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The Civilized States of America and Jesusland
Buckingham Palace admits Princes Charles and Edward are gay
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Eating Horses
The Theory and Practice of Masturbation
Why Grown Men Lust after Teenagers
Captain Kirk Meets Pollyanna
It's OUR Money!
Invade the Isle of Man
Billionaires and Capitalists
Why Bolsheviks don't want to kill Billionaires
Are atheists communists?
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The only thing that keeps movie/rock stars financially alive is sales (movie tickets, concert tickets, CD's, merchandise, etc.). The quickest way to send a celebrity from "heaven" (oceans of money and all that goes with it) to "hell" (unrecoverable debt, bankruptcy) is to simply quit buying their product. YOU ALREADY HAVE POWER OVER THEM - you just don't realize it. Listen to Jackson Browne's "Loadout" song. Is anyone telling you that YOU can't do the same thing that Bill Gates, Garth Brooks, and Julia Roberts have done? They worked for it, they worked long and hard for it - they've earned it. More power to 'em. Your point about "rock stars" is correct - partially. Yes, popular performers command a small amount of money from a great number of people, but have you considered how much of the gross revenues the musicians themselves actually see? If you're looking for someone in the music biz to point fingers at, look to a band's management team. Compare the incomes of managers, tour managers, promoters, publicists, booking agents, record producers, studio engineers, attorneys, etc. vs. the "rock star". Really, do some research. After thorough investigation, you will most likely find that the team member taking it hardest in the caboose (other than the roadies) is guy on stage working his tail off. If it makes you feel any better, only about 2 albums out of every ten reach moderate success. You (through radio, magazines, performances, etc.) are only seeing the highest, sharpest point of a very large mountain. The mountain is made of thousands of bands struggling to get the media's attention. Additionally, even if they get the attention they so desperately want, the public's tastes change so fast that the musicians might as well be NFL or NBA players (up to five-year career for most). So, the next time you start tearing apart those who have made it to celebrity status, consider how they got there, consider what they gave up to be there, consider if they are really happy with it all. Better yet, ask yourself why you're not one of them. Maybe if you could think of a product that you could sell to thousands, your idiotic article might not have been written. |
Just what proportion of the 6,323,000,000 people
on this planet can work hard enough to be as rich as Bill Gates? In round
figures.
How much harder does Bill Gates work than you do? I work more than 40 hours each week, how many centuries a week does Bill Gates work?
Please explain to me what Bill Gates would do if he could not earn so much money. Would he live in a trailer park and get drunk every night? If he lived under a cruel, insensitive and inefficient communist regime would he have had the gumption, drive and intelligence of an office cleaner? If so, where did the inventors come from in the Soviet Union? And don't tell me they copied everything from the west. I'm not proposing a communist regime, I'm just suggesting that money is simply the score in the game rich people play, but those people are really playing to win, to feel good about themselves, they don't need most of the money they earn.
I don't think the lawyers and backstage crew make enough to be frank. They are all there supporting the ego of the prima donnas. The prima donnas themselves couldn't sell a million records, they would get bored very quickly if they had to touch the money themselves.
Bitter? You bet. And why the hell shouldn't we all be? Don't keep swallowing the shit they keep feeding you. Most people in this world have no unique talents, just run of the mill ordinary skills and abilities, we can be replaced by other people who compete for our incomes. People who compete to ensure we don't get as rich and cocky as the stars. This is reality for the vast majority of people, including those tour managers, record producers, studio engineers and publicists you seem to despise so much, lesser mortals gathering crumbs fallen from the table of the gods, how dare they!
Why do you defend the handful of people who have made it under this absurd system? Do you still expect to get your break? What is your stage name? I'll watch out for you, and be sure to drive your limo past my house when you make it, superstar. Perhaps you would like to flick ash from your cigar on my prostrated body? It is vitally important that all stars do that, it is a public service, otherwise ordinary people will never know how shitty and fundamentally replaceable their lives really are and how inadequate they are because they do not possess a talent that can be replicated and sold by the efforts of others.
