As I started reading, I was curious about the business model that would allow the clubs to spend this much money, on the basis that they had to recoup it and more within a single night.
They kind of answer that near the end, but I'm still left a bit befuddled. Apparently there's multiple(!) groups of people who will pay $25,000 dollars minimum to sit at a table near Nikki Minaj for an hour?
I can understand (if not condone) the birthday party thing, where you spend millions to get someone famous at your party, as by doing so you are saying "I have so many millions, I can do this ridiculous thing, or buy a famous painting, and still be richer than you". But it seems weird that it's a booming and widespread business model.
Maybe available capital is currently underutilized.
(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.)
>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.
I tend to think that the people spending money on this are unlikely to be the type of people capable of putting capital to a more 'efficient' or effective use.
My comment is more of an attempt to understand how they acquired the money in the first place.
Large numbers of fools with inheritances (the easy feel good explanation) still implies some lack of efficiency in the step that comes before them getting the inheritances.
Remember that iPhone app that simply said "I am rich" (or something like that) and sold a few copies for $999 before Apple pulled it down? It is always amusing to see the ridiculous things people would do to make themselves feel better than others around them. Some "celebrities" charge hundreds of dollars for an autograph or a pic and people still pay for the privilege. I guess as long as people pay for it, there would be someone to take advantage of it.
> Apparently there's multiple(!) groups of people who will pay $25,000 dollars minimum to sit at a table near Nikki Minaj for an hour?
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.
> Yes. There are tens of thousands of people (and most importantly, their children) for whom multi-million dollar annual expenses are fairly inconsequential.
You forget that rich people do not care about showing off their money to the middle class. They care about showing off to their peers and above. And that costs a lot.
Yeah this. If you're worth eight or nine figures, dropping $25k for hobnob with a celebrity is probably no big deal. From a percent of wealth perspective, its cheaper than what a middle class family would spend at Disney World.
It reminds me of something Neil deGrasse Tyson once pointed out. You or I might not stoop down to pick up a nickel off the floor, because it's not worth it. But maybe we would for a quarter. As a fraction of a decent middle class salary, a quarter is worth picking up. A similar fraction of Bill Gates wealth is worth about $35,000.
For some people, what's big money for you or me is small change.
You're missing the point of these night clubs. Nearly all of them are owned by, or involve criminal gangs because they're a fantastically convenient and efficient way to clean dirty money. Buy a jeroboam of champagne wholesale for $300, sell in night club for $30,000 or more.
I'm not quite following. Are you claiming that criminal gangs are investing in night clubs just because they have high profit margins? Or are you claiming that they pass dirty cash under the table to certain customers with the understanding that those customers will immediately return it as clean cash by paying artificially inflated prices for drinks?
There is a common money laundering scheme where a criminal gang purchases a bar and buys a bunch of inventory. But they don't really try to earn a profit or have many real customers. They just write up fake receipts for cash "customers" and then deposit their dirty money. Most of the inventory gets poured down the sewer. The IRS will sometimes send agents to count actual customers going into such places when they suspect laundering.
Any info available about that? Most of the clubs I know of are affiliated with large corporate entities like Wynn or MGM. The highest grossing clubs are all run by the Tao Group.
Also where can you get a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot or Dom Perignon for $300 wholesale? I'd love a link or more info since I would buy a bunch for parties.
Are there places that charge $30K for non Dom Perignon/Armand de Brignac champagne? I think at Marquee (NYC) you can get something larger than a jeroboam of Veuve for $30K. (Probably a methuselah or salmanzar since I think they keep one of them on hand for all their venues)
What top grossing nightclubs in NYC aren't corporate affairs? All the top ones I can think of are; Tao, 1Oak, Lavo, PHD, VIP Room, etc. I'm sure there are smaller ones that are purely independent affairs but they aren't doing 10M+/year in revenue.
A club is a great way to launder dirty cash without crossing borders. Just say that 500 people came last Friday and all paid a $50 cover. That's $25,000 USD laundered and there's no easy way to prove after the fact that it didn't actually happen. If these imaginary people averaged three drinks each, that's another easy $15,000 laundered. Few other business models are able to charge so much for intangible value and maintain such high margins while being believable.
