/siberia/ - Off-topic

>even entertaining the idea of the "ethics (or lack thereof) of being a billionaire" in the first place
<greed
midwit thread

> These people are inherently bad.
This is pure moralism. Individuals with that much money typically hold most of their assets in property, which makes them porkies. Not inherently evil by nature, but simply a different social class with interests that diverge from those of ordinary working people.

>>726935
Yeah no shit, that's how it works. Even if they were ethical, they'd still be billionaires and thus part of the ruling class.
>>726937
Technically true, but since evil is subjective I can still call them evil. Just like being a twat is subjective so I can call anyone who corrects everything people say with the Marxish version of what they just said.

What about Gabe Newell?
As far as I know he hasn't done anything super evil with his wealth. And his company seems pretty not evil to me

>>727412

steam moderators are pretty corrupt pieces of shit

focusing on the morality of individual capitalists is the most unmarxist thing in the world.

>>727427
They made proton tho

>>727412
bro got so addicted to buying luxury yachts that it ended up cheaper for him to just buy the manufacturer

>>726935
you might as well have walked into this site for communists and said "capitalism is bad" why did it need to be pointed out

>>726935
>People always bring up these people to say that there are ethical billionaires but that’s not true, these people are inherently bad by grasping to that amount of money. Yes George Lucas made some good movies, yes LeBron James is good at basketball, and no Taylor swift is not a good musician but that still doesn’t exonerate the greed of these people.
They didn't do these things in order to become billionaires. The stupid system rewarded them exorbitatntly for their skills contributing to entertainment slop. You're also missing the point, they didn't become billionaires by being good at making movies or playing ball or singing. They became billionaires through intellectual property shenanigans. Lucas has most of his fortune due to selling Star Wars to Disney plus getting the merchandise rights. James sells his likeness also for merchandise and advertising. Swift also got rich from royalties off her songs, having ensured she kept the rights instead of selling them to a studio.

These three people are also respectively pretty much at the top of their field in terms of financial success and marketability (the exception is that Lucas is second to Steven Spielberg). For directors, athletes, and musicians the vast vast vast majority never make it to the status of capitalist let alone billionaire.

even if the bourgeois were "ethical" why the FUCK would the proletariat care? what a dumbass thread

>>727412
GabeN lucked out by having Half Life be a huge success despite tons of trouble in production (1 and 2) and being the first mover on digital distribution of PC games. He is closer to a landlord than a capitalist because almost all of the wealth at Valve is effectively rent collected from steam sales. This is also a big part of why Valve is an oddball among large corpos instead of riddling their product with microtransactions and shit. They got there first and nobody has managed to make a storefront and game service that comes close to threatening their position so they can just sit fat and happy and maybe make a game once every ten years. They're also not publicly traded which is much more conservative for a corporation than usual and allows them to act according to what Gabe or his employees want instead of being dog walked by shareholders. The degree to which the internal politics live up to the dream of horizontalism they espouse is probably pretty small though based on what insiders have said.

The new push into hardware might change things but at this point they have so much money and influence it will probably not be that much bigger than the existing hardware they've put out.

>>727460
>He is closer to a landlord than a capitalist
………

>>727412
He was one of the first promoters of AI slop.
Valve had a partnership with OpenAI back when they were nobodies.