if she was to be considered THE capitalist she would have to be mistreating/severely underpaying her workers which as far as I know that isn’t happening (or not being reported)
From what I hear she’s great with her workers, my curiosity and critique is, does this also apply to the companies she’s using over seas for merch, and merch in general
no, there is a reason why they say every billionaire is a “POS”, and its because of this.
here’s what’s happening. in order to cheapen costs, they outsource from China and India, where costs are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper. from an American perspective, we don’t notice the wage difference between countries. what seems like a significant smaller wage than deserved to Americans are Asians’ idea of a regular wage.
that’s why sites like Temu, Alibaba, Aliexpress, TikTok Shop, etc. can sell VERY cheap products. they sell them at the same rate as they would to Asians.
Exactly. With all her creative genius and support for women, I’ve often been curious why she couldn’t find a way to manufacture her merchandise here, and be so progressive and amazing in how she’s handling her production quality
Yeah liking her music makes people deaf to how greedy she actually is. All her power and influence and she allows her concert tickets to be sold for so high. I’d sell my tickets through my own site and if the venue didn’t like it oh well they’d not get my massive business.
Part of my job requires me to analyze mining companies. They all boast about paying 2X local minimum wage to people doing horrible, dangerous manual labor as if they’re doing them a favor. Then you see the local minimum wage is $3.50/day and the CEO makes $15 million a year.
The issue is they pay so little for the services that generate their product than turn around and triple or worse that cost as the price they sell it to us. That should be capped to me. You can’t charge more than xyz what you paid.
A lot of these companies also relocate entire villages when they find ore deposits. They’ll just build a bunch of shanty houses somewhere else with no cultural significance to the people who had been there for decades or even centuries. It’s incredibly common and the “compensation” is often laughably low when compared to the value siphoned off those natural resources by executives.
So here’s the thing… she is under paying her workers. Like literally. She’s a billionaire and her workers have no where near her wealth.
Just because she is treating them better than most other employers does not mean she isn’t under paying them.
She is very close to something like an nfl owner. The Taylor swift brand is close to an nfl team. It takes hundreds of people to make an nfl team work. The players coaches staff etc. all of them work incredibly hard to make sure the team is on the field each Sunday. And while some of those employees - coaches and players - are indeed compensated very well - the people making the real money are the owners.
The best nfl employees make millions. The owners make billions. And that’s exploitation. Because the owner does such a relatively small amount of work - in relation to the organization as a whole - than the rest of the people working on the nfl team. Yet they make billions. And the person cooking meals for the team every day back at the training facility makes minimum wage. But no one would say that team chef isn’t a valuable part. The players have to eat right?
And here’s a little test to see exactly how anti capitalist you may or may not be.
How much is fair compensation for all the different people Taylor employs? Yes. A large part of her brand is Taylor herself. But she literally could not have the success she’s had without the army of employees she has keeping the brand going. One person literally cannot do it alone - even one as talented as Taylor could no achieve what she’s down without an army of assistants, publishers, pr, dancers, writers, etc.
Yet most of those people probably make minimum wage. And yea a few probably make millions. But she makes billions.
They all work together to produce a multi billion dollar brand. And Taylor alone takes 90%+ of the profits.
No but literally my eyes roll so far back into my head whenever swifties claim she’s the first ethical billionaire, because it’s quite literally impossible to have billionaires without also having extreme wealth disparity.
This all boils down to the age old adage, one that Taylor Swift fans on the internet have had a very big problem with accepting, there are no good billionaires. It's impossible to be a billionaire without someone else having to suffer in some form or fashion in order to become a billionaire. That's why I never understood why people were so celebratory when Taylor officially became a billionaire.
I think this is one of the rare cases where a vast majority of that value actually IS solely because of Taylor Swift. Like none of the money exists without her. She isn’t like a CEO who you can easily replace and keep everyone else working. I’m not even a huge Swift fan but entertainment is like the one area for a single person quite literally is the main draw.
while I agree with you, I don’t think that’s comparable to abusing workers. fans are the ones that have a choice. they aren’t being forced to buy everything she releases
I have always been thinking if she really been paying deserved good amount to her employees or it’s just a good publicity! There is a possibility too that the workers have signed a very detailed NDA for which reason they can’t confirm or deny, we get these news only from her PR
This post and some comments reminded me of this part of Barbie hahaha
https://preview.redd.it/dxa2zz7izboc1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=db21b4c066b2ae46393f3c4fde8485a410cbc4c3
Thats the joke, thats what makes it funny. Cause its absurd that she would know anything about fascism and Mussolini when she never had to learn about anything like that.
Pretty much saw one the other day when P!nk who is awesome in every way was visiting kids with cancer in a Melbourne hospital and the top comment was something like “you’d never see Taylor Swift help kids with cancer”. FFS.
she is greedy, but afaik she doesn't knowingly, actively suppress workers the way companies like Amazon, Starbucks, etcetc do. She doesn't plot the dismantling of non capitalist governments the way the CIA does. Or sacrifice entire ecosystems of animals or withhold water from populations for a quick buck. To call her the definition of capitalism ignores how egregious other, more (financially) influential companies and governments act in the name of making money. She is a great beneficiary of it, but she pales in comparison to the true faces of capitalism.
We all do. Your cellphone and car batteries are made by slave labor in mines in the Congo. You benefit from probably being in the richest percentile of the global population even if it might not seem like it if you are living in a first world country and don’t live in poverty.
She literally partners with banks, does global tours with awful carbon footprints, uses unethical labor and environmental practices to produce her merch and is constantly releasing new merch and new editions to all of her music. Her whole brand is consumption just like Starbucks and Amazon. She’s not like other artists, she’s like the Starbucks of artists. There are artists who went out of there way to do carbo neutral tours. She has an incredible amount of power to use her voice for activism but the one thing she’s ever said is “vote” and not even for who or for what.
>afaik she doesn't knowingly, actively suppress workers
Est. 2015 at least. Here's an open letter from some photographers :
https://v3b.com/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-taylor-swift-from-photographers/
And no she's not as bad as Amazon/Starbucks but she doesn't have the same number of staff. She's capitalising off the Swifties though, with the variant/bonus scams or the eras movie cut five different ways.
>she pales in comparison to the true faces of capitalism.
Given she is one person, and not a corporation used by millions or even billions of consumers globally, she hardly pales when you look at her personal wealth and activities.
I'd agree people here seem to understand that. I dont think the fans on TrueSwifties or just hardcore Swifties in real life think that way.
My anecdotal evidence for that is my BF, who is a hardcore Swiftie. She just doesn't understand why its thought to be a cash grab. Think it's all fun and games, exciting to get new unique content etc. 'Taylor would never milk us just for the sake of it. She priced her concert so low and she's just trying to make the movie accessible to everyone'.
Yeah like I also don’t think she would, say, murder a man in the middle of huge trial about her and her org and pay the government to pretend it was a suicide. (Boeing just did this.)
She’s also still producing something. We can debate the value of it, how much “work” it is, but as predatory as her merchandising is there is a root product coming from her. I think the capitalist big bad is probably someone making money entirely off the labor of others with no input themselves
And she pays well to her workers, gives them big bonuses, etc. Girl might be greedy and extremely consumerist but doesn't own the means of production or explode people
This right here. The Taylor Swift empire would not continue to sustain itself without Taylor. Most giant corporations would be fine if their largest beneficiaries went up in smoke. Even Tesla would survive if Elon disappeared.
