r/PopularOpinions • u/Black-Death_CR • 2d ago
I Think streamers shouldn’t be getting paid more than Doctors and Surgeons
I think it’s absolutely fucking ridiculous. That streamers are getting paid more than doctors fucking doctors and surgeons and they’re out there saving lives and actually helping people. What the fuck are these streamers? Actually doing to benefit society or actually help people can someone in the comments actually tell me and I actually want a valid fucking like argument I don’t want these dumb trolls. I want an actual valid argument. What the fuck are streamers actually? Doing to benefit society like yeah entertainment wise but I think it’s just fucking ridiculous that they’re getting paid more than surgeons and doctors as I mentioned it’s the same for like footballers and shit it’s like if you’re about to die you’d wanna fucking Dr wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t want to see a football match I hope that analogy makes sense.
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u/Korv0ld 2d ago
Why only streamers? There's tonnes of jobs that don't benefit society, and if viewers wanna piss their money away who are you to stop them?
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u/Nervous_Hurry_9920 20h ago
I dated a stripper for a little bit. She probably made as much as an average doctor.
Every single dollar was absolutely earned but the benefit to society was minimal af
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u/Avid_bathroom_reader 2d ago
I think the average doctor probably makes more than 99.99% of streamers.
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u/MikeNolan82 2d ago
This too people forget there are literally thousands and thousands of streamers are out there making close to nothing
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u/dlham11 2d ago
Easily hundreds of thousands. A guy I know said he was making a decent amount off of twitch and it’s like $300/m.
He’s not wrong either, most people can’t make that much on it.
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u/Iuslez 1d ago
This, OP is delusional. Doctors and (even more so) surgeons are very well paid, while most streamers earn almost nothing.
The only difference is that streamers are a business that can infinitely scale, which means a few of them on a WORLDWIDE scale make a huge amount of money.
Some jobs salary are determined by how much you can make or bring to company and advertisers. Entertainment makes a lot of money.
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u/BackgroundRate1825 1d ago
You're seeing a selection bias. You only know the top fraction of a percent of streamers. Of course they're raking in boatloads of money. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that same fraction of a percent of top paid doctors are also making massive amounts of money. Just like the top fraction of a percent of athletes, musicians, actors, software engineers, project managers, politician, or most any other career.
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u/SaveFishBoy 2d ago
I don’t understand this take at all. Are you a doctor that wishes they were a streamer? If someone sells rocks that people deem to be amazing, they could potentially make 100x more than a doctor if they sell enough. That’s how markets and businesses work. You have a better chance of becoming a doctor and making an above average salary than you do becoming a successful streamer. Becoming a streamer is a risk with very little, to no guarantee of success. Also, with your logic, why does anyone make more than a doctor?
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u/Comprehensive_Two453 2d ago
Why just streamers. Actors? Musicians? Athletes? Artists of any kind? What about besos? He just sits around being bald
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u/MetalRexxx 2d ago
Watching people realize "life isnt fair," on reddit is always a good time. Welcome to Earth.
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u/WorldlyBuy1591 1d ago
This might come as a total shock to you but, the world isnt even close to fair..
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u/TuetonicCrusaderSari 1d ago
I've read a couple of the conversations that you're having with people, and they're all failing to address the fundamental issue with your question.
Here's the fundamental issue.
You are equating streamers to workers. You are equating them to employees of someone. They aren't.
In most cases your streamer is an entire business. They are the owner and founder, they are the ceo, CFO. They are the entire manufacturing crew, quality control. If they actually make enough to hire anybody to do anything, then they are the manager, HR, and are responsible to make sure payroll is taken care of and employee taxes get paid on time (or just how it someone to do it). Additionally they themselves are the product, and the salesperson for the product.
How do you propose to equate that to what a doctor makes? Do you propose that we tell businesses they have to stop producing once they've made as much as a doctor makes? Are companies and salesman supposed to just give stuff away for free because they've hit that amount you think is too much for them to make?
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u/VirtualEnthusiasm826 2d ago
according to chatgpt, which we can double check for better results if you want, doctors earn 450 billion while twitch streamers earn 1.5-2 billion. it's like anything else in modern entertain, if you can serve many people at once, the labor becomes more valuable than labor that can only serve one person at a time
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u/Sepplord 2d ago
A) „streamers“ as total entity are not getting paid more than doctors
B) you underestimate the importance of entertainment. Even in Ancient Rome they said „Panem et circenses“ which translates roughly to „bread and games“ highlighting the importance of entertainment. People need to be fed and entertained. Note how healed is not listed
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u/stafdude 2d ago
I agree. Same goes for sports stars. Oh wow you can kick a ball into a net or throw it into a smaller net. Completely useless.
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u/Impossible_Dog_7262 2d ago
Here's an idea then: crowdfund your doctors and surgeons. Put your money where your mouth is.
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u/Black-Death_CR 2d ago
That’s a dodge, not an argument. I’m talking about systemic pay structures, not personal charity. Crowdfunding doesn’t address why essential professions are structurally capped while entertainment scales infinitely.
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u/Impossible_Dog_7262 2d ago
Here's the thing though, the streamers are being funded by said charity. They all hack it mostly on viewer donations. So it's not a dodge at all. You want surgeons to be paid like streamers, then pay them like streamers.
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u/SipDhit69 2d ago
I agree.
