theparadox @ theparadox @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Kathleen technically fills the specified criteria if you remove the context of the conversation, which is whether or not Lucas shared a morally acceptable portion of the billions of dollars of wealth generated by LucasFilm that he took for himself, including the $4 billion he made personally from it's sale to Disney.

Your other two of your allegedly obvious examples are absolutely not from LucasFilm and one of them has a net worth of $20m, which is definitively not "hundreds of millions".

I presume, therefore, that you either argue in bad faith or don't try very hard. In either case, you aren't worth my time anymore.

I could throw a dart on a list of names and get such a person.

Fascinating. You respond with the president of LucasFilm who started, more or less, months before LucasFilm was sold to Disney in 2012, an actor who has had an amazing career well beyond anything related to LucasFilm, and an actor with a career is admittedly most associated with the Star Wars Franchise (though he's done a lot of voice work in unrelated franchises) but who's net worth is only about 20 million.

So 1/3 are actually part of LucasFilm, and that one didn't really work under Lucas. Ford did star in a two franchises under LucasFilm, but he is not part of LucasFilm.

Thanks for wasting a few minutes of my time.

If you can name another person from LucasFilm that also had, at some point, several hundred million dollars, I'll make an effort to look into that claim.

If the people who worked on making money from the Star Wars franchise generated literally billions of dollars in value for George Lucas's company and George still has billions of dollars then no, he did not distribute those billions to those people. How do you not understand? I'll simplify this for you.

If I have 1000 employees and my company rakes in $4 billion in revenue, I'm not a good guy even if I give them $1,000,000 each and keep the remaining... $3,000,000,000. That would imply that I think my work was 3,000x more important and valuable then their work. I guarantee that some people that helped Lucas make billions of dollars were paid as little as possible, with many likely in foreign countries with much lower minimum wages.

Society likes to pretend that rich people earn their money. What actually happens is that rich people create a situation in which they are disproportionately rewarded for work done by many other people. Yes, it's likely they did some work too (occasionally even good work), but not work proportional to their compensation. The fact that they insisted that they be the ones retaining a disproportionately large percentage of the surplus value is very telling.

Or he could have distributed the billions he made, as he was making them, to more equitably pay everyone who's work generated that wealth.

That's my point.

My mother's life insurance policies, many of which she's had for decades, are actually bleeding her dry with premium increases. I'm hoping seeing an accountant can convince her to drop at least some of them. She's so obsessed with "leaving me something" when she dies that she's going into debt to pay for it...

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to get anything from her and I've told her so repeatedly.

Where do you think he got his billions?

He owned the IP. He ensured that he'd retain merchandise rights and sequel rights via his contract for the original Star Wars film. He made his billions off of that. Mostly merchandise. Then he sold his company LucasFilm (along with those rights) to Disney in 2012 for a few billion in cash and a few billion in Disney stock (making him one of the largest shareholders).

So yeah, he did own the franchise first.

So instead of more evenly distributing the profit from the franchise to everyone who contributed, he's going to hand the wealth to an already obscenely wealthy corporation so that he can have control over it again?

You know how in many industries there is a standard amount of time something takes and that determines the standard cost? Like it takes .5 work hours to change your oil so they charge .5 of labor + cost? Well, as I understand it, the plan was to limit the amount of anesthesia they'd cover based on the standard/expected time a medical procedure would take.

"In other words, if a procedure takes longer than expected, patients may wake up to an unexpected bill." https://www.prevention.com/health/a63104965/blue-cross-blue-shield-anthem-insurance-anesthesia-time-limit/

The only time precedent ever matters to conservatives is if it works in their favor.

No, before anyone says it, it is not smart to stoop to their level

While it's a bit disappointing, I understand that one perspective is that it is a defensive move. I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that Trump is going to abuse his power and weaponize the Justice Dept to extract everything he can, politically, from the resulting show.

I don't know whether or not Biden would have done the exact same thing if it was a more reasonable Republican administration coming in. That would be far more telling. It might have been that Biden was making a show of it with the assumption that he'd be overseeing and influencing it all as president and if that weren't the case he'd be abusing his authority to spare his son.

