It is that time of year in Finland...
Tax records time
In Finland, they release the tax information for the top earners (everyone over 100K earned, though I think more are released in some regions) and publish them in the newspapers, so we can all be jealous of those who earn more than us. Often, it is tech people, or old money family businesses that make up the majority of the list, and each year people complain about there not being enough female representation, or the surprise low-level in comparison to others in the same role, like this year, a football coach.
My complaint is a bit different.
The highest earning individual was the founder of the Wolt delivery service, with €79M ($84M) earned in 2022. That is a pretty decent amount. But, my complaint is that this business model relies on access to cheap labor in order to operate. What this means in Finland, is foreign workers who don't have much opportunity to do anything else, so they are desperate and will do anything, working very long hours, often on "operating licenses" of another person, paying half their income to the license holder.
There was no mention of this in any of the articles I read.
And I am guessing this business model is the same all over the world where it is used, where people are not actually employed by the company, but are essentially freelancers. According to what I could find, the hourly rate is about the same as the lowest paid McDonald's workers. The difference is, McDonald's doesn't hire these kinds of people either, so, they are essentially forced to work and the work has almost no benefits other than "flexibility" of how much you work. Which I hear is something like 12 hours a day, in order to make enough money. And, it also means that they have to cover all of their own insurances and expenses. At least they can call themselves entrepreneurs.
Where is the line before this becomes a clear form of exploitation?
Sure, it is "opt-in" but what option do they really have, if the system is set up that they can't get a job elsewhere, other than the jobs that no one "local" wants to do? Perhaps this is some kind of right of passage to be included as part of society, but the government is also looking at ways to exclude people further, raising the bars to say, lowering the bar to kick people out if they don't meet expectations. I am pretty sure, that if this was an industry of Finnish workers, these kinds of conditions would be seen as unacceptable, yet the general view is that the people doing this now should consider themselves lucky to be able to earn anything at all.
In a country where they want people to integrate into the culture, what lesson are they learning?
However, what I think this highlights is how incentives operate and how people can be manipulated into acting a certain way. There is obvious incentive for businesses to maximize their profits, and what they are doing in this case is preying on people who don't have other options to meet their needs. So the workers are incentivized to do whatever it takes, regardless of whether it is appropriate or not.
Imagine if 20 years ago, a man said to a woman, what I want you to do is make sexual videos of yourself and I will sell them to people all over the world for a few dollars and give you 80% - is that female empowerment?
It used to be called pimping.
Yet now, it is a normalized activity and encouraged, because the incentive to make money is high enough that enough women from all over the world, including celebrities, are willing to go into sex work. There are multiple platforms filled with them - whole industries created to support - plenty of money going around, so that predominantly women can be objectified, but because they are "opting-in" it is okay, and they do so because they are incentivized enough to forget about all of the complaints they had about this kind of behavior, or how they judged women who did this earlier - because they want some too.
OnlyFans revenue in 2022 was $932 million, up 160% from the previous year. OnlyFans creators earned $3.9 billion, an increase of 115% from the previous year. The company's profits were $433 million, up from $61 million in 2020. OnlyFans has paid out $10 billion to creators since its founding in 2016, and the platform has over 2 million creators. Creators can earn money through subscriptions, where users pay a monthly or annual fee, and the creator keeps 80% of subscription revenue, while 20% goes to OnlyFans.
For those doing the math, while the company only takes 20%, the revenue for the company increased 160%, but only 115% for creators. This means that they are earing in other ways - probably advertising. But me than this, while they have given out an impressive 10B over the last 7 years, with 2M creators, that means there is an average of just $5000 each.
Lucrative.
But, this is the way things are going. Because the gig economy is required for normal people to make ends meet. People have to do what they can as living costs spiral, even whilst the investors and owners are making record profits. People used to complain about wage slavery, which is still a thing, but 40 hours a week isn't going to cut it, so people have to sell themselves as slaves in other ways too - from the safety of their own home, in a work from anywhere environment.
It would be interesting to what percentage of the creators do the majority of the income go and, cross reference that with where the creators are from. Are there work opportunities for them in other domains, would they be paid elsewhere similarly? It might not be the case for the top earners, but if the average earning is $5000, there are people earning much less than that.
Blac Chyna, also known as Angelina Renee White, is currently the highest-paid creator on OnlyFans, earning around $20 million per month from her 16.2 million subscribers who pay a $19.99 monthly subscription fee.
The math doesn't work on that - I don't know how it works, but if all those subscribers are paying $20, she should be getting 320M a month, minus the 20% the platform takes. But that aside, every year, she earns 48,000 times the total average.
We are shifting into an interesting world, with AI taking jobs, social unrest, rising prices and more and more people struggling to make ends meet. Actors are being replaced by animations, workers by robots and systems and we are being compartmentalized and diminished to a survival lifestyle. It is starting to look a bit like the world of Bladerunner.