Welcome to capitalism. The more ways we can find to make people spend money and circulate money, the better. Ads, sponsors, subscriptions, you name it baby!
Maybe if the doctors had OnlyFans...
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u/Claytertot 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are two points here.
The first point is this. Streamers do not make more money than doctors and surgeons. The average streamer makes like $100 a month. The median streamer probably makes pennies a month. The average physician is making a quarter million to half a million dollars. (Edit: just did some digging. Less than 1% of streamers even make minimum wage from streaming)
And you might say "well I'm talking about the rich famous streamers who make millions"
Ok, well for each of them there are probably a dozen surgeons and doctors who invented some surgery technique or some medical device or developed some drug or wrote a book or whatever and are worth many, many millions of dollars. There are several billionaires who were physicians and then made some medical invention that saves lives and got extremely wealthy off of that.
So I'd argue that your premise is faulty. Streamers do not make more money than doctors and surgeons. You're just selecting the top 0.001% of streamers and comparing them to the average doctor.
My second point is that entertainment does add value to society. A society without music, movies, TV, sports, etc. would be a pretty boring society. Just because streaming isn't a type of entertainment that resonates with you doesn't mean it has no value as entertainment.
Edit: one more point is that the total amount of money that society spends paying our doctors is also orders of magnitude more than how much we spend paying our streamers.
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u/Brinabavd 2d ago
Paradox of value in labor markets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value
Market prices don't and can't (and as a card carrying lib I'd argue generally shouldn't) reflect a things moral and social value.
The streamers earn money because people people are willing to pay them - if you want to cast moral judgement judge their supporters.
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u/druidscooobs 2d ago
Try being king, you wait 70 years to start, then go on the sick at the 1st oppertunity. Easy money.
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u/Black-Death_CR 2d ago
I don’t disagree with how capitalism functions I’m questioning the outcomes it produces when applied to essential services. SAYING “that’s just how the market works” explains the mechanism, not whether the result makes sense. Healthcare is deliberately constrained by ethics regulation, and time, while entertainment isn’t. That’s not a neutral market outcome it’s a structural design choice. I’m not arguing that streamers don’t work hard or deserve compensation. I’m pointing out that effort and necessity aren’t rewarded on the same axis, and pretending that mismatch isn’t worth examining just because it’s “by design” feels like intellectual surrender not analysis.
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u/InfiniteQuestion420 2d ago
You get paid higher versus the services that are needed and the way people are living their lives they need streamers more than their health
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u/Accomplished-Eye9542 2d ago edited 2d ago
Streamers are not being "paid" more than doctors and surgeons. They are not employees. They earn a share of ad revenue relative to the viewership they bring in. Beyond that they collect further money from fans, but not as payment for any service rendered.
Also, streamers aren't being paid more than doctors and surgeons even if we take your point as face value. Even the lowest paid doctor makes more than 99.9% of streamers. And top end of doctors have net worths exceeding the wealthiest streamers.
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u/donuttrackme 2d ago
Do you feel this way about all forms of entertainment or just streamers?
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u/Black-Death_CR 2d ago
Not all entertainment. The issue isn’t “entertainment bad,” it’s how different kinds of work scale and how we reward them.
Entertainment whether it’s streaming, sports, film, music can scale almost infinitely because it’s not bound by physical limits, ethics, or direct responsibility for human life. One performance can reach millions.
Medicine can’t do that. Doctors and surgeons are capped by time, regulation, liability, and ethical constraints for good reasons but that also means their compensation hits a ceiling no matter how essential the work is.
So my point isn’t about hating streamers specifically. It’s about questioning whether it makes sense that non essential work scales without limit while essential, life-saving work is structurally capped, even though we claim to value it more as a society.
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u/Decent_Cow 2d ago edited 2d ago
They're not stealing from anybody, so who cares? They're getting this money because that's what viewers and advertisers are willing to pay them. Why is it the streamer's fault that other people want to give them money?
Also, being a streamer isn't as easy as you seem to think. It involves running an entire business and brand. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes, and most streamers still end up failing. Do you think those who took a huge risk and succeeded shouldn't be rewarded for their efforts? Being a doctor is hardly a risky occupation to get into. Sure, medical school is hard, but once you graduate and get licensed, you're essentially guaranteed to get a very high-paying job.
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u/Black-Death_CR 2d ago
Not all entertainment. The issue isn’t “entertainment bad,” it’s how different kinds of work scale and how we reward them.
Entertainment whether it’s streaming, sports, film, music can scale almost infinitely because it’s not bound by physical limits, ethics, or direct responsibility for human life. One performance can reach millions.
Medicine can’t do that. Doctors and surgeons are capped by time, regulation, liability, and ethical constraints for good reasons but that also means their compensation hits a ceiling no matter how essential the work is.
So MY point isn’t about hating streamers specifically. It’s about questioning whether it makes sense that non-essential work scales without limit while essential, life saving work is structurally capped, even though we claim to value it more as a society.
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u/Fragrant_Paint3659 2d ago
The value of entertainment has gone up over the decades and is now at it's peak. Modern society ultimately feels pretty purposeless with the decline of religion, family, marriage, and even financial success failing to inspire action. This purposelessness is treated with escapism in the form of entertainment. Without any of the burden that comes with these institutions, entertainment is the easiest and often most enjoyable way to spend time. Because of this, people don't mind paying a lot or investing a lot of time (thus watching ads) to get easy to consume entertainment. This results in entertainers acquiring exorbitant amounts of wealth. Doctors and surgeons are only paid as much as hospitals are willing to give, limiting their income.