This, ofcourse, does nothing to explain why they'd need to pay famous people for appearances. I assume they do that because they expect to make money from it from real customers.
"on the basis that they had to recoup it and more within a single night"
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
----------
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
> I can understand (if not condone) the birthday party thing, where you spend millions to get someone famous at your party, as by doing so you are saying "I have so many millions, I can do this ridiculous thing, or buy a famous painting, and still be richer than you". But it seems weird that it's a booming and widespread business model.
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.
Are you really referring to a tenant of Marxism to explain why some people have enough money to blow on trivial things in a night club and correlate it to some sort of future revolution?
This isn't something new - 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' from the 1980s was based on this exact kind of excess.
Societies can handle x amount of difference between the wealthy and the poor. We're nowhere near any point of revolt, regardless of what hyped up manboys on reddit and HN think. Low unemployment, high gdp per capita, high household income, high human development index rating, etc.
If anyone's revolting its the Greeks and the Spanish, not Americans. And not because of "the rich" but because the feel good socialism they can't pay for is destroying a generation of wealth, work, and prosperity.
HN/Reddit unicorns like Brazil, Russia, Finland, etc are also all underperforming:
Gee, maybe low regulatory environments, easy access to investment cash, entrepreneur culture, freedom of speech, honest elections, a real judiciary, capital protections, etc matter to an economy? Naww, keep ignoring the facts.
> Low unemployment, high gdp per capita, high household income, high human development index rating, etc.
Not true, real unemployment (ie including homeless people, people that are unable to work, etc.) is quite high and rising. Many people are just completely excluded from the 'official' unemployment statistics. Mean GDP per capita is fairly high BUT median, which is a much more important metric of wealth inequality, is quite low and decreasing relative to mean. Not sure why you listed household income and GDP per capita as different things even though they are basically the same for this purpose... and high human development index says nothing about revolt, in fact higher educated and well-read people that are economically disenfranchised tend to be more outspoken and interested in the wealth gap.
> And not because of "the rich" but because the feel good socialism they can't pay for is destroying a generation of wealth, work, and prosperity.
80% of the American public is essentially completely politically disenfranchised, for most people in the US the net income adjusted for inflation and increasing costs is decreasing.
> And not because of "the rich" but because the feel good socialism they can't pay for is destroying a generation of wealth, work, and prosperity.
Greece and Spain are far from 'feel good socialism' compared to countries that are much closer such as Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, where quality of life and happiness is regularly rated as higher than the US.
> Gee, maybe low regulatory environments, easy access to investment cash, entrepreneur culture, freedom of speech, honest elections, a real judiciary, capital protections, etc matter to an economy? Naww, keep ignoring the facts.
Literally none of those things conflicts with socialism, socialism actually helps many of those things. But I guess you heard the good ol 'socialism bad hurr durr' on fox news or whatever and suddenly feel that is a basis to justify your misguided beliefs.
>Many people are just completely excluded from the 'official' unemployment statistics.
Every country reports unemployment similarly. The system we use has classes, so yes you can look at both U3 and U6 and the still the US comes out on top, if compared to the same class. The US's high employment rate is unquestionable, as much as you hate it and wish it to be worse.
>. Mean GDP per capita is fairly high BUT median, which is a much more important metric
Real Median Household Income is almost excactly the GDP per capita in the USA.
>Greece and Spain are far from 'feel good socialism'
They absolutely are. Their programs are unaffordable, especially in Greece's case. The government is the biggest employer there and literally writes checks it cannot back because its bullied by the unions and leftist electorate to do so. Eventually you need to pay your bills and the Greeks simply cannot.
> Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, where quality of life and happiness is regularly rated as higher than the US.
Because people are naturally racists and in ethnocentrist cultures people are happy. White loves white. Why is that a plus to you? Melting pot life will always have more strife. Also those countires are a fraction of the size of the USA. Denmark is a mere 5m people, about half of the Chicago metropolitan area. Compared that to a 330m juggernaut is silly. Sweden is about the population of the Chicago metropolitan area. Germany has a multi-payer health care system just like the US does, its much more to the right than the other countries you mentioned.
