Dolly Parton: An American Success Story

Speaker 2

I'm Phil Magnus, the economist.

Speaker 1

extended their deepest condolences to the family, friends, and fans of Dolly Parton, a hero of the working class and an inspiration to us all. Donald Trump said very sad to report that Dolly Parton, one of the greatest country singers and far beyond ever, has just passed away. This is a true loss for millions of people. There's never been anyone like her and never will. In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States For a one week period, beginning tonight at six p.m. Rest in peace, Dolly. The world loves you, President Donald Trump. And even the Communist Party USA had great things to say about Dolly Parton. The Communist Party USA mourns the loss of Dolly Parton, a working class woman who is known not only for her remarkable musical contributions, but also for who she was as a person. And they go on and on and on to honor her, eventually ending by saying the working class has lost one of its brightest and boldest. Sorry I didn't check in earlier. How how are you holding up?

Speaker 2

I'm holding up all right. ⁓ I mean, you know, she was a country music icon, and I don't think there's any denying that. But she's also ⁓ Dolly Parton was also an entrepreneur throughout her career, which kind of makes it ⁓ ironic that the communists and socialists are weighing in to claim her as one of their own, especially in the sense I don't think someone like Dolly Parton could have thrived in the Soviet Union or under the socialist economic systems that a lot of these people are trying to wrap her legacy around.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's what it makes me wonder, you know, are these legitimate eulogies or, you know, just kind of capitalizing on a celebrity loss because the socialists and the and the communists, they seem to be leaving out a lot about Dolly Parton. And I think you you brought up a good point because when I think of America, I think of Dolly Parton, you know, not only the part she played in popular culture with music and acting, but also She has a real rags to Rich's story that seems like something quintessentially American and only possible in America. I think like like you said, you know, which is ironic considering the love from the lefties.

Speaker 2

Right, right. You know, so D Dolly Parton's career arc is someone who came from basically nothing. She was born in a a little cabin in the hills of Tennessee, ⁓ Appalachian Mountains, lived in extreme poverty and that whole region was, especially when she was growing up. This is right after World War Two. ⁓ I think she ⁓ had a ⁓ a one room house with twelve children in it, all of her siblings. Parents were not wealthy by any means. They're tenant farmers. They're ⁓ basically working on subsistence. ⁓ what they grow, they eat. ⁓ her dad sh reportedly like didn't even know how to read or write. And yet here's someone that comes from that background and builds an entire media empire, entertainment empire, musical empire out of it. You know, at the end of her life, she's very well off. She's ⁓ quite the opposite of this like Forever suppressed proletariat. ⁓ quite the contrary to the DSA ⁓ or the Marxist narrative of the capital owners always keeping the worker down. ⁓ you know, here's someone that comes from a a very deep working class background and makes something of it, ⁓ makes a contribution to broader society that people like and appreciate and are willing to pay money for.

Speaker 1

I think that's the key. You have a person like Dolly Parton that people are willing to pay money for, and obviously because she's great at everything that she did. I mean, from music to movies. And one of my favorite things about when a celebrity person passes away, which sounds terrible just coming out of my mouth. Let let let me just say this. The only thing that I enjoy when a celebrity passes away, or at least a beloved celebrity, is when people start sharing all of the Clips and examples of their work, and you really start to see, like, ⁓ this makes so much sense. There's an obvious reason why, you know, this woman, for you know, the better part of her life, I mean, she passed away when she was 80 years old, why she had such a a long career. It's because she was great at so many things. And one of the many things that she was great at was business. And I think we could learn a lot about Dolly Parton when it comes to business and capitalism. And something that I found really interesting was she kept her publishing rights. to the songs that she wrote, or at least a lot of them, where you always hear these like horror stories of all these really successful recording artists who they were given a contract, they didn't read it over, they definitely didn't have a lawyer read it over. They signed on the dotted line and then years later they've missed out on millions and millions of dollars in in royalties. And it seems like Dolly Parton had a great head on her shoulders and said, No, you know what, I'm actually going to own the publishing rights. Right.

