Thursday, February 10, 2011

Arianna Huffington and Slave-Era Economics

What else would you call someone who earns tens of millions of dollars off of unpaid labor? The Huffington Post was built on the back of earnest (liberal) bloggers, who apparently have seen nary a dime since day one:

To the extent that some of the backroom folks still aren’t getting paid (according to Wikipedia, the operation has about 60 employees), they have lots of company. Since start-up, HuffPo hasn’t paid its bloggers either, despite getting $1 million, $5 million, $5 million, and $25 million, respectively, in angel, first-stage, second-stage, and third-stage funding, and achieving revenues of about $30 million...

And apparently AOL paid Arianna and her partner $315 million (the
exact amount of which AOL stock dropped by over the five days following the sale) on the basis of the continuation of this exploitative business model. R.S. McCain casts some doubt, however, that this can continue, now that our liberal whoress has been exposed as a plantation-era slave master:

If you are relying on unpaid contributors for a significant amount of content at a site where the proprietors are earning enough revenue to pay full-time salaries to some people, how do you justify paying nothing to most of your contributors?


"Come on, baby -don't you want to be my blog-slave?"

Better yet, how do you justify your liberalism? While hosting a blog pushing progressive values - equality of pay, equality of labor, spreading the wealth, and the tar-and-feathering of CEO's who earn outsized bonus - it seems as if Arianna was instead getting rich(er) off the hard work of people she refused to pay(talk about inequality!), while eventually earning an outsized bonus.

At least Wall Street CEO's and bankers help create jobs by generating and lending wealth. Arianna got $18 million plus a $4M/year job at AOL when she transferred ownership of the HuffPost to AOL, and she still shows no intention of "spreading" a dime of it.

Arianna is no liberal. She's no capitalist either. She's a slave owner, albeit with useful idiots willing to trade their labor for zero return while their boss gets rich.

Al least the old plantation owners used to give slaves
Christmas bonuses. Arianna keeps it all, and will now be forced to push her unpaid minions even more, all under the guise of helping the progressive cause.

"Get back to your keyboard and stop complaining about your medical bills! Do I need to get out the bullwhip?"

Funny how liberalism works in practice. From Stalin to Castro to Arianna Huffington, the masses are starved - for their own good.

There's a lesson in here somewhere...

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