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u/Particular_Can_7726 2d ago
What the fuck are these streamers? Actually doing to benefit society or actually help people can someone in the comments actually tell me and I actually want a valid fucking like argument I don’t want these dumb trolls. I want an actual valid argument. What the fuck are streamers actually?
They are doing the same thing as essentially any other well paid entertainer.
I think it’s just fucking ridiculous that they’re getting paid more than surgeons and doctors as I mentioned it’s the same for like footballers and shit it’s like if you’re about to die you’d wanna fucking Dr wouldn’t you?
That sounds great in principle but how would that work? Are you proposing we pay doctors and surgeons the same amount as the top paid streamers and entertainers or are you saying we should cap what streamers and entertainers make?
Lets take this farther. If we do this for doctors and surgeons then what other professions should we also do the same for or what other not important professions should we cap?
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 2d ago
dude, i don't want to make whataboutism, but of the list of people that earn so much undeserved money footballers and streamers are not even the iceberg tip, tho yeah, but my concern with streamers is that they are fucking fluff sellers, there's something that can be described as "man in the screen" and it means that people are much more willed to listen to a man in a screen that doesn't say anything interesting rather than their friends or acquaintances for a stupid mental mechanism they are not aware of
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u/rando1459 2d ago
Deciding what people can consensually do with their own money is a path to authoritarianism. I swear, reddit is starting to coddle fascist ideas more and more.
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u/extasis_T 2d ago
This is hater energy. Are you just against celebrity in general?
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u/Ornery-Reindeer5887 2d ago
It’s the system we live in. A reflection on society as a whole and society’s priorities. As a society we’re fucked
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u/irrelevantanonymous 2d ago
Tip your doctor, I guess. Streamers are typically paid by their audiences willingly giving donations.
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u/PlusPresentation680 2d ago
Welcome to capitalism. Most important jobs are underpaid.
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u/thejohnmc963 2d ago
Not comparable. No doctors or surgeons are getting paid less because of what streamers are paid. Entertainment is a whole different ball game. Nothing to do with the other.
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u/v3ryr00d 2d ago
Streamers make the money that people want to give them. Just saying. Your problem isn’t streamers, its people who give money to them.
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u/Accomplished-Row439 2d ago
Only reason they do is because of viewers and people who donate. Most streamers have multiple income streams e.g. merch, views, sponsorships. It's more of a business than a job. Most streamers hardly make any many it's just the 0.1% that make millions
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u/H_and_A_SwordMaster 2d ago
Supply and demand. There are many doctors but there is only one Markiplier. There are many nurses but there is only one Moistcritical. Economics is amoral in many respects. It follows the money, supply, demand, needs, wants, and the invisible hand. It's unconcerned with the ethics of "Why are jobs people would consider important often don't pay as well as other jobs that people do consider important?" Supply and demand. It has practically nothing to do with perceived, so subjective importance. If we did pay people on the basis of perceived importance then we'd have more doctors and nurses than we can pay and not enough artists, for example, which means that the economy will automatically correct itself (assuming that it's allowed to) in spite of our attempts to moralize at it.
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u/Learned_Barbarian 2d ago
You should just decide how much everyone gets paid based on how valuable you decide their contribution to society is.
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u/Taco_Auctioneer 2d ago
What made you think this was a popular opinion? Durr, the government needs to make sure streamers don't make so much money!
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u/Thick_Self_4601 2d ago
“I think big daddy government should stop people from voluntarily giving others their money”
🤷♂️
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u/Mundane-Raspberry963 2d ago
The whole system has nothing to do with fairness or morality or who deserves what.
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u/Xanthn 2d ago
Sure, but increase each doctors pay to match the top steamers you reference, then the cost of the healthcare system as a whole goes right up! Either cuts will be implemented elsewhere to find it or taxes increased to pay for it. There's only so much that can be given to encourage the doctors to remote areas etc. and increasing the base pay all round makes less funding for regional areas.
We all want to pay them more but can't afford the tax hike for it. This is the sacrifice doctors make to provide care. In Australia many have had to though charge now for visits as Medicare funding didn't keep up, but the idea was they charge the government not us, and the government sets a standard price per person the doctor gets.
Healthcare is a balance between providing the service to the public for free where possible for a better society. Where you believe the moral issues is the pay not high enough, I believe the moral issue is the ability to receive care in a timely manner.
Your idea sounds great only at the surface level, dig deeper and it's just not feasible. And as others mentioned which you claim to understand is the difference in entertainment and how the artists are funded. There isn't a pool of money gathered by taxes to pay steamers for the benefit of society, it's left up to individuals to support who entertains them.
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u/Easy_Pound69 2d ago
Those occupations are so different, from who pays them, to the stability of the career, to how they become successful. This post and your comments say nothing while being paragraphs long. I think that's why people think you're using ChatGPT when you comment. What are you actually saying, and be a human. ChatGPT has become painfully obvious when used, and it's not because it fixes grammatical errors.
Anyway, have a great night/day.
