Ah, so we’ll have Department of War employees occupying American cities from the opposing party.

The primary purpose of the Department of Defense is to transfer public money to defense companies.

The difference is literally between capital and a really rich worker. Capital is wealth extraction, they have accumulated wealth and therefore they should accumulate more wealth for reasons. The value in their investment is created by others and they nevertheless extract a percentage for doing nothing. If the workers could organize and buy their own equipment, the business would continue on just fine and they’d make more money.

Swift’s business is Swift. The Swift crew can replace the crew of a similar size for another performer and it will not boost the sales for that performer at all. There’s nothing extractive there because the extra value is due to her being involved. She’s no doubt got investments where she’s extracting value of workers through her capital, but it’s not meaningfully the case in her core business.

The Musk question is valid. His business do make more money simply because he’s involved, so you could say some of the extra “value” is due to him as its creator (he’s still extracting labor value from his employees as well though). He gained that stardom through appropriating the work of others though, so the issue is less his stardom and more the previous abuse. The additional value he generates is already stolen, whether or not it stems from his personal brand now. And also we should acknowledge that little of his company’s value stems from the actual sales to end consumers. Some people buy cars because Musk is CEO, but that doesn’t remotely account for the inflated market value of Tesla.

Swift isn’t a trading bubble. She sells more things and to more people because she’s doing it, and the people buying it enjoy the product they’re getting.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist, because our society doesn’t benefit from allowing that level of accumulation. They should be taxed away to serve the public good, or failing that be giving it away to worthy causes as fast as possible, and it doesn’t seem like Swift is doing that. So she’s bad in that she has immense power to do good and isn’t doing so, but there’s a very meaningful difference between wealth extractors and simply being a superstar who can provide value (and accumulate the wealth from selling that value) completely out of scale to any other worker.

That’s honestly fine. If someone ends up dead, especially if the killer is the only surviving witness, it’s pretty reasonable to have a thorough determination of responsibility and legality.

You’re literally talking about herself and her past creations as some illegitimate ownership. Tax her wealth away, criticize her insufficient philanthropy, but saying she has not earned the money generated from her own personal brand and performances is nonsense. Even if you think she’s due less of a percentage of the profit that the Swift brand has produced, the lights guys, the ticket takers, and the producers aren’t such a large percentage of that brand that she’s not still a billionaire. Individual people can be popular enough for millions of people to give them money and simply doing a job for them doesn’t make you a partial owner of that person’s personal brand.

Sure, but do you have any evidence she’s underpaying the staff? Maybe her songwriters deserve a significant share of the money, but everyone else is just doing a job, the same job they do for other acts on other nights, so just because Swift is a big name doesn’t mean they should all be rich. If she’s abusing them or demanding extra work and not compensating them for it, then yeah, she’s a villain, but just because her lights guy isn’t getting $10M for his work isn’t evidence of wrongdoing.

The other rich guys you try to compare her to did small work themselves and then just rode the work of others. Most of their wealth came about long after they were doing any work critical to the result, so they’re basically just investors extracting value from others contributing more effort and talent to the success than they do. Swift on the other hand is practically the whole reason anyone is paying anything. Whether you appreciate her music or not, Swift is actually irreplaceable and the primary driver of its value.

“Police said the two men were wearing bulletproof vests and had some sort of badge around their necks.”

The Nazis want badges alone to be enough of a signifier, but frankly anyone trying to break into your home without presenting identification and a warrant should be treated as a threat.

Yes… mistake…

And they should be shot while doing so.

In the scope of things, she is. She could certainly distribute more money to her employees and go on a massive charity spree like Mackenzie Bezos, but she did gain her wealth mostly through her own work and flying a private jet is hardly the core sin of “bad” billionaires.

Not that people with guns trying to break into a house are necessarily very smart (both burglars and Nazis), but what’s the plan here? You hit the homeowner and then you just have a shot guy on the other side of a still locked door. You gotta be really dedicated to robbing that particular house this particular night to jump to do that.

I’m guessing the order of events is off. Shooting at thugs trying to break into your home and those thugs shooting at someone shooting at them makes perfect sense.

It’s embarrassing that the news media just repeats his “anti-crime” lie.