>Yeah, that worked out magnificently in 2008.
Every country has economic issues that come and go. The US has been the lead performer since WWII. We're seeing the destruction of Greece right now with no real way out. There's very different than the once in 30 years recession almost all economies suffer from. Your precious Germany had some bad dealings both political and economically in the 30s and 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I guess we arent allowed to talk about that ,but anything in the US's history is fair game, eh?
> Every country reports unemployment similarly. The system we use has classes, so yes you can look at both U3 and U6 and the still the US comes out on top, if compared to the same class.
First of all, U3 and U6 are both not real unemployment. They exclude a large portion of the population from the statistic, like I already said, but you seem to have no idea what I'm talking about. Real unemployment which is usually taken as the number of people above 16 who do not work is about 40% in the US. Yes, there are reasons why people in this large group should be separated for statistical purposes but this number is the real unemployment, IE the actual number of people who are not employed.
> The US's high employment rate is unquestionable, as much as you hate it and wish it to be worse.
You're really trying to sound like an idiot aren't you?
> Real Median Household Income is almost excactly the GDP per capita in the USA.
So now you are comparing MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD (OFTEN TWO OR MORE PEOPLE COMBINED) income to AVERAGE PER CAPITA (SINGLE PERSON) income? Really? Embarrassing.
Here is what the real median vs average incomes look like:
> They absolutely are. Their programs are unaffordable, especially in Greece's case.
So, your definition of 'feel good socialism' is 'they have unaffordable programs'? You amaze me with your depth of knowledge.
> Because people are naturally racists and in ethnocentrist cultures people are happy.
Sorry, go preach your NrX crap to the children over at /r/AnarchoCapitalism. It does not impress me.
> Denmark is a mere 5m people, about half of the Chicago metropolitan area.
How is that relevant, when their productive output is still dependent on their size?
> I guess we arent allowed to talk about that ,but anything in the US's history is fair game, eh?
You sound like an angry American redneck, who tries to yell 'Murica! Fuck yeah!' to whoever might hear you and try to defend America to people who don't have anything against the country in general and attack them with childish fallacious rants. All the while trying to cover up any issues that actually hurt American people. You are a brainwashed moron.
Acerbic asides like these degrade the discussions here and typically provoke much worse from others, as happened in this case. Please eliminate nastiness from what you post here, regardless of how right and wrong you or someone else's views may be.
Just so we are clear... what countries do you think are doing well?
because i would posit that out of the countries that are economically performing well outside of the united states almost none have: low regulatory environments, easy access to investment cash, entrepreneur culture, freedom of speech, honest elections, a real judiciary, capital protections
if we are going to say we need to focus on empirical evidence then I dont think this elements are as important as you are making them out to be...
There are 536 billionaires in the United States. If you have $1 billion, and you earn a measly 2% return on it, then your yearly income is $20 million. If your yearly income is $20 million and you blow $10 million of that on stuff other than entertainment, then you can spend $25,000 every night and not exceed your entertainment budget.
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.
And here I am thinking it is insane that people pay for pictures of people on TV shows at comic con and the like. I have quite a few friends who are traveling the con circuit and always thought it was a strange secondary job market where ex stars get appearance fees and people pay for money (guys like some random Star Wars extra).
This isn't surprising. How else does a single night club in Miami pull in over $70M a year (LIV at fontainebleu hotel). For every 25k appearance there are 10 that night paying $5k each for bottle service nearby, and then another 1000 paying $100 for booze.
It's great to see high-profile Amazonians practicing the Leadership Principles in their personal lives. Frugality, Highest Standards, and Learn & Be Curious all in one night of partying!
As someone who's been to LIV a few times, I can say that entrance alone on most weekend nights (fri/sat) is $100. "Premium" drinks like Patron (how is that premium?) are $25 a glass. Those skyboxes on the second floor (that look down on the dance floor) start at $10,000 minimum. Fortunately, I never had to pay because I had a mutual friend with the owner. LIV is definitely on the top end of South Beach nightlife, but there are other clubs that have similar prices.
