Given various horror stories regarding paypal account freezes, seeing that much money in a paypal account (even when it isn't mine), gives me the cold sweats.<p>Of course, in his case the backlash to an account freeze would probably kill paypal (would be so widely reported that the feds would have to get involved, I'd guess), but still...
The part that spoke the loudest to me: <i>I never viewed money as being "my money" I always saw it as "The money" It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.</i><p>Many of you know exactly what he means by that, and also subscribe to the same philosophy. I just thought it was a very apt way of putting it into words.
I had a spirited debate yesterday with my 22 year old son about "Occupy" and increasing taxes on the 1%. Since this puts Louis CK firmly in the 1% (if he wasn't there already), it will be interesting to look at him as a case study.<p>At the risk of down votes, and converting this to a political argument...<p>According to my son, in order for the 1% to "win", many of the 99% had to "lose". This seems like a clear case where we (collectively, mostly 99%-ers) decided to "reward" Louis CK with a million dollars, and none of us "lost" in the transaction. We decided willingly to fork over $5 for great comedy (arguably worth more!). The only potential losers are the traditional distribution outlets - which got zero from the transaction (so neutral, not a loss).<p>So, Son, what do you think of that? Explain again why you think we should penalize Louis CK for this?<p>Don't vote me down, kid. (My son will probably read this. I suspect there are probably few father-son combos on HN.)<p>Edit: My son said he's not going to answer me publicly. However, he says "I reserve the right to vote on the comment".
I like it. Taking care of the people who helped you make it super seamless to buy, quick to download, advised you on drm issues. Donating to charity is an excellent way to gain real life karma. That man is a real class act(well not on stage).
The most inspiring thing about the whole story to me is how he was able to generate a massively successful marketing campaign simply by being authentic, and engaging his fans directly. I think this follows a lot of the "Thank You Economy" concepts that Gary Vaynerchuck promotes to a T, and I hope that other artists, companies, and brands take note of how powerful that strategy can be after seeing this success.
It's funny that one of his segments in this special is about how he's a bad person -- he has charitable thoughts toward others, only so he can use them feel good about himself without having actually acted on those thoughts.<p>In reality, he is probably in the top 10% of best humans ever.
Is the video subtitled or captioned? The website says nothing and I did not want to spend $5 without knowing in advance. I've emailed to the support email account listed on the website. But I'm sure it'll take time for someone to give me an answer through the email.<p>Am hoping someone here could chime in and give me a quick answer.<p>Thanks
among all the SOPA news today, seeing this is refreshing. I'm so glad this model worked for him, and I hope others follow in his foot steps. Distribution is over valued.
So the lesson reinforced here, again, is that once you're already famous for something, the Internet makes it easy to sell things to fans directly. We already knew this. But it's great to see it happen.
I'm not sure I actually feel good about paying those $5 knowing that most of it won't end up in Louis's pocket, actually.<p>If I wanted to donate to charities, I'd do it myself. I don't want to, I believe there are better ways to use money - so I feel that money is kind of wasted.<p>More importantly, I felt good about paying $5 because I felt I was giving $5 to Louis CK to support a great effort and an awesome artist. The fact that he's keeping only 22% of it makes me feel like 78% of it was rejected. If so, I might as well have kept my $5.<p>Honestly, right now what I'm thinking is that I'll probably get the next version off BitTorrent. I'm not happy paying for a download with 80% of overhead, especially if that overhead is voluntary. Most of the $5 should end up in Louis' pocket, and if it doesn't, I don't feel like throwing it down the drain, I have better uses for my money.