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I have a job for you. It requires you to tell the audience what you already know. If you want, you can prepare, but you don’t need to prepare. If you talk for an hour, I will pay you $50,000 or even $200,000. Would you be interested?
This sounds too good to be true. It will take years for millions of people in rich countries to make so much money. The billions of people (mainly people of color) in the south of the world need decades of hard work to make so much money. However, in the United States, a group of social justice speakers can make the same money in an hour.
Is this compatible with anti-inequality politics?
“All America” speaker prices
Several websites-publicly available but mostly unknown to the public-provide lists of celebrities you can hire to speak at the event. The price of each lecture ranges from approximately US$5,000 to over US$200,000. These lists mainly include those who offer to deliver “keynote speeches” at corporate and academic conferences. Keynote speeches are framed around an event around a theme (such as racial injustice or large-scale technology), and well-known headline news speakers provide prestige for the event. In this sense, the keynote speaker is very much like a musician at a music festival.
Spending money to get people to deliver keynote speeches is nothing new. For decades, politicians, scientists, and entertainers have paid thousands of dollars for speeches at public and private events. But until recently, the public has not been able to know the current price of a high-profile keynote speech.
However, today, in the Internet age, various institutions have listed the ratio of keynote speakers on the Internet, and the public can get a glimpse of what is happening in this field.
For example, the AAE Speakers website lists thousands of celebrity speakers—from “business people” and “pop artists” to “anti-racism speakers” and “social justice advocates”— Willing to speak thousands of dollars in many events. Sites such as Celebrity Talent.net and Lavin Agency also provide similar lists.
Various celebrities are listed on the website of the keynote speaker. Generally speaking, the bigger the celebrity, the more money is required. The price of well-known artists and intellectuals is usually between 50,000 and 100,000 US dollars, sometimes even “200,000 US dollars or more.”
It may not be surprising to see outstanding business leaders and go public at this price. We all know that the rich can’t get enough to eat.
However, it is surprising that those who claim to be members of the “Left” and are committed to helping build a more equal world also seem to demand tens of thousands of dollars to deliver an hour-long speech.
Transparency and conflict of interest
Unfortunately, this process is still a bit opaque. Some speakers may be listed without their knowledge. When I called an AAE employee, her name was “Olivia” and she told me that sometimes the spokesperson in their database would contact them, sometimes they would contact the spokesperson, but she said she “don’t know” Are there any speakers listed without their knowledge.
However, we know that people on the “Left” get a lot of money for keynote speeches.
For example, in April 2021, a freedom of information request revealed that anti-racism professor Nikole Hannah-Jones received $25,000 in an online Zoom lecture at the University of Oregon in February. As early as July 2019, anti-racism spokesperson Tim Wise revealed that the cost of speaking at the event was about $10,000, and told the media that other anti-racism spokespersons usually “charge more than mine high”.
In another example, Microsoft told me that they are currently paying 14 well-known scholars to give lectures for their monthly “race and technology” series of lectures, but did not disclose the specific amount. The host recommended to me New York University professor Charleton McIlwain, who is the co-organizer of the series, but he did not respond to an email asking how much the speaker is paid.
Microsoft provides various surveillance technologies and partnerships to police, immigration authorities, prisons, courts, and the military around the world. Critics view these technologies as racist and imperialist, but the five speakers so far have hardly mentioned Microsoft’s ongoing controversial practices.
This illustrates a clear conflict of interest, in which respected American racial and technical intellectuals help Microsoft show interest and sensitivity in racial justice—and take money from Microsoft at the same time.
We don’t know which celebrities actually score keynote performances, whether they always receive these payments, and what they choose to do with the money they receive. For example, some people may donate their expenses or use them to promote the cause they seek to promote. However, it is difficult to find this in public records.
Does my consumption matter?
As with the wider inequality in the capitalist system, the irony is that the people with the most resources are usually the ones who need them the least. In the national speaker list, the more famous you are, the higher the lecture fee. For celebrities who work in elite universities, the salary can reach $300,000 or more. At the same time, second-class citizens in academia, such as part-time professors, have difficulty paying bills and have no job security or benefits.
When we compare it to the livelihoods of the global South, the hypocrisy and abnormality of the keynote system is much worse. Nearly 8 billion people are alive today. 4 billion people (more than half of the world) live below the meager poverty line of US$7.40 per person per day—the minimum amount required for a healthy diet and full life expectancy.
Therefore, people living on this poverty line can spend US$2,701 per year.
For Foxconn sweatshop workers who make Apple iPhones in China, the basic salary is $314 per month, despite the 18-hour workload.
In their one hour, $50,000, celebrity speakers have spent nearly 20 years in the global poverty line and 13 years of hard work in sweatshops in China. 100,000 US dollars is equivalent to 40 years of consumption value, and for those who make iPhones, the value of casual consumption of “all-American” speakers is 2.5 years.
This is even more problematic when we consider inequality in the ecological environment. For those who are concerned about the ongoing environmental crisis, growth and over-development are the core issues we face.
The United Nations elaborated on this in its 2019 Sustainable Development Goals. At present, the entire mankind extracts about 100 billion tons of material resources each year, but the sustainable limit is only about 50 billion tons. People from low-income countries consume only 2 tons per person per year, while people from high-income countries consume 28 tons per person per year. The sustainable limit of 8 billion people on the planet is considered to be 6 to 8 tons per person per year.
In addition, about 10 tons of resources per person are transported from poor countries to rich countries for consumption by their people. iPhone, coffee, rubber, lithium, these things did not fall from the sky. People produce them, usually with little return.
As the de-growth researchers pointed out, if everyone consumes as much as rich countries—28 tons or more per person per year—we will damage the environment. This is not sustainable. We must redistribute wealth and income to resolve the ecological crisis in a fair and just manner.
The huge salary of celebrity intellectuals exceeds the limit of sustainability. Thematic expenses of US$20,000, US$50,000, or even US$100,000 have increased consumption patterns beyond the limits of fairness and sustainability, and exchanged unequally with the exploited laborers they seek to protect. Despite the fact that many American speakers advocate environmental sustainability.
It is counterintuitive for some people who advocate against inequality to ask for and take the money within their hour. “All Americans” is a good label because it reveals the profound hypocrisy of some elite “anti-inequality” intellectuals in the United States.
Those who truly believe in equality and solving environmental crises should promote the abolition of classes for fair and sustainable development. However, it is the system they claim to oppose that is rewarding them for keeping silent on consumption restrictions and taking money away.
It’s time to clarify this point and end the ridiculous keynote speech system.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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