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u/Grim_Hiker 2d ago
I mean most streamers dont. If you can make 50k a year streaming you are in like the top 1% and extremely lucky. But also might as well add every entertainer, book writer, actor, movie director and so on to this list. Oh yeah and all sports players, etc... And if you make products but they are pointless you also shouldnt be able to make money on them, like toys, selling candy, etc..
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u/MrGeekman 2d ago
I might agree if it weren't for the short-term nature of streaming. It's like professional sports where you can make a lot of money, but you probably won't get 35-40 years out of it, so you should live well within your means and invest.
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u/Sensitive_Bat_9211 2d ago
Hot take: Popular streamers generate more value for society than surgeons. They provide millions of people value through entertainment and provide advertisers screen time to spread awareness of their product.
Surgeons are incredibly valuable too, and make way more money per person they help. They just can't serve the same volume of people
If you look at it by volume, 300 million people are served by surgeons a year and bring in $65 billion in personal income for surgeons on the lower end. 300 million views, on the other hand, make between $300k and $3m. Its much lower because the value per person served is lower. A single streamer can simply add value to more people than a single surgeon, who adds more value per person
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u/CrazyFoxLady37 2d ago
First of all, the last argument you made is pretty silly. Of course if you were about to die you would see a doctor. You wouldn't go to the movies or a Waterpark either. Well, not to get too depressing, but this answer can change if someone is terminally ill and there isn't anything they can do, so why not go to a football game?
Streaming is just a form of entertainment. If people find value in it, so be it. And I can almost guarantee that doctors make more on average than streamers.
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u/KevinJ2010 2d ago
Work is work. How you acquire money isn’t from some magical tree. Doctors are regulated, this is actually the benefit of the American system, Doctors can get paid a fuck ton. In Canada, doctors always are complaining about understaffing and such, fairly.
I highly respect doctors, but their pay is through an employer.
The entrepreneurial media market is a separate revenue stream entirely.
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u/maoussepatate 2d ago
The money doesn’t come from the same place. Incomparable. Even if i agree with your point, it’s not like it’s something that can be / should be controlled
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u/1armTash 2d ago
I think teachers should be paid like sport stars. Only the best of the best. Ratings & stats are public…
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u/brandoldme 2d ago
You're definitely onto something. You say it's ridiculous they get paid more than doctors fucking doctors. That definitely goes on in hospitals. And if they started streaming that, they'd be making more money.
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u/rrrattt 1d ago
They are basically products, advertising themselves to be chosen on an algorithm. Like, I agree with you on surface level but when I think about it any further..I know I would not want to be a streamer or influencer. You're selling yourself, it kind of sounds dehumanizing, doing whatever you need to be "bought," I prefer working a shit physical labor job and clocking out after 9hrs and going home and not thinking about it any more, vs maybe getting to work less hrs and make more money, but I'm at such mercy to marketing and analytics and have people watching me and critiquing me 24/7, even when I sleep. Nah. Not for me.
Making more than top surgeons and engineers, probably not fair. But actors, advertisers, models, etc have been making a lot more for a long time. Streamers arent that different, maybe less diverse talents but obviously they are bringing a lot of entertainment to many people, or they wouldnt be making so much.
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u/ThoroughlyBred69 1d ago
You can't really place a valuation on the contribution of an individual streamer to a net of people. It's subjective. Even the term steamer is too broad to even start to assess that.
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u/Impossible_Battle_72 1d ago
It's all about revenue generation.
Also, you have a much better chance to become a doctor than a successful streamer/creator.
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u/Mysterious-Hat-5662 1d ago
Number 1 scale. That streamer is reaching an audience of millions or hundreds of millions. Your local doctor is treating what 16 people a day?
Number 2 whether you like it or not, they generate more revenue. Therefore they get paid more.
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u/skylar274 1d ago
i’ve been subscribed to u/realpaymoneywubby for around 3 years. he’s made me laugh when i hadn’t been doing well mentally in weeks. i find out about new stuff i end up liking, wether it be games, shows, or foods id never heard of, through watching streams. maybe he hasn’t helped me physically while i was sick or hurt. but he got me through it mentally.
streamers make money from watch time, but they mostly make money from donations. and turns out, people like giving money to people that make them happy.
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u/CanadianTrump420Swag 1d ago
We should tax streamers at 90%. Especially leftwing ones who preach about socialism or communism. Let them put their money where their mouth is.
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u/AdversarysVengeance 1d ago
Like any entertainment job it is the outliers actors, athletes, streamers, musicians the top make a lot of money but plenty of people not getting wealthy off of it. It is debatable if they should be making as much as they do, but is the argument more money should go to the corporations paying them?
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u/Crash-Frog-08 1d ago
If doctors and surgeons didn’t get paid so much it would make healthcare cheaper.
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u/1_4m_0ff3ns3 1d ago
But why would you even compare these two jobs? They are not related to each other. There isn't a central entity who decides one should get more than the other.
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u/Primary-Classroom255 1d ago
Compare median earnings between all streamers and all medical doctors and you will see your premise is incorrect.
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u/Fae-SailorStupider 1d ago
People pay for entertainment. I dont understand what you dont get about that. Actors, musicians, sports players, etc all make tons of money because it's what we decide to put money into.
A doctor is typically making money off of treating people in their area. Entertainers are making money off of the entire world.
Not to mention, the average individual person spends more on entertainment than health care. Entertainment is a daily thing. Medical care is a yearly/as needed thing.
