I don’t care how the CEO of Marvel Comics spends his money

spider-man-money

It’s his money. When I order pizza, I don’t ask how the pizza delivery person plans to spend the tip. Why should I feel differently about comics?

Whether or not we buy products from people shouldn’t be a referendum on what those people do with their own money in their off-hours.

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35 Responses to I don’t care how the CEO of Marvel Comics spends his money

  1. pillsy says:

    The pizza guy isn’t going to spend more money than most people see in a lifetime in order to advance causes that are hateful to you through soft corruption. Hell, the pizza guy doesn’t have enough money to spend millions on political donations due to the bizarre way executives are compensated.

    If we’re going to equate money with political speech the way Citizens United says we must, then I’m not sure it’s so easy to separate what we buy from a political referendum. If the CEO of Marvel Comics wants to buy political influence with his money, why is it wrong for everyone else to do the same?

  2. Jake Squid says:

    The pizza guy isn’t going to spend more money than most people see in a lifetime in order to advance causes that are hateful to you through soft corruption. Hell, the pizza guy doesn’t have enough money to spend millions on political donations due to the bizarre way executives are compensated.

    I was going to try to say this, but pillsy got there first and better.

  3. Susan says:

    The task of following through the political behavior of every CEO of every business I buy stuff from is too much for me. How much money does it have to be for me to worry about? The pizza guy doesn’t have enough, this character does? Trump is over the line, Clinton isn’t? Bewilderingly complex.

  4. LTL FTC says:

    I go to a hardware store in my neighborhood where Rush Limbaugh is always on the radio. I go during different times of day, and it’s always Rush, Rush, Rush. Either he’s got it on repeat or that show is on for 10 hours a day.

    In any case, I’m always going back and forth on whether to go five blocks out of my way to another store as a way of putting my money where my mouth is politically. It gets me a little riled up listening to Rush for the minute it takes out to pay, but his prices are fair and the store is conveniently located. This is what it comes down to for me:

    1. I don’t know if the other store owner’s views are any more in line with my own, only that he doesn’t make his obvious.

    2. Boycotting him won’t turn him into a liberal.

    3. The right has enough of a persecution complex, so why play into their narrative?

    4. I would only hope that people wouldn’t boycott me if I opened up a store in deep red country and let my views be known.

    5. My work puts me in contact with people in other parts of the country. Some of them are even Trump supporters! They know I’m a liberal and we can still manage to work together. All things being equal, I’d prefer that nobody supported Trump. But given that people do, the fact that we can work together of issues of mutual interest and benefit is at least a little bit heartening.

    If there’s a line where a person is too rich for their personal political actions to not go unpunished, I don’t know where it lies and I’m not sure a principled line can be drawn.

  5. pillsy says:

    @LTL FTC:

    [re: a dittohead hardware store owner]

    Boycotting him won’t turn him into a liberal.

    The desire here isn’t to turn Ike Perlmutter into a liberal, it’s to make him, and other zillionaires, stop spending millions of dollars to purchase the services of politicians. Boycotting that hardware store owner is much less likely to address a problem you actually have beyond occasionally hearing Limbaugh on the radio.

  6. pillsy says:

    @Susan:

    The task of following through the political behavior of every CEO of every business I buy stuff from is too much for me.

    Then don’t. There’s nothing wrong with singling out egregious, high profile targets with one’s activism; it’s not like you’re the government enforcing a law.

  7. LTL FTC says:

    Pillsy:

    The desire here isn’t to turn Ike Perlmutter into a liberal, it’s to make him, and other zillionaires, stop spending millions of dollars to purchase the services of politicians.

    Do you really think you can scare someone away from participating in the political process, or are you just going to drive the money through other, more anonymous, channels? What makes you think he won’t double down? In fact, if that’s the face of the enemy, I’d do anything I could to keep bullying opponents out of power.

    Also, how would you feel if that happened to a businessman making donations you agree with?

  8. Ben Lehman says:

    Wait, are we concerned about the Trump donation because it’s Trump, or because it’s “spending money to buy politicians?”

    Because those are very different arguments.

    If he’d donated a million dollars to a Sanders-supporting SuperPAC, would that be okay? Because that’s definitely still “buying a politician.” OTOH it’s not exactly like our society faces a problem from politicians being the pocket of Big Comics.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  9. pillsy says:

    @LTL FTC:

    Do you really think you can scare someone away from participating in the political process, or are you just going to drive the money through other, more anonymous, channels?