I have a personal rule to never trust anyone who speaks in the third person...this article seems to validate that quite well.
From another perspective though, is GQ effectively proposing Paris Hilton as a disruptive innovation? I kind of except that...she effectively initiated the business of recursive celebrity (rich begets famous begets rich). I honestly wonder what scholars 2-300 years from now will have to say about the development of reality television from Survivor to The Simple Life/Paris Hilton to the Kardashians to whatever will come next...
Paris is a disruptive innovation, though just not one that the tech world sees an opportunity.
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.
I would separate power (even historical power) and it's inter-linkage with wealth and fame from simply the inter-linkage of wealth and fame. That to me is the new thing, removing power from this equation
The whole things seems incredibly distant and surreal to me, but I'm also the sort of person who would pay money to AVOID going to anything that bills itself as a "night club." I much prefer a cozy pub or a decent wine bar, ideally with the music low enough that conversation is possible.
But, you know, I'm a giant nerd, so what do I know?
I click on this link and immediately my retina screams "please switch off!". It's an entirely different planet and species. An now I need to take a shower. /!s
Isnt this just advertising? I dont really understand how this is any different from other forms of celebrity endorsements such as basketball players pitching nike's. These guys faces are even on the flyers to the parties.
I think that there's a sense that, like, if you go and endorse a Nike shoe, okay, you might get paid a lot of money, but you still go and do a photo-shoot and maybe spend a frustrating day being filmed doing a jump-shot and have the director saying, "Okay, but can you do that with more intensity," whereas going to a club is supposed to be fun -- indeed, such fun that lots of basically ordinarily people pay fairly large amounts of money to go to it.
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.
I don't know what I'm more sad about in this article, the fact that so much economic activity is dedicated to boast oneself's social status by paying to gain proximity to celebrities, or that these parties are insidious to a celebrity's mental and physical health.
They're leaving out the bigger part in that Clubs are a very easy way to launder money. When the hire these celebrities to show up it makes it even easier to move larger amounts of cash.
Famous people can make money simply off the interest that the general public has in them. However, I would encourage the author of this piece and anyone who reads it to consider this point much more broadly.
For example Ronan Farrow and Chelsea Clinton were both paid hundreds of thousands by MSNBC for essentially nothing. I think it's rather telling that people would prefer to focus on someone like Nicki Minaj getting money in clubs, but that's just me.
Celebrity culture has always been around, but in some ways it feels more noxious and gamed than it used to be.
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.
the average life of a nightclub is not very long, perhaps a few years and that's IF you're popular. as such, there's huge pressure to just create a lot of buzz and ride that wave until inevitably you become old hat.
those people here talking about how it's convenient for laundering are missing this fact. you can point to the mega clubs in vegas as the few examples of those raking in money, but the vast majority of these clubs go out of business and make nothing. living in nyc there are handful of these big clubs that have been around for longer than a few years and even then, the popular ones have to "re-invent" themselves every few years to keep attendance up.
the more common story is that doors open, and you get some mediocre attendance and basically just losing money hand over fist every week thereafter. people come and see that your establishment isn't that popular and the next week even less people come. momentum is crazy important and i can see paying thousands for a guest appearance even if you're losing money that specific week.
Yeah this. You don't want to launder in a high regulatory, high crime, high profile, etc business. You want something like a car wash or laundromat on a small scale. Or, better yet, construction, which is notorious for its lax accounting.
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?
One operated here illegally for about five years because every time there was a motion to shut them down they found another avenue to appeal. The legal system can move at a glacial pace at the best of times, and they were clever enough to slow it down even more.
Five years is enough time to bank millions of dollars in legitimate profits and make even more on the side through more shady deals.
I know that many of the clubs here juice up their profits by laundering and taking a cut of the drug trade in their bathrooms. They also make enormous amounts of cash legitimately which makes it hard to find out what profits are legal and which are illegal.
For example if you charge $10 for a double shot, but the product only costs you (at most) $1, you're making 90% profit right out of the gate. If someone wants to launder some money, increase your shot sales by 20%. Pour out bottles if you have to just to make the numbers add up, it's not even hard.