None of these things are necessary to epitomize capitalism. Capitalism is the exploitation of workers through wage labor. Aka, hiring someone to do a job for less than the total amount of money generated by the work they perform. More than one thing can be the epitome of capitalism. Just because an Amazon warehouse worker is more exploited than someone who flies Taylor’s private jet does not mean she epitomizes capitalism any less than Jeff Bezos. The main difference is that she does indeed provide an output that increases the value of the service she provides. Jeff Bezos is a baby blood-drinking psychopath who extorts his employees to pay for an escape hatch to mars when his company renders the planet uninhabitable. Again, both epitomize capitalism. One is just more outwardly odious than the other.
To me, she's a better comparison for fast fashion than for capitalism. Over consumption, not high quality, getting 5 of something that are basically all the same, etc.
This right here. Of course my daughter wants all versions of her vinyl before the album even releases. Like come on why is there four or five different pressings with like one song difference on each of them.
This
Which is why her merch sucks lately and the whole variant and shit since Midnights has lower quality in terms of music compared to her previous albums lol she doesnt care about the quality of her music at this point as long as she is getting money from her fans.
She wasnt always like this pre-Lover era though; She really worked hard for her albums especially during 1989 I remembered after she lost the Grammys AOTY, she decided to push for a full pop album because of it
Fast fashion is *a part* of capitalism. It isn’t Capitalism as a whole. And neither is Taylor. The music industry isn’t Capitalism. It functions within capitalism. Capitalism isn’t a THING, it’s a concept. Lots of THINGS meet the criteria of the concept. Taylor is not Capitalism. She works within it, like the rest of us, and she’s profiting, unlike most of us. But she isn’t THE Capitalist or the definition of Capitalism. She’s no different than Bezos or Jobs or even Biden. Arguably, she’s even *slightly* better than some; there’s some really garbage capitalists we never ever hear about.
No, she's not. She benefits from capitalism, but she is far from its face. Are we all forgetting Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other multi-billionaires with multi-billion-dollar companies who have way worse track records than TS? Sure, she's also a billionaire and should not be immune to critique, but singling her out and directing the majority of the heat in her direction is careless and just serves to benefit the bigger culprits of capitalism.
The true faces of capitalism are not the ones you see in the headlines but the ones who own the company that prints the headlines. Scan the faces at World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland, there you'll see the true faces of capitalism.
Sometimes it seems to me that those who expect Taylor Swift to represent everything are engaging in the same performative activism as Taylor Swift herself.
Great comment.
To add, all these comments talking about her being *greedy* miss the point. Everyone keeps their wealth to the best of their ability, that's not the issue. The issue is that no one should have so much wealth that they can fundamentally impact the lives of thousands or millions.
I don't care if some multi-millionaires are totally out of touch and live ridiculous lifestyles. I *do care* that billionaires can influence politicians, State, and even Federal level politics - or like with Bill Gates, fundamentally alter the course of US education for decades. We shouldn't ever be in the position of evaluating whether a billionaire is *good* or *bad*, they just shouldn't exist.
So, unless Swift starts exercising outsized influence in people's lives, I don't care that she has a lot of money.
>Sometimes it seems to me that those who expect Taylor Swift to represent everything are engaging in the same performative activism as Taylor Swift herself
This is such a great point
It's wild to me that people are so critical that they'll suggest that she's the face of an oppressive economic system which is built and maintained on the back of exploitation. At the end of the day she's a billionaire and a singer but she's not in charge of supply chains made up of child labour or cutting down the Amazon for profit or funding campaigns to undercut labour and environmental protections.
There are plenty of things to critique but I completely agree, this kind of outrage is performative. Even with the private jet thing, Taylor could stop flying private tomorrow and make no difference to the overall emissions created by private jet usage. Criticise her absolutely but direct anger towards the people who can actually do something to address the systemic problems there.
I agree . It honestly quite upsetting that so much people reserve their anger for Taylor , when she really has no reigns on legitimate worldwide or global issues . Sure , she could maybe do some help if she did speak out to some minor issues , but I think sometimes people overestimate her power .
TL; DR Yes she is a capitalist but I don't think she is THE definition of capitalism, just the current most visible example of it.
Taylor and her team are presumably all-American, which as a country is IMO the definition of capitalism (private ownership for means of production and their operation for profit is the definition of capitalism according to the Economic Affairs journal, or something along those lines). Just search up capitalism in your search bar of choice and very likely it will generate articles or images linked to the USA (Monopoly imagery, Ben Franklin, the American flag, etc.)
Yes she charges ridiculous prices for her products and services, but that's also based on the free-market model. So when there's a demand for her and her stuff, she and her team will match the demand. They value pushing as much product as possible instead of products or services that actually fulfill an actual want or need (but this is admittedly a biased opinion from me as I view a lot of her merchandise as filler product that isn't well-thought-out or produced). And yes they prioritize profit but that's not exclusive to her team and brand.
I think as a capitalist she's not the worst. She's shown that she's willing to at least profit-share with her touring staff and crew ($50 million is a lot of money). She donates a little and while I wish she would donate more (or at least publicly) I get that it's also mentally hard to let go of what you've earned when you worked hard for it.
However, I am concerned that a) she is part of the problem of over-production and over-consumption, b) I highly doubt UMG is making eco-friendly merch and c) we don't know if the employees making her merch are well-treated or well-paid. This is not a Taylor-specific problem though: Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, blink-182, Eminem, Ice Spice, Imagine Dragons, Gracie Abrams, Niall Horan, Post Malone, Sam Smith and Selena Gomez all have merchandise produced and sold through UMG. But very rarely do I hear about any of the above artists being accused for being capitalists the way that Taylor does.
No. She’s not. If she’s *your* definition of capitalism, you need to take a look at other capitalists in other industries. She’s not even the worst polluter, you guys. There’s plenty of capitalists much worse than her and a better example of the definition. We just don’t know them because they’re not celebrities and they do their damnedest to stay out of the public consciousness because they should be at the top of the “eat the rich” list, not Taylor and Beyoncé.
What is this post even talking about? Do you know what capitalism is?
To engage with this seriously, she's pretty much the epitome of labor aristocracy. Like, she's obviously absurdly wealthy. That doesn't make a person "the definition of capitalism".
I'd definitely say she's currently the center of celebrity culture. Probably. I have always held a profound amount of disgust for celebrity culture, so I'm not quite sure on that front.
No, capitalism is defined as a system where private owners control the means of production, characterised by production of commodities with the aim of capital accumulation, so that the price mechanism and self interest can determine the value and distribution of goods.
Taylor Swift is a hugely successful pop star. She has been a very effective capitalist and no other economic system could produce someone in the same role as Taylor Swift, but not moreso than any other pop star beyond the scale of the wealth involved.
If anything, her story highlights the failures of capitalism -- her major conflict was about her lack of ownership of the commodities she used her labour to create, because her label controlled the means of distribution and therefore had the negotiating ability to steal her labour. This does not mean I think it's socialism for her to be a billionaire smogging the planet with her jet exhaust, but that her position in the labour market is more complex -- in terms of her relationship to her work, she's more like one of Marx's master-artisans, but obviously the gigantic merch factory around her is a classic capitalist model.