    I don’t know, and for the purposes of this conversation, I don’t really care, because I find the principles that people are rooting their objections in to be so profoundly wrongheaded. They seem to boil down to saying that it’s perfectly OK for the likes of Ike Perlmutter to buy all the influence their considerable fortunes let them afford, but the rest of us shouldn’t use our far more modest resources in a similar way.

    That’s a vision of free speech and political participation that’s ideally suited to comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.

    Also, how would you feel if that happened to a businessman making donations you agree with?

    Pretty good, really.

  10. pillsy says:

    @Ben Lehman:

    Wait, are we concerned about the Trump donation because it’s Trump, or because it’s “spending money to buy politicians?”

    Because those are very different arguments.

    I’m much more concerned about the latter than the former[1], but I’m certainly not going to object to people engaging in potentially beneficial activism just because they’re doing so for narrowly partisan reasons.

    If he’d donated a million dollars to a Sanders-supporting SuperPAC, would that be okay?

    Nope. IMO, the problem with SuperPACs is the outsized influence for the very wealthy that comes with them, not the specific partisan interests they advance.

    OTOH it’s not exactly like our society faces a problem from politicians being the pocket of Big Comics.

    Marvel is a subsidiary of Disney, and Disney in particular has had a pretty negative impact on how copyright is handled (and endlessly extended) in this country. In a world with the likes BP and Blackwater/XI/whatever-they-call-it-now, the entertainment industry is definitely the Diet Coke of evil, but that doesn’t mean that the influence of the *AAs has been either small or beneficial.

    [1] To be fair, I’m more concerned the two million dollars that Perlmutter threw at Rubio than I am about his Trump-adjacent charitable donation.

    EDITed to improve formatting and restore some context.

  11. LTL FTC says:

    Pillsy:

    I don’t know, and for the purposes of this conversation, I don’t really care, because I find the principles that people are rooting their objections in to be so profoundly wrongheaded. They seem to boil down to saying that it’s perfectly OK for the likes of Ike Perlmutter to buy all the influence their considerable fortunes let them afford, but the rest of us shouldn’t use our far more modest resources in a similar way.

    It’s not “us[ing] our far more modest resources in a similar way,” since nobody here is arguing that only Perlmutter should use his money to support political candidates.

    It’s about not wanting to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.

  12. Jake Squid says:

    LTL FTC:

    It’s about not wanting to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.

    But this isn’t an example of using all tools at our disposal to etc. Perlmutter (or Soros or Gates or whoever) uses their money to influence policy in a direction we don’t agree with. So we don’t use our money to buy influence through the filter of Perlmutter (or Soros or Gates or whoever). We’ll be much less effective than Perlmutter (or Soros or Gates or whoever), but it’s the same tool. Money.

    What we’re not doing is finding out Perlmutter, et al’s schedules and private phone numbers and harassing them or anything else. We are using our money the same way Perlmutter is. By not giving it to people who give it to people we oppose.

    I think that this is clearly a different thing than boycotting business X because the owners of business X have made offensive statements.

  13. Susan says:

    It’s about not wanting to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.

    Thank you, LTL FTC. One of the major problems with political discourse at this time in this place is the tendency for people to shout at one another rather than have discussions. And the tendency to demonize your opponent. This is a flaw of both the right and the left, and it’s gotten to the point that the machinery of government, which requires compromise and reasoned argument, has all but frozen solid.

    As for “buying” politicians, I would personally prefer focusing on the takers of bribes. This is the major reason I cannot support Clinton: I believe that she is bought and paid for, and that she will make paying her supporters back the major focus of her tenure in office. That might conceivably be OK if her supporters wanted something other than tax cuts for billionaires and the destruction of the economy. Oh, and yet another stupid war, which will again fill the pockets of the Usual Suspects.

  14. Sebastian H says:

    “It’s about not wanting to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.”

    Yes a thousand times yes. This topic has come up at least 3 or 4 times in the last year on this blog and this is the best description of what bothers me.

  15. John says:

    It’s about not wanting to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.

    It’s not “all aspects of their lives.”

    It’s only the aspects where they use our money to support causes we wouldn’t if we used our money in the same way, thus not giving them any of our money and using it instead to support those who support our causes and concerns.

