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

[afrosnow.livejournal.com]

Very interesting perspective. I don't think it's right to call out the sisters past... and it is her brother who ceased, so who are we to determine if she is deserving or not. However, I do agree that it is absolutely obscene the amount of money the entertainment industry collects. The income inequality is fucking nuts. We could do better for humanity but then there are private jets and fur coats and multiple luxury cars just for show. Whateva.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I think she specifically states that she is not judging whether the sister is deserving or not:
"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.
But then if she didn't why bring it up indeed.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

As I said elsewhere, if a million people want to pay someone to sing songs or throw a ball, who is at fault for the income inequality? They chose to give their money away, presumably for some momentary pleasure.
I think we need to handle this in a different way than either trying to stop people selling things or trying to stop people buying things.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Of course, we do not mean just direct action, ie people should not buy. Rethinking the system is included too.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I think rethinking the system is probably the only option.