I believe it's called being obsequious little stains of embarrassment. You know, the exact opposite of what Hollywood movies told the world America was all about.
Corporations have also already proved very difficult to actually hold to account. They can basically do as they please, with relative disregard for any consumer protections that may already exist. It's not good, but it can get worse.
The Canadian law would have more teeth if it wasn't so darn easy to set up a Canadian company to buy houses in the first place (please note: this is not from personal experience, I have not done this personally). The law we need progressively taxes corporate-owned houses to the point of making it unprofitable after they own X houses (pick your own value of X).
Laws can protect people or they protect corporations. It should be both, but it never really looks like both, does it?
not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect
What gets me is that, for the right style of music, age or attractiveness shouldn't matter as much as it does. You should be able to create your art, whatever kind of art it is, and have the art itself be judged on its merits. Instead we've got a bunch of our culture still somehow wrapped up in these veneers of attractiveness. It's kind of maddening, to be honest. If you're in your 50's and making 90's style Acid House or 2000's style Trance it shouldn't matter what you look like. If you're a DJ it shouldn't matter if you look like Shirley Temple or Shirley Manson. And yet here we are.
8 million listens netting you only 40 bucks really is insane, isn't it? I used to think radio royalties were bad: I remember Sting talking about how every time Roxanne got played on the radio someone somewhere got 3 cents. He didn't say who got the 3 cents, nor did he say how much of that 3 cents went to him. I'm not 100% sure about those numbers ("my memory is muddy, what's this river that I'm in?") but they're a damn sight more impressive than whatever crumbs the streaming companies are paying, somehow a thousand times less than the radio. Spotify's announcement last year that they weren't even going to bother paying for songs with less than 1000 streams per month was a shocker - what stops them from making it 2000, or 10,000?
Still, being a hobbyist isn't all bad. I've been releasing jazz cover-versions of pop songs for about 2.5 years now, and have netted about 25 bucks so far :) Who knew jazz versions of Toxic or Rusted From The Rain could be so popular?
I'm pretty sure if dentists are advocating for something that would make them less money in the long run, that whatever they're advocating for is a good idea.
If he gets back into office you'll hear that "not a democracy" line quite a lot.