Speaker 2

And she didn't just ⁓ sit there and rely on like an early hit in her career to sustain her either. ⁓ you know, Dolly Parton is an entrepreneur in many respects. ⁓ she starts out as like ⁓ singing religious music, ⁓ and and starts to actually even appeared on the scene as a child, as a ⁓ a young performer. I think her first performances are like age six or seven at the local church. And she parlays that into a singing and Performance career, ⁓ parlays that into an acting career, ⁓ moves from that into a business career, eventually like opens up a theme park even in ⁓ in Tennessee. And ⁓ by the end of her life, you know, she's not just a singer. She's a singer, she's a businesswoman, entrepreneur, actress, ⁓ theme park magnate, ⁓ owns multiple different components of a performance industry that ⁓ ⁓ i i she's quite the opposite of like the Marxist version of a capitalist is someone who just s sits there and rests on their laurels and correct collects the ⁓ rentier proceeds of the capital that they own. ⁓ Dolly Parton never really stopped working.

Speaker 1

I also find it interesting too, you hear about kind of her enigmatic husband who she was married to for sixty years and he passed away. And as far as what he did, he was nowhere in the spotlight. He wasn't a singer, he wasn't a performer. ⁓

Speaker 2

Earlier this year. Kind of a normal person and and normal and unusual for celebrities. She remained ⁓ you know, they remained in a ha what seems like a a very happy marriage for decades.

Speaker 1

And and I do wonder like how much of the, you know, business acumen that she had was shared, you know, with her husband. Or her husband, you know, having to like run a business and have a

Speaker 2

You see this in part of the message of some of her music and ⁓ some of her performance. ⁓ there's a real emphasis on, you know, pull yourself up from your bootstraps, ⁓ be thankful for what you do have, even in extreme poverty. ⁓ make something of yourself. Quite the opposite of ⁓ let's go look for a handout from somebody else, or ⁓ my plight, ⁓ the plight of Appalachia ⁓ is because of somebody else's fault. It's because of free trade or the Chinese or it you know, all the usual litany of excuses that people make today when they're seeking some sort of policy solution. You don't find that in Dolly Parton. It's more a message of be thankful for what you have and do something with it.

Speaker 1

One of things that she did with what she had was she created a theme park. Yes. Called Dollywood. Have you have you been to Dollywood? Have not

Speaker 2

Been to Dollywood. I've been to ⁓ Savir County, Tennessee, driving through there. ⁓ so I've seen kind of the economic scene that has built up around it. And this is really interesting as a story, you know, it's outside of Knoxville, off of the ⁓ the main interstate there, and it's kind of like a redneck Disney World. you know, it's like Orlando where you get Disney World and then all these other things start cropping up around it. ⁓ well, this used to be a very, very impoverished part of the country. ⁓ is mountainous, it's not great for growing crops. It was kind of the ⁓ part of Tennessee that if you were not the rich landowner, ⁓ you lived in a cabin on the hills. And this goes back all the way to the founding. This was like the land that nobody wanted in ⁓ the the late 1700s when it's being settled. Scenically beautiful because you're in the smoky mountains. ⁓ but other than that, you know, w what is there to do with it? Well, ⁓ up until Basically the mid-20th century, this is a very poor region of the state of Tennessee, poor region of the country. But you have someone like Dolly Parton, who's a local there, ⁓ you know, home hometown hero, comes back and invests in her entertainment empire by building a theme park and they had musical show reviews and all sorts of stuff like that. And it creates a local economy around it. All these other businesses move in. And, you know, right next to her theme park, you're attracting vacationers now that want to come. ⁓ ride the roller coasters and go to Dollywood, well, the ⁓ ice cream shop and the ⁓ the the go-karts and the mini golf and all of that just pops up. And if you drive through ⁓ you know, ⁓ Severe County, Tennessee today versus what it looked like in probably nineteen fifty, it's just a complete transformation of the local economy from ⁓ poor impoverished hills to ⁓ entertainment mega complex, capitalism, ⁓ On full public display everywhere. ⁓ outlet malls, ⁓ entertainment venues, shows, musicals, theme parks. My favorite, you can go ⁓ like if you're into ⁓ shooting and hunting and that sort of stuff, again, because I said it's kind of like a a redneck Disney World, ⁓ you know, you can go to the mic the knife factory, ⁓ you can tour the distillery, you can do all the fun adult things, as well as having the kids ride the go-karts.