Very few of them are ever snared in legal issues because they have a lot of experience flying under the radar and knowing how to operate without getting into trouble. The number one cause for closing a club is either the place burned out, popularity waned, or in rare cases where there was a shooting which means a much tighter leash.
Presumably it's to avoid suspicion and liability. Re-selling is strictly forbidden by the rules here, and losing your liquor license is the worst possible thing to happen to a club.
To put it in perspective: If there's a report of using drugs in the bathrooms nothing will happen, it takes too much police work to amount to anything, but a single incident of alcohol leaving the premises can get you shut down. They're super strict about this.
And Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ev Williams, Marc Benioff, Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Arianna Huffington, etc... get Millions of dollars per day. Within any one of those weeks, there is an hour or two where they're not doing much more labor than a Scott Disick or Nikki Minaj in a club.
The difference is that the people in the article are being paid just to turn up. The business people you mentioned are in charge of large organizations that are making them money while they aren't around.
Celebrity culture of US is so bizzarelly different from the nightlife culture I know. I understand that some people just want to waste money sitting at the table with a celebrity, but why call this establishment a nightclub in the first place?
Clubs are places to enjoy the music — without phones, without friends, without stupid conversations. Things describes in that article are the exact opposite of this.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] thread99.9th percentile US net worth is about 30 million: http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/20...
Arbitrarily assuming a 5% return on that, that's 1.5 million dollars a year, which is about $5K per day.
Go out to the club with a few of your .1% friends, and you are right in the $25K per table ballpark while still staying within budget.
They kind of answer that near the end, but I'm still left a bit befuddled. Apparently there's multiple(!) groups of people who will pay $25,000 dollars minimum to sit at a table near Nikki Minaj for an hour?
I can understand (if not condone) the birthday party thing, where you spend millions to get someone famous at your party, as by doing so you are saying "I have so many millions, I can do this ridiculous thing, or buy a famous painting, and still be richer than you". But it seems weird that it's a booming and widespread business model.
(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.)
I tend to think that the people spending money on this are unlikely to be the type of people capable of putting capital to a more 'efficient' or effective use.
Large numbers of fools with inheritances (the easy feel good explanation) still implies some lack of efficiency in the step that comes before them getting the inheritances.
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.
Indeed.
http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/
For some people, what's big money for you or me is small change.
There is a common money laundering scheme where a criminal gang purchases a bar and buys a bunch of inventory. But they don't really try to earn a profit or have many real customers. They just write up fake receipts for cash "customers" and then deposit their dirty money. Most of the inventory gets poured down the sewer. The IRS will sometimes send agents to count actual customers going into such places when they suspect laundering.
Also where can you get a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot or Dom Perignon for $300 wholesale? I'd love a link or more info since I would buy a bunch for parties.
I didn't specify brand. £230 Moet Jeroboam (including 20% VAT) - http://www.drinksupermarket.com/moet-chandon-imperial-brut-n...
What top grossing nightclubs in NYC aren't corporate affairs? All the top ones I can think of are; Tao, 1Oak, Lavo, PHD, VIP Room, etc. I'm sure there are smaller ones that are purely independent affairs but they aren't doing 10M+/year in revenue.
This, ofcourse, does nothing to explain why they'd need to pay famous people for appearances. I assume they do that because they expect to make money from it from real customers.
I know it's personal opinion and all, but I find it to be much better than both of the above.
Jeroboam for 183,64 € [1]
[1]: http://boutique.tsarine.com/catalogue/formats-speciaux/jerob...
It calls it a "Double Magnum", but others online call it a Jeroboam, which I think is technically correct for a 3L bottle of sparkling wine.
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.
This isn't something new - 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' from the 1980s was based on this exact kind of excess.
Marxism's taking in lodgers now?
If anyone's revolting its the Greeks and the Spanish, not Americans. And not because of "the rich" but because the feel good socialism they can't pay for is destroying a generation of wealth, work, and prosperity.
HN/Reddit unicorns like Brazil, Russia, Finland, etc are also all underperforming:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-11/meet-2016-...
Gee, maybe low regulatory environments, easy access to investment cash, entrepreneur culture, freedom of speech, honest elections, a real judiciary, capital protections, etc matter to an economy? Naww, keep ignoring the facts.
