Prince’s Mad Money

[topum]

As many of you know, after I joined LJ slightly over two months ago I was surprised how strong the Russian segment of it was. I could barely find active journals in English but there seemed to be an ocean of super active journals in Russian. I got interested. Many of you also know how much I am into Google Translation. I read Russian journals via Google Translate sometimes, you might remember these.

Today I was looking at a couple of their top journals and saw a post about Prince. I got curious what the Russia's top blogger's take on it would be. Below is that post Google Translated from Russian with some minimal tweaks only to the bits which did not make sense at all after GT. I had to make those using a vocabulary.

I thought you might be interested too.

Google Translated from this post by miss_tramell, Russia's top blogger.

Prince’s Mad Money

Prince left an estate of $800 million.

-Photo of Prince-

He did not leave a will. The money will go to his nearest relative - his sister - a former drug addict and prostitute.

Here she is:

-Photo of Prince's sister-

And this is one of Prnice’s villas:

-Photo of Prince's lavish villa-

I absolutely do not care that the amount that can not even be comprehended (so huge it is), will go to a former drug addict and prostitute. It is absolutely none of my business.

What absolutely infuriates me is: why the singer Prince is worth nearly a billion dollars?

What he has done for mankind? He wrote a dozen hits in the '80s? Not just hits, but super-hits? OK. More than a dozen? Accepted. But is it really worth that huge amount of money?

Humanity is insane. I realized it a long time ago. It is unjustifiable for songs - no matter how good they may be - to pay millions. Showbiz Workers do not produce anything that moves humanity forward. They do not save lives. Their relatively light work should not be paid so obscenely high.

Every day 22 thousand children die in conditions of extreme poverty.

-Photo of a kid covered in flies-

In 2011, 6.9 million children under 5 died of hunger and thirst. Every hour took the lives of 800 children. They did not have enough food. They did not have enough water. They did not have enough basic medicines.

At the same time the singer Prince amassed a fortune of $800 million.

Showbiz in our world is severely overvalued, and human life is sorely underestimated.

Madness. Cruelty. It is, but it should not be. This is not even the way to the Apocalypse. This is the Apocalypse.

Comments

[mariana-aga.livejournal.com]

To which she personally responded. : ) Obviously she has no time left for work or charity. It's her personal Apocalypse, what happened to her with her popularity in the livejournal community.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I don't think what she does or doesn't do is relevant here though. I am only interested in reasoning she puts forward not who she is personally or what she does. This cannot turn right or wrong depending on her donating or not. Also someone who does the wrong thing does not lose their right to call it the wrong thing (and definitely are not required to call it the right thing) just because they are doing it too. I think personal attacks are counterproductive almost in all cases. I am really not a fan of Ad hominem and Tu quoque logical fallacies. So much so that my very post was about it: http://topum.livejournal.com/2016/02/01/

[mariana-aga.livejournal.com]

You are right of course. Even those who do ad hominem attacks do not deserve to be attacked ad hominem themselves.

As for doing... there are different definitions of doing. Some do by actually doing the deed, others - by calling to do the deed.

I said what I said not because I was interested in the author of the topic or even in late Prince and his inheritance. Remember that most people sit in front of the computer screen, reflecting upon themselves, they see in the eye of another what they fail to see in their own eye. Everything said about 'others' is a statement about self in no small measure. In psychology it is called 'projection'. In folklore: "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but don't notice the log in your own eye?"

I was mostly pondering about the price that I pay for spending so much time publishing and commenting 'in livejournal' instead of doing good deeds, and about inheritance that I am leaving after myself to internet addicts and www whores, former or not.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I understand )). I also don't think that she attacked Prince in her post ad hominem or otherwise. Yes she did not express sympathy and mentioned a couple of facts about his sister that were unnecessary but I did not see an attack on Prince. She did not shame him for not donating more and specifically mentioned that is was "none of my business" that the money was going to his sister. What I saw was more of an attack on us (including herself perhaps, she is certainly included in "humanity" which "went mad"). It is possible that she would not deny that she would end up doing the same thing as Prince if she was surrounded by all these adoring fans and all that money was just thrown at her. I think she is asking how comes that in the world where we are informed, educated, and apparently striving for justice, equality, compassion and sharing and in the system where we vote with our money we are making people who sing songs or pretend to be other people on TV so insanely rich while a huge amount of people are absolutely struggling in the world. Is something wrong with us? Or with the system? She is saying that in the world were educated voters (us) who claim to value justice and equality a lot and are free to vote with their money for whatever cause they see fit, a singer who sings songs should not be valued above the lives of a couple of countries of starving kids. At the same time it is quite clear that we cannot stop buying music and that the artists have to charge for it. So what is wrong in this puzzle? Or everything is OK?

[mariana-aga.livejournal.com]

Wrong and right are moral judgments. Nature is more or less blind and quite cruel. Those who can survive, others don't .

System(s) are part of human history, I think. They evolve.

We help those whom we physically see, or hear. If people are dying in misery somewhere afar, silently, so to speak, we cannot possibly know they need our help. I live in Canada and here we help to whomever asks vocally on behalf of themselves or people from other countries. On top of that we help our relatives in poorer countries and give away 10% of our income to the church who helps those in need and spends on social activities for kids from less fortunate families. And our taxes are 50% of our income :))) So I cannot say there is something wrong with o u r system.

Obviously, there are countries where adults and kids die in poverty, from hunger, treatable diseases, etc. But I doubt that it is widespread in the US, where Prince was from. They die in the countries with their own billionaires and millionaires, so I guess that is where Apocalypse takes place. Or simply underdevelopment.

Money has to be concentrated in order to have power, to pay for large factories, large tv stations, telescopes, advanced medical facilities, precious art including architectural art, such as some mansions, gardens, etc. It cannot be dispersed evenly, that would be chaos and white noise. We've seen plenty of examples of poor people winning substantial lottery. They simply spend it on junk, so to speak.

When people speak about Prince's fortune, it is as if he was sitting on bags of paper money or gold coins. It was all in investments, it was all in form of stocks, bonds, etc. it was part of a large economy, people were actually using his money to run factories, hospitals, build roads, etc.

So yes, there is a level of societal development, where social services are not just in hands of nuns and doctors without borders, but part of a relatively wealthy government, with trained staff, etc. Most countries have reached it, some - very few - haven't. As you can understand, it is as difficult to interfere with affairs of poor countries, as it is with a poor neighbor's family. You cannot easily cross borders with your good intentions and dollars in your pocket. Until every country has a developed social welfare system and structures able to absorb and channel donations without stealing them or wasting them, kids will die from hunger and under bombs.