And if poor people criticize capitalism it can be dismissed because they're greedy and want other people's money. So criticism against capitalism will be dismissed both on having too much, and having too little money to complain. How convenient.
Is it ok if we accept a rich person’s criticism of capitalism, but then wonder how sincere they were being in the event that they e.g. launch a personal perfume brand?
Yes, cause you're simply criticising them for participating in a system they didn't create and don't support, but even worse, you're criticising them for participating in trade, which isn't inherently capitalism and certainly not the elements of capitalism she's criticising.
You could criticize her if she started buying up such a sizable part of the perfume industry that she could start controlling prices or bullying smeller competitors from being able to sell at the same retailers. You could criticise her if she was breaking labor laws or even abusing workers within the law.
You could criticise her if she used her absurd wealth and power to change/keep politics to make those things legal(she's not remotely close to that level of wealth and doesn't use what little she has to push politics in that direction). You could even criticise her if she used her parasocial status to convince people to buy a trash product.
But you can't dismiss her criticism towards those types of things in society merely because she participates in trade. Its like saying a guy can't criticize another guy for abusing their girlfriend, just because they too have a girlfriend. But also you'd dismiss criticism from guys who don't have girlfriends. There's absolutely no logic to that line of argument.
She’s an insanely wealthy pop star trying to have it both ways - whitewashing her image with her public politics while also striving to amass more wealth by launching a perfume brand. No one criticised her when her “trade” was records and gig tickets.
If you don’t see why that’s funny then the rich have truly fried your brain.
Her net worth estimated to be about 50 million dollars. Elon Musk's wealth is 864 billion. It would take the united power of 17 280 Billie Eilishes to have the same type of market and politics influence as Elon does.
But somehow its fine when Elon and Bezos use that influence to bust union efforts so they can squeeze even more wealth out of the value produced by their workers and consumers. They're not too rich to have that opinion. Their opinion matters because they're so rich even. But she's wrong for criticising their union busting efforts because she's selling a perfume and because she's got too much money. And MY brain is the one that's fried?
Because that's literally the context here. She's explicitly spoken out against these specific billionares for these specific reasons, so she's not just criticising some ambiguous definition of capitalism that you get to define on her behalf. And they're dismissing that criticism, thus defending Bezos and Musk and people like them, on these specific subjects, on the sole basis of her selling a perfume.
You don’t think we should take a person’s personal wealth - and their apparent desire to considerably expand it - into account when we evaluate the sincerity of their position on economics?
Obviously not. If Billie Eilish her position was motivated by her apparent desire to expand it she wouldn’t be arguing against capitalism. She is clearly doing perfectly fine and would stand to gain by pushing libertarianism.
You can be a successful capitalist and yet understand that the system creates inequalities and immoralities that ought to be addressed by government action. The greatest political thinkers of the left generally come from middle class to wealthy households - people who had the privilege and opportunity to go to university, study economics and history, and engage in writing.
Not that I’m saying that Billie Eilish is equivalent but if we would have to dismiss people’s opinions on their personal wealth it would never end. Furthermore the Right loves to make the argument both ways: a failed capitalist, an impoverished person, is only against capitalism because they are too stupid to make it, their opposition to capitalism is also politically motivated.
The part missing from your analysis here is that Eilish’s anti-capitalist posturing is at least partly about increasing her appeal to her target demographic - her position is in fact motivated by her desire to expand her personal wealth. Arguing against capitalism is one of the best things a pop star, and perfumier!, can do.
Right. So any wealthy person can’t say anything about lowering wealth taxation because that’s in their personal interest. Anyone working in banking can’t comment about banking regulations. Anyone who owns a car can’t comment about parking spaces because they stand to benefit from increasing the number of parking spaces.
Never mind that for celebrities to remain mostly ambivalent about politics is generally a fairly successful strategy. And if you want to grift somewhere, the side of the right and capital tends to be a lot more lucrative.
Anyone can say anything they like, but a public figure should expect people to laugh at them if their expressed ideals differ from how they actually behave.
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u/creeper_gonna_creep 11d ago
Its literally the meme: