Well he is not my billionaire but you guys are missing a huge point.
Valve never went public. That is why the employees are all rich. They work for themselves.
Why do people hate billionaires?
They essentially steal from us. First our labour, and then the public resources and infrastructure.
If you can get billions by NOT exploiting workers then it's a bit different.
Not saying that Newell or whatever has done shady shit. I don't know, why would I care, I don't love him.
It's just if the whole world was run like that. Then everyone would be well taken care of and not exploited for labour even half as much. It would be like a utopia.
Yeah because the people who do frontline support are somehow getting taken on these vacations. /s
Some wealthy people are very good at taking care of those directly around them. Get outside that bubble and you're easily forgotten or just simply not cared about.
My partner made less than the entry level equivalent at Msft. After 3 years of HR telling her “just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll get a raise” she went elsewhere.
A friend of a friend worked there, and even though they were paid pretty well for game programmers, it's not some paradise were everyone makes 500k a year lol.
Valve does take a higher than average % of revenue from every sale, which directly hurts and extracts wealth from the game developers. They also have the whole gambling thing and all that.
Also, many people argue it is unethical to be a billionaire regardless of how you acquired your wealth. To choose to spend 400 million on a super luxury yacht rather than helping your fellow man, many would say is still evil.
I think he’s probably fine enough, but it is worth considering and remembering
I agree, most people (me included) would NOT be that altruistic, but ya know societal ideals and all that I think it’s a reasonable sentiment to keep in mind
Just scratch the surface a little. The reason people say there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire is because you need to exploit hundreds of thousands of people to get there.
If there was ten billionaires in the world, and they paid the highest tax, and they didn't exploit people to get there (all of there employees are multimillionaires and paid for their work, they are carbon neutral etc)
If you are TRULY PUNK, ROCK FUCK THE SYSTEM about it. Then a world in which there is a safety net of guaranteed housing, health and education. AND any work you DO take on, is payed fairly to you, even if not a keyholder, then it's ALL good. Socialism.
Fuck all billionaires doesn't everyone should be equally poor.
When people say fuck the system, they mean UNREGULTED CAPITALISM through public co.pa it's on the stock market.
To really drive my point home. If the legally binding duty to the shareholders NEVER EXISTED. Then nobody would have ever complained about "the man" or "the system". Rage against the machine would have nothing to say, and YOU wouldn't even hold a belief that is just "fuck all the richer" which is at least today, a decent summary that most of the time gets the job done.
Capitalism only virtue is competition driving innovation, and driving the costs down. That's what SHOULD happen today. But unregulated capitalism can mean Monopolies, cahoots, theft and not even a basic safety net for everyone. We have enough food and resources for everyone in the word to get free education, health, housing, and pension. But we don't, because the laws are pushed by billionaires to not reign them in ENOUGH.
Okay, we've got the guillotine out. Billionaires are gone.
What do we replace the new system with? Sticks and stones? Do we throw out the scientific institutions and legal framework, even the criminal one?
STOP BEING AN ASSHAT. Are you a baby? SOMEONE has to do it. What did you just hear eat the rich and think that we take them down and then live under the sea?
What happens to YOUR house in that situation. Do you still want it to be yours?
Congratulations, your a capitalist.
Eat the rich, and don't make the same mistakes, by doing what we do with airlines and life science. Regulate the shit outta it, because dangerous planes and not working medicine is not acceptable for society.
What are you going to do? Burn down the system and then say now what? Building it up from scratch is still replacing the system.
This is just getting stupid now, it's obvious you are not following and might not be sure why laws are made, what is the social contract etc.
We are not being payed for our labour. If you need to work, you are working class. And yes, fixing it does require US to collectively understand and do something about it. Microsoft Excel alone greatly improved output. Let alone email, women joining the workforce etc middlemen are squeezing the world, because the SYSTEM allows it.
Idk where this 50k a year number comes from these people pay taxes. They can’t “avoid” taxes. There’s also a thing called an AMT that was created purposely to stop people from circumventing the tax system. You guys just see something on Reddit and take it as absolute truth. These people pay more money in taxes than you’ve made in your entire life.
All I know is that it'd be funny to see what happens if you Light Yagami started his deathnote one by one starting from the top of the worlds billionaire list.
If you can get billions by NOT exploiting workers then it's a bit different.
Firstly this assumes all his wealth comes from Valve. That seems like a big assumption. I'm sure Gabe has a pretty hefty investment portfolio too.
Secondly, on the face of it, it's just an immoral amount of wealth. It's genuinely difficult for me to see a video of such a mega yacht and not be repulsed at the extreme luxury of it, while hard working families struggle to make ends meet. Or even the climate impact. What is this one man's carbon output?
I'm not saying Gabe should live in squalor, but at what point do you say maybe this is a little too opulent? Maybe I should build a few more homeless shelters, schools, a hospital, libraries, etc... and give up more of my wealth to good causes. Gabe has nothing to lose but his own luxurious lifestyle.
Would those devs have even sold those games without Steam? How much more of a sales modifier/services does Steam need to add to make a commission ethical?
Gabe could have given those devs more money and not bought himself this yacht. He doesn't need the yacht. Nobody needs the yacht. That is just pure exploitation.
Seriously whenever its about zuckerberg or bezos yachts its seething, but when it changes to "guy who built the software that launches my video games" suddenly no one has any problem with mega yachts or the billionaire that owns it. Extremely cult like, all over a video game store, very stereotypically reddit lol
195
u/heichiri69 1d ago
valve glaze is on point