  16. pillsy says:

    We’ve now gotten to the point where spending three million dollars to curry favor with presidential candidates is “hav[ing] a discussion”, but saying that you shouldn’t give money to someone who spends millions of dollars to curry favor with presidential candidates is “using all tools at [one’s] disposal to damage them”.

  17. Copyleft says:

    “It’s about not wanting to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.”

    LTL has nailed it perfectly, and this point needs to be acknowledged more broadly. “That person disagrees with me” is not a license to attack, and it would be shameful for any self-proclaimed liberal to adopt such an attitude… which, sadly, many seem to do.

  18. pillsy says:

    @Copyleft:

    “That person disagrees with me” is not a license to attack, and it would be shameful for any self-proclaimed liberal to adopt such an attitude… which, sadly, many seem to do.

    The problem isn’t Perlmutter’s beliefs and interests, it’s the means that he is using to advance his beliefs and interests.

  19. LTL FTC says:

    The problem isn’t Perlmutter’s beliefs and interests, it’s the means that he is using to advance his beliefs and interests.

    So if some other rich guy donated $3 million to your favorite candidate, you’d boycott him too?

  20. pillsy says:

    So if some other rich guy donated $3 million to your favorite candidate, you’d boycott him too?

    Maybe not, but I’d actually be pretty happy to see partisans opposed to my favorite candidate boycott the rich guy who’s pissing them off. Hence my interest in establishing a norm that rich guys shouldn’t spend millions on candidates, and defending the practice of bringing economic pressure and public disapproval down on them if they violate that norm.

  21. LTL FTC says:

    And what, exactly, is the dollar amount that you decree to be unacceptable? And how did you reach that amount?

  22. pillsy says:

    And what, exactly, is the dollar amount that you decree to be unacceptable?

    Why would there be an exact dollar amount?

  23. Lirael says:

    Note: In this comment I’m talking about boycotts because a lot of other people in this thread are talking about boycotts. I don’t know if there’s any organized attempt to boycott Marvel over this, and it’s unclear that the OP was talking about organized boycotts as opposed to individual consumption choices.

    Like pillsy, I also don’t understand how not giving someone money because they’ll use that money to advance policy* in a way that you don’t agree with, is in any possible way using “all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives” because they disagree with you. And apparently unlike Susan, I don’t understand what this has to do with people shouting at each other. “Not buying products” and “shouting” are very different things. Disproportionate response is a very real thing, and this blog has covered it recently, but so is proportionate response, and this seems within proportionate response to me.

    In this case I wasn’t planning to boycott Marvel, and obviously (given that I don’t plan to do it) I don’t think there’s some kind of moral obligation to boycott (I generally don’t). I also think there’s interesting discussion to be had about when boycotts are and aren’t ethical, because boycotts (including those widely embraced, including by me, in the US of 2016, like the Montgomery bus boycott) can do a lot of damage, including to people who aren’t the target. And I think that North Americans get overly enamored sometimes with individual consumption habits as a political tactic (there’s an interesting Naomi Klein quote somewhere about this, about the differences between activism in Canada and in a developing world country, I forget which, that she had visited).

    There’s also pretty reasonable questions one could ask like “Does most of Perlmutter’s money actually come from his job or does it come from investments?” (I have no idea) and “In what proportion would a boycott of Marvel affect Perlmutter vs affecting a gazillion other people?” and “What is the goal of this boycott, through what mechanism, and is this feasible?”

    But the discussion here is conflating a lot of things. This situation is very different even from boycotting someone for saying offensive things, or doing non-monetary bad things. It’s taking the position that you aren’t going to give someone your money in a voluntary commercial transaction to be redirected into causes that you abhor. I mean, once I give Perlmutter my money, it’s his money, but until then it’s my money, and if his spending money on Trump’s and Rubio’s campaigns is a form of political argument (which I only agree with if you add some qualifications, but it seems like there are others who do), then where I spend my money is also a form of political argument. I agree that it would be impractical and silly to do that with the pizza delivery person – a well-designed boycott on the grounds that you don’t want your money redirected into causes you abhor, picks a target who gets enough money from their commercial transactions to wield nontrivial power. If you think that is over the line, is there any form or target of boycott that you consider acceptable?

    *Whether that policy is “Rich people get outsized influence in politics” or “[Trump’s/Rubio’s] platform” or both

  24. notwithstanding says:

    “LTL FTC”:

    And what, exactly, is the dollar amount that you decree to be unacceptable? And how did you reach that amount?

