136 points

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.

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74 points
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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.

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28 points

I quantify it as: Taylor might not deserve the guillotine, the rest inarguably do.

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9 points

I’m not a fan of hers but they are still correct that she’s not nearly on the same level as the others.

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6 points

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.)

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5 points

TBF 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

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4 points

I have avatars turned off.
But nice. lol

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2 points

I agree with you, 100%.

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-3 points

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.

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2 points

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.

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1 point

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.

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28 points
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Okay but it’s not a 1 woman show. She has likely hundreds of people employed she would not have succeeded without, yet she’s about 1b richer than those combined

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11 points
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She is known for giving these people bonuses that surpass anything I’ve heard about outside corpo management, though. The occasion that made the press mention 100k USD for truckdrivers for one tour and while I dont know how much a truck driver makes a year, it’d sure make my life easier for a couple of years.

Not saying she isn’t good at making money, but I’d say the jury is still out on the issue of hoarding all of it for herself.

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12 points

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

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9 points
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The men in the picture are the top 3 of the latest forbes list, Tylor Swift is not in the top 2,500.

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6 points

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)

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1 point

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?

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-6 points
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It’s people’s money that made her a billionaire, if she became a billionaire it’s because everyone who ever paid for something that brought her money was overpaying. It’s the same for each and every billionaire, even the ones you appreciate, you’re paying too much for shit so they can have more money than they can spend in a lifetime.

“I got my money’s worth!” Well no buddy, you only think so because there’s always a billionaire at the top inflating the price of everything, your money is worth a lot more if they all disappear.

I guess that all the people who downvoted think that it’s perfectly ok for billionaires to exist…

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7 points

I think it’s more your implication that every time anyone make a purchase they get duped or scammed as if they’re stupid and helpless.

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3 points

This is also why all the people insisting “Proof that Valve/Steam are SCAMMING you” are hated and rightfully cast aside. People pay for Steam and enjoy what they get.

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3 points

Everyone but the ultra rich get duped and scammed in this system, we don’t have a choice but to pay the price we’re being charged, but the price we’re being charged is inflated to enrich the few without and benefits to the majority!

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-9 points

There’ll be a place for you in the gulag after the Revolution

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108 points

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?

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44 points

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.

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-23 points

Cuz she a billionaire maybe???

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38 points

That doesn’t explain why she’s on the list instead of the multitude of other, more noxious billionaires.

It makes it look more like someone just doesn’t like TS so they’re trying to say she’s as bad as musk or bezos.

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13 points

She’s definitely not as bad as these other fuck bags. That is for sure. But she still represents how and why the system we live in is broken.

She is just as selfish tho and I think that’s the real issue.

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3 points

Well, tbf, the people shouting “kill all the billionaires” aren’t exactly shouting “well, not the hot one who sings ok!” This should frankly be no surprise, if billionaires are to be shot, she’ll be in the line because she “is one,” nothing “more” is needed when the only metric you’re using to justify murder is how many zeros their bank acct has.

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60 points

Where Rupert Murdoch? I’d put him as even worse than Bezos.

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23 points

Musk, Bezos and Zuck are just the most visible ones but by no means the worst.

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11 points

It depends on where you are, of course. Here in the UK, the Murdoch press is a massive influence.

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6 points

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.

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8 points

Indeed. The Saudi royal family also ranks pretty high up there.

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4 points
*

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.

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3 points

And the Sacklers and the Kochs and the Murdochs and let’s not forget Musk’s handlers, Thiel and Ellison.

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7 points

Koch family deserves to be on here too.

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31 points

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.

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5 points

Nobody should be a billionaire. There is no labor that can be done to become a billionaire ethically.

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3 points

I agree with this take and upvoted you. But she is a billionaire, and also a genuinely good person who’s supported her fans, the people that work with her, etc. I don’t think there should be any billionaires, and I suspect TSwift would likely agree with that.

That’s the difference between her and the actual oligarchs pictured. They’re scum of the earth. She’s guilty of wage exploitation, but capitalism is designed around that idea, so she’s just playing the game.

She’s not off the deep end like so many other billionaires.

There’s shades of gray here. We can agree there shouldn’t be billionaires on principle, and also agree that not all billionaires are using their ill-gotten wealth for pure evil, like the other 3 pictured in the “meme”.

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1 point

Yeah, I also agree she doesn’t really deserve to be in this meme. She’s not as bad as the others on here. However, I suspect the original creator put her on the meme so this discussion could be had, which is honestly very smart.

At the end of the day, I think it should be criminal to hoard the amount of wealth that constitutes being a billionaire. I would “take action” against any and all billionaires given the circumstances, even Taylor Swift. Eat the rich. Distribute the wealth.

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2 points

She belongs on the list because of this, and this.

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28 points

This is practically jaywalking compared to the other people in this meme.

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3 points
*

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.

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26 points

Replace Swift with Putin and I’m back on board.

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10 points

“no no, my billionaire is fine. They are really different i promise”

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16 points

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.

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4 points

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.

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2 points

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.

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2 points

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.

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