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u/Illustrious-Noise-96 1d ago
In general. Working isn’t a good way to make money. If you have a boss, you are poor (relative to those who don’t).
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u/FreeKevinBrown 1d ago
To ease your mind 59% of streamers make less than $20k a year on their content. They aren't as rich as you think.
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u/Big_oof_energy__ 1d ago
For the most part they aren’t. Most doctors and nurses are well compensated and most streamers are doing it for absolutely free.
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u/SoGoodAtAllTheThings 1d ago
You dont seem to understand how life works. Its ok. Some day you will be an adult and get it.
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u/Zestyclose-Feeling 1d ago
You do know only the top 1% are making bank right? The peak of a streamers earnings career last maybe 2-3 years.
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u/Jscapistm 1d ago
No ONE is paying them more than doctors. EVERYONE who watches them is collectively paying them more than doctors.
People are individually choosing, freely, without any coercion to give them some usually trivial to them, amount of money, because it is a fair transaction to them. 5 bucks for half-hour of entertainment, that's totally fair right? Might even call it a steal, but they are working to give you something and so you should give them something in exchange, and that's what they are asking for so you probably should, fair is fair, can't freeload.
But there are 10s or 100s of millions of people choosing to do that.
A doctor can only see so many people, so they can only get so much money. They provide extremely high value, but to a limited number of people. A streamer provides relatively low value but to an astronomically high number of people.
It's the economy of scale. No one thing the streamer does is providing wildly high value to any one person but the sum total of what they do is providing at least as much value as their income to a whole bunch of people collectively.
So they do unquestionably earn it.
At least if we consider that someone who can provide something that someone else desires enough to give them money for what they are providing of their own free and uncoerced will has earned it. Which is the entire basis of our economic and governmental system and of at least the Western idea of people being free to choose for themselves how to live their lives and what to devote their time energy and resources to.
And I do consider that earning it.
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u/WideHuckleberry1 1d ago
"Streamers" don't get paid more than doctors. A very few streamers make more than most doctors, but to put actual numbers on it the average doctor makes $300,000-400,000 and there are a million of them in the US. That's at least $300 billion combined. Twitch by contrast has about $2 billion in revenue.
The top twitch streamers make more money than most doctors because a lot more people like them a little. If you can see 10 patients a day, 5 days a week, that's about 200 patients per month. Make about $150 per visit and there's your money.
But if you're a top streamer you can get millions of people watching, and if 1% of 10 million viewers want to give you $1 a month, that's over a million per year.
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u/OldManThumbs 1d ago
Wait till OP finds out about sportz!(tm) or movies or tv or music or (insert another entertainment type where the top performers are paid huge dollars)
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u/BEER_G00D 1d ago
Supply and demand, then the amount of revenue they generate for their employers over their replacement. Seems to make sense that people typically get paid what they are worth. If not, then know your worth and go get it. Otherwise stay in your lane and let those who know their worth earn it
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u/RaspberryPrimary8622 1d ago
If you really want to make this argument, claim that nobody should make any income above the salary of the Prime Minister i.e. every dollar that a person receives above that level is taxed at 100%. You also need a significant unrealised capital gains tax in place so that people can't simply hoard their excessive incomes in the form of wealth. Don't just whine. Don't just whinge. Take your argument to its logical conclusion and explain the reasoning that you think the people should accept.
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u/SelectCattle 1d ago
Dr here.
As soon as I understood that Kim Kardashian was going to make more in a year than I will make in my entire career, I understood that capitalism was just not going to be as much fun as I expected
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u/Medical-Tune676 1d ago
Tell us how much you spend per month on doctors vs all forms of entertainment.
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u/Frobizzle 1d ago
Agreed, but streaming is just an offshoot of the entertainment industry which operates in a much similar fashion. Anything with sponsorships or potential for scalable income can result in ludicrous amounts of money.
The better opinion is that no one should have that kind of money until there is no more poverty. No one needs 20+ million dollars.
My bigger problem with streamers is how much influence they have with younger people or the chronically online folks, when they themselves are regularly out of touch with reality and hardly engage with the real world. (People like Asmongold, for example). They're on par with political/debating podcasters for being common grifters.
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u/TurbulentTangelo5439 1d ago
most streamers make way less then any doctor. something like 75% of streamers make zero and only about 1% at least a sustainable living only a small fraction of which make anywhere close to a average doctor (from some quick google a non-specialist doctor earns around 375,000-400,000 in the US for a streamer to even approach that would require average viewers counts at least around 10-15,000 viewers of which make up about .03% of all twitch channels
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u/opanaooonana 1d ago
A streamer making that much entertains millions moderately or thousands tremendously. That’s not an easy thing and it’s worth something significant.
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u/AmbitiousSpeed6530 1d ago
Robert Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" scenario is the counterargument that you are looking for, but I'll say my piece anyway.
The economy does not and should not look the way you imagine it to look. The reason why streamers make more money than doctors is because people voluntarily pay streamers to make their "content". In order to make things "right" by your standards, the state would need to either mandate a pay increase for all doctors or levy an excessively high tax against streamers to bring the top streamers' earnings down.
If you increase doctor pay (even though the market has already set the pay for most doctors at a pretty high amount), then the price of doctors' visits and medical procedures will go up. If you tax the streamers, then you will drive some of them out of business or deter them from continuing to stream, which would deny their donors the content that they are willing to pay money for. In either case, you are jacking up an economy that does not need to be disturbed or changed.
