Money for Nothing: The Lucrative World of Club Appearances

(which is admittedly hand wavy and ill informed, but there must be some limit to how efficiently a given economy can put capital to use, faced with abundance, that lack of efficiency might show up as outlier valuations of particular experiences. At least the recipients on the club side are likely to put the money to more comfortable purposes.)

Yes. There are tens of thousands of people (and most importantly, their children) for whom multi-million dollar annual expenses are fairly inconsequential.

There are also plenty of people who cannot afford such expenses, but who will nonetheless make them -- a fool and his money are easily parted.

And clubbing with celebrities -- especially for young people -- is among the best status symbols that money can buy. Not to mention that it can be fun, too. (The Lil Jon example in the article is good -- some celebrities are known for throwing really great parties. As with most goods, the really great is much more expensive than the normal stuff.) In a society that is greatly concerned with status and appearances, it is no surprise that this market exists.

I'm not sure that's exactly right

I'm not exactly a regular club goer, but every once in a while I hear my co-workers talk about various places that members of the local NFL team were at the night before

it occurs to me that this makes for relatively effective branding for those places

if its a fun enough place for professional football players to party, it must be a fun enough place for regular people to party, etc etc

suddenly that place is a hot spot

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I suspect a similar thing is going on, you bring enough celebrities to create a buzz about your place

whether your place is actually fun enough to monetize that buzz.... I don't know, it really isn't my scene, but that might be a different thing

those places do seem to go in and out of business pretty regularly, I suspect overinvesting in buzz is relatively common

"Buy experiences, not things"

There aren't millions of such people, but in a big city with a big nightclub scene? Of course. Why do you think people complain about the 1% so much?

The rich are growing richer and the wealth gap is deepening, is happens all the time until the lower classes can no longer stand the abuse and revolt, after which usually a subset of the upper classes gets power and makes minor concessions to calm the mob. Usually this is followed by increased propaganda and controls to prevent another revolt from happening which leads to the people losing more power. Most of the media and sources of information are already in the hands of the elite and allied with their interests, so revolts are less likely and usually easily suppressed. The cycle continues. A police state and an Elysium-style separation of the elite from the plebs seems closer every day. People find it easier to ignore the struggle and suffering of people far away or people they don't see, even the impoverished and homeless in their own cities, because the media mostly ignores them, but most don't realize that they will soon also be in this class of ignored, powerless beggars and the elite class will be better protected and more isolated, allowing them to ignore the problems of the lower classes even more.

Obviously that's not actually how it works out -- lots of people who do this stuff are not billionaires, the above is not how billionaires finances work, etc. But it gets at the scale of money available to a top end group of people who are a minuscule fraction of the population but because the population is large, are actually a fairly sizable absolute number of people who can throw that kind of money around.

The same owners eventually ran the TAO clubs in Vegas. It's....interesting.

http://goo.gl/JE3sqX

Clubs bring in a lot of scrutiny. The 70s mafia movies made them look for but serious criminals have so many other options that dealing with them nowadays seems stupid. Do you really want a drunk or a whore or a gangbanger to bring police into your laundering operation regularly?

On the other hand, social media is just as driven in large part by pop-culture, but tech loves it. Beyond that, most people crave what she's managed to create, not the only rich person in the world, yet she managed to make it happen.

Now if it was only possible to make meaningful ideas & knowledge as viral using the same tactics.

Wait, why is the current royal family rich/famous?

Maybe it's just me, I guess. But when I look at someone like the Kardashians, honestly the only real reason they got this opportunity to be "famous for nothing" is their Hollywood connections. They certainly didn't rise up on their acting ability. The celebritization of "lucky sperm club" members as you mention also bothers me.

But, yeah, I don't get the article's attempt to drag other musicians / DJs / rappers into this. Well known musicians / performers going to a club and getting insane sums for simply performing? That's not news. Yes, today its EDM and rap in the club versus rock bands on the stage, but that's what is trendy now; big artists in the 1960s (your Beatles and whatnot) also got (2016 equivalent) six figure appearance fees too.

One can argue about the merits of the winner-takes-all nature of the entertainment industry, but it's a little less "money for nothing" in that case. Lil Jon did have to spin a set.

So these people are being paid not to, like, fake go to a club in front of cameras and it's work, but literally be paid to have fun.

I expect that the actuality of it is a little more complex than that, but there does seem like there's a grain of truth in it, too.