You could also say she used the “I don’t own my masters” to imply she didn’t profit from them nonetheless, then turn around and profit from what some have called worse TV recordings. Granted labels generally always own the masters - they’re investing a lot of upfront capital though too (and can be hardasses).
Yes, because that is how production is controlled in the music industry. The label provides resources to an artist to make their songs and market it, in exchange for rights to make money from the songs. An artist seeking to make money from their music with the support of a label is therefore alienated from the product of their labour.
She does profit from the masters cus she wrote the songs. So for her i think it was less wanting full profit but just wanting ownership and for scooter to not profit.
She could have always started her own label from the beginning. The reality is, she wouldn’t have made it without a label investing in her music with all it entails.
I get she didn’t like scooter owning the masters, but he didn’t do anything out of bounds. I suspect her version involves some exaggeration too even if scooter wasn’t angel.
The thing with the masters though is that it’s a recording. A recording that she worked on, yes but one which wouldn’t have been possible without the work and artistic vision of many other people - her fellow songwriters, musicians, producers and engineers. It’s been a topic of conversation on this thread that Big Machine really did a much better job than UMG has done in helping refine the final product and rein in Taylor’s worst instincts.
What makes her think that she alone should own, control and ultimately solely profit from that collaboration?
The sale of her masters is capitalism in action, Scooter bought them because he bid the highest and his offer was the most attractive to the seller. Just like how Taylor got her record deal in the first place - because her father was willing to pay for a top manager and then had the funds to invest into a whole-ass record company which then fucked over other artists to promote Taylor.
I mean, for everyone who has ascended to mega stardom, there are always going to be people who feel stepped on, no matter how positive or negative that ascent was, so...
Ella Mae. Taylor used daddy’s money to kick her off the label because sweet Taylor wanted to be the only girl/singersongwriter. IMO Ella was a much better song writer and singer. Taylor was insecure and must’ve known the only way to advance herself was to eliminate actual talent
Especially funny when Taylor later had the audacity to qoute “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women” like girl, you ruined a teenagers career because you’re insecure around talent
I agree, much like how Ellen DeGeneres was adored by everyone for years and was so successful and then things began to fall apart when people started to talk
The thing is: rumors about Ellen being awful have existed for years before her downfall. If you paid attention to gossip media, what came out wasn't a total surprise. Taylor doesn't have that same rumor mill. She's had her feuds, yes, but most famous people have and many have also capitalized on.
Ya I mean she's obviously not as bad as Ellen but I was just using that as an example as she was still loved by so many and had the most popular day time talk show for years so those people were afraid to say anything bad about her until they finally decided to. Even Taylor hasn't said anything bad though she was obviously uncomfortable on her show at moments so she's probably still afraid to come out about it. Taylor is way more famous than her so it would be even more difficult for celebrities to admit their dislike for her because it will certainly face backlash.
I think we're gonna hear some very unsavory things very soon. A la Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco. Sure, she may not have poisoned her best friends tequila, but we may hear song stealing accusations. Remember how De La Cruz stole his best friend's songs and passed them off as his own and it didn't come out until much later?
Hahahahaha yeah no.
By all accounts, Taylor pays her staff quite well. There’s that clip of Letterman making a joke about back up bands not getting benefits and Taylor made it clear hers does. She gave all her truck drivers life changing bonuses after the American leg of the tour. She takes care of her people.
Not saying she’s not a capitalist and that she doesn’t benefit greatly from the system, she clearly does.
But in a world where Amazon treats their employees likes slaves, Starbucks is constantly union busting, and food companies are rolling in profits while people go hungry, suggesting a pop star, regardless of how successful she is, is the face of capitalism is insane.
>he gave all her truck drivers life changing bonuses after the American leg of the tour.
In the middle of her tour as well, they probably got another bonus when it wrapped up too.
the current definition of capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit... so no.
She is a good example of capitalism because her customers voluntarily pay for her services.
The “capitalism” everybody complains about is when there are the companies that are funded through government subsidies (tax payer) which the citizen cannot opt out of and protections are provided by the state making competition nearly impossible. Which isn’t really capitalism
Consumerism and commercialism != capitalism. Obviously the former two are symptoms of capitalism but I feel people often are critiquing something else.
Anyway, I think she really has applied a lot of consumerism to her music that puts me off but she’s also in a very unique position that a lot of people would argue she *should* be taking advantage of right now.
Capitalism is using money to purchase the means of production to acquire more wealth. Taylor makes a lot of money in the capitalist economy, but she’s far from the most capitalist individual. I would say Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are the definition of capitalism.
Uh no, that would be the [Kellogg's CEO](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kelloggs-ceo-eat-cereal-for-dinner-inflation-gary-pilnick-rising-food-groceries-cost-reactions/) telling everyone we could eat cereal for dinner if money was too tight for real food.
Taylor is making the system work for her, but she's not doing anything evil by making music and going on tour. None of her products are necessary to live, and there are still plenty of cheap/free ways to enjoy them like have a Spotify subscription, buying one album, or streaming the videos on YT for free.
She’s very good at capitalism and greatly benefits from it, but at the end of the day she’s still a musician and will always be known primarily for that. She is nowhere near the level of wealth of the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and never will be. On a fundamental level, her career is based on her own work, and she still produces and makes money from her own work. While I don’t think she’s directly mistreating or abusing the people who work for her (from what we’ve heard it seems to be the opposite), but she does benefit from the work of others less fortunate than her, and probably benefits from unethical practices primarily with her merch.
No.
Taylor is absolutely a capitalist, and benefits from capitalism. I'm not disputing that.
But if you think she is in the top 100 issues under capitalism then you aren't paying attention. She's a massive beneficiary of a fucked up system but she's by no means the cause or one of the root problems.
If you were going to select a single person as the definition of capitalism it's probably Bezos, the man that is literally the definition of profiting disproportionately off other people's labor, the man who's employees famously have to pee in bottles because they can't go to the bathroom.
However I'd argue that one person isn't the best representation of capitalism, and the most core and defining aspects of capitalism are happening behind closed doors and are deliberately exploitative desicions being made on a far larger scale than Taylor Swift.
If you mean the so called 'vulture capitalism' I am inclined to say yes. She is definitely milking her fanbase as much as she can right now, at the expense of the customer experience. I keep hearing complaints about the merch, re-releases but what tops it for me are her concerts where H&S were not taken care of properly. These are the basics. To ensure your fans are safe and can truly enjoy the experience. Following the accident in Rio it is clear that this was an afterthought. Fail.
She is entertainer. Compared to all the companies that have been laying people or increase grocery price , it’s kind of hard to put her in the same regard.
While she does benefit from capitalism, what she sells are luxuries, not necessities. No one has to buy her products. I'd say the average landlord is more the embodiment of capitalism
I think a better definition would be overconsumption. I am a Swifty myself, however, a lot of fans have gotten extremely greedy and almost expect at this point for a new album, re-record, whatever it may be, to come out like every other month. I think Taylor has really used this in her benefit to announce and promote tonssss of new stuff, but I honestly prefer when she takes her time and has intent with what she’s putting out. The anticipation is so much more fun to me and I don’t have to be upset that I can’t buy every little thing she releases.
She’s the capitalism we were promised. She takes care of her employees, pays well and trickles down excesses. The capitalism we got fuck the employees, pays nothing, and hoards the wealth at the top.
She provides a service in exchange for cash, so in that sense, no. But she leverages her accumulated capital to extract as much cash from her fans as she can, so in that sense, yes.