Speaker 1

Are you allowed to ride the go karts with ⁓ firearms? That would be something you'd put it all together.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, I I saw like a a viral YouTube video the other day and it was this guy at the shooting range riding on a a a riding lawnmower and he had invented a sport of, you know, charging the targets on the lawnmower and shooting at them. ⁓ so maybe there's something in there. Like to see that in the Olympics one day.

Speaker 1

You know, I do wonder like, you know, which parts of Dolly's business journey would have been made impossible by DSA policies. You know, it's like I'm imagining a world where the DSA has all the say in the world. They're just like, Sorry kids, no Dollywood for you. You know, it wasn't approved by the government. Well

Speaker 2

We can look to historical examples of socialist societies. You know, the first thing I'll point to is the theme park. Dollywood is a private venture theme park ⁓ that built a recreation economy, a tourism economy around it. ⁓ it looked to socialist societies, you know, we're talking Eastern Europe during the Soviet era, the Soviet Union itself. You know, more recent examples, no one goes to Venezuela for their theme park.

Speaker 1

It's a theme park trying to get out of Venezuela. Right.

Speaker 2

But but we actually know many examples from ⁓ from history. ⁓ you know, i if you want to Google something interesting, go down a rabbit hole, look up the theme park industry of the Soviet Union. ⁓ first off, it i it really isn't so much theme parks in the sense that there's no private capital coming in here and saying, hey, ⁓ this this is something that people would like to do on their weekends, go ride the amusement parks. ⁓ there are all these government controlled and created entities that were Supposed to inculcate like the model socialist citizen by giving them a recreation facility. ⁓ this was like, ⁓ you're the worker, you are working for the benefit of our perfect socialist utopian society. Therefore, we are going to reward you by putting a recreation park to celebrate the proletarian ideal. And that means you get to go like ride on a rusty merry-go-round or something. and the most famous example of this was actually ⁓ probably never used. It's called the ⁓ the Pripyat Amusement Park and it's located right next to Chernobyl. So and it's like this fascinating story because 1986, you know, the Chernobyl nuclear accident that ⁓ the Soviet Union covered up, ⁓ right before that accident happened, ⁓ in the in the little neighboring town where all the workers in the in the nuclear plant worked, ⁓ they were building this like workers' paradise amusement park.

Speaker 1

Ha ha.

Speaker 2

That was supposed to be their reward for being good model Soviet citizens. And you see it in all the videos of like the abandoned Chernobyl. There's ⁓ like the merry go around in the Ferris wheel that's rusting and and just kind of hanging there in i in the background and it looks like a a zombie apocalypse dystopia. But ⁓ the Pripyat amusement park, ⁓ it never really opened because it was scheduled to be like the May Day, the Labor Day celebration on May first of nineteen eighty-six. And the workers were supposed to be like paraded in there and shown that hey, you you've done a good job for the power of the Soviet state by keeping this nuclear plant operational. Well, then the accident happens a couple days before the meltdown is in late April. And the you know, the story was that they kind of distracted people that there's all this radiation spewing everywhere. And so, well, just wait a couple of days. You're gonna be rewarded by getting to go into Pripyw in Adventureland and ride the rusty merry-go-round. ⁓ meanwhile, you're being ghosed with lethal rate radiation. it never really comes to fruition. It's a centrally planned amusement park, all connected to this notion of cultivating the proletarian sense of ⁓ of collective unity. And the thing is not only just a joke, it's now like a a zombie apocalypse wasteland ⁓ behind this mismanaged, terrible nuclear accident.

