Am I just deceived? I think I might love him?
He has 6 yachts from kiddie gambling…
A billionaire who gives away 99% of their wealth to the poorest, first and exclusively, isn’t a billionaire, and still has enough money (maybe more!) for the rest of time.
In my opinion if anyone has billions of dollars and hasn’t given a majority of it away to charity or those in need, that person is on some level at least somewhat an evil person.
Sure, much of it would be tied up in stocks and stuff that legally can’t be sold for specific purposes or timeframes, but if you have net worth in the billions and any stocks that could be sold for cash and then donated it should be. Or if you have an annual income that’s much more than you need to live an extremely comfortable life and then you just spend and invest the excess instead of donate.
Give him the ability to divest his wealth first.
“Billionaire” is a convenient modern buzzword. It used to be “millionaire”. The classic joke from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil demands money is a good example. It’s just inflation.
Plus, a lot of “billionaires” are only considers such because they own shares in their corporations. It’s a “theoretically if they could find a way to sell all of those shares at the current price without tanking the market value of those shares in the process, they could get $X billion from that”.
If there were a theoretical global revolution, on of the the first steps of eating the rich is to seize and nationalize those businesses. Later, land reform will seize the extra mansions they own. They will still be left with adequate personal property to live quite comfortably. Finally, the justice system will need to evaluate what labor laws (or other laws) they may have been violating for years and using their wealth to get away with.
Start with the biggest fish and watch as the rest start to downsize voluntarily and cut deals to avoid jail.
I don’t expect to see any of this in my lifetime. Not in any major country, and certainly not globally.
If it were to be a revolution he would be given the chance. Just be a director of valve for a normal director salary. If he take it then he would be just another worker.
Just universal wealth redistribution, there is no way a human may ever deserve to accumulate so many resources…
Offer him the option to transition Valve to a workers cooperative. Boom, he would no longer be a billionaire.
There is no such thing as a good billionaire. There are billionaires who might be temporarily aligned with you but make no mistake, none of them will love you back…
Love your wallet though
There is a finite amount of money in this world. For one person to have more means others have less. There is no going around that simple fact.
I personally don’t like the idea of murder, I’d if we-the-people get into power, just pass laws that taxes them, then enforce the law as such. If they resist, jailtime for tax evasion.
For those that are exceedingly cruel with their time as a billionaire, they get tried, judged by a jury of average people, 2/3 is a conviction (as opposed to the unanimity required now), life imprisonment.
Billionaires and their heirs are deprived of political rights.
Easy peaceful transition. Zero bloodshed
I don’t like bloodshed, because once that starts, once we “okay” mob killings, people are gonna attack anyone they don’t like, including small bussiness owners they had a grudge against in the past.
I have empathy, I don’t wanna see the streets filled with blood.
Yeah I don’t think we can force billionaires to do anything without some violence. Have you seen the world and how long the rich have been in power?
I have no problem with people who contribute a lot of value to society being proportionally rewarded. However, having a net worth in the billions is just plain ludicrous, especially since the billionaires aren’t the ones creating all the value, they’re just controlling it. For example, did Gabe invent everything that makes Valve as successful as it is, or was most of it designed and developed by engineers who are paid a fraction of what he is paid? Even if most of Valve’s IP started with Gabe and other engineers were doing the grunt work to “make it so”, that still shouldn’t mean that society allows this one man to control billions worth of our societal resources.
If I am not mistaken, Steam is one of the highest paid companies in the world, if not the. Perhaps still not fair relative to contribution, yet exemplary compared to the rest.
I do believe that Gabe is one of the better/more benevolent winners of an inherently unfair and now definitely broken system.
That means that gamers have been ripped off for decades.
Valve encourages and keeps the system broken just as much as Microsoft or Nintendo does. They all try really hard not to compete.
They do have high salaries, but it’s also a ridiculously small company for the money they make. Gaben is still making money hand over fist, and the employees making big money are all on the admin team.
