Edit: I’m using him as an example of an other billionaire who is constantly defended even though he owns 6 mega yatchs and a few submarines costing him an estimated 75 to 100 million a year just in maintenance. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Especially when steam could have a sliding scale for fees where developers with fewer sales could earn more profit from the sale which would greatly benefit the indie developers.
Instead it has the opposite structure where fees decrease as you sell many millions in revenue which has the opposite effect.
And the perfect counterpart is another rotund fuzzy tech guy, Steve Wozniak. The Woz, who isn’t a billionaire in part because when Steve Jobs decided to fuck over a bunch of Apple employees before the IPO Woz gave them some of his shares. Woz, who spends his time in part video chatting with elementary school classes and talking to them about technology.
To be fair
He did get the steam deck made, so that was kinda cool.
But maybe owning 6 yachts is a little less cool.
Unless the sub and boats were like research vessels he funds, that would be cool
But they aren’t.
Why can’t billionaires dump their money into funding scientific research? It’s not like there aren’t scientists out there with plenty of research to be done.
Or even maybe wherever he lives, he could like, fund the entire county school districts for the rest of existence and no one would have to worry about taxes.
Or maybe regularly cancel the medical debt of Valve employees and their families.
Like how fucking hard is it to redistribute your own wealth?
Like fucking Christ, that’s the part I don’t understand. They complain about taxes and shit at the top, but they do absolutely fuck all to make things better for large swaths of people. Or if they do, it’s after they die and $200m gets donated to a university and it prevents next year’s tuition from increasing.
I think part of it is the form that that wealth exists in. Not defending billionaires in any way, but they don’t have stacks of cash lying around. The way that they live is that their money is in various forms of equity that passively increase in value, like stocks and houses, which they take loans against in order to pay for things. Then, they take out more loans to pay off the previous and repeat until they die and the debt disappears due to legal loopholes.
Stuff like the yachts and all the other crazy expensive stuff is one thing, but to redistribute the wealth, it’s not as simple as handing out cash to everybody (and I think turning all their mansions into subsidized housing instead of selling them would be more beneficial anyway).
I think incentivizing them to do more useful things with that cash and disincentivize them from simply hoarding it in various forms would be a decent short-term solution to the issue without having to put in much effort on the government’s part, but I never expect to see that happen.
If they can leverage banks, and do all sorts of shit with their money (and debt) to make more money, then they can find ways to use it to benefit others.
Incentivizing giving it away is what we do now by providing tax benefits. We have seen the limitations of that.
It is really hard to comprehend, seriously.
A guess I’ll venture is that the vast swaths of money are essential to retain influence, perhaps. The game stops being about money and starts being about power, and you lose your seat at the table unless you’re just hoarding stupid ridiculous amounts of money like the rest of the players.
I dunno, I used to think they do it because they’re terrified of slipping into having to actually work for a living instead of just making other people execute their maybe-good ideas. But that feels too simplistic for the uber rich, maybe it’s like that for the “petit-bourgoise” but not the mega-corp titans.
But yeah, they just couldn’t possibly spend themselves to a lower social class at this point, so there’s gotta be some weird motive at play. It boggles the rational mind. Like are Gaben’s 6 yahts “necessary” to wield influence at convenient locations and woo other industry titans? Dunno.
In any case, it’s stupid and wrong, I just wanna understand it.
Are you presenting him as an example of a good billionaire? Cause still, nah.
Guarantee we’re going to find out he’s a real dirt bag after everything is said and done he just keeps a tight circle.
I doubt it. It’s obvious from looking at Gabe that he hasn’t really changed who is he from before he made his money.
And his ethics at work with a flat hierarchy don’t scream over involved shitty boss.
Mind you by virtue of having all that money, he isn’t good, but I don’t think he is bad either.
who the fuck is he and why does everyone know him by face?
i feel morally superior to all of yall who are star gazing all the time, fuck, why do you all know who he is