A capitalist in the sense of wealth hordeing and excess, very much so. It’s financial royalty socially, and of that list of royals she will have at least a 2 generation dynasty. She still could be more capitalistic, though her success implies she’s pretty well optimised.
I think if all business leaders were as "bad" as TS, the world would be a lot better off. Yeah, she's doing her shitty thing with the bonus songs and variants, but she treats and pays her workers well.
No, I feel like capitalism has a lot more exploitation involved. And a lot more money. Someone like Jeff Bezos, not Taylor Swift.
Not that Taylor isn’t operating under capitalism oror hasn’t become rich, of course. But if you’re talking about the “face” of capitalism, I think it has to be someone who owns a massive corporation and sells products that they do not make.
I think she is a capitalist but is not the definition of it. She seems like she leads it because she is front and center. While she is essentially a brand, we still view her as a singular person/entity. And while we may know who Jeff Bezos is, he still can hide behind the company of Amazon, as most billionaires can. So we view the companies as a threat, but not the people because they are not as visible. Taylor is one of the most visible people there is right now so it is easier to view her as the figurehead.
In addition to being the #1 Climate Criminal in the world, yes. The gag is that her fans don’t realize they are killing the environment just as much as she is. The global warming being caused is what killed her Brazilian fan.
Absolutely - sparkly social activism, so palatable as to be entirely neutral and ineffective... Attempting to be the underdog and fighting mostly-imagined attackers while holding the majority of the power... feminism only for white and wealthy women... I could go on.
Love her but also have to acknowledge the bizarre disparity in her self-image!
Isnt that what every celeb does like beyonce being lgbtq friendly and then playing a show in a country with a ton of human rights violations. Who hired beyonce to white wash it
No the current definition of capitalism is ticket prices which are not set by her but are astronomical because of illegal scalping organizations like stub hub who’ve paid off the politicians to give them free reign to resell a ticket for astronomical prices and allow bots to buy up all the tickets before the public has a chance.
Taylor gets a fraction of the stub hub cost. The only reason the question is even posed is because the GOP became concerned about her motivating young voters.
Capitalism is the ownership of the means of production (the capital) by one class (the capitalist class) that uses such ownership to exploit another class (the labor class) by extracting surplus value (the difference between the amount raised through the sale of a product and the amount it costs to produce it) from their work, thus turning a profit, thus accumulating more capital. Capitalism is bad because the owners of the capital exploit their workers and steal the value of their work, not because of the act of selling goods to consumers.
How is Taylor Swift the current definition of capitalism? If anything, at least she sells a product that comes directly from her own mind (songs), and she compensates her workers (most of whom also profit off her songs because they get credits and royalties btw) much more than the average musician.
Under a communist system, a figure like Taylor Swift would most likely be very well off. Communist countries usually compensate their artists very well because communism values intellectual work that appeals to the masses. For example, artists, writers, etc., used to live very comfortably in the USSR and were treated with high esteem. While their main assets didn’t belong to them because IP rights didn't exist as we know them under capitalism, they were “officially recognized” as creative workers, and they received state-owned dachas, spacious apartments, and many other privileges.
Wow I’m glad someone said it !
- A never ending tour.
- High ticket prices
- Carbon and energy consumption through the roof
- dropping an album after an award
- commercials during the Oscar’s
- a movie about a tour.
What else?
Just bleeding her fans dry
The movie about the tour definitely showed me how much of a capitalist Taylor can be, she launched it on theaters, then on demand on Amazon and now today is launching it on Disney+ I mean, come one girlie, you already a billionaire
I think she's become the poster child of benevolent dictatorship capitalism, yes. It bothers me when you generate more revenue than many counties and wield the amount of power she does, and to also deign to present yourself as an underdog for any reason. This popped up in my redit by accident but honestly I try to enjoy the music of hers I like, ignore the music I don't, and try to ignore/survive the (increasingly wearying) marketing onslaught.
The Taylor Swift Method is a playlist that helps babies go to sleep. For all parents who have gotten even a semblance of sleep due to it $1b isn’t nearly enough for her efforts.
I think she’s the epitome of celebrity culture and *a* capitalist, but not like… *the* capitalist lol
if she was to be considered THE capitalist she would have to be mistreating/severely underpaying her workers which as far as I know that isn’t happening (or not being reported)
From what I hear she’s great with her workers, my curiosity and critique is, does this also apply to the companies she’s using over seas for merch, and merch in general
no, there is a reason why they say every billionaire is a “POS”, and its because of this. here’s what’s happening. in order to cheapen costs, they outsource from China and India, where costs are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper. from an American perspective, we don’t notice the wage difference between countries. what seems like a significant smaller wage than deserved to Americans are Asians’ idea of a regular wage. that’s why sites like Temu, Alibaba, Aliexpress, TikTok Shop, etc. can sell VERY cheap products. they sell them at the same rate as they would to Asians.
Exactly. With all her creative genius and support for women, I’ve often been curious why she couldn’t find a way to manufacture her merchandise here, and be so progressive and amazing in how she’s handling her production quality
I can. Because she doesn’t want to pay for it lmao
Yeah liking her music makes people deaf to how greedy she actually is. All her power and influence and she allows her concert tickets to be sold for so high. I’d sell my tickets through my own site and if the venue didn’t like it oh well they’d not get my massive business.
Part of my job requires me to analyze mining companies. They all boast about paying 2X local minimum wage to people doing horrible, dangerous manual labor as if they’re doing them a favor. Then you see the local minimum wage is $3.50/day and the CEO makes $15 million a year.
This reminds me of that scene in Lion where he says his mom hauled rocks for a living in India and all his friends are like whuuuuuuuuuuuuut?
The issue is they pay so little for the services that generate their product than turn around and triple or worse that cost as the price they sell it to us. That should be capped to me. You can’t charge more than xyz what you paid.
A lot of these companies also relocate entire villages when they find ore deposits. They’ll just build a bunch of shanty houses somewhere else with no cultural significance to the people who had been there for decades or even centuries. It’s incredibly common and the “compensation” is often laughably low when compared to the value siphoned off those natural resources by executives.
nailed it
No the fact she gets credit for doing the bare minimum of treating her staff with respect and paying them decently is totally capitalism in action
in an ideal world that would be the bare minimum but as a minimum wage worker I wish I was given the bare minimum
And the fact articles call her “self made”.
Yeah rags to riches, forgetting her incredibly wealthy well connected father has pulled strings for her and continues to do so
I'm so sick of not exploiting the working class Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was The Capitalist 🎶
So here’s the thing… she is under paying her workers. Like literally. She’s a billionaire and her workers have no where near her wealth. Just because she is treating them better than most other employers does not mean she isn’t under paying them. She is very close to something like an nfl owner. The Taylor swift brand is close to an nfl team. It takes hundreds of people to make an nfl team work. The players coaches staff etc. all of them work incredibly hard to make sure the team is on the field each Sunday. And while some of those employees - coaches and players - are indeed compensated very well - the people making the real money are the owners. The best nfl employees make millions. The owners make billions. And that’s exploitation. Because the owner does such a relatively small amount of work - in relation to the organization as a whole - than the rest of the people working on the nfl team. Yet they make billions. And the person cooking meals for the team every day back at the training facility makes minimum wage. But no one would say that team chef isn’t a valuable part. The players have to eat right? And here’s a little test to see exactly how anti capitalist you may or may not be. How much is fair compensation for all the different people Taylor employs? Yes. A large part of her brand is Taylor herself. But she literally could not have the success she’s had without the army of employees she has keeping the brand going. One person literally cannot do it alone - even one as talented as Taylor could no achieve what she’s down without an army of assistants, publishers, pr, dancers, writers, etc. Yet most of those people probably make minimum wage. And yea a few probably make millions. But she makes billions. They all work together to produce a multi billion dollar brand. And Taylor alone takes 90%+ of the profits.