Steam could charge a 5% fee and give the rest to developers. The services and salaries would still stay the same. It would give Gaben enough money to cover his billion dollar boats fleets maintenance cost, just not enough to buy himself a new yacht every two years.
steam charges the industry standard…if they lowered it, and their market share naturally increased even further they would be even more open to some kind of anti-monopoly lawsuit (which are very often put forward by less effective companies, who just want the monopoly themselves. ie. Epic)
Every company in a soft monopoly charges the industry standard, that is how soft monopolies work.
They all stop charging what it’s worth and pick a number together that equals maximum profits.
No, they wouldn’t.
Anti-trust law exists to prevent companies from overcharging consumers, something they can do when they don’t have competition.
Valve keeping their prices far higher than costs is something that can open them up to anti-trust scrutiny. Competitively lowering their prices while still maintaining profitability cannot, as that is the exact goal of anti-trust laws in the first place.
It’s also fucking wild that gamers hate Tim Sweeney so much. What has he used his fortune to do? Build a reasonably priced and powerful third party game engine that makes it easy for indie developers to build games, spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to break up Apple and Google’s walled garden 30% bullshit, launched a PC store to try and do the same with Steam, and bought tens of thousands of acres of US land to preserve for nature conservation. Oh what a moustache twirling monster!
look into the history of anti-trust laws actual application across US history, just like everything else around our government…it’s a tool for whoever holds power to either ratfuck funds or otherwise manipulate markets, for personal gain/at the direction of some other company.
sweeney is on record as saying he just wants the monopoly for himself, and engages in far more manipulative/anticonsumer behavior than steam does, like buying exclusivity deals
some monopolies form because all the competition is just incompetent
It doesn’t matter how the monopoly forms, Gaben is still one of the rat fucks profiting from it. He wouldn’t have been able to spend a billion dollars on boats if he wasn’t.
Whatever arguments you think you have, ask yourself first if they apply to Musk or Bezos. They probably do.
We don’t have to eat them all, but we do have to take their money.
Valve gives you a taste of gambling.
Every billionaire out there has become a billionaire by being a fucking idiot. No exceptions.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/valves-reported-profit-per-head-from-steam-commissions-is-out-there-and-at-usd3-5-million-per-employee-it-makes-apple-and-facebook-look-like-a-lemonade-stand/As far as I know Valve isn’t one of those companies that employes a hundred thousand minimum-wage slaves, but one that’s gotten big, by actually innovating, which is like the only potentially good aspect of capitalism and seems to not be something most corporations do anymore. Of course were this question to ever become relevant he would have to give up most of his wealth, but it’s not like he is one of those billionaires that eat babies for breakfast.
Valve innovated a package manager, a store, strict DRM, and gambling / third party cosmetic markets.
Very recently they built the Proton compatibility layer.
The worst thing he does that we know of seems to be trying to collect the fastest iteration of every type of vehicle.
Well no. Valve is involved in a lot of actual gambling with csgo etc. How they are ignoring and willfully profiting from all of the skin casinos etc. is my biggest problem with them. Despite that they are still one of the best big companies i know of.
They allow gambling clutches pearls next you’ll tell me they don’t drug test their employees!
And they purposely target kids with addictive loot crate mechanics and look the otherway while loot/skins are sold on 3rd party sites.
Maybe GabeN really needs a 7th yacht but maybe he’s just a greedy bastard who wants all the money.
Same bullshit people use to ban things “for the children” counter strike is not targeted at children, why should Valve prevent people from selling their skins on 3rd party sites?
Freedom is bad because children? Porn should be banned because children, flavored cigs should be banned because children, flavored alcohol should be banned because children.
Such a stupid argument
Edit: To be clear, I don’t like lootboxes and do not play games that use them, I also am not a fan of alcohol or cigs and acknowledge they cause harm, however I see it as a freedom issue, just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I should decide what others can do with their body within reason. “Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins” children are just an excuse to censor things that parents can’t be bothered to stop themselves.
I understand and don’t necessarily disagree with any of that but let’s not pretend GabeN is anything other than another greedy billionaire.
His actions seem to indicate he is in fact not the same as other billionaires
And collusion with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
He charges 30% like the rest of them, he isn’t trying to compete.