Speaker 1

The podcast is just audio, so you guys can't see or hear that my mouth has been a gape the whole time. Phil has been describing this post apocalyptic theme park. ⁓ man. I you know, w what i what are even the figures that they use? Like who are the beloved, you know, child figurines and stuff? Is the big head of Lennon kind of like on every ride? I mean

Speaker 2

Well and you joke on this, but all over the former Soviet ⁓ holdings in East Europe, ⁓ today now they have like these ⁓ Communist Times Remembrance Park. It's almost like a Holocaust memorial where they've gathered up all the Stalin and Linen statues that were installed and forced upon them ⁓ by the Soviet Union when it was essentially occupying them, and they make like these ⁓ these parks out of them with these busted down statues. Of ⁓ Marx and Engels and Stalin and Lenin and all these ⁓ horrific communist figures. And like you you go there as a place of mourning. ⁓ I think in the in the Czech Republic is one of the more famous ones, but ⁓ these ⁓ statue gardens of all the relics left over from what was supposed to be the Soviet public spaces of entertainment. And that's the other thing about the Soviet theme park industry. First off, the rides are are, if they even exist, they're really crappy, you know. ⁓ but but but more so they were trying to create like these aesthetic places to where the model socialist citizen would go to ⁓ engage in recreation in the approved way. ⁓ you know, this is not recreation where you choose to get to do what you do. It's ⁓ this is your reward for being a ⁓ a good proletariat who cares about the health and of the Soviet state and ⁓ ⁓ strikes into their labor with a vengeance and ⁓ props up the motherland. It's like, well, your reward is we'll build you ⁓ kind of a weird dystopian park and you get to go use that over the weekend.

Speaker 1

I mean, a Ferris wheel as a Christmas bonus sounds really good on paper.

Speaker 2

It does. But but not when it's being blasted with with nuclear radiation. Yeah.

Speaker 1

Nuclear radiation, or I'm just imagining like the poor bastard who's like stuck all the way at the top and everybody running for their lives. Yeah. One of the ridiculous things about the DSA and the communists praising Dolly Parton is that when you look at old, you know, Soviet film, when you look at fashion, the theme parks, there is so little joy. It's just so unfun, which is just the complete opposite of Dolly Parton. And America. Yeah. You think of like California surfers and rock and roll and when you think about the ⁓ Soviet, I don't know, there's like no no joy. Everyone's kind of a soldier. It's all ⁓

Speaker 2

It's all discipline and and and planning. You know, this and this is the mentality in the Soviet system, it's the mentality in socialism in general. It's we build a a park, a recreation ground for you because our plan has deemed this a part of the cog and the wheel of maximizing production for our society. It's like, well, ⁓ we we want you to meet your industrial outputs, therefore. ⁓ our formula prescribes that on every Saturday you get six hours of recreation at the approved local park. ⁓ and this is true of a authoritarian societies in general. ⁓ so the Nazis did this in Germany. They built like state run cruise ships that were supposed to be I say cruise ship very, very lightly, ⁓ they were supposed to be these recreation facilities for the good Nazi workers. ⁓ they and their families got to go on a holiday on an approved trip around the Baltic Sea or something. But it it was all like the state managed way of signaling that because you are working on behalf of the collective good, your reward is that we plan, we built into the plan a recreational facility for you. Now contrast that with capitalism, contrast that with the free world, ⁓ not whether it's Dollywood or Disneyland or Universal Studios or any of these theme parks. It's not like Walt Disney is sitting there saying, Hey, I I I have a five year plan to to boost American industrial production and we're going to ⁓ give them their recreation. He's saying, No, wait a minute, here's a niche in a market I can fill. I can create something where there previously was not an industry essentially in the theme park. ⁓ sector. He he's like an entrepreneur on that. Dolly Parton's the same way. So Sevierville pigeonforged that whole region of Tennessee. It's the backwoods, it's the hills, it's a ⁓ very impoverished part of the country. And suddenly it's turned into well, you know, she recognizes, hey, this is actually a beautiful part of the country. What if we make this a place where people want to come and vacation? ⁓ she was the entrepreneur in the sense she saw something that other people previously did not and says, Well, this is an opportunity. I'm not planning their six hours of recreation time on Saturday. I am saying I'm going to build something because I think people would like this and they would pay money to go to it and attend it. And they become a vacation destination as a result of it. And that vacation destination attracts even further industry and attracts new tourist opportunities. You can go see the Titanic exhibit in ⁓ Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, ⁓ of all places. Why? Because they built that museum there to capitalize on the tourist industry, not because somebody announced this is the central plan. ⁓ we have deemed that the Titanic artifacts need to go there.