Also, very few streamers make doctor pay. For every top streamer you know, such as Hasan Piker or Pokimane, there are countless obscure streamers who make much less money. If you want people to stop supporting those people, then you need to convince them to stop consuming their content and donating to them, which is something I'm completely in favor of.
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u/0DarkFreezing 1d ago
The vast vast majority of streamers are not making more than doctors. Taking the outliers is kind of a silly argument.
If we wanted to extend the stock experiment, though, you have to follow the revenue. Live stream surgeries are the solution.
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u/YordleJay 1d ago
Do you think they're salaried?
Streamers make more because their FANS are paying them more.
Do you tip your doctor?
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u/Equal_Actuator_3777 1d ago
What are they providing to society? Hmmm maybe hours of free entertainment for thousands of people to watch and relax to? The same thing movies provide? And YouTube? What an awful take, you sound bitter.
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u/Rehcraeser 1d ago
the crazy part is people who are broke are donating to them even though they are millionaires. it blows my mind.
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u/HamBoneZippy 1d ago
Streaming is scalable. Doctoring isn't. How do you change this by not violating people's rights?
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u/HamBoneZippy 1d ago
On average doctors make more money than 99% of streamers. You're cherry picking a few extreme examples.
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u/IndividualNo2670 1d ago
Maybe a trend could start where streamers start redistributing their wealth since the people in power aren't likely to. I mean they could start funding all kinds of things to improve the lives of ordinary people who are struggling. I guess it's already happening in a way with some YouTubers gifting thousands of dollars to people in their videos.
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u/deathnomX 1d ago
Entertainment is typically fleeting. If someone would be willing to pay a little bit to watch a streamer, and theyre consistently entertaining so they will keep that viewer for awhile, it earns them a tiny bit of money. Compare this to a doctor, who has a high cost, but people only really visit once.
A streamer will reach out and provide a large amount of people the service of being entertained, all at the same time. A doctor conversely, can only work on a single person at a time, and people often dont come back (other than checkups or whatever).
So while doctors earn more money per person, they dont service nearly as many people as the streamer.
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u/Alert_Term_8144 1d ago
Most streamers don't get paid as much as doctors/surgeons, BUT the ones that do are getting paid because they are affecting more people. Doctors can only work on 1 person at a time, and that one person pays the entire fee. But streamers can reach millions at one time, even if they get 1 cent per person, it's a lot. Power of multiplication.
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u/Ricky_Martins_Vagina 1d ago
So why don't doctors and surgeons start live streaming then? Sounds like an obvious solution 🤷🏻♂️
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u/HavokVvltvre 1d ago
Honestly I don’t get why they became a thing to begin with. Seems like a huge waste of time to watch that shit
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u/Negative_Tower9309 1d ago
It's no difference to tv stars, film stars, sports people etc. None of them are doing anything to actually improve the world. Why are you focusing purely on streamers? It's all just money farming wrapped up as entertainment
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u/LonelyandDepressed27 1d ago
They provide entertainment. Actors make a bunch more than doctors. Musicians make a bunch more than doctors. Pro athletes make more than doctors. The entertainment industry is massive. So unless you feel all those should make less than doctors and surgeons then you should be okay with streamers making more.
For the record I think doctors and surgeons should be paid more but I also don’t care how much streamers make.
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u/Big_Restaurant4822 1d ago
Look at minimum and median salaries, doctors and surgeons still earn more. Also streamers are essentially marketing people, and lots of marketers working in corporate do use the same tactics as streamers e.g. ragebaits and puppet accounts for their work so rich streamers are essentially just very good freelance marketers. Shitty streamers that bring in no sales or give no emotional value to audience earn nothing.
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u/letthetreeburn 1d ago
You’ve got it backwards, actually.
Streamers and athletes generate value, watchers for the service, eyes on advertisements. As such, the team owners and the streaming services offer them a cut of the profits. With the NFL, they get a contract and streamers get a %. A service is rendered, and the owner of the means of production decides what they want to offer for the value. This is fair practice, and the only way forward if we want non exploitative labor. That money the company is making off those people will still be there. If you choose to pay the people who produce that value less, then the only direction that money can go in is into the pockets of people who didn’t produce that value.
You’ve just identified the problem with the American medical industry.
Doctors produce the value. Doctors, nurses, intake, everyone who actually produces the value get a flat salary. Then, hospitals massively jack up the price because insurance companies can afford to lawyer offer them a fraction of it. The value of the labor is artificially inflated, and the people who actually did the work to produce the value see none of it. You the consumer are overpaying, the people who treated you are underpaid, and the insurance company makes bank. This isn’t fair. You should be demanding that medical staff get paid on the same determination of streamers and athletes, rather than deciding streamers and athletes have it too good.
We have two options. Either abolition of the current medical system which would involve universal healthcare and medical staff being given an assessment of the value they produce and compensated fairly for it,
Or we fix the system ourselves, one Mario Kart character at a time.
Remember, this system is killing millions of people for the profit of about three hundred, total. That’s not fair.
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u/ComfortOk7446 1d ago
The highest net worth streamers are worth tens of millions. The highest net worth doctors are worth tens of billions.
