this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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That doesn't even have to be the case. It could continue operating to make profit, it's just that Gabe shouldn't be made a billionaire on its back, it should be distributed more fairly to workers of Valve.
"He could always be worse" is in no way an excuse for being bad. He could stop being a billionaire (or not become one in the first place), and still "do what he loves". If he is doing it for the love of it, then the money shouldn't matter, anyway.
This is beating a dead horse and talking in circles. We know it's not USD paper currency sitting in a safe, and yet nothing changes when you talk about what it actually is. As far as the point about "more money than is needed", how can you possibly not think that billions of dollars is "more money than is needed"? I'm not even going to speculate how you think someone "needs" that amount of money.
It's not the simplest thing we've ever had to deal with, but it's also not nearly as complex as you're implying. It's certainly not so complex that we shouldn't make attempts. Somehow taxing already impoverished people is braindead-simple, yet taxing people with absurd amounts of wealth becomes some very complex issue. If we get it wrong by going "too hard" initially, they aren't going to be destroyed; the amount of wealth they have is enough to not be crippled by that, and we can course-correct however we see fit. Waiting until there's some perfect solution laid out on the table before making any attempt to address the issue only does a disservice to the needy, and greatly benefits the wealthy. Standing by idly works in their favor, not ours.
In general, your entire comment reads as flaky defense of the ultra-wealthy. You aren't hardline defending their right to be disgustingly wealthy, but you are parroting their lies that would have you believe that attempting to change the status quo would be a bad thing for the average person.
I didn’t say that billionaires don’t have enough money, in fact I said the opposite if you reread however it was poorly worded from me. Gabe Newell is a billionaire off the back of Valve in the sense that he owns Valve which is a billion dollar company. Our views will differ and that’s obviously ok, but really Valve is the best example for my POV because it’s a company with lots of profit and a very small staff which means it can much more easily pay its staff a more than reasonable salary for their work. You can obviously argue that valve’s profits should be distributed more among the employees but this really comes down to the fundamental difference between Socialism and Capitalism and is something more than I am capable of arguing against since I do not have a postgraduate degree in Economics.
I personally prefer the Capitalistic view of whoever puts up the most risk gets the most reward if they succeed. How well this is done in practise is a very different matter, the government should definitely let business fail more often than they do [with the exception of the G-SIBs].
But I definitely believe that we should be looking to an increasingly socialist system as technology advances and jobs become less available.
I really appreciate your response to my comment and whole heartedly thank you for sharing your views on the matter :)