Yes, it's frustrating because of the message it send but frankly, I don't think it'll cause much trouble. Everyone who'd see it as an admission of the guilt of the "Biden crime family" wasn't going to change their mind, even if Hunter was publicly drawn and quartered by the Biden administration. Those folks would immediately move the goal post - "Yeah, whatever, but what about..." or just insist Hunter's death was fake and it was all sham.

The trend is technically voting out the establishment - trying something new out of desperation. Unfortunately, the extreme right is more than willing to pretend that they have a solution. Usually, it's to blame the other and promise to get rid of the other. You know, Nazi shit.

I think we could eliminate it if literally everyone put in a fairly minor effort - getting vaccinated, masking, washing hands, avoiding gatherings for a while.

Even in countries where the culture is to wear a mask when you are sick I guarantee significant minority selfishly ignores those practices - more than enough to spoil it for everyone else.

Also, masking helps lessen but doesn't prevent the spread in all cases. Many of the cultures that mask when sick do so because they are going to work or are out and about while sick. The more time you spend with someone, the higher the chances of transmission even if you are both masking.

I think their point is that, with effort, it can be become a thing of the past.

However, so many are unwilling to put forth the effort because it's either too inconvenient or they've been brainwashed into believing it's a hoax.

I think Trump knows that he'll almost always score points with voters by offending and upsetting those opposed to him, regardless of their party. So many of those who voted for him cited his unwillingness to conform as a major draw.

Most of them are just angry with the status quo and by upsetting establishment people Trump misleads the electorate into thinking he's not of and from the establishment. He's convinced so many that he's a force for change when in reality he's a force for entrenching and empowering the worst aspects of the system.

There were a lot of fires to put out and this fire department chose the ones that would benefit them and lectured those abandoned in burning buildings about how their building aren't burning and then campaigned arm in arm with a bunch of arsonists.

Yeah, their opponent was an arsonist so it wasn't the best strategy to sit this one out but there is a lot of blame to go around.

America needs to fix it's shit. I'm just hoping the arsonists don't burn it to the ground first.

Votes aren't all counted so no, 15 million didn't sit out. I'm not saying it wasn't millions, but it's not 15 million.

You're fine being part of the problem then? Shit looks bad so you're not going to even try and be civil? You sound like those disaffected voters.

What if the folks that voted in 2020 and didn't vote in 2024 are the type of folks who just normally don't vote and weren't inspired this year? What if the same kind of "there's no way Trump can win" thinking had them taking the situation for granted? Again, not saying they should have fucking voted but maybe it's more complicated than a few million people didn't vote this year so apparently the entirety of the non-republicans are racists. Group punishment is in order?

I disagree. Championing progressive policies in most instances actually appeals universally to a majority of the electorate.

I'm not suggesting they'd be able to follow through because I think a significant number of Democrat representatives can't stomach actually progressive policies... but I think they'd win more elections.

Yes, we all woke up to our future being a fucking fascist horror show. We're all grieving. Chill the fuck out with the "racist" shit, you just dividing the left more.

Yes, I'm sure some people are just misogynistic and racist and stayed home because of that. However, other people feel like it doesn't fucking matter. We understand that it does matter, but I'll be damned if I don't feel that way too sometimes. It's so goddamn frustrating when the Democrats tack right over and over again, hamstringing progressives along the way, and then turn around and say "Vote for us because we're the lesser evil. We've wedged you between a rock and a hard place so suck it up and do your patriotic duty like good little peasants."

Kamala's campaign veered right and abso-fucking-lutely alienated progressive voters. By the end I was legitimately worried she might actually end up being to the right of Biden economically.

Do I forgive lefties for sitting this one out? No. That doesn't mean they won't do it again and that, for the first time in what feels like decades, the Democrats need to actually learn the right lesson from losing an election.

Lol, like what? Does liking a sport and hating and exposing the corruption of it's organizers equate to supporting it's organizers? https://youtu.be/DlJEt2KU33I?si=WJAc7yVePsn0GwaA

...and apparently understanding the frustration with the EU but calling leaving it insane and urging people to vote against brexit is "supporting" it? https://youtu.be/iAgKHSNqxa8?si=JsEMq6gV7-tp5y7k

Like are you even trying? Nobody is perfect, John Oliver included, and I'm sure there are reasons to dislike him but could you at least chose topics he hasn't released multiple YouTube full clips of episodes of his show where he literally contradicts your point?