The fact that Musk is shit doesn’t make Swift not-shit. But it’s like comparing her cup of shit with Musk’s olympic swimming pool of shit on a warm summer day.
IMHO that critique is fundamentally flawed. She’s selling a service (concerts) and for that she needs to fly. So all that CO2 is caused by the concert goers. Without the concert goers she wouldn’t need a jet. Of course, then it’s also a negligible amount. And presumably she isn’t flying to jets like side by side, but only uses(used) one at a time.
About the other suggestion in that article, I do not want billionaires to use their money for political purposes. This is responsibility of the voters and the government. Ideally billionaires shouldn’t exist but at the very least they should not control our politics with money.
But the real fundamental flaw is that this is a distraction. We need sweeping systematic change and focusing on individuals works against discussing that. Where is the manhattan project to R&D our industrial processes and services to not require carbon? Instead we get this kind of propaganda and “let the free market solve it”. Well what Swift does is the best the market offers. Well maybe she could switch to a Celera 500L. But maybe the concert goers should just go to concerts of local artists instead, or superstars that fly low energy jets. Lol.
I honestly have to give props to FOX news. Or the think tank that came up with this strategy to focus on Swift.
She needs to pollute so she can keep singing isn’t the defense you think it is. If anything it’s evidence of her own selfish belief that the environment shouldn’t affect her money train.
I’m sure streaming residuals and the metric tons of marketing deal money are more than enough for her to slow down and find an ethical way to travel.
She needs to pollute so she can keep singing isn’t the defense you think it is.
No, concert goers are doing the polluting. If Swift retires then you’d get other superstars using Jets instead.
It’s a systemic problem, so the strategy is to distract from the immensity of change needed. We’re not even remotely talking about what would need to be done. Basically focusing on taylor swift isn’t much different from greenwashing or outright climate change denial. Criticizing swift helps PREVENTS action on climate change.
It’s not the person organizing the event and flying people out. It’s those poor peasants that dared attend. What an argument to make.
Someone else would fly the jet is also, not a coherent defense because someone else isn’t doing that. She’s flying her own private jet right now.
It’s a systemic problem, yes. So criticize all aspects of the system to show how inherently flawed it is. All private jet travel by all celebrities should be criticized. Suddenly when it’s not Elon tons of defenders need to tell us how we should look the other way and how there’s nothing important here in this identical situation.
If anyone is trying to prevent anything, it’s Taylor sycophants throwing themselves to defend her from valid criticism.
She’s a billionaire. She could fly first class, rent out an entire train, purchase a fleet of evs or go by bus like a normal touring musician. She has plenty of options and chooses the worst one
Sure, I don’t give a shit about Swift or her music either. My problem is the overly (hypocritical) focus on her, the strong language (“hate her”), the reason why this critique works so well (misogyny) and that it distract from climate action, and that it’s propaganda started on fox news.
This is an example of why we won’t do shit about climate change. We’ll burn every last bit of fossil fuel and do nothing about adaptation and then have a bunch of wars and genocides. These are the mechanisms why. That’s what’s pissing me off.
I thought the saying "there are no good billionaires"was because of the wage theft, unethical labour practices and tax evasion almost all billionaires commit to become a billionaire. AFAIK she didn’t do any of that. I think she is the first ethical billionaire.
While I believe that nobody should be able to wield that much wealth in the first place, arguably being a world-famous artist is among the least unethical ways to become rich as long as the artistic work isn’t bought from ghostwriters. It takes $10 in net profit from 100m fans to make a billion, and I could easily imagine a sizable crowd of her followers genuinely wanting to give her money like that (whereas, for example, I never would have willingly agreed to give Nestlé’s leadership money, even when I used to buy their brands still).
I don’t care about her specifically, but from a “owning the fruits of your own labor” perspective, I think it makes sense for the art itself to be a big part of that.
I’m not even a Swift fan, and yeah I get that she is ultimately still a billionaire. But she played on Friday in my home city of Melbourne, and that day she donated $100k to a local food bank system. I know that’s still a drop in the bucket for her, but that’s not chump change.
However, if you do some searching, there’s a stream of news stories of her donating large amount like that or more. The day before her first Melbourne concert, she donated $100k to the family of the woman killed at the super bowl parade. Two months ago she donated $1 million to a relief fund for tennessee tornado victims. Heaps more food bank donations.
Like, can we seriously just leave her the fuck alone? Musk is an alt-right piece of shit, she’s just a talented musician that actually works for a living. And yeah, I know she doesn’t work as much as some of the rest of us, but stadium touring is still brutal. Musk just sits on his arse all day tweeting and committing labour violations.
She’s also not the child of an emerald mine owner so there’s that too.
100k to a billionaire is no more than a tip. Billionaires are a symptom of an unjust system of wealth distribution, regardless of the person. Musk also happens to be a racist numbfuck, but they’re a dime a dozen. The problem is that he’s part of a digital feudalism and wields enormous power.
