I don't believe you. I believe you're earnest, I just also believe you're wrong. If you grew up in a modern industrialized nation with luxuries like plumbing, sub millimeter precision engineering, electricity, internet - are you suggesting we tear those things down because others don't have access to them? 'Cause if no, I have news for ya, buddy - by the standards of history, you're exceedingly rich. You wouldn't understand though because all rich people are evil, obviously. 🙄

Thank you for your reply. I like it more than @wylinka@szmer.info's. Sorry for the delay - turns out living in a MAGA hellscape sometimes hurts your friends and family, who coulda guessed? 🤔😅 Got busy helping friends and decided that's more important than arguing with strangers.

It is fundamentally immoral to have such wealth.

I'm unconvinced by this argument. I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is more of an armchair philosophy discussion than a justification to kill someone. Capitalism, by its nature, concentrates wealth. It "picks winners" as a function of its structure. Murdering rich people, while cathartic, is treating the symptom and not the cause.

I believe, in today's environment, once we start murdering people, it'll be hard to stop. All the evil people in ICE will quietly switch hats because murdering rich people is more viscerally satisfying than murdering immigrants (but they'll take what they can get, amiright? 🙄). From there - the concept of "billionaires" becomes fuzzy - a billion is an arbitrary number. Especially fuzzy if the dollar continues to weaken as the international fiat currency.

Secondly, you can NOT obtain such wealth without abusing others.

I can get behind this as a principal, but it's still incredibly weak. Can you prove that it's not possible to fairly gain that much wealth without abuse? That sounds like a statement of faith to me, and it relies on luck having some mystical upper bound that in practice has never been shown to exist.

On a more practical level - is GabeN really the poster child you want for this principle? How he made his money is pretty simple: he makes a 30% cut of every Steam sale and he made a bunch selling hats in TF2. Sure, we can quibble on if 30% is too high or not - but it's not really backroom wheeling and dealing. There's nothing particularly shady here. Or rather, if this is the hill you want to murder on, you'll have to bring more evidence.

Similarly, how he uses his money matters - Tim Apple and Microslop are marching us into a tech powered surveillance state. Mr Newell has used his influence to encourage people to use Linux and every product he releases is the most open available. Pop quiz: Name some Nintendo exclusive titles. Playstation? Xbox? Cool. Name some Steam exclusives. Much shorter list. But it is a markedly better track record than many others. As a businessman, he seems to embody the philosophy of 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. Does this make him a saint? I don't know. But it also doesn't make me eager to throw the guy to the wolves.

Third. Fuck his predatory gambling that feeds off the addicts and kids

Ya know what? Fuck this guy. I believe I said, "and if you can cite one, I'll support ya". This is absolutely one of his largest evils. I would not mind organizing around removing gambling's influence in the economy and Gabe's hands are absolutely bloody in this. Not for his TF2 hats (I mean, they don't help his case) - but for all the other lootbox crap Steam definitely makes it's cut on. If such a mob shows up at his door and Gabe can't appease them, I wouldn't lose much sleep over it. I might privately suspect that if such a murderous coalition were to start to coalesce, GabeN would likely be a smart cookie and would course correct their business - but if such remedy failed to materialize in time to save his life, I wouldn't lose much sleep.

I am more concerned about what types of murderous mobs I unleash on the world. "Kill all Billionaires" makes a protest potest poster, but as a policy is ripe for abuse. The first things that will happen is many clever rich people will cleverly hide their riches better (not all, but enough of them will do well enough to effectively escape justice in this life), moreso, many clever billionaires will use their influence to set up other billionaires, which turns the whole apparatus back into a tool for the rich.

Anyways, thanks for listening. Would love to know your thoughts.