Speaker 1

So I guess in short, in a world where DSA runs things, you don't get Dollywood. You don't get a lot of stuff that makes people very happy. And I don't think you get Dolly Parton's song Nine to Five or the movie. The song, you know, seems to have been used as kind of like a a labor market anthem. But, you know, what let's talk about it, you know, in light of Labor Day. What about the nine to five? How did we get here? Yeah.

Speaker 2

Right. what turns you know in nine to five it's a huge commercial success. So the celebration of of not work for working toward the central plan, but work with dignity in it. Even even though it's like deprecating, you know, some of the hard realities of a a job, hard realities of you know being on the grind of the job. That's the message of the song, yet it turns into this great commercial success. ⁓ so there's the irony. You know, one of the things you see in in socialist societies is they often have music as a point of escape from the totalitarian conditions, the grind. And there are all these famous examples of well-known Russian composers that are using that as their outlet, ⁓ their composition as their outlet. They've been ordered by the Soviet propaganda min ministry. So ⁓ Sergei Prokofiev, very famous Russian composer in the early 20th century. He actually died right around the same time as Stalin and they suppressed news of his Death because everyone had to be honoring Stalin. ⁓ but he was basically ordered to ⁓ make compositions for these Soviet propaganda movies that they were doing, the Soviet film industry. But that becomes his outlet. So you these beautiful ⁓ orchestral compositions that are like the soundtrack of clearly state-directed Soviet film that emerges there. Well, you you don't have that in capitalism. Like the the composition emerges ⁓ organically. ⁓ it's not the escape, it's the centerpiece itself. So ⁓ w whereas like Soviet films you these wonderful compositions that are now performed only because they're orchestral and everyone's forgotten about the film, versus you have something like nine to five. It's it's it's a major part of the inner the entertainment package itself. It helps parlay Dolly Parton. Over into acting, into ⁓ becoming an entertainer on that side as well as just a singer. and she has a huge career on that. Multiple films she's in, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and she always said the ⁓ and that's where the the the famous I will always love you song ballad comes out of ⁓ a performance from that. Well before it goes on to become this huge international hit. It's it's built into and kind of complementing a very broad. Capitalistic entertainment employees.

Speaker 1

So it's Labor Day, it's a celebration, people have off from work. It seems that Labor Day has always been a celebration of the left. Is the left taking too much credit for work for nine to five?

Speaker 2

I think so. You know, there's always an attempt to politicize Labor Day, and it kind of emerges differently in the United States than the rest of the world. Labor Day, you know, as I mentioned, it was supposed to be the the opening day of that Chernobyl Pripyat Adventure Park was supposed to be May Day, May 1st, ⁓ nineteen eighty-six. ⁓ so in other parts of the world, Labor Day is is celebrated at the beginning of ⁓ the summer season. You know, you're you're ⁓ it's right when Everything is thawed out. ⁓ it's kind of the peak of spring. Here in the United States, we celebrate Labor Day. It's the very tail end of summer, beginning of fall. ⁓ I think that's a n first off, that's a natural point in the calendar to have ⁓ a holiday of some sort. You know, the kids are about to go back to school. This is the point when the semester starts. It's it's also the point that the summer heat usually starts to break around then. It's kind of the last hurrah of summer before you go into a ⁓ different part of the year. And I I think there's Something natural to that that you'd have a holiday anyway. We call it Labor Day 'cause it kind of goes back to the Industrial Revolution era, the notion that there needed to be a recognition day celebration of the factory workers. And oftentimes like the early versions of this, it meant that the factory workers would go take a picnic together. ⁓ you get the day off and you go ⁓ bring your families to the factory picnic. Or sometimes it was an excursion where they'd charter a boat out on Lake Michigan or something if they're for all the ⁓ the factories around Chicago where a lot of this movement starts. So it kind of emerges in the United States as its own version of the holiday, not associated with the much more political May Day, which kind of becomes a ⁓ a socialist ⁓ left-wing overt demonstration ⁓ oriented holiday.