Yeah, like I already said in my comment, it’s a drop in the bucket for her. But she’s doing it over and over again. Twice this week she donated $100k. It adds up over time. Dolly Parton is worth $650 million, and she also donates significant sums of that to her book charity. They’re both trying reasonably hard to make the world suck less. Musk is actively creating more suffering. Can we not talk about them like they’re the same level of evil? What good does that bring?
Many rich people are “donating” to avoid paying taxes and it another way for marketing. You are the proof of that, you are defending and promoting her.
Billionaires like her are the reason we have poverty and charity associations
You are 100% correct that many billionaires do that. As cogman mentioned above, having a “charity” that you run yourself as a billionaire is absolutely a common tax scam. That’s not what she’s doing though. She’s actually spending the money.
Also in terms of marketing, like, are you serious? Her music speaks for itself to her fans, they don’t care about any of this. My words here aren’t going to influence someone to go listen to her music or buy a concert ticket. To believe that they could is simply ludicrous.
As a US citizen, she is only allowed to claim donations to charities registered in the US. The $100k she just dropped in Melbourne, Australia wouldn’t be eligible for example. Therefore it’s not free PR, she actually paid about $100k for it.
A lot of billionaires do donate sums like these without direct personal gain. They also have more complex tax optimization/scams going on. None of that means they are virtuous people, and neither is taylor swift. She’s just like any other billionaire.
Have you ever read Andrew Carnegie’s book The Gospel of Wealth? Even if Taylor hasn’t, someone close to her has. Carnegie and Rockefeller needed bodyguards to feel safe in public. All billionaires should feel the same. We forgot to call them what they are. Robber Barons.
It’s, frankly, more than most billionaires and 100 millionaires do.
Most billionaires are setting up fake charities as tax shelters so they can publicize “Elon musk gave money to the Elon musk charity for fueling billionaire private jets foundation”.
You can pretty much pick a billionaire and find that billionaire’s charity that does dog shit.
Except for Dolly Parton who apparently didn’t get the memo that she’s supposed to be scamming :D
More than most billionaires is a pathetically low bar to clear. Charities are less efficient than paying taxes to fund proper centralized systems but this way they get to hold on to the majority of their dragon hoard, not meaningfully address most of the cause they donate too, and launder their reputation to people like you that can’t see past the hollow optics.
to people like you that can’t see past the hollow optics.
Umm, ok, Like I agree with you that charities in general tend to be a bad way to solve public problems. But I’m also pointing out that charities rich people tend to contribute to are often even worse than ineffective for addressing public needs.
This is the second “meme” I’ve seen trying to make the point that Taylor Swift should be immune to criticism because she’s female in the span of two minutes.
That is because you’re not reading properly then. I don’t give two shits about this subject, but the meme states “popular with girls and women”, it says nothing about her being a woman.
I’m fine with all the billionaire hate, although I’m getting a little tired of people beating the now unrecognizable, gooey pile of horse vicera that is photoshopping airplanes into pictures (or just having ai generate a picture) and posting it as “Taylor Swift doing x”
I didn’t see many memes about Swift’s plane usage till she threatened the kid tracking her flights. If that’s not just me, then she deserves it for making a stink about publicly available information.
She only threatened legal action after those memes started and when her flight movements got the attention of the right in an attempt to make her less credible of a voice speaking out against trump.
And knowing how batshit insane trump cultists can be and how she’s basically the single most hated person of his base I’m not surprised that she feared for her security.
Those records were public for years but the legal action only happened after someone created those memes and even fox news suddenly cared about plane emissions…
I think hating equally based on a single metric is never a based take. If being a billionaire makes you evil then surely having 205.2B makes you a whole lot worse (185 times worse) than having 1.1B.
Also you can like things people do while disagreeing with their ways. Sounds like Swift donates a decent sum while being shitty for having a private jet.
Not trying to stick up for Swift, just trying to add nuance to the conversation.
Sure, and I would say we send at least 185 times more hate towards musk. This is a meme about airplanes, nobody has been calling her a nazi or an apartheid nepo baby or anything.
I’ll just point out that there’s a significant difference between wanting someone to be a role model for others and having someone as a role model for yourself. IMO, more people view Swift as the former, and most who hold musk in high regard are the latter.
Instead of “hating” can’t we just universally agree that the ultra-wealthy using private jets as their primary means of transportation is horrible for the environment and hold them all accountable for their part, considering their emissions are much larger than the average person and is only enabled by the money made in part from the emissions of others?
It shouldn’t matter who they are or how many jets they have. Maybe they shouldn’t use private jets all the time if they don’t want the bad publicity.
You see, this is what I was telling some other lemmyer. All this T Swift jet stuff is distracting from the fact that private airplanes are not a major cause of green house emissions. It’s industry. They love all these memes pulling the heat off of them.
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