In theory, a modern artist, writer, or musician could become a billionaire by selling directly to customers, but I’ll believe it when I see it happen.
Nobody becomes filthy rich by being honest. You can only become this rich by exploiting people and having absolutely no fucking empathy whatsoever.
The biggest lotto win in the USA was $2.04 BN, in California. Subtract taxes and there is no way that comes close to the account of money other billionaires have ammassed, even assuming there was no outstanding debt to pay and the money was invested in high-yield investments (green or not). I believe you’re right.
In theory a modern artist, writer, musician, etc could become a billionaire from direct to customer sales, but I’ll believe it when it happens.
As much as I dislike her and her views, J.K. Rowling would be an example wouldn’t she?
Nah. Tons of merchandising, films, publishing etc.
Those Quidditch brooms and plastic wands don’t assemble themselves in a sweatshop.
Think more like if some self hosted webnovel had the same success somehow, or if she’d been as involved with checking the conditions of the merchandise empire as thoroughly as she was apparently involved in making sure the child actors were treated well. Not particularly likely, but hypothetically.
Why do the merchandise sales not count? Are they not a product of her creative writing? Many webnovelists sell merch. One of my favourite webnovelists semi-recently hired an editor, would that disqualify them?
I’m a little confused on how you are defining the conditions. If the artist can only count their personal contributions than I don’t think it is possible in any sense. No person no matter how hard working or talented can personally generate a billion in profit.
“by being honest”
Firstly, who the fuck are they?
Secondly, you have the money, why can’t you just be reasonable? Like it’s not enough to rich, and not work and be happy, travel the world without limits and without a care… you somehow need to hurt people. It’s awful.
But how else will they get a bigger house? Nicer, larger yacht? More private jets?
Like, I kinda understand the “more more more!” mentality. As my income has gone up over the years, there’s always something more my monkey brain tells me I should want. A nicer, more comfortable car. A new video card. Two angry ponies. You know how it is. I tell it to shut up because I have more than enough already.
I’m not a sociopath, though, so at no point has my monkey brain told me to enslave others so I can have nicer stuff.
Why do the ponies have to be angry? Seems kind of uncharacteristic
Little Grandpa story time:
Ponies are generally nicer than horses, but I was raised believing ponies were angry, vicious little assholes. My father was bucked off of a pony in his twenties, causing him to break a rib and paralyze half of his diaphragm. Being the actual asshole in this story, he never stopped to think that maybe he was too heavy and too drunk for a pony, so he spread pony hate throughout his life. I want angry ponies as I dislike my father and on a primal level think they’d keep me safe from people like him, like two pissy, grass eating charms to protect against narcissists.
UKs richest family? But not the King? 🤔
Nope, not the King. He might have a lot of stuff, but quite a lot of that is basically unsellable. So his crown might be worth a gazillion, but parliament would probably interfere if he tried to sell it off. And it would be an issue what is actually his to sell and what is really owned by the state.
Much of it is owned by the Crown Estate. Which is technically owned by the current monarch, but it’s not their personal property.
All sounds like a scam to me to prevent inheritance taxes scooping off a chunk every time one of them carks it.
All the revenue that the Crown Estate generates is given directly to the UK government to use, so they get plenty of tax from it already. ~$400 million in 2022 for example.
I’m not even kidding when I say it’s getting to be pretty close to the time that we need to break out the guillotines and remind these people what happens if they get too sure of themselves.
Eat the rich.
Behind every great fortune is a great crime