Not true, real unemployment (ie including homeless people, people that are unable to work, etc.) is quite high and rising. Many people are just completely excluded from the 'official' unemployment statistics. Mean GDP per capita is fairly high BUT median, which is a much more important metric of wealth inequality, is quite low and decreasing relative to mean. Not sure why you listed household income and GDP per capita as different things even though they are basically the same for this purpose... and high human development index says nothing about revolt, in fact higher educated and well-read people that are economically disenfranchised tend to be more outspoken and interested in the wealth gap.
> And not because of "the rich" but because the feel good socialism they can't pay for is destroying a generation of wealth, work, and prosperity.
80% of the American public is essentially completely politically disenfranchised, for most people in the US the net income adjusted for inflation and increasing costs is decreasing.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
> And not because of "the rich" but because the feel good socialism they can't pay for is destroying a generation of wealth, work, and prosperity.
Greece and Spain are far from 'feel good socialism' compared to countries that are much closer such as Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, where quality of life and happiness is regularly rated as higher than the US.
> Gee, maybe low regulatory environments, easy access to investment cash, entrepreneur culture, freedom of speech, honest elections, a real judiciary, capital protections, etc matter to an economy? Naww, keep ignoring the facts.
Literally none of those things conflicts with socialism, socialism actually helps many of those things. But I guess you heard the good ol 'socialism bad hurr durr' on fox news or whatever and suddenly feel that is a basis to justify your misguided beliefs.
> Gee, maybe low regulatory environments
Yeah, that worked out magnificently in 2008.
Every country reports unemployment similarly. The system we use has classes, so yes you can look at both U3 and U6 and the still the US comes out on top, if compared to the same class. The US's high employment rate is unquestionable, as much as you hate it and wish it to be worse.
>. Mean GDP per capita is fairly high BUT median, which is a much more important metric
Real Median Household Income is almost excactly the GDP per capita in the USA.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N
https://www.google.com/search?q=gdp+per+capita+usa&ie=utf-8&...
>Greece and Spain are far from 'feel good socialism'
They absolutely are. Their programs are unaffordable, especially in Greece's case. The government is the biggest employer there and literally writes checks it cannot back because its bullied by the unions and leftist electorate to do so. Eventually you need to pay your bills and the Greeks simply cannot.
> Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, where quality of life and happiness is regularly rated as higher than the US.
Because people are naturally racists and in ethnocentrist cultures people are happy. White loves white. Why is that a plus to you? Melting pot life will always have more strife. Also those countires are a fraction of the size of the USA. Denmark is a mere 5m people, about half of the Chicago metropolitan area. Compared that to a 330m juggernaut is silly. Sweden is about the population of the Chicago metropolitan area. Germany has a multi-payer health care system just like the US does, its much more to the right than the other countries you mentioned.
>Yeah, that worked out magnificently in 2008.
Every country has economic issues that come and go. The US has been the lead performer since WWII. We're seeing the destruction of Greece right now with no real way out. There's very different than the once in 30 years recession almost all economies suffer from. Your precious Germany had some bad dealings both political and economically in the 30s and 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I guess we arent allowed to talk about that ,but anything in the US's history is fair game, eh?
First of all, U3 and U6 are both not real unemployment. They exclude a large portion of the population from the statistic, like I already said, but you seem to have no idea what I'm talking about. Real unemployment which is usually taken as the number of people above 16 who do not work is about 40% in the US. Yes, there are reasons why people in this large group should be separated for statistical purposes but this number is the real unemployment, IE the actual number of people who are not employed.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/record-94610...
> The US's high employment rate is unquestionable, as much as you hate it and wish it to be worse.
You're really trying to sound like an idiot aren't you?
> Real Median Household Income is almost excactly the GDP per capita in the USA.
So now you are comparing MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD (OFTEN TWO OR MORE PEOPLE COMBINED) income to AVERAGE PER CAPITA (SINGLE PERSON) income? Really? Embarrassing.
Here is what the real median vs average incomes look like:
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
http://qz.com/260269/painfully-american-families-are-learnin...
