Cause & Effect
When you're angry with billionaires, but you also send them money
If you’re awake, aware and empathetic, it’s hard to live in America right now.
I, as many of you, have been grappling with what’s been happening lately, what’s been happening since January, and while we’re at it you have to think about everything that came before it since life is a big, tangled web of cause and effect.
That Bezos wedding
Boy, did that ruffle some feathers. Look, as I said back in January, I’ve made nine purchases on Amazon in the past decade and none in the past four years. So, I personally did not feel invested in this billionaire romp replete with 90+ private jets and a mint of plastic surgery and bad fashion. Honestly, were y’all expecting something else?
I read several hot takes about the nuptials. Some people were so mad about the gross display of wealth. Some people felt betrayed by Oprah or Leonardo Dicaprio, as though wealthy celebrities exist because they’re trustworthy moral compasses. (Amusingly, no one seemed upset with the Kardashians.) I enjoyed W Kamau Bell’s point of view and Phoebe Robinson’s takedown at least made me laugh. A $55 million dollar wedding. Where on earth did they get all that money?
You get what you pay for, and I want to know: Did you help fund the wedding?
If so, stop now or shut the heck up.
If this soulless wedding is what makes you finally quit shopping there or question whether billionaires should exist, cool. Welcome! But if you whined about the wedding and then whinged about how you simply cannot stop buying everything on Amazon because because because…you are absolutely the problem.
It’s cause and effect. If you’ve done the majority of your shopping on Amazon to this day, you cannot complain about his wedding. You paid for it.
More reasons to quit Spotify
I’ve also seen renewed chatter about Spotify.
Pick your topic:
The “band” the Velvet Sundown, which has over a million monthly Spotify listeners, has just “admitted” to being “a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence.” AKA, the band is not made of people.
Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, has invested nearly $700 million in defense company Helsing, which makes military drones and AI defense software.
If you don’t already know, Spotify pays artists between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average1. Even then, artists must reach certain thresholds before they’re “eligible” for payout. I’m not going to bother explaining why that’s so deeply offensive. I worked in the music business for many years and I’m married to a musician, so just trust me.
So, a CEO of a music streaming service has become a billionaire by paying musicians a fraction of a penny per listen. Since Spotify is a publicly-traded company, the question will never be why they should pay musicians more. The only question is: How can they make MORE money for their top brass and stockholders?
Seeing that it would be difficult to pay the musicians any less for their music, how can they make more money? Cut the musicians out entirely! Let robots make the music. Will anyone even notice or care?
Y’all. I quit Spotify back in 2021, after I learned that they gave Joe Rogan $200 million dollars to join them. (I also took my podcast off of it, so I was willing to lose listeners to be in integrity with my values.) I just read that Spotify gave that blowhard $250 million MORE in 2024, I’d missed that memo.
Did you catch that? Musicians get a fraction of a penny per listen, and Joe Rogan gets upwards of a half a billion dollars.
What has been the effect of giving Rogan such a huge platform, and paying human musicians so very little?
Are you still paying Spotify every month?
You get what you pay for. You are what you eat. Garbage in, garbage out.
BBB
Speaking of, the BBB passed just in time for July 4th. While I’ve never been a celebrator of this holiday, see here for some good reasons why, it felt especially dark this time around. What did I do with my three day weekend? I grieved.
I’ve been grieving about the demons in charge and the death cult they worship. Taking food subsidies away from school children and health care away from tax-paying citizens, and funding unprecedented expansion of masked, secret police and internment camps. What timeline is this? Why is everything so dark and horrible? Why are they intent on answering the question, Can it get any worse?
But again, this is cause and effect. We are in yet another Find Out era. They didn’t do this alone. These fascists, warmongers, billionaires, technocrats and oligarchs have lots and lots and lots of supporters.
I grieve thinking about the pain, misinformation, corruption and whatever other dark forces got us to this place. I keep asking myself, what caused this? I don’t know all the answers, but I am sitting with the question.
Spending your money, time & attention
I’ve said “vote with your dollars” before now. But let’s put a finer point on it. What I will say instead is to give your money, support and attention to people you trust.
Look, we don’t have a choice about paying taxes, so we’ll do that and keep voting, protesting, calling, donating, etc. until our tax dollars benefit the 99%. You may or may not have any leeway in who you pay for your rent or mortgage, electricity, gas, internet or phone bills. I acknowledge there are not great alternatives to everything.
But that doesn’t mean you do nothing! There are great alternatives for so many things. For the rest of the places you shop, spend or invest your time and attention, I want you to look for the people and businesses that share your values. Support those you can trust to spend your money in ways that you can feel good about.
Stop thinking about giving your money to “a store” or “a website” that “everyone else uses” and start thinking about the people behind it and what they’ll do with all your money.
Stop giving your attention and online data (which is a huge form of currency, arguably worth more than money) to “apps” and “entertainers” that don’t have our best interests at heart.
Your money and your attention builds people up and gives them power. Please spend your money and attention wisely.
If you want a different effect, create a different cause.
As Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
As individuals, we didn’t create all the problems. So many problems are inherited or imposed upon us. Either way, the buck stops here. We can wake up, take what responsibility we can, quit investing in what’s evil and inane, and start dreaming of how things should be.
As soon as we can get real about it then we can get resourceful. I don’t have all the answers, but I want to leave you with some questions:
Who and what deserves our time, money, attention?
Who do we trust?
How can we each take more responsibility and action?
What miracles can we imagine and work toward?
How can we not lose hope?
What can we cause, starting now, that brings about a different effect?
If you read this entire essay, please let me know by hitting the heart button.
If you have any additional questions or answers, please share them in the comments. I’d love to engage with you about all of this.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream/
Please keep these reminders coming. I have made so much great progress in non-spending and I continue to not miss Amazon. (Full disclosure—I have twice ordered products from Amazon since quitting in January. I started to type out the reasons why but it was getting long and boring. In short, both times I was driven by desperation, not laziness. My goal is to not let that happen ever again). I’ve always loved thrift shopping and have gotten even better at it—I mean, times when I am shopping, so very rarely. Really appreciate your ongoing encouragement for us to be mindful. Thank you.
Thank you for calling us in. A good reminder that we have agency in this chaotic world.