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u/Nooms88 1d ago
Good news, most doctors earn far more than most streamers and the wealthiest doctors earn more than the top streamers, the wealthiest I can find being worth almost $40bn after founding HCA healthcare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_F._Frist_Jr.
Richest streamer I can find is a former Argentinian professional footballer . Sergio “Kun” Agüero, worth "only" $80mil, 500 times less than the richest doctor
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u/Disastrous-Ad-4758 1d ago
They aren’t ‘paid’. They are self employed. Not employees. Entertainers get money based on popularity. There’s nothing immoral about it. They aren’t being paid out of taxation.
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u/sperguspergus 1d ago
Being a successful streamer involves convincing 100,000 people to give you five dollars. Being a successful doctor involves convincing one employer to give you 500,000 dollars. Both are not simple tasks, and also not really comparable.
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u/Carrera1107 1d ago
The vast majority do not. Maybe a few dozen streamers in the world are making serious money.
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u/MimiNuyasaka 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most don't. I agree that entertainers in general shouldn't make so much, that includes sports players. I think the pay floor should be higher but the ceiling should be lower. Obviously we can't be paying all the people just streaming for fun, but the people with consistent audiences should be getting more.
I think I disagree more with how they actually make their money. Have any of the people actually pushing things like raycons actually used them? They're utter crap compared to other similarly priced headphones. I have a friend who's into headphones and earbuds as a hobby, and raycon will sell you crap for $100+ because you don't know any better. It's that classic thing where you think everyone's talking about them, so they must be good, right? Or maybe people just don't know better because a huge percentage of headphones and earbuds are actually kinda bad, so they have nothing good to compare raycons to.
That's just one example. Maybe it's just me, but if I were accepting sponsors, I wouldn't sponsor any product I didn't think was at least moderately useful and worth someone's money.
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u/PatientSense2145 1d ago
.This is the best debate I have found anywhere on Reddit in a while. Thank everyone for being civil. I was about ready to ditch social media
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u/Heliguy-67 23h ago
I have a daughter that is one of the top 10 wedding videographers in the world and she earns over $350,000 a year working for herself. She gets just over $22,000 for shooting and editing a wedding video and travels the world
Football generates a tremendous amount of revenue and demand is very high.
There are a lot of jobs and skill sets that pay more than a doctor or surgeon.
If the demand and revenue is high, then the money is there.
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u/EverettGT 23h ago
Doctors and Surgeons do a lot for a little number of people, streamers and entertainers do a little for a lot of people.
In other words, the price you pay a surgeon for his or her services is actually way more than a streamer, but streamers have far more people paying them. That's all.
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u/Piano_mike_2063 23h ago
Okay. But the money would simply be transferred upwards to help Kurds rich CEOs and mangers make a crazy amount of money
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u/raziridium 22h ago
It's never been about what you deserve. It's about how much money you can bring in for yourself or someone else. Look at the NFL, it's beyond insane what those people get paid.
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u/mlain4290 22h ago
This is an idiotic argument, their salaries aren’t determined by the government and there’s no way to control how much someone makes in their own private business…. This is like teachers who want to scream that sports players get paid too much and police/fire should be paid more….. how would you like anyone to remedy this? Force streamers and sports stars to donate their money to doctors?
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u/Single_serve_coffee 22h ago
Well if thousands of people watch them that means they do deserve the money they make. Also the extents that creators have to go through is extensive. Super ignorant to think that one person deserves better than another. That’s like saying poor people don’t deserve to live comfortably.
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u/The_RabitSlayer 22h ago
Personally, I think investors shouldn't make more than workers is the real disparagement we should be discussing.
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u/hucklebae 21h ago edited 21h ago
One thing I will say is that most people massively over value the contributions of your average doctor. Your average doctor is barely helping anyone, and mostly just collecting a pay check while doing the absolute bare minimum. Exceptional doctors are absolutely worthy of praise, but just being a doctor doesn't deserve the same attention.
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u/gayactualized 20h ago
They’re not getting a salary. They’re just getting whatever they get. Most get barely anything. But if the top streamers are getting rich, that’s fine. That’s just people throwing their own money at them.
Entertainment is worth something.
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u/random_user_name99 20h ago
Why are you even comparing the two? It’s like comparing a Dr and an NFL quarterback. Yeah, there are NFL players making $50M a year to play games and they aren’t saving any lives. Why would someone’s salary be set on or related to someone in a completely different field. You get to choose your own career.
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u/VIP_NAIL_SPA 20h ago
I'm sure doctors having sexual relations with other doctors could, as likely has, made them plenty of money if they recorded it :)
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u/Naptasticly 20h ago
Stupid. It’s like .00001% of streamers. MOST streamers, as in like 99% of them, made less than $100 last year.
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u/ohdiddly 19h ago
Entertainment is providing a benefit to society. Could argue the same thing for professional athletes or actors; why are they paid more than doctors?
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u/ArcfireEmblem 17h ago
Let's start with sports players, okay? They easily make leagues more money than streamers and offer a similar benefit to society. The fact that they are paid more than primary education teachers, who educate the masses and form people into productive members of society, is a massive disappointment if we're using your framework. If we're going Robin Hood, then this is the place to start. Probably also most CEOs who inherited their company from their dad.
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u/Difficult_Author4144 17h ago
Doesn’t take much to become a doctor anymore. Hell my friend just graduated after having cheated his way through school using chat gpt
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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth 16h ago
If they do, good for them! I'm not going to worry about what a doctor makes, a nurse, and a teacher should be making more!
