Uplifting News

True. Artists are exploited for their labor as well.

She's said to be "worth" ~6 mil. So we can estimate that at best she has <1 mil she owns in assets + liquid cash, so on a liquid cash level probably just well-earning, not rich?

I mean that's still al ot of money, but considering how this "worth" is probably based on how much she is worth to a label, I doubt she herself owns that much.

Neither Notch nor Joan Roling (I am aware this is not her name, but if she decides others names for them I can decide hers for her) did it on their own. It is literally impossible to do so. Both of them 1) got insanely lucky, 2) got major investment behind them.

That major investment is were the billions actually came from. Its important to recognize "i recieved billions of dollars from shit fucks who got their billions the old fashions way, murder and exploitation, in order to promote my creation and make those billionaires even more wealth" is not the same as "the singular work of art that I produced generated a billion dollars of value for me without accepting tremendous amounts of blood money from the ruling class."

It is not possible to become a billionaire without being guilty by association. You MUST participate in oppression because of the nature of capital.

I mean in that case Roan is 99.94% fine, right?

I think this touches on the concept of labor aristocracy pretty well. But at the point where you're a billionaire, even labor aristocrats would have needed to do some level of exploitation. At which point, they're just doing the same thing the owning class does.

For instance, once you start doing shit like licensing IP (private property is theft; including "intellectual property"), creating fashion brands, perfume, and other forms of "passive income" (A.K.A. stealing from someone else) like that, you're not really profiting off of your own labor anymore. You're exploiting others.

I don't think anyone from labor aristocracy can ever get to the point that they're approaching billionaire status with clean hands (relative to how "clean" one can be under capitalism). But artists like Chappell Roan aren't anywhere close to that, as someone else pointed out.

I think that's highly reductive, but if you want to see it that way, fine. There are lots of people in that sort of income bracket that have good opinions that are worth listening to, and it's good that they use their platform to advocate for various causes.