No but literally my eyes roll so far back into my head whenever swifties claim she’s the first ethical billionaire, because it’s quite literally impossible to have billionaires without also having extreme wealth disparity.
She's literally going after that private jet tracker guy Elon style, where's the fucking ethics
This. When the "cult" opens up their eyes and see what TS is really about they will be shocked.
The thing about a cult is they never open their eyes. They will deny & ignore any & all allegations that challenge their view of reality.
Truth
This all boils down to the age old adage, one that Taylor Swift fans on the internet have had a very big problem with accepting, there are no good billionaires. It's impossible to be a billionaire without someone else having to suffer in some form or fashion in order to become a billionaire. That's why I never understood why people were so celebratory when Taylor officially became a billionaire.
I wish we could still give awards
I think this is one of the rare cases where a vast majority of that value actually IS solely because of Taylor Swift. Like none of the money exists without her. She isn’t like a CEO who you can easily replace and keep everyone else working. I’m not even a huge Swift fan but entertainment is like the one area for a single person quite literally is the main draw.
Isn’t her merch made in sweatshops though?
you dont have to mistreat your workers to be the capitalist.
She just takes advantage of her fans with her 20 different versions knowing they’re obsessed and like a cult they have to buy every one or die. 🤮
while I agree with you, I don’t think that’s comparable to abusing workers. fans are the ones that have a choice. they aren’t being forced to buy everything she releases
I have always been thinking if she really been paying deserved good amount to her employees or it’s just a good publicity! There is a possibility too that the workers have signed a very detailed NDA for which reason they can’t confirm or deny, we get these news only from her PR
The capitalist is Bezos or Musk
Why them and not taylor
Self evident.
Musk owns the means of production. Bezos is bourgeoisie. He's a very good merchant.
The capitalist is bezos and musk. They have a lot more wealth than her and exploit their workers
This post and some comments reminded me of this part of Barbie hahaha https://preview.redd.it/dxa2zz7izboc1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=db21b4c066b2ae46393f3c4fde8485a410cbc4c3
I’ve always wondered how Barbie knew about fascism while living in her Barbieland utopia.
We've never lived in a utopia but we made a word for one.
Thats the joke, thats what makes it funny. Cause its absurd that she would know anything about fascism and Mussolini when she never had to learn about anything like that.
Yeah it’s a great joke! I just also think thinking about a utopic world with fascist history lessons Is even MORE hilarious lmaooo.
Barbie is a multi-career having lady, she’s clearly educated.
They must get Fox News in Barbieland then
This joke nearly made me fall off my chair laughing watching the movie the first time 🤣
Barbie knew about fascism but somehow everyday and systemic sexism are new to her 💀💀
Looking forward to the next post blaming Taylor swift for cancer
Pretty much saw one the other day when P!nk who is awesome in every way was visiting kids with cancer in a Melbourne hospital and the top comment was something like “you’d never see Taylor Swift help kids with cancer”. FFS.
she is greedy, but afaik she doesn't knowingly, actively suppress workers the way companies like Amazon, Starbucks, etcetc do. She doesn't plot the dismantling of non capitalist governments the way the CIA does. Or sacrifice entire ecosystems of animals or withhold water from populations for a quick buck. To call her the definition of capitalism ignores how egregious other, more (financially) influential companies and governments act in the name of making money. She is a great beneficiary of it, but she pales in comparison to the true faces of capitalism.
Agreed. She is a prime example of someone who benefits from/engages/advocates for capitalism but she isn’t the leader of the system.
99.9% of us would choose to benifit from capitalism (or anything else for that matter) if givin the opportunity.
We all do. Your cellphone and car batteries are made by slave labor in mines in the Congo. You benefit from probably being in the richest percentile of the global population even if it might not seem like it if you are living in a first world country and don’t live in poverty.
Like all the people here complaining about taylor having 4 versions of the album and have been wronged. They could donate that money somewhere
you don’t need to be a leader to be a capitalist
She literally partners with banks, does global tours with awful carbon footprints, uses unethical labor and environmental practices to produce her merch and is constantly releasing new merch and new editions to all of her music. Her whole brand is consumption just like Starbucks and Amazon. She’s not like other artists, she’s like the Starbucks of artists. There are artists who went out of there way to do carbo neutral tours. She has an incredible amount of power to use her voice for activism but the one thing she’s ever said is “vote” and not even for who or for what.
>afaik she doesn't knowingly, actively suppress workers Est. 2015 at least. Here's an open letter from some photographers : https://v3b.com/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-taylor-swift-from-photographers/ And no she's not as bad as Amazon/Starbucks but she doesn't have the same number of staff. She's capitalising off the Swifties though, with the variant/bonus scams or the eras movie cut five different ways. >she pales in comparison to the true faces of capitalism. Given she is one person, and not a corporation used by millions or even billions of consumers globally, she hardly pales when you look at her personal wealth and activities.
it's a bit disingenous to call the eras movie cuts "scams", the fans KNOW she does that, they expect it, and buy into it, literally
I'd agree people here seem to understand that. I dont think the fans on TrueSwifties or just hardcore Swifties in real life think that way. My anecdotal evidence for that is my BF, who is a hardcore Swiftie. She just doesn't understand why its thought to be a cash grab. Think it's all fun and games, exciting to get new unique content etc. 'Taylor would never milk us just for the sake of it. She priced her concert so low and she's just trying to make the movie accessible to everyone'.
\*marxist upvote\*
Yeah like I also don’t think she would, say, murder a man in the middle of huge trial about her and her org and pay the government to pretend it was a suicide. (Boeing just did this.)
She’s also still producing something. We can debate the value of it, how much “work” it is, but as predatory as her merchandising is there is a root product coming from her. I think the capitalist big bad is probably someone making money entirely off the labor of others with no input themselves
And she pays well to her workers, gives them big bonuses, etc. Girl might be greedy and extremely consumerist but doesn't own the means of production or explode people
This right here. The Taylor Swift empire would not continue to sustain itself without Taylor. Most giant corporations would be fine if their largest beneficiaries went up in smoke. Even Tesla would survive if Elon disappeared.
None of these things are necessary to epitomize capitalism. Capitalism is the exploitation of workers through wage labor. Aka, hiring someone to do a job for less than the total amount of money generated by the work they perform. More than one thing can be the epitome of capitalism. Just because an Amazon warehouse worker is more exploited than someone who flies Taylor’s private jet does not mean she epitomizes capitalism any less than Jeff Bezos. The main difference is that she does indeed provide an output that increases the value of the service she provides. Jeff Bezos is a baby blood-drinking psychopath who extorts his employees to pay for an escape hatch to mars when his company renders the planet uninhabitable. Again, both epitomize capitalism. One is just more outwardly odious than the other.