Is this world we are creating empowering, or taking even more advantage of us?
We are driven by incentives and the most basic form is the desire to survive. With the right conditions, we will do just about anything and have done in the past. Those in control, create the conditions according to their incentive - to maximize their wealth. And with wealth, comes the power to make conditions even more favorable.
Including minimizing taxes.
There is a big difference in tax percentage between what the workers and creators pay, and the percentage the companies they work for pay. The gap keeps widening.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
I wonder how all these sex content platforms will evolve as AI allows users to create fake content instead of real on. Initially probably some users will be able to profit from it without exposing themselves but soon, the platoforms will realize they will not need real people and will create the content themselves.
Oh there's already plenty that do it. There are fake Instagram profiles of pictures of people that don't even exist and then have OF accounts it's wild and I bet they are making a decent buck lol
Yeah, but those are static photos. What I meant was AI interactive sex characters.
I remember a couple years ago there was mention of an AI called Project Melody, which was making money being an animated AI character stripping.
I think this is what is going to happen with actors too. "Name, image and likeness" becomes meaningless, when all three are AI-generated.
It will be interesting to see. Actually, isn't it in Japan where men already marry this holographic ladies?
Perhaps in another decade Hive will go to moon and you will be on top of that list as well. Such success story would surely attract more people to hive. And that could increase Hive price even more...
I would never want to be on one of these lists... fly under the radar.
It seems brothel and prostitution to have also advanced by the technology. No difference between selling your body or selling your sex/nude contents in return of money, imo.
It is interesting to think how quickly people have jumped aboard and said "this is fine".
It is sad that those who are at the labor level are paid very little while the owners of their companies are among the best tax payers. As we see in the case of freelancing who basically do the work for different companies the pay is basically low.
I read the company's FAQ where they talked about why they don't hire the people. Many things made me laugh - one was the flexibility of there being "no minimum/maximum work time". the only way to survive doing it, is working more hours than legally acceptable if an employee.
We have a lot of people that are not content with what they have and because they are “jealous” of many things like tax reports of many others, that can do anything to rub shoulders with people they are jealous of.
Everyone loves money. Even if they hate the people who have it.
I do believe those with extreme wealth are screwing the 'have not's' harder than ever before, many will take any easy way out of the doldrums which is not a good answer to the problem either.
Taxation has always been a way of taking money while affording special tax rebates to rich on pretext they supply work, well when the robots/AI arrive in factories what then?
This has been my argument for years! If they aren't supplying jobs, they have to pay the tax - including an "inheritance tax", as legal entities, they should have to live as long or as short as humans. Every 50 years, taxed... :D
Man on the street never wins, rich will invest into machinery replacing humans on the floor and get special tax rebates or concessions for new assets acquired. People need to move toward community self sustenance one being a baker another a wood maker or the rich will eat us alive....
I have little respect for taxes. In the USA they started voluntarily and still should be but government has become a monster and the people are too afraid to do anything. Yes we have taxation but where is the representation?
Taxes aren't the question here. There is no representation and any feeling there is, is misguided. Being able to vote is meaningless. The only vote that matters, is what we spend our money on - including changing the process of money itself.
I just feel bad. It is so unfair that the ones who do the real job or sacrifice so much to achieve the aims and objectives of the company are not being paid a reasonable amount of money
It hurts so bad
I hope that stops but I don't think it can stop anytime soon...
I'm not being pessimistic though
I am pessimistic. No one actually cares, as long as they are not the ones suffering right now.
I hope it get easy tax
Wow, that is crazy. So they just release everyone's info to the public like that? I mean, I'm used to it over here because I work for the public school system. Our salaries are all public info, there is an online database you could look me up if you knew my real name. Outside of that it feels like some kind of invasion or privacy. Maybe people just don't care as much as we do over here.
If in my country such release would have attracted the boys, and those on the list would have been kidnapped.
One day, Hive earners will make the list because something big is happening here underground.
!DHEDGE
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The gap keeps widening and I think it's sad to see that there is so much exploitation out there. However, I can't really blame them because they are pursuing profits. It makes me wonder where things will go as technology evolves even further they will start requiring less people due to machines.
It is sad to see that exploitation is happening everywhere. In the Philippines, contractualization is something similar. Big companies hire people for work, like sales ladies, supermarket baggers/helpers/cashiers, etc. After working for 6 months in a company, they should be regularized employees. But the companies 'fire' and reassign them to different branches before the 6th month. So they are never regularized. The company doesn't need to pay for their benefits like insurance or vacation leaves.
Companies are making record breaking income, and yet regular people suffer, and making ends meet become harder and harder. The world just isn't fair.
By the way, Singapore has gone the digital monitoring of the transactions and we have soon the specific threshold where there will be changing the taxes on the type of investment happened, which includes crypto. Does finland has any such provision or direction they are taking on taxation?