> They absolutely are. Their programs are unaffordable, especially in Greece's case.
So, your definition of 'feel good socialism' is 'they have unaffordable programs'? You amaze me with your depth of knowledge.
> Because people are naturally racists and in ethnocentrist cultures people are happy.
Sorry, go preach your NrX crap to the children over at /r/AnarchoCapitalism. It does not impress me.
> Denmark is a mere 5m people, about half of the Chicago metropolitan area.
How is that relevant, when their productive output is still dependent on their size?
> I guess we arent allowed to talk about that ,but anything in the US's history is fair game, eh?
You sound like an angry American redneck, who tries to yell 'Murica! Fuck yeah!' to whoever might hear you and try to defend America to people who don't have anything against the country in general and attack them with childish fallacious rants. All the while trying to cover up any issues that actually hurt American people. You are a brainwashed moron.
If you'd like this account not to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. But please read the guidelines first:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> I guess we arent allowed to talk about that
Acerbic asides like these degrade the discussions here and typically provoke much worse from others, as happened in this case. Please eliminate nastiness from what you post here, regardless of how right and wrong you or someone else's views may be.
because i would posit that out of the countries that are economically performing well outside of the united states almost none have: low regulatory environments, easy access to investment cash, entrepreneur culture, freedom of speech, honest elections, a real judiciary, capital protections
if we are going to say we need to focus on empirical evidence then I dont think this elements are as important as you are making them out to be...
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
Guess that's just small potatoes.
From another perspective though, is GQ effectively proposing Paris Hilton as a disruptive innovation? I kind of except that...she effectively initiated the business of recursive celebrity (rich begets famous begets rich). I honestly wonder what scholars 2-300 years from now will have to say about the development of reality television from Survivor to The Simple Life/Paris Hilton to the Kardashians to whatever will come next...
and I cannot believe I just wrote this on HN
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?
Just wow.
Well, it's certainly a scam!
But, you know, I'm a giant nerd, so what do I know?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
For example Ronan Farrow and Chelsea Clinton were both paid hundreds of thousands by MSNBC for essentially nothing. I think it's rather telling that people would prefer to focus on someone like Nicki Minaj getting money in clubs, but that's just me.
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.
For rappers, DJs, and Reality stars: this is called club appearances.
those people here talking about how it's convenient for laundering are missing this fact. you can point to the mega clubs in vegas as the few examples of those raking in money, but the vast majority of these clubs go out of business and make nothing. living in nyc there are handful of these big clubs that have been around for longer than a few years and even then, the popular ones have to "re-invent" themselves every few years to keep attendance up.
the more common story is that doors open, and you get some mediocre attendance and basically just losing money hand over fist every week thereafter. people come and see that your establishment isn't that popular and the next week even less people come. momentum is crazy important and i can see paying thousands for a guest appearance even if you're losing money that specific week.
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?
One operated here illegally for about five years because every time there was a motion to shut them down they found another avenue to appeal. The legal system can move at a glacial pace at the best of times, and they were clever enough to slow it down even more.
Five years is enough time to bank millions of dollars in legitimate profits and make even more on the side through more shady deals.
I know that many of the clubs here juice up their profits by laundering and taking a cut of the drug trade in their bathrooms. They also make enormous amounts of cash legitimately which makes it hard to find out what profits are legal and which are illegal.
For example if you charge $10 for a double shot, but the product only costs you (at most) $1, you're making 90% profit right out of the gate. If someone wants to launder some money, increase your shot sales by 20%. Pour out bottles if you have to just to make the numbers add up, it's not even hard.
Very few of them are ever snared in legal issues because they have a lot of experience flying under the radar and knowing how to operate without getting into trouble. The number one cause for closing a club is either the place burned out, popularity waned, or in rare cases where there was a shooting which means a much tighter leash.
To put it in perspective: If there's a report of using drugs in the bathrooms nothing will happen, it takes too much police work to amount to anything, but a single incident of alcohol leaving the premises can get you shut down. They're super strict about this.
Clubs are places to enjoy the music — without phones, without friends, without stupid conversations. Things describes in that article are the exact opposite of this.