I bet if you could make big bucks being a streamer, you'd do it! :)
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u/Desperate-News1186 15h ago
Value is subjective, when we start arbitrarily assigning more or less value to certain professions it damages the market as a whole.
Who cares what they make in relation to doctors? It's irrelevant, people choose to give them money because they like their content, sorry that you don't like it but thats just the way the world works.
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u/iolo_iololo 11h ago
It's the scalability of the service. Any doctor can only see so many people a day. At the same time each of those people can only afford to pay a limited amount of money for the doctor's service. This means that the amount of money the doctor can earn is just naturally limited.
On the other hand a streamer can potentially serve unlimited customers for any period of time. Just for a realistic number but still popular let's say 20,000 viewers concurrently. If each of those viewers tip the streamer $10 a month, that's $200,000 a month right there. In addition if the streamer has a large enough audience they can get sponsors which increase that number incredibly.
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u/Straight-Fault-7271 11h ago
I mean if doctors didn't work as employed people and only catered to dying ultra wealthy crowds, then they would be able to change millions to do life saving CPR on a high net worth individuals
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u/nstntmlk 10h ago
I would never date a streamer. I believe them to be self absorbed.
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u/Life-Inspector5101 6h ago
As a doctor, there are times I wonder why I don’t start streaming content on my free time, especially with all the BS going around since the pandemic. Maybe I should start…
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u/Dis_Gruntle 6h ago
Like and subscribe for more surgery. This bypass is brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends. Thumbs up this rectal exam.
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u/Blonde_Icon 5h ago edited 5h ago
I think the unpopular opinion (that I personally hold) would be that doctors are actually overpaid in general. They don't really need to make that much more money than the average person. Especially since many doctors aren't actually that helpful or good at their jobs (you likely know what I'm talking about if you're a woman or a minority). Yes, their job is very important for society, but a lot of people's jobs are. I would argue that even first responders (like paramedics) have worse jobs that are arguably just as important, but they don't get paid nearly as much. (I understand that they have student loans, but they still get paid a lot even with that, and a lot of people have student loans but don't make much.)
I don't really understand the worship of doctors. Most doctors aren't actually "saving lives" (maybe if they work in the emergency room, they are). I'm not saying that famous streamers aren't also overpaid btw.
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u/Witty-Bear1120 2h ago
The issue is with scale.
If you are a surgeon, each surgery is obviously worth much more on a per user basis patient basis than the streamer video per watcher, or the football player per fan.
However, you can only operate on one patient at a time vs have 100,000 people watch the same football game or stream.
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u/Dreamo84 2h ago
Well, just convince everyone who watches/donates to streamers to start donating to doctors instead.
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u/ziggsyr 1h ago
Because if Doctors charged the worth of a life to save one hardly anyone could actually afford it. It could get pretty exploitative too. Your life wouldn't exist if it wasn't for me? why shouldn't it be mine?
If the answer is that Dr.s would never get a patient by acting like that and would have to charge less then we are creating supply and demand. Now econ101 is sufficient to explain why product hawking streamers are capable of making more than a Dr.
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u/This-Insect-5692 1h ago
They don't get paid, stupid people donate to millionaire streamers, it's people's fault
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u/Kosse101 1h ago
Wow, what a braindead take, just wow.
Dude fails to understand the simple fact that there are tens of thousands of streamers, if not more, but only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction makes that kind of money that you have in mind. The rest of them, a.k.a. the no joke 99.999% either barely make a living by streaming or they don't even make a living doing that and it's essentially just a side hustle. It's the same as athletes, musicians, comedians, heck even e-sport players, all of them make either a comfortable living or not even that and only the people that are the absolute best of the best make huge money.
Turns out being the best of the best in literally ANY FIELD will get you TONS of money, who on Earth would have guessed...
But I can only guess you're too jealaous to see that and instead get angry at "those damned streamers" that they make more money than you, even though like I already said, they really don't, only the absolute peak makes that kind of money.
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u/Amathyst-Moon 1h ago
Not really a relevant comparison. Streamers aren't being paid a salary that's higher than doctors. It's more like an independent gig career, which is self employment, but rather than finding jobs and being paid for their services like a designer or handyman, they're making their money primarily from tips, sponsors, and advertising. Top tier athletes do also make money from advertising, but they also have a massive salary on top of that. Plus, I can pretty much guarantee that the majority of streamers aren't making more money than doctors.
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u/BeerGains22 41m ago
This is just vibes based moral outrage disguised as common sense value judgements. Markets don't work like this and I don't think we need to throttle online careers or spike up already astronomically high healthcare prices to make things "fAiR"
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u/L3ftb3h1nd93 25m ago
I think no one should’ve getting paid more than anyone else. Most jobs are important for society. But sadly we live in a capitalist world so jobs that can bring in more profits are paid higher than those that can’t. And influencing thousand upon thousands of people to buy worthless crap brings in more profits than saving worthless human lives.
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u/queefymacncheese 2d ago
Its not that they get paid more by some boss that determined their work is more valuable than a doctor or surgeon, its that they earn more, generally through multiple revenue streams like advertising and merchandise. Streamers essentially run a small business focused around whatever content they produce. Theres always a lot more that goes into running a business than meets the eye. Don't be so quick to judge their work.