- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Suddenly this makes way more sense
I can hear this picture
The only condition under which I wouid ever consider getting a neural implant, is if the implant and its software is open source.
Any closed source thing you stick in your brain will ultimately doom you.
Besides that, there’d also actually have to be a purpose. As it stands now, cybernetics isn’t advanced enough to turn me into a full cyborg, so probably never in my lifetime.
I don’t think it’s expected that the average person will be jumping at the opportunity to tinker with their neurons. The first line of people to get such implants will almost certainly be people with physical disabilities.
Regarding closed source ultimately being a net negative to your well being, I think you’re absolutely right. Unfortunately with as niche as a product like this will be for some time, I worry any corporation willing to put forward the funding isn’t going to be willing to open it up to such a degree.
While true regarding open source vs closed course. The risks are quite large for patients. For example, a few years ago there was a company called Second Sight that made artificial eyes so blind people could partially see again. Then the company discontinued the product and now they are stuck with an unsupported surgically implanted device that they rely heavily on but can break any time. It’s pretty risky to have something implanted if you don’t know if the company will be around in a decade or so.
All these brain chips will primarily, initially, be for crippled people. Maybe a controller chip to control prosthetic arms, or something to let a paraplegic person control a computer.
It’s still fun to hear the man himself talking about a larger than life virtual reality.
The tech still scares me, I’m not even sure I’d be okay with EEG-like patches that work both ways (scifi, I know), not to mention brain surgery, for pure decadence. But the quality of life benefits really can be huge for many, and that really got my fantasy going, once I ‘accepted’ we figured out the limits and safeties of bodily autonomy.
Will we also get a control valve back on our heads?
Yes, but it belongs to Gaben. Don’t touch it.
HL3 is going to be launched with Valve’s brain chip.
They don’t even have to make the game. The chip will convince you that you have already played the game and it’s the best game ever.
HL3 is going to be launched with Valve’s brain chip.
The headcrabs feel like headcrabs!
So, to all the people freaking out and saying this is as bad as Musk and Neuralink:
There is here zero mention of things like ‘being able to take a phone call’ or ‘bluetooth your brain directly into a keyboard or mouse or other people’s brains’ as Musk was saying.
This seems very much intended to be aimed at legitimate medical conditions.
They didn’t steal the PhD work of an actual pioneer in the development of medical brain implants via poaching a number of grad students who worked with him (which is what happened with Neuralink, btw), they are instead partnering with basically a nonprofit cooperative of the world’s foremost experts on nanoelectronics development, who have an established track record of developing various medical devices.
…
If news comes out about GabeN electrocuting monkeys and pigs to either death, or insanity/brain damage so extreme it causes them to kill themselves to escape the pain (again, this literally happened at Neuralink), then I will absolutely do a 180 heel pivot and condemn the fuck out of that.
Just to be clear here, a BCI is probably the very last thing I would ever be an early adopter of as some kind of commercial, general use product. Seems absolutely insane given the rampant cybersecurity problems just basically everywhere all the time, not to mention I just don’t like the idea of an actual chip in my actual brain, permanent holes in my skull.
Valve and GabeN are not some paragons of virtue, they basically invented (and still widely use and encourage) half of the monetization and dark pattern bullshit that is now everywhere in the entire games industry.
… But to me at least, this seems nowhere near as openly, comically, real world supervillain levels of evil as Elon and Neuralink.
I think we all know where this is going.
- The Brainchip is trendy in Silicon Valley but doesn’t do much yet. The company says cyber-superintelligence will be available in a year, tops. Investors are pouring billions into it. Everyone says you need to hop on the trend now or you’ll be obsolete in six months.
- It’s been two years. The Brainchip still struggles to control a mouse or search Google. Everyone’s lost interest in building apps for it. Many users are reporting severe migraines, but the company says there’s nothing to worry about.
- The Brainchip pipes three unskippable ads directly to your optic nerve every time you go to the bathroom. Notifications ping your brain all day long. You can get it removed if you’ve got $80k to burn, but there’s a high risk of postoperative stroke.
Yeah, no, I’m not putting anything in my brain that isn’t open-source from end to end. And even then probably nah.
the only way, and I mean the ONLY way I’ll put hardware in my brain is if I have resurrection level support like in Altered Carbon.
the fear of losing my outward identity over the ability to live forever is worth losing.
You still won’t be able to live forever.
I wonder how often you have to back up in case you need a reboot.