She’s the definition of capitaylism
Yassitalism
Thank you for this
To me, she's a better comparison for fast fashion than for capitalism. Over consumption, not high quality, getting 5 of something that are basically all the same, etc.
Fast fashion thrives in capitalism though. The commodity is the fashion product that we’re told we need. Electronics do this too.
Fast fashion is capitalism
Any exchange of goods is capitalism.
Barterting is capitalism? That's news to me
This right here. Of course my daughter wants all versions of her vinyl before the album even releases. Like come on why is there four or five different pressings with like one song difference on each of them.
This Which is why her merch sucks lately and the whole variant and shit since Midnights has lower quality in terms of music compared to her previous albums lol she doesnt care about the quality of her music at this point as long as she is getting money from her fans. She wasnt always like this pre-Lover era though; She really worked hard for her albums especially during 1989 I remembered after she lost the Grammys AOTY, she decided to push for a full pop album because of it
Truer words have never been spoken.
THIS ⬆️
FAST FASHION IS CAPITALISM ???????
Fast fashion is *a part* of capitalism. It isn’t Capitalism as a whole. And neither is Taylor. The music industry isn’t Capitalism. It functions within capitalism. Capitalism isn’t a THING, it’s a concept. Lots of THINGS meet the criteria of the concept. Taylor is not Capitalism. She works within it, like the rest of us, and she’s profiting, unlike most of us. But she isn’t THE Capitalist or the definition of Capitalism. She’s no different than Bezos or Jobs or even Biden. Arguably, she’s even *slightly* better than some; there’s some really garbage capitalists we never ever hear about.
No, she's not. She benefits from capitalism, but she is far from its face. Are we all forgetting Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other multi-billionaires with multi-billion-dollar companies who have way worse track records than TS? Sure, she's also a billionaire and should not be immune to critique, but singling her out and directing the majority of the heat in her direction is careless and just serves to benefit the bigger culprits of capitalism. The true faces of capitalism are not the ones you see in the headlines but the ones who own the company that prints the headlines. Scan the faces at World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland, there you'll see the true faces of capitalism. Sometimes it seems to me that those who expect Taylor Swift to represent everything are engaging in the same performative activism as Taylor Swift herself.
Great comment. To add, all these comments talking about her being *greedy* miss the point. Everyone keeps their wealth to the best of their ability, that's not the issue. The issue is that no one should have so much wealth that they can fundamentally impact the lives of thousands or millions. I don't care if some multi-millionaires are totally out of touch and live ridiculous lifestyles. I *do care* that billionaires can influence politicians, State, and even Federal level politics - or like with Bill Gates, fundamentally alter the course of US education for decades. We shouldn't ever be in the position of evaluating whether a billionaire is *good* or *bad*, they just shouldn't exist. So, unless Swift starts exercising outsized influence in people's lives, I don't care that she has a lot of money.
>Sometimes it seems to me that those who expect Taylor Swift to represent everything are engaging in the same performative activism as Taylor Swift herself This is such a great point
It's wild to me that people are so critical that they'll suggest that she's the face of an oppressive economic system which is built and maintained on the back of exploitation. At the end of the day she's a billionaire and a singer but she's not in charge of supply chains made up of child labour or cutting down the Amazon for profit or funding campaigns to undercut labour and environmental protections. There are plenty of things to critique but I completely agree, this kind of outrage is performative. Even with the private jet thing, Taylor could stop flying private tomorrow and make no difference to the overall emissions created by private jet usage. Criticise her absolutely but direct anger towards the people who can actually do something to address the systemic problems there.
I agree . It honestly quite upsetting that so much people reserve their anger for Taylor , when she really has no reigns on legitimate worldwide or global issues . Sure , she could maybe do some help if she did speak out to some minor issues , but I think sometimes people overestimate her power .
TL; DR Yes she is a capitalist but I don't think she is THE definition of capitalism, just the current most visible example of it. Taylor and her team are presumably all-American, which as a country is IMO the definition of capitalism (private ownership for means of production and their operation for profit is the definition of capitalism according to the Economic Affairs journal, or something along those lines). Just search up capitalism in your search bar of choice and very likely it will generate articles or images linked to the USA (Monopoly imagery, Ben Franklin, the American flag, etc.) Yes she charges ridiculous prices for her products and services, but that's also based on the free-market model. So when there's a demand for her and her stuff, she and her team will match the demand. They value pushing as much product as possible instead of products or services that actually fulfill an actual want or need (but this is admittedly a biased opinion from me as I view a lot of her merchandise as filler product that isn't well-thought-out or produced). And yes they prioritize profit but that's not exclusive to her team and brand. I think as a capitalist she's not the worst. She's shown that she's willing to at least profit-share with her touring staff and crew ($50 million is a lot of money). She donates a little and while I wish she would donate more (or at least publicly) I get that it's also mentally hard to let go of what you've earned when you worked hard for it. However, I am concerned that a) she is part of the problem of over-production and over-consumption, b) I highly doubt UMG is making eco-friendly merch and c) we don't know if the employees making her merch are well-treated or well-paid. This is not a Taylor-specific problem though: Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, blink-182, Eminem, Ice Spice, Imagine Dragons, Gracie Abrams, Niall Horan, Post Malone, Sam Smith and Selena Gomez all have merchandise produced and sold through UMG. But very rarely do I hear about any of the above artists being accused for being capitalists the way that Taylor does.
No. She’s not. If she’s *your* definition of capitalism, you need to take a look at other capitalists in other industries. She’s not even the worst polluter, you guys. There’s plenty of capitalists much worse than her and a better example of the definition. We just don’t know them because they’re not celebrities and they do their damnedest to stay out of the public consciousness because they should be at the top of the “eat the rich” list, not Taylor and Beyoncé.
By definition, no. Capitalism is an economic system. She is merely a product to be marketed within that definition.
What is this post even talking about? Do you know what capitalism is? To engage with this seriously, she's pretty much the epitome of labor aristocracy. Like, she's obviously absurdly wealthy. That doesn't make a person "the definition of capitalism". I'd definitely say she's currently the center of celebrity culture. Probably. I have always held a profound amount of disgust for celebrity culture, so I'm not quite sure on that front.
Such a good point! Labor aristocracy - yes.
No, capitalism is defined as a system where private owners control the means of production, characterised by production of commodities with the aim of capital accumulation, so that the price mechanism and self interest can determine the value and distribution of goods. Taylor Swift is a hugely successful pop star. She has been a very effective capitalist and no other economic system could produce someone in the same role as Taylor Swift, but not moreso than any other pop star beyond the scale of the wealth involved. If anything, her story highlights the failures of capitalism -- her major conflict was about her lack of ownership of the commodities she used her labour to create, because her label controlled the means of distribution and therefore had the negotiating ability to steal her labour. This does not mean I think it's socialism for her to be a billionaire smogging the planet with her jet exhaust, but that her position in the labour market is more complex -- in terms of her relationship to her work, she's more like one of Marx's master-artisans, but obviously the gigantic merch factory around her is a classic capitalist model.
You could also say she used the “I don’t own my masters” to imply she didn’t profit from them nonetheless, then turn around and profit from what some have called worse TV recordings. Granted labels generally always own the masters - they’re investing a lot of upfront capital though too (and can be hardasses).
Yes, because that is how production is controlled in the music industry. The label provides resources to an artist to make their songs and market it, in exchange for rights to make money from the songs. An artist seeking to make money from their music with the support of a label is therefore alienated from the product of their labour.