Wake up and smell the coffee, you're one of the replaceable 99.99%,
your job is to work your ordinary replaceable life and to smile when the
stars walk past so they can feel better about themselves. And you have
to keep telling other people that the stars deserve the money and that
fat ugly girl behind the Wal*Mart checkout counter could be Julia Roberts
or J-Lo if she just worked a bit harder, why, everybody could be a star
if they worked hard enough to deserve it, couldn't they...?
How many records did Sting sell in the last five years? I'd bet he hasn't sold a single one. He has probably given away a few hundred and got other people to actually sell the records for him.
Very few sports stars or musicians actually take any money off anybody, ever. Musicians who take money from people are not the stars, they are those despised people we call buskers.
Have you ever seen a famous author in a bookshop? (Including on TV) Probably. Have you ever seen them take payment for a book? Or ask for payment for a book? Of course not. That isn't nice, is it? They sign books that other people have sold, or sometimes they give away books. Touching the money is very bad form.
Have you ever seen the Queen take money off one of her subjects? We know she gets our money, but she never touches the stuff, even though it has got her face on it.
Have you ever seen Bill Gates demand money off somebody before they can get their computer to work?
There is a terrible stigma against being seen to get money out of the little people. Even psychotic gangster bosses feel the need to employ people to do their extortion for them. Why is this?
The Parable of the Chair maker
Imagine a man who makes chairs. He can make so many chairs in a day, he cannot increase that rate beyond a rather modest total. He works in a small market town which is also home to two other chair makers They are all very much alike in the the quality of chairs they make. The chair makers charge a fair price and the one who can make and sell the most chairs earns the most, but they are all of similar talent so they all earn a similar income. Now assume our chair maker makes a better chair, it takes 10% more time to make but is 50% better. He can't supply the whole town with chairs but naturally the people of the town want the better chairs, what happens? Naturally the chair maker charges a bit more for his chairs, the richer people buy only his chairs, he charges as much as he can get away with without leaving chairs unsold. What determines the extra income of the chair maker?
Now the chair maker has another idea. He moves to the big city. Instead of being the finest chair maker in town he is now the third best chair maker in the city of two dozen chair makers But he makes more money. He sells the same chairs. What determines the extra income of the chair maker?
Now the two best chair makers marry and emigrate. The chair maker is now the best chair maker in the big city. He makes more money than ever before. He sells the same chairs. What determines the extra income of the chair maker?
Who deserves the extra money? The chair maker, the city, or both?
I hope that example has been instructive. It shows how a market can add value. But markets can also multiply value.
Replicability
You cannot make really serious money unless your talent is replicable. Most people have no replicability in their repertoire. They cannot get somebody else to sell multiple copies of their talent, and so they will never be super-rich.
Replicability is what makes people richer if they are serving richer markets. Replicability should be taxed.
There are some talents that people have that, unlike chairs, can be sold over and over again to different people without ever depleting the source. Books are an example. You can write a book and sell a hundred copies or you can write a book and sell 50 million copies. You still have the book.
Naturally when Shakespeare was writing the ability to make money from writing was nowhere near as good as it is now. Shakespeare was the first writer to make a reasonable living out of publishing the written word. But he didn't do anything like as well as J K Rowling and Steven Spielberg, or even Lord Archer and the Farrelly Brothers. Few would argue that was because he didn't have the talent, it is obvious that nowadays with a huge global market there is an opportunity for a few thousand people to make themselves very rich indeed serving that market. People who are fortunate enough that their talent can be packaged, replicated and sold by ordinary people to the general public. But the lion's share of that income does not belong with the owner of the talent, it belongs with the market that made it bankable. It was the market that made the money. Steven Spielberg on a desert island is nothing, I bet he couldn't even make a chair.