Why so pessimistic? With any luck brainchips will mean the end of annoying adverts once and for all. You’ll just feel an unexpected desire to acquire certain products. And maybe crippling headaches or a nauseating feeling of unease if you ignore these urges
this isn’t for you, you’re not a paraplegic, are you?
The article does not mention paraplegia.
Why does it have to? All current bci’s are designed for the disabled, why would this one be an exception?
So rich people can make money on the hype and sale of a new product to the masses?
you know, like literally everything?
that’s where regulators step in, do you honestly believe elon musk would not be implanting healthy people with neuralinks if regulators would allow? They won’t, this is tech for people whose lives are so awful that not having one is worse than the things that may go wrong, for a very, very long time.
I didn’t think an old nazi with 32 felonies would be the leader of the free world, I’ve been surprised a few times in my life but nothing really does it anymore.
Can you say your statement could hold up against 50 years of future trends? Transhumanism? Fanatics who want it so bad that they make it law?
For that matter, who’s regulating Ai right now?
No, it won’t hold up for 50 years, but if you don’t want one don’t get it?
The Brainchip is trendy in Silicon Valley but doesn’t do much yet.
These guys would beg to differ:
https://thedebrief.org/neuralinks-first-human-trials-mark-one-year-of-control-through-telepathy/
I know the internet lives the guy but no. Just no.
Some people are starting to wake up to the fact that the guy is just another libertarian billionaire, he just happens to be in charge of a company that made a product people love enough to give them monopolistic powers.
Edit: these people aren’t in this thread
Edit 2: first edit was from when the votes on that comment were at -8, happy to see that for once one of my comments on this subject ends up in the positives
You’re not wrong, the downvoters are just sad because you are right. Just takes one personality shift from Gabe to turn him from beloved figurehead to shitty billionaire and being reminded of that sucks.
“one personality shift”
That’s everyone dude. “Bernie Sanders is one personality shift away from being a Maga tech bro.”
Entirely correct. That’s why we shouldn’t put anyone on a pedestal.
Sanders doesn’t have control over (probably) thousands of the games you “own” or, if we’re honest, the PC gaming market as a whole.
If you just pay attention more than the average person you quickly realize that he’s already a shitty billionaire.
Steam underage gambling profits him directly.
He owns a yacht collection while his clients can’t afford to own the place they live in. How’s that for an environmental impact?
His reaction to George Floyd’s murder wasn’t that Valve should release a statement as he considered that problematic (source), instead he gave each employee 10k to spend however they felt like. Where I used to work we used to call that a “shut the fuck up”. Employees are complaining about something? Here’s 10k each for them to shut the fuck up. Hell, they could spend that money to finance far right groups if they wanted, Newell didn’t care!
Women employees with managerial positions at Valve? What women employees?
Valve takes a 30% cut but Newell is a billionaire, which means they could afford to take a much smaller cut, he could have hundreds of millions instead and the devs could have more money in their pockets.
I always get shat on for saying they do unregulated gambling, including to minors
People be really defending Valve
I think being on a tech community instead of the gaming ones helps
Eh, probably. They always state how competitors do this and that, and all the good Valve brought with Steam.
Which is true, but they’re blinded by this. Google also brought a lot of good, and bad.
People be really defending Valve
They defend Microsoft and Windows for the same reason. It’s their beloved gaming platform
Pretty sure Musk has had a significant shift. Not saying he started out as a nice normal guy, but something cracked for sure.
We also spend dramatically more now as well and are on an unsustainable path according to the Fed.
People want more spending and less taxes though, as its human nature.
I think despite the claims that Gabe is a Libertarian, first spread by some blogger named Yanis V(?), are floating around the internet: he rarely makes a political statement but did endorse Joe Biden over Trump lending to the idea that he is NOT some sort of anarcho-syndicalist Republican-lite.
It’s been known for quite a while now. Even reddit gets annoyed with the guy.
I even got to downvote that back then!
I’m not even sure if it’s love. When something is all you’ve known, you just view everything else as strange and inferior. When you have so many games and have had so many experiences on Steam, the cognitive dissonance of accepting that Valve is quite problematic could be hard to bear. Knowing that everybody around you praises Steam, with many turning to rage or even harassment when they see competitors like Epic, the fear of being ostracized and ending up in the same position as those competitors is also a strong factor at play.
As someone losing control of their hands and enjoys playing video games, I very much look forward to this technology not only being available via Elon Musk.