    I don’t think there’s a precise amount. For one thing it will depend on what the issue is, how important it is, and how many people it affects. But I do have a way to answer the second question:

    Do you disagree with me? Do you still disagree if pay you $10? How about $10,000? How about $2,000,000? When you reach a number you find would convince you, you have hit on a reasonable line for that amount. Because at that point you clearly are not being convinced by the strength of the argument or the evidence, only the money.

  25. La Lubu says:

    You know what’s missing here? A sense of perspective. Some people purchase Marvel comics or tickets to see a Marvel movie. Perlmutter is purchasing politicians.

    Three million dollars is enough to subvert the democratic process. Full stop. And folks who decide “I’ll be damned if I pay you to effectively buy politicians that institute public policy that directly destroys my ability to pay my bills, let alone buy comic books” are supposed to be the bad guy here?! GTFO.

  26. La Lubu says:

    Criminey. I meant to say “sense of proportion”. (Not enough coffee this morning combined with unusual job start time, overtime hours, and long-ass commute in the dark).

    Two words: weaponized money. Why blame the folks receiving the brunt of impact from rich people weaponizing their money?

  27. Lee1 says:

    Count me on the side of Jake Squid, pillsy, John, et al. that I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. No one is “damaging them in all aspects of their lives” by choosing to not buy a comic book. And

    “That person disagrees with me” is not a license to attack

    Jesus, not buying someone’s product is not an attack! It’s choosing to exercise your right to spend your money as you see fit, just as Perlmutter is doing. Your decision will have far less impact than his, (realistically, probably essentially no impact), but if it fits in with your own moral compass to not contribute to the profits of someone whose views you disagree with, I don’t see the problem. I don’t buy Domino’s Pizza because the owner contributes a lot to anti-choice groups (plus it kind of sucks, so I’m not exactly making a big sacrifice…). He’ll never feel any impact because I’m middle-class and he’s a multi-millionaire; but I don’t want any of my money to go to support those groups, even if it’s just a few cents in the end. I haven’t attacked anyone or damaged all aspects of anyone’s life by making that decision.

    It gets slightly more complicated for me when it comes to very large-scale organized boycotts, but maybe that’s me trying to find some mealy-mouthed middle ground; I’m not sure why and I haven’t really thought it through enough to justify it. On the surface the distinction doesn’t really make sense, but it still feels different to me. Maybe it’s the fact that the balance of power is potentially much more equal, or even in favor of the boycotters; but that doesn’t really make sense either – I don’t know.

    @ Susan 13

    This is the major reason I cannot support Clinton: I believe that she is bought and paid for….

    I’m curious to know, are there any serious candidates for president (at this point I would say there are five – Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Cruz, Rubio) you think are not “bought and paid for”? And if so, which ones and how do you think they would perform as president compared to Clinton?

  28. Lee1 says:

    A funny analogy just occurred to me based on my poorly developed thoughts in the last post – the Supreme Court basically said “Under God” or “In God We Trust” was OK, because yeah it’s religious, but no one really takes it seriously. That kind of sounds like the argument I was making – boycotts are OK if they have little-to-no impact (beyond for the individual doing the boycotting). That makes no sense. I clearly need to think about this more, but I’ll sure as hell continue to personally boycott companies where I think my money is going to support shitty causes.

  29. Sebastian H says:

    “Three million dollars is enough to subvert the democratic process. Full stop. And folks who decide “I’ll be damned if I pay you to effectively buy politicians that institute public policy that directly destroys my ability to pay my bills, let alone buy comic books” are supposed to be the bad guy here?! GTFO.”

    Is the same true of the millions to Clinton from Goldman Sachs, or does it only count for politicians we don’t like? that’s all to one politician. At least the Marvel CEO spread it around a bit.

  30. Phil says:

    This discussion has been really interesting for me to read, because while I don’t like the idea of contributing money to someone who might use that money to advance a policy that I disagree with (and/or a policy that might one day hurt me), I also don’t want

    to live in a country where the first reaction to people who disagree with us is to use all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives.

