• peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      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.