The use of the fingers is covered under our monthly plan of $49.99
If you would like thumbs included, that is covered under our premium plan of $499.99 a day.
And I see that but a game developer is not the right type of business to develop these kind of extremely intrusive and potentially dangerous accessibility devices. We need much stricter guidelines and oversight for this kind of tech before they essentially become a remote control for parts of our brain.
The fact that most people would obviously never want to get a brain chip implant, combined with the fact that multiple billionaires are developing brain chip implants, indicates that there are plans in some circles to incentivize or coerce people into getting a brain chip implant at some point in the future.
It’s risk/reward. If brain chips made me twice as productive or intelligent, I’d probably tolerate a lot more risk than if it was just a way to check my Instagram notifications without pulling out my phone.
Productive or intelligent for whose benefit? If it’s so that you can perform better under wage labor conditions, that’s coercion.
I am self-employed. So myself, I guess.
Well then hell yea, it’s likely you won’t be coerced into it’s use. Though sticking to my original prediction, that means you won’t be the demographic it gets marketed to or pushed upon.
I suspect you are all too right.
Medicine in the US is very expensive. There is a lot of money in helping with neurological conditions or paralysis.
What if you were going to die but you could live indefinitely if you got the implant? Would an incentive like that interest you?
So like the black mirror episode Common People
Why would a brain implant allow me to live indefinitely?
I would explain it to you - but you would need the brain implant to understand the context completely. Are you interested in getting the implant now?* :)
* (Post may or may not be sponsored by the brain implant company™)
No.
They’ve existed for awhile for people with certain disabilities and further advancements in the field would be great for the people who actually need them, but outside of that niche most people would likely not want to risk a highly invasive surgery and I don’t think they actually care about them.
If they could make them small / sensitive enough to make them subdermal, without the risky brainsurgery, that would be an absolute gamechanger and would increase acceptance by a lot. if the process would be like getting a few piercings under local anesthesia, it would make servicing the hardware much less of a life and death decision, and i wouldn’t mind getting something like that - especially if it’s on the hackability scale of a steam deck lol
TIL Valve is into brain chips.
The Valve Deckard was a little more ambitious than had been originally anticipated.
To be fair, I think it’s specifically Gabe who’s been obsessed with brain computer interfaces for the past many years. Obviously it’s his company, so Valve by extension participates.
Makes sense, as you get older you get more and more disgusted by the weakness of your flesh, and tend to crave the certainty of steel.
As far as I can see the company behind it (Starfish Neuroscience) is not affiliated with Valve in any way? (Aside from having the same CEO)
And Newell is Valve because it’s his private company
Headlines you didn’t expect to read. Rather a Gabe chip than at Musk chip for sure
how about both of them fuck off and stop shoving their proprietary tech in our heads, just a thought
Valve did contribute quite a bit to OSS iirc
oh sorry just open up my asshole then
I’m not sure that that’s the optimal route to the brain. I’m not a brain doctor though, for all I know suppository-style brain chips are the way to go.
Is there an open source equivalent then?
i don’t know, but for any possible positive use for it, the only legal way must be open source, or else we’re in deus ex territory.
i know fuckwits like elon cannot see past aesthetics so they think it’s cool but brain chips are as close to the Torment Nexus as we can possibly get.
The reality of funding is probably going to mean that open source is off the table.
I’m with you, Elon Musk is a life lesson into why key services such as internet or brain computer interfaces should not be in the hands on the few. Path seems set unfortunately as too much money is on the table.
this is the same thing, publicly owned, publicly funded.
make no mistake, with all the tax cuts and incentives and wage theft involved, these are also already publicly funded.
He’ll only be able to make the first prototype, and then a second. He will never make it to 3.
By then he should be able to pass the tech off to a smaller, independent contractor like Gearbox (please don’t; I don’t want Randy in my brain) or Obsidian.
He’ll make a few versions:
- Brain Chip
- Brain Chip Army
- Brain Chip Police
- Brain Chip 2
- Brain Chip 2 Coastal Vacation
- Brain Chip 2.1
- Brain Chip 2.2
- Brain Chip 2 VR
Will never make it to 3 though.
