Did you read the sign?
I don’t think you are faulting the correct party.
If you’re going to invoke basic economics, you need to take into account the basic economic principle of diminishing marginal utility. Namely, the “happiness value” of having more money does not increase linearly with the amount of money.
For instance, a person with fifty million dollars may well be happier than somebody with a hundred thousand dollars, but not five hundred times happier. A multimillionaire is not literally experiencing several hundred times more positive emotions than a modestly wealthy person just because they have several hundred times more dollars.
So it’s still pretty naive to assume that celebrities’ wealth and fame must automatically make their lives so much happier than those of ordinary people that it’s ridiculous for them to complain about any downsides.
Thing is, they don’t need to be hundreds of times happier for me not to feel sorry for them. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who is twice as happy as I am.
It’s not even like the thing they are unhappy about is usually that big a deal, especially if they use their money to take methods to prevent it. The fact that I have to constantly worry that I may get sick and lose my house, assuming I don’t die from bad care, is a little more pressing than worrying about some asshole taking a picture of me in a position I don’t like.
If they have freaking depression and think they are worthless, that’s a little easier for me to care about. Depression is an actual big deal. And even then, I feel more sorry for people without money who can’t afford the best doctors and medicines and who just have fewer accomplishments in their life to be able to use to make themselves feel better.
The whole concept of feeling sorry for someone is that you feel that, in some way, they are worse off than you are. You just can’t feel sorry for someone who is better off than you.
And that’s before getting into the real message of the diminishing monetary utility: it would thus get more for your money if you gave it out to people who needed it rather than hoarding it for yourself. When you choose to hang on to the very money that’s making you less happy, it’s even harder to feel sorry for you.
No, they do, if the celeb really cared about them and would continue paying them. That’s part of the reason it’s so hard to feel sorry for a celebrity. They pull down more money than 100s of people combined with much less effort.
I don’t hate celebs. I hate people who whine about how hard their life is when it isn’t. The things that are supposedly so bad are things real people have to deal with all the time. We don’t get to have someone produce a documentary to make people like you feel sorry for them.
Even these other people who work for them are hard to feel sorry for, as they are still way better off than most of America. Oh noes, you have to go work for another star or a salon or whatever. This isn’t the unskilled worker who won’t find a new job, and it’s not someone who couldn’t have saved up enough money to deal with the temporary unemployment. And, like I said, if their happiness is so important to the celeb, they can even keep on paying them until they get a new job.
Real people have to leave their friends all the time. Real bosses have to fire people even if they feel sorry for them. A documentary designed to manipulate me into feeling bad for people who are much better off than I am is not going to somehow change the fact that their lives are objectively better than 99% of the country.
The emotions that I maintain are based on fact. I only have so much caring to give, and there are many, many more deserving people who actually have a hard life. Not these celebs who are so bad off that they need at best a law that doesn’t do anything but create publicity and at worst a law that tries to sneak in protections that none of the rest of us get.
Just because you might have to fire your friends doesn’t make me feel sorry that complete assholes take pictures of you that find you in compromising positions. The ones that are not breaking the law are at worst annoying.
Probably not patentable: prior art.
“Garment to wear among strangers”, Larry Niven, circa 1970’s.
Are you a potential serial killer, big t?
It amazes me to think that people are so naive as to think that more money automatically brings more happiness. Sure, give me a chance, but the fact is, you bring happiness with you.
With unlimited money you can buy unlimited puppies, silly.
Now you know why I’m doing business as Fred. If the paparazzi knew I wasn’t Fred … oops, I let the cat out of the bag, didn’t I? :smack:
so i was surfing Youtube and i came across this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty7EkOv5rjU. what a zoo! how can anyone not go blind being assaulted like that? can’t even imagine what it’s like with paparazzi.
Its only a shame that RICO laws can’t be applied to the people who pay Papazazzi to [del] regularly & ruthlessly break the law [/del] just do their jobs.
It looks like saner heads in the House are going to prevail, mostly by doing nothing.
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And why isn’t anyone interested in this bill? Because the rich and famous people who are pushing for this bill don’t deserve or need special laws passed just for them:
Meh, those quotes sound petty.