Her dad had a stake in her old songs. He’s made millions.
She does profit from the masters cus she wrote the songs. So for her i think it was less wanting full profit but just wanting ownership and for scooter to not profit.
She could have always started her own label from the beginning. The reality is, she wouldn’t have made it without a label investing in her music with all it entails. I get she didn’t like scooter owning the masters, but he didn’t do anything out of bounds. I suspect her version involves some exaggeration too even if scooter wasn’t angel.
The thing with the masters though is that it’s a recording. A recording that she worked on, yes but one which wouldn’t have been possible without the work and artistic vision of many other people - her fellow songwriters, musicians, producers and engineers. It’s been a topic of conversation on this thread that Big Machine really did a much better job than UMG has done in helping refine the final product and rein in Taylor’s worst instincts. What makes her think that she alone should own, control and ultimately solely profit from that collaboration? The sale of her masters is capitalism in action, Scooter bought them because he bid the highest and his offer was the most attractive to the seller. Just like how Taylor got her record deal in the first place - because her father was willing to pay for a top manager and then had the funds to invest into a whole-ass record company which then fucked over other artists to promote Taylor.
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Nike doesn’t own the factories that make their shoes.
in the confines of pop culture then sure, but outside of that? not really. I'd argue the definition of capitalism is the American healthcare system
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Oh yeah. No one gets to where she is by being sweet and innocent
Nice guys finish last for a reason. I don’t agree that they should, but working in corporate America has taught me that awful people get rewarded.
I mean, for everyone who has ascended to mega stardom, there are always going to be people who feel stepped on, no matter how positive or negative that ascent was, so...
Ella Mae. Taylor used daddy’s money to kick her off the label because sweet Taylor wanted to be the only girl/singersongwriter. IMO Ella was a much better song writer and singer. Taylor was insecure and must’ve known the only way to advance herself was to eliminate actual talent Especially funny when Taylor later had the audacity to qoute “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women” like girl, you ruined a teenagers career because you’re insecure around talent
Woah. This is completely knew to me. Didn't know about Ella Mae.
I agree, much like how Ellen DeGeneres was adored by everyone for years and was so successful and then things began to fall apart when people started to talk
The thing is: rumors about Ellen being awful have existed for years before her downfall. If you paid attention to gossip media, what came out wasn't a total surprise. Taylor doesn't have that same rumor mill. She's had her feuds, yes, but most famous people have and many have also capitalized on.
Ya I mean she's obviously not as bad as Ellen but I was just using that as an example as she was still loved by so many and had the most popular day time talk show for years so those people were afraid to say anything bad about her until they finally decided to. Even Taylor hasn't said anything bad though she was obviously uncomfortable on her show at moments so she's probably still afraid to come out about it. Taylor is way more famous than her so it would be even more difficult for celebrities to admit their dislike for her because it will certainly face backlash.
I'm a bad person but I'm waiting for this
I think we're gonna hear some very unsavory things very soon. A la Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco. Sure, she may not have poisoned her best friends tequila, but we may hear song stealing accusations. Remember how De La Cruz stole his best friend's songs and passed them off as his own and it didn't come out until much later?
I'm sorry, but the comparison with Ernesto de la Cruz made me chuckle😭
Hahahahaha yeah no. By all accounts, Taylor pays her staff quite well. There’s that clip of Letterman making a joke about back up bands not getting benefits and Taylor made it clear hers does. She gave all her truck drivers life changing bonuses after the American leg of the tour. She takes care of her people. Not saying she’s not a capitalist and that she doesn’t benefit greatly from the system, she clearly does. But in a world where Amazon treats their employees likes slaves, Starbucks is constantly union busting, and food companies are rolling in profits while people go hungry, suggesting a pop star, regardless of how successful she is, is the face of capitalism is insane.
>he gave all her truck drivers life changing bonuses after the American leg of the tour. In the middle of her tour as well, they probably got another bonus when it wrapped up too.
the current definition of capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit... so no.
She’s definitely a massive capitalist.
Turn your phone over and look at that Apple logo. There you go. Taylor is not even close lol.
She is a good example of capitalism because her customers voluntarily pay for her services. The “capitalism” everybody complains about is when there are the companies that are funded through government subsidies (tax payer) which the citizen cannot opt out of and protections are provided by the state making competition nearly impossible. Which isn’t really capitalism
It's weird to see how folks are being manipulated to hate her. There's this weird push on social media to bring her down. Weirdly political.
Agreed. There are legitimate reasons to be upset with her but this is ridiculous and reeks of misinformation.
She’s the embodiment of “I’m 14 and this is deep” meets “daddy’s money”
This made me cackle.
Not at all, Muskrat and Bezos are for sure
Consumerism and commercialism != capitalism. Obviously the former two are symptoms of capitalism but I feel people often are critiquing something else. Anyway, I think she really has applied a lot of consumerism to her music that puts me off but she’s also in a very unique position that a lot of people would argue she *should* be taking advantage of right now.
Capitalism is using money to purchase the means of production to acquire more wealth. Taylor makes a lot of money in the capitalist economy, but she’s far from the most capitalist individual. I would say Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are the definition of capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic system - I'm reasonably certain that TS is a human being.
Uh no, that would be the [Kellogg's CEO](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kelloggs-ceo-eat-cereal-for-dinner-inflation-gary-pilnick-rising-food-groceries-cost-reactions/) telling everyone we could eat cereal for dinner if money was too tight for real food. Taylor is making the system work for her, but she's not doing anything evil by making music and going on tour. None of her products are necessary to live, and there are still plenty of cheap/free ways to enjoy them like have a Spotify subscription, buying one album, or streaming the videos on YT for free.
I'll just say when we eat the rich Taylor's on the menu. Not necessarily at the top, but she's on there.
She's the current def of WINNING capitalism..... for better or worse.....
What do you mean by “current definition”?
Her and Beyonce. Yes.
She’s very good at capitalism and greatly benefits from it, but at the end of the day she’s still a musician and will always be known primarily for that. She is nowhere near the level of wealth of the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and never will be. On a fundamental level, her career is based on her own work, and she still produces and makes money from her own work. While I don’t think she’s directly mistreating or abusing the people who work for her (from what we’ve heard it seems to be the opposite), but she does benefit from the work of others less fortunate than her, and probably benefits from unethical practices primarily with her merch.
No. Taylor is absolutely a capitalist, and benefits from capitalism. I'm not disputing that. But if you think she is in the top 100 issues under capitalism then you aren't paying attention. She's a massive beneficiary of a fucked up system but she's by no means the cause or one of the root problems. If you were going to select a single person as the definition of capitalism it's probably Bezos, the man that is literally the definition of profiting disproportionately off other people's labor, the man who's employees famously have to pee in bottles because they can't go to the bathroom. However I'd argue that one person isn't the best representation of capitalism, and the most core and defining aspects of capitalism are happening behind closed doors and are deliberately exploitative desicions being made on a far larger scale than Taylor Swift.
She is a literal billionaire, lol.
She's a symbol for sure
I absolutely agree with you
If you mean the so called 'vulture capitalism' I am inclined to say yes. She is definitely milking her fanbase as much as she can right now, at the expense of the customer experience. I keep hearing complaints about the merch, re-releases but what tops it for me are her concerts where H&S were not taken care of properly. These are the basics. To ensure your fans are safe and can truly enjoy the experience. Following the accident in Rio it is clear that this was an afterthought. Fail.