“Now, if you’re part of Control Group Kepler-Seven, we implanted a tiny microchip about the size of a postcard into your skull. Most likely you’ve forgotten it’s even there, but if it starts vibrating and beeping during this next test, let us know, because that means it’s about to hit five hundred degrees, so we’re gonna need to go ahead and get that out of you pretty fast.” - Cave Johnson
"Alright, the implantation surgery was a success, now all we have to do is fire up the remote activation. Throwing the switch in three… two…
Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really see a problem with brain implants. I wouldn’t put anything in my brain in a thousand years, but if someone’s willing to accept the risks, why not? They have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for many people.
It’s exactly like AI. Could the technology be useful were it to be used in service of goals that would serve humanity? Absolutely. Will it be used by billionaires in a way that will be harmful to most people in order to further entrench their power? Most definitely.
“Someone might abuse it” is a reasonable concern. “Therefore nobody should be allowed to use it” is not a reasonable answer to that concern, IMO. We’d never have anything with that approach.
There’s a lot to be said for the scale of damage that can be done with something, especially relative to the effort needed to do that damage.
These days tech companies are doing enormous damage to people’s brains (saturating our dopamine receptors to the point that many people have depression and executive dysfunction) to turn us all into consumption machines that can only find happiness by consuming content and buying commercial products and services.
Imagine how much more harm they’ll do when they have direct access to our neurons, without even LED pixels as a buffer in between.
So regulate the uses of the technology. Don’t ban it outright.
Those companies are doing their manipulation currently by using the Internet and social media, should the Internet and social media be banned outright? We’re using social media to discuss this right now, that discussion should be suppressed?
Technology and social media are entirely under regulated with basically no privacy restrictions. Look what DOGE has done to the entire American Federal agencies… “Read-Only”-- As If. They just pirated all our information.
You can say that about literally any consumer product, however.
Like everything else, it will be come enshittified and we will be living in the Johnny Mneumonic world.
At least some of the people developing this stuff think they’re going to be able to partner AI and neural links. I think the desire is they think about the solution to a problem and then they don’t have to do the work of creating it. It will just exist magically because the AI will do it.
It’s egotistical bollocks that comes from believing your ideas are always right, and that a back of the napkin idea is the same as a fully engineered solution.
It could become the standard in time, like smartphones. I can easily see it becoming the norm, making it more expensive and difficult to use a normal smartphone instead of some brain implant, much like how “dumbphones” are coming back as overpriced and gimmicky. Maybe they pullsomething similar to the “green bubble” like apple did, alienating people without implants.
This is a very important concern. Tech companies already exert entirely too much power over society through smart phones and their accompanying apps. The damage they would do with direct access to your neurons is incalculable.
The only thing that comforts me is that I firmly expect that society as we know it will entirely collapse before this technology can really be capitalized. It’s not a very comforting expectation, but it somehow bothers me less than the idea of techno-fascist corporate feudal states taking control of everyone’s thoughts.
It is sort of funny how the idea that humanity would wipe itself out used to be a worst case scenario and now it is one of the more comforting options.
I am siding with the zombies in that apocalypse.
If I lived in, say, Iain Banks’s post-scarcity anarcho-communist utopia The Culture, I’d get a neural lace in a heartbeat. But living in this capitalist dystopia that most of us does, I don’t trust corporations to not use this sort of technology for domination over the populace.
For perspectives on how it might go (general vibes, not the same technology) I recommend HYPER-REALITY (6 mins short film) or David Brin’s Existence novel.
Continuum is a tidy lil show addressing this, too. Actually, not so tidy, a bit of a mess. But still entertaining and intriguing at times.
thanks, I’ll check it out!
Not “The Matrix” – we will just serve as batteries for someone’s AI or Crypto farm while having/living in lucid dreams?
Tbh the Matrix never made sense from that angle, metabolism uses more energy than it generates. I think the original script said humans being farmed for their brain processing power, not body heat, which would have made marginally more sense. (Also why not just keep people in a coma in either case; anyway I’ll stop poking at Matrix plot holes 😂)
I’ve read Consider Phlebas, due to either your or another lemmings’ recommendation and it’s very ‘80s sci fi in writing style. I felt it required a bit too much attention for a good audio book at work, but wasn’t really interesting enough to pick up the physical book. Player of Games is supposed to be very different, is it worth giving it a shot or is Iain Banks’ writing just not to my taste?
Tbh I think Consider Phlebas is one of the weakest Culture novels, so I’d absolutely give Player of Games a shot! I started with that one, and it does a much better job at showing The Culture’s society than the mere outside glances we get from Phlebas.
