Well, the communists who usually want to kill the billionaires would say “yes, they shouldn’t be allowed to do that, because money shouldn’t exist and she should be touring for free.” They want to abolish money entirely and run the world off “the love of the game” alone.
To them, all voluntary transactions are inherently exploitative by virtue of “money,” if it exists someone will have more than someone else and thus a hierarchy is born, whether they’re actually exploitative in any other sense is of no consequence, simply having “more” than another in any capacity is enough.
McCarthy called. He wants his personal privately owned red scare back.
“Communists want to abolish money” is ridicolous. And the straw men of going from abolishing billionaires hoarding obscene wealth to “everyone should be doing everything “for free”” is the size that it could feed an entire farm.
It’s easy to see how that falls down though. If everyone’s in it for the love of the game then lots of people are gonna want to be up on stage, like Taylor the superstar, not cleaning the outhouses like Bob the maintenance guy.
And people will say Bob is being exploited, of course, but Bob did choose to take that job. Of course Bob needs to eat and to pay rent and pay for health care and entertainment and to send his kids to university and all that. But let’s assume we take care of all those other things Bob needs the money for, would it still be exploitation if Bob was willing to accept some amount of money (less than what Taylor gets paid for the concert) to clean the outhouses?
I don’t think so, and I doubt Bob would either. I think he would be unhappy if his choice to accept payment for that job were taken away. I think Bob would say the job doesn’t bother him as much as other people and that he benefits from having a stronger stomach (or a weaker sense of smell) from everyone else. Just because we find the job intolerable and disgusting doesn’t mean Bob does. And that’s one of the limitations of empathy (which is so often brought up in these discussions).
Oh I know that, I’m not one of the “kill billionaires” guys, I’ve just unfortunately spoken to way too many of them over my 4y (or whatever) on this tankie refuge we call a reddit clone and that’s what they say. They also say “well someone is going to want to clean the shitters for free because they’ll smell otherwise” in response to what you said. They’re mostly a collection of willful ignorance and hatred. But personally I can’t imagine there’s enough coprophiliacs out there to sustain an entire waste management industry.
Yes, they’re fueled by resentment and righteous indignation. They see the world as a terrible place and demand that it be fixed for them. They also take for granted all the ways in which the world sucks so much less now than it did for most of history.
