her private jet shenanigans or her music, but the other 3 also use private jets like it’s going out of style, and are nowhere close to her when it comes to societal impact. If you wanted a 4th you can use one of our own billionaires from the old continent like Bernard Arnault (who is allegedly pals with Musk)
There’ll be a place for you in the gulag after the Revolution
Not close to as evil as the others for sure. But there’s a lot of labor that goes into making music and into touring that she didn’t do herself. Does all her talent make it right that she makes thousands of times more money per hour of labor as all those others?
I’m not going to argue that Taylor Swift doesn’t deserve to be on the billionaire list somewhere, but if you were only going to include 4, why would she make the cut?
Insofar as Swifties need to be reminded from time to time that their favorite billionaire is still a billionaire, with all the problems that entails, I support reminding them, but Swift being put up as some major public enemy lately is weird.
Where Rupert Murdoch? I’d put him as even worse than Bezos.
Musk, Bezos and Zuck are just the most visible ones but by no means the worst.
It depends on where you are, of course. Here in the UK, the Murdoch press is a massive influence.
No doubt. Some hypothesize that Vladimir Putin is the actual richest man in the world. Possibly even a trillionaire. He’s definitely the worst of the radical rich.
Indeed. The Saudi royal family also ranks pretty high up there.
Alice Walton has more DUI’s than one can count. Killed someone, another time drove into a ravine. Net worth: 71 billion.
She could pay a new person $50,000 for an 8 hour shift of driving her around for every living moment, and it wouldnt dent her money. Could have a “house for a ride” program where if you give her a ride she buys you a house. 10 rides that day? She’d still make money.
And the Sacklers and the Kochs and the Murdochs and let’s not forget Musk’s handlers, Thiel and Ellison.
Koch family deserves to be on here too.
I get that tswift is a billionaire, but she doesn’t belong in this meme.
Quit trying to equate her to the oligarchs. She hasn’t demonstrated any of those tendencies.
This is practically jaywalking compared to the other people in this meme.
The point isn’t to subject them to gradation, it’s to note the damages they all do in their different ways.
Taylor isn’t exempt from being held responsible for her part just because she’s a nice person.
I mean what is she supposed to do, take a riverboat to her next tour? She’s a direct result of a larger cultural fascination, not the problem itself.
I’m with you, she can’t possibly take any form of public transport. Not because she’s somehow better than the rest of us, but for security if nothing else.
And honestly, I can’t imagine how much she would disrupt a public airport or train station. No way I would want to be in that place at the same time, it would be chaos.
There’s plenty she could do and tons of other acts throughout history that managed to do what she does with a smaller carbon footprint.
“She has no choice!” is not an argument to defend what she does.
Perfection is the enemy of good
Asking someone to reduce their carbon footprint isn’t asking for perfection. It’s simply asking them to participate.
And a blatant refusal to do so is what earned her her spot on this list.
I’m sure she’s a nice person- but being nice doesn’t excuse one from the responsibility of their actions.
The cultural fascination with her doesn’t demand that she use private jets to fly almost 200,000 miles a year.
Doesn’t it though, imagine her trying to go through the airport. If people would leave her alone it would work out, but cultural fascination implies people will be fascinated. And therefore she, and every other person at the airport will end up delayed over and over and over.
I think the point being missed is that she takes unnecessary flights and uses too much fuel in doing so.
Look it up. She’s been scrutinized for it pretty publicly. And there are viable alternatives- she just seems to prefer not to use them.
https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-private-jet-jack-sweeney-flights-1868272
13 minute flight to go 28 miles. Maybe a car might have sufficed?
You should, uh…reaaaaad.
Not defending her, but it’s sorta ambiguous. It sounds like this may have been prep for selling the aircraft.
Per the article you linked:
“The last few flights on this account are right around the time that N898TS was sold,” he wrote. “Registration for the aircraft transferred 2/4/2024. These short flights are likely maintenance or demo flights.”
Replace Swift with Putin and I’m back on board.
“no no, my billionaire is fine. They are really different i promise”
She isn’t “my” billionaire as I don’t consume any of her content or really give a shit about her one way or the other but she does feel like a weird addition to the list.
Her tag seems to boil down to her private plane usage but is it really all that more than any other person in her income bracket? There are also a bunch of other billionaires listed by others that do a lot worse. He’ll, even the other three listed are having greater environmental impact because of their company’s pushes into AI and the data center requirements of those.
it’s not about who she is. it’s ridiculous to have her in this group. her plane is doing damage but it’s nothing compared to multinational companies that do whatever the fuck they want with your air, land and water.
She may single-handedly save America from turning into a fascist state with her endorsement, so she gets a pass for now. It is extremely important, yes, but we can worry about her carbon footprint after we get past this MAGA nightmare. Priorities.
Single handedly? So she is the one deciding the elections? I thought there is some 200 million voters deciding the elections. The fact that one billionaires endorsement is so decisive shows deep deep problems with the billionaire cult in the US.
You can’t abolish wealth, it’s practically impossible. Instead, close the loopholes that make them that rich.
Nobody wants to abolish wealth. We want to abolish people hoarding it away from others who lack basic needs.
It actually very much is, if you abolish capitalism and private property you outlaw capitalists.
there has to be some form of private property though, but how do you define the line? Maybe if you could claim stuff for varying amounts of time, be it hours or for your lifetime, but there would still need to be somekind of measure against hoarding and other abuse. Everything should still have value for this, but maybe it wouldn’t need to be monetary value we currently have.
Economy also probably cant be completely removed but it doesnt have to be exactly like it is now where money controls everything. Maybe if every type of work had some kind value determined by something that benefits society as whole and as you work, you gain some kind of credits that can be used to lay claim on stuff. Stuff could also have different tiers based on how crucial they are for life so everyone would have access to at least basic food and shelter no matter what. I dont think people just not working if they dont die to hunger or exposure as result would be problem, as life where you dont do anything is hell unless you are so simple minded you wouldnt be able to work anyway.
Then there is matter of resource allocation, if everyone uses as much as they want everything will run out. But to regulate this there would need to be some kind of authority which could easily corrupt into mockery of itself.
It would be nice if there was some serious research on how to achieve something like this. We dont have to be slaves to wealth. At least i havent heard of anything like that. But i wonder if large enough portion of humanity is even capable of thinking like that.
Private property is fundamentally evil, the only acceptable form of property is personal property. Its simple if you use it yourself (like a home or a toothbrush) its yours, if its a tool of profit then it belongs to those who use it.
that is better term for it
You can’t get rid of hard work
Shoot them into the sun on a billionaire’s space rocket!
space billionaires!
Removed by mod
It took me way to long to realise that wasn’t Bill Nye…
I think Bezos, Musk, and Zuck are each much more of a planetwrecker than Swift.