Speaker 1

Day. Yeah, I'm preparing myself to see posts about like, you know, thank your local, you know, socialists for weekends. Which I find funny because I'm like, I don't know, I go out on weekends. There seems to be a lot of people who work weekends. Yeah. Myself included. And, you know, you know, thank your local union member. And it's funny to hear that in light of say, for example, the the UAW, the United Auto Worker Unions, who apparently twenty five percent of them are college professors. Right. Hey man, changes happen and sometimes they don't make any sense to me and they're a lot funnier than ⁓ than anything else.

Speaker 2

Right. One thing college professors are good at they they like to cosplay as beleaguered proletariats. You know, the ⁓ this is the ⁓ the old Frederick Hyatt quote that ⁓ socialism is never and nowhere a working class movement. ⁓ it always originates from the intellectuals, ⁓ and these tend to be ⁓ you know like the dilettante offspring of wealthy people. ⁓ and this because all the way back to, you know, two communists themselves, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both had well to do parents that were probably upper middle class or in angle's case his dad was rich, ⁓ owned a bunch of factories, and spent like most of his life saying, ⁓ hey Freddie, ⁓ I want you to go manage my ⁓ my cotton textile mill in in England. ⁓ you don't have a job, you don't do anything. This'll be good for you. Go manage the mill for me. ⁓ learn to work ⁓ do something with your life. And and and a what Engels ends up doing instead is he just takes the proceeds from ⁓ his father's textile mill, becomes well off, becomes wealthy himself, and uses it to subsidize Karl Marx to be a a a couch surfer.

Speaker 1

Which is a terrible, terrible use of money. As opposed to the great Dolly Parton, who did wonderful works with philanthropy. And one of the things that people are highlighting is her Imagination Library program, which has mailed hundreds of millions of books to young people. And I saw a post saying how, you know, this is proof that private libraries can work. And ⁓ yeah, sure, sure they could work. But more than that, it just seemed like, wow, here's a person who I trust a lot more with her money than I do the government. I think the the amount of money that she put, you know, into sending those books and getting them into the hands of children, I think is much better spent than sending that money to some bureaucrat who then has to create a study and then they need more money to create more and more studies and seeing what should we do with this book, which book should we have, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2

It's private civil society. And and I think in Dolly Parton's case, her family story coming from ⁓ a father who could not read. This makes ⁓ literacy all that much more appreciated. Contrast that with like a ⁓ a local bureaucrat who views the public library as a vehicle to promote their political agenda. ⁓ yeah, you know, to get the sixteen nineteen project into the hands of the ⁓ of the youth, not because people want that, but because they think, We're we're choosing what you need to read. ⁓ I'm I'm not gonna knock libraries in general. In fact, I I think they're generally enjoyable to be in and go to, but public libraries often have this reputation. It's kind of like the the place where all the homeless people hang out. Yeah. ⁓ they're often decrepit old brutalist style Soviet era buildings. ⁓ they smell kind of musty. The carpet hasn't been replaced since nineteen eighty-six. ⁓ And yet they get gobs of money thrown at them from the public sector. Whereas Dolly Parton, here's a civil society response, a successful entrepreneur. There's a long history of this. Andrew Carnegie was famous for building private libraries. He took his steel fortune and he started to endow all these small town libraries around the country as kind of his philanthropy wing. ⁓ you don't need the government to do that. So there's an interesting story. to be told there that the private sector steps in and provides these things that ⁓ at least in the socialist model they say ⁓ would would never exist but for ⁓ the government.

Speaker 1

I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place with more Dolly Partons in it. I think we were lucky enough to have one and ⁓ while she was here, it was a good time. Yeah. Yeah. And if you listen this far, you must be having a good time. Make sure to check us out next week for a whole new episode of Happy Hour Econ. Hopefully by then we don't lose another great celebrity.