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this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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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.
Look I love Gabe as much as anyone but nobody earns a billion dollars
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.
Pure greed
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.
I mean incentivizing them to invest it into things like public works and other beneficial things, but I also expect that that would go about as well as the current tax incentives do. It would be the thing that requires the least effort possible from the government, though, which I think makes it the most likely to actually occur. Actually taxing them more is pretty much a pipe dream.
This is misinformation. It takes 2 years proof of income to buy a house a bank bets you can afford. Billionaires have more flexibility, access and leverage than this with finances.
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.
Yeah it's like a sickness. They're hoarders, but they hoard wealth. If I had over a billion dollars, I would literally not be able to give it away fast enough (I would leave myself with a cool $10 mil).
Which is one reason why I'll never be one.
Are you presenting him as an example of a good billionaire? Cause still, nah.
It was not my intention, I edited my comment to make it clearer.
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.
To be a billionaire you need to be a dirt bag, it's that simple.
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.
imo nothing is obvious about gabe. very little is known about him. we see what he wants us to see, nothing more.
We see how he runs Valve and how he interacts with customers. Both are pretty different to every other company. How many billionaires can you email to get help with low level account issues?
Oh fuck off dude, the guy is a billionaire that means anyone who makes a purchase on Steam is paying more than the games are worth because there's a fucking leech at the top who wants to buy a seventh yacht.
Where we at now...30% and probably climbing? Ugh.
They take their 30% cut, then the publisher takes another cut with another billionaire's salary taken into consideration and then.......
He's greedy as fuck leech no argument.
But the dirt bag billionaires are the ones who it comes out allowed for a culture of fear, have sexual assault charges against them, power hungry manipulative fucks, etc. and I don't see that coming out about Gabe.
They're all dirtbags, the reason why people like you and me can barely afford to live comfortably is because of all the billionaires and multimillionaires. Just because they propose a nice product doesn't mean they're not responsible for much more harm than good.
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
He is Gaben from steam. The picture is used a lot in article headers.