    I think that’s a well-put phrase, and I think it’s worth pointing out that, in this line of thinking, the sense of proportion is actually not relevant. That is, if I choose to personally boycott Marvel products because I don’t like what its CEO is doing with his money, the fact that I might not have much of an impact on him is not what matters. Whether the tools at my disposal are effective or significant isn’t the issue; the issue is whether I am using the tools that happen to be at my disposal.

    I provide some financial support to my mother, as do my siblings. I know that she donates a small amount of money to the collection plate at her Catholic church every week, and–because money is fungible–I know that, on some level, the money I send her is also allowing her to donate to a church that I disagree with.

    It occurred to me that I could tell her I didn’t want any of *my* money going to the church, or even that I could tell her I would discontinue supporting her if she continued to donate to the church whose teachings (in some areas, at least) I strongly disagree with.

    I didn’t do either of those things, though, because it just seems so fucking gross and icky to do that.

    I realize that the CEO of Marvel comics is not my mother, and that Donald Trump is terrible for many reasons. But I feel like I share Amp’s reluctance to use my personal purchasing decisions as a way to punish someone’s political activities. I can understand why others arrive at different conclusions.

  31. La Lubu says:

    Is the same true of the millions to Clinton from Goldman Sachs, or does it only count for politicians we don’t like?

    Of course. (and what’s with the “we”? I’m not a Clinton supporter.)

    Don’t get me wrong—there’s no such thing as an “individual boycott” that is effective. Only targeted, organized boycotts can be effective, and it’s hard to sustain one over time. I’m just saying that in the absence of a productive political and social movement to channel the anger and frustration of people who are de-facto disenfranchised by Big Money (whether at the polls, on the job, or anywhere else), it’s an understandable reaction when they use one of the only tools at their disposal (ineffective though it may be) to register their complaint. That’s the real issue—there are no effective tools for individuals to fight against this type of power being used against them.

    And it is being used against us. “Us”, meaning “working class people”. How is “the pizza guy” going to use your tip to whittle away your working conditions? Living conditions? Educational system? The pizza guy can’t. My governor can. Concentrated wealth is a weapon. That’s easier to see if it’s being used against you, and it’s especially easy to see if it is already having a serious impact.

    tl;dr “size matters”.

  32. La Lubu says:

    Look, this is not a matter of mere “disagreement” with someone’s (or some organization’s) political opinions or preferred political policy, be they Perlmutter’s or Goldman Sachs. It’s about power, and how one person (or a numerically small group) can readily impose their power over the rest of the citizenry via their political contributions/bought politicians. In this manner, one person’s political “voice” erases the voices of an entire city full of people.

    If political contributions were legally capped to a reasonable amount, such that rich people and poor people were at the same “weight class” politically speaking, this wouldn’t even be a question, and there would be no need for ridiculous hyperbole like “all tools at our disposal to damage them in all aspects of their lives”. (and that’s setting aside the fact that wealthy folks are using the very effective tool of concentrated money to damage working class people in literally all aspects of our lives—our workplaces, our cities, our school systems, the air we breathe and the water we drink)

  33. pillsy says:

    @Sebastian H.:

    Is the same true of the millions to Clinton from Goldman Sachs, or does it only count for politicians we don’t like?

    Yes. Why wouldn’t it be? In some ways, it’s worse when that kind of money goes to a politician I like, because it raises painful doubts about whether said politician will really be serving my interests, as opposed to those of major donors.

  34. Ampersand says:

    I’ve been meaning to get back to this thread, to say: The comments that set me off, and inspired this post, did not seem to me to be part of an argument for campaign finance reform or for getting the money out of politics.

    If that is the argument, then I think that’s a much better argument, and one that doesn’t trouble me nearly as much. (Putting aside the question of whether or not a personal boycott of Marvel comics (or even an organized boycott) is an effective way of bringing about campaign finance reform.)

    But the impression I have – and this was just from reading various comments on twitter and tumblr, so I’m afraid i can’t find them to reread them – it seemed to be more about “the politics of personal purity,” and not about campaign finance reform.

    Of course, it’s totally possible I misunderstood what I read.

  35. Ms. Sunlight says:

    What I’m not clear on is, why is this any different from people who didn’t want to go see the Enders Game movie because they didn’t want to put more money in Orson Scott Card’s pockets that he might chuck at homophobic groups. After all, a ton of other people were getting money from that movie, not all of them hateful individuals. Do I think this kind of boycott is useful in terms of effecting change? No, I do not. I do, however, like to have the choice not to give cash to arseholes.

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