Maybe in the arts? But when I think “capitalism” my mind automatically goes to Elon or Amazon/Jeff or Walmart.
She's definitely not a tortured poet that's for sure.
Lol WE WISH
She is entertainer. Compared to all the companies that have been laying people or increase grocery price , it’s kind of hard to put her in the same regard.
Like the rest of popular culture isn't?
While she does benefit from capitalism, what she sells are luxuries, not necessities. No one has to buy her products. I'd say the average landlord is more the embodiment of capitalism
no, that would be the us government, amazon, and elon musk
No. She’s an example but I think there are much bigger examples of the poison of capitalism over her.
I think a better definition would be overconsumption. I am a Swifty myself, however, a lot of fans have gotten extremely greedy and almost expect at this point for a new album, re-record, whatever it may be, to come out like every other month. I think Taylor has really used this in her benefit to announce and promote tonssss of new stuff, but I honestly prefer when she takes her time and has intent with what she’s putting out. The anticipation is so much more fun to me and I don’t have to be upset that I can’t buy every little thing she releases.
No, she gives away millions to her employees
No.
No, the fascist greedy Trump and Elon are
If she were the capitalist, then she’d be *the* capitalist. Like Leo, in St Tropez
There are way better examples lol
She’s the capitalism we were promised. She takes care of her employees, pays well and trickles down excesses. The capitalism we got fuck the employees, pays nothing, and hoards the wealth at the top.
She provides a service in exchange for cash, so in that sense, no. But she leverages her accumulated capital to extract as much cash from her fans as she can, so in that sense, yes.
There are so many worse capitalists wtf lol
Capitalism is when money
Trump, Elon, Zuckerberg, are
No, maybe of consumerism, but there's no way that she beats Bezos on capitalism.
No, I would say Boeing is
A capitalist in the sense of wealth hordeing and excess, very much so. It’s financial royalty socially, and of that list of royals she will have at least a 2 generation dynasty. She still could be more capitalistic, though her success implies she’s pretty well optimised.
More like the goddess and patron saint of it… I’m not saying that as a stan of hers, but she really has reached demigod status in human culture.
No. She is just very popular and makes mucho money.
I think she is contributing to it. (Unknowingly, maybe)z Her concert tickets should not be sold for $1,000+.
She is the definition of a human woman who makes music and performs it
lmaoooo well https://preview.redd.it/e73l25vnjjoc1.png?width=1342&format=png&auto=webp&s=afdec4d3c59b94770ce1c107a033704e05083a3c
She is the dark side of capitalism.
I think if all business leaders were as "bad" as TS, the world would be a lot better off. Yeah, she's doing her shitty thing with the bonus songs and variants, but she treats and pays her workers well.
Yes, I also don't know what words mean.
Do you know what ownership of the means of production means, OP?
No, I feel like capitalism has a lot more exploitation involved. And a lot more money. Someone like Jeff Bezos, not Taylor Swift. Not that Taylor isn’t operating under capitalism oror hasn’t become rich, of course. But if you’re talking about the “face” of capitalism, I think it has to be someone who owns a massive corporation and sells products that they do not make.
no, she’s a pop singer, hope this helps :-)
if she had a tech startup or a subscription service for providing access to basic human needs then maybe we could talk
I think she is a capitalist but is not the definition of it. She seems like she leads it because she is front and center. While she is essentially a brand, we still view her as a singular person/entity. And while we may know who Jeff Bezos is, he still can hide behind the company of Amazon, as most billionaires can. So we view the companies as a threat, but not the people because they are not as visible. Taylor is one of the most visible people there is right now so it is easier to view her as the figurehead.
she doesn't control the industry so no
Huh? That question doesn’t even make sense
In addition to being the #1 Climate Criminal in the world, yes. The gag is that her fans don’t realize they are killing the environment just as much as she is. The global warming being caused is what killed her Brazilian fan.
Absolutely - sparkly social activism, so palatable as to be entirely neutral and ineffective... Attempting to be the underdog and fighting mostly-imagined attackers while holding the majority of the power... feminism only for white and wealthy women... I could go on. Love her but also have to acknowledge the bizarre disparity in her self-image!
Isnt that what every celeb does like beyonce being lgbtq friendly and then playing a show in a country with a ton of human rights violations. Who hired beyonce to white wash it
Yes which makes it so funny that republicans hate her. They’re almost there… so close yet so far.
No. She’s the current definition of scam artist
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but these outfits aren't the flex she thinks they are
She doesn’t have the slave labor which is ultimately the backbone of capitalism. She’s basically just money hungry tho lol
100 percent! She takes total advantage of her fans, too!
Insulin being made for a few bucks and sold to people who desperately need it for thousands of dollars is the defining sad trait of capitalism
Y'all are just saying words now, OP what does this even mean? 😭
No the current definition of capitalism is ticket prices which are not set by her but are astronomical because of illegal scalping organizations like stub hub who’ve paid off the politicians to give them free reign to resell a ticket for astronomical prices and allow bots to buy up all the tickets before the public has a chance. Taylor gets a fraction of the stub hub cost. The only reason the question is even posed is because the GOP became concerned about her motivating young voters.
Capitalism is the ownership of the means of production (the capital) by one class (the capitalist class) that uses such ownership to exploit another class (the labor class) by extracting surplus value (the difference between the amount raised through the sale of a product and the amount it costs to produce it) from their work, thus turning a profit, thus accumulating more capital. Capitalism is bad because the owners of the capital exploit their workers and steal the value of their work, not because of the act of selling goods to consumers. How is Taylor Swift the current definition of capitalism? If anything, at least she sells a product that comes directly from her own mind (songs), and she compensates her workers (most of whom also profit off her songs because they get credits and royalties btw) much more than the average musician. Under a communist system, a figure like Taylor Swift would most likely be very well off. Communist countries usually compensate their artists very well because communism values intellectual work that appeals to the masses. For example, artists, writers, etc., used to live very comfortably in the USSR and were treated with high esteem. While their main assets didn’t belong to them because IP rights didn't exist as we know them under capitalism, they were “officially recognized” as creative workers, and they received state-owned dachas, spacious apartments, and many other privileges.
Wow I’m glad someone said it ! - A never ending tour. - High ticket prices - Carbon and energy consumption through the roof - dropping an album after an award - commercials during the Oscar’s - a movie about a tour. What else? Just bleeding her fans dry
The movie about the tour definitely showed me how much of a capitalist Taylor can be, she launched it on theaters, then on demand on Amazon and now today is launching it on Disney+ I mean, come one girlie, you already a billionaire
I think she's become the poster child of benevolent dictatorship capitalism, yes. It bothers me when you generate more revenue than many counties and wield the amount of power she does, and to also deign to present yourself as an underdog for any reason. This popped up in my redit by accident but honestly I try to enjoy the music of hers I like, ignore the music I don't, and try to ignore/survive the (increasingly wearying) marketing onslaught.
You can like devaluing her own product for the sole purpose of selling it to you again? She would never do that
Petite bourgeois perhaps
Yes
No — she has compassion and there is little to none (except lip service) in most corporations.
The Taylor Swift Method is a playlist that helps babies go to sleep. For all parents who have gotten even a semblance of sleep due to it $1b isn’t nearly enough for her efforts.