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The Curious Case of Taylor Swift

What’s going on underneath the hype?

Douglas Giles, PhD
6 min readDec 11, 2023

Back in November 2020, I wrote approvingly of Taylor Swift (perhaps you’ve heard of her). I was defending her in her battle against the record corporations who, through a legal fiction they invented, claimed that they, not Swift, owned the records of her songs. The Question Behind Taylor Swift’s Battle.

In that article, I stated that “I don’t share Swift’s taste in music, but I admire her for her courage to stand up to the music labels.”

Three years later, Swift has more or less won her battle in re-recording her songs. That’s the only way of defeating the absurd legal fiction imposed by the record corporations.

Somehow, Swift has parlayed all of this into becoming, according to some media outlets, the first artist to become a billionaire.

$$$

Okay, Swift, you stuck it to the Man. I appreciate that. But there’s something I truly don’t understand. Why are you so rich and for what?

A baseball player named Shohei Ohtani recently signed a contract worth $700 million. As much as I love baseball, I can’t agree that any player should be making that amount of money.

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Douglas Giles, PhD
Douglas Giles, PhD

Written by Douglas Giles, PhD

Philosopher by trade & temperament, professor for 21 years, bringing philosophy out of its ivory tower and into everyday life. https://dgilesauthor.com/

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