With the possible exception of Phlebas, I recommend going through the series in publication order. But feel free to skip Inversions and State of the Art, imho they both mostly suck 😅 The rest of the books are great :)
Another problem is abandonment. When the company goes under or the device becomes outdated and they no longer want to support it the device can’t be easily removed. If the device was fixing a disability, the person’s disability will be reinstated.
I suspect we will end up in a situation where you have a “mount” that is connected to your brain. The mount is able to be serviced by any company in the field, because it is standard. From there, you have the actual chips which are going to be relatively easy to install and remove, eventually you might even be able to do so at your house. This allows competition while allowing being consumer friendly.
As for the disability side of things, it just means that when your chip is no longer serviced you easily swap it for another companies whose are.
My piercings are against God but technoligarchs think they will convince those people brain chips you can swap out on the fly are okay. lol
Anyways I’ll take one brain chip here in like 5 years.
I’m not trying to convince anyone. I well aware of where the tech will be in 30 years and I am getting one. If anyone else has a problem with it, they can wait until then to do their surprise pikachu face when the tech ends up being awesome, exactly how AI is going. LLMs are basically useless, but outside of those AI even in it’s modern incarnation is wildly inpressive, and will only get moreso.
10 years ago no one believed me when i told them about the LLMs we currently have. It was around that time I realised that the public makes sweeping generalizations about tech when 99% of them don’t understand the tech, the math, or even that something being present in nature means its replicable, because nature can replicate it(and therefore so can humans). That last one seems to be a huge disconnect in peoples cognitive abilites.
Edit: also anyone who tells you anything about your piercings in a disrespectful light can go suck an egg, they don’t live in your body. I realize im autistic but the fact that people try that shit and then other people are susceptable to that sort of societal pressure is wild to me. I do what I want, when I want, however I want. People call me weird and I openly ridicule them for thinking their opinion holds any sway over me. You try to shame me, and I will shame you for your massively inflated ego that you think has power over me.
I think a generic plug would be great but look at how fragmented USB specifications are. Add that to biology and it’s a whole other level of difficulty.
Brain implants have great potential but the abandonment issue is a problem that exists now that we have to solve for. It’s also not really a tech issue but a societal one on affordability and accountability of medical research. Imagine if a company held the patents for the brain device and just closed down without selling or leasing the patent. People with that device would have no support unless a government body forced the release of the patent. This has already happened multiple times to people in clinical trials and scaling up deployment with multiple versions will make the situation worse.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2818077
I don’t really have a take on your personal desires. I do think if anyone can afford one they should make sure it’s not just the up front cost but also the long term costs to be considered. Like buying an expensive car, it’s not if you can afford to purchase it but if you can afford to wreck it.
Like “Unauthorized Toast”… with all the DRM laws, we could get arrested and charged with a felony for trying to repair ourselves.
At some point in humanity’s future, I assume that it will be a thing and be widespread. Just too many potential benefits to having high-bandwidth links to the brain not to eventually do it.
But it’s a path with a lot of hurdles along the way, and risks.
Beyond expanding the brain’s functions it can fix things like some forms of blindness
The CRISPR technology is more advanced than brain implants.
If I can read your thoughts, it can change them. I guess it depends on the level of sophistication but it opens up the ONE place in the entire world that is completely yours.
The one place i cant leave, id love to not have my shit fucked up anymore.
That’s the challenge with technical advances. It’s not just solving the technical problem, it’s also solving the societal problem.
If you look back into history, Automated elevators was a major panic until people got comfortable with the idea.
Imagine the guy at BMW who invented subscriptions for heated seats teaming up with the guy at nvidia who does drivers and youll understand why I wouldnt
If it prevents or mitigates Alzheimer’s, or other degenerative brain diseases, it’s a good development.
Not advocating for our against but 2 thoughts here:
1: Gabe isn’t Musk. Yes money etc but don’t immediately jump there without other malfeasance please. Caution absolutely but don’t ascribe one rich assholes shit to another.
2: He probably has hard data on accessibility… Possibly more than nearly anyone else. There’s a HUGE portion of the population that can’t use “traditional” controllers or other input devices. And that’s not even going into the medical realm.
Could game Gabe be starting his villain phase? Sure! But until more negative details come out I’m just hoping this is investments he’d use toward a new steam controller.
Yeah, if we were putting billionaires against the wall, GabeN would probably be near the end of the line.
There was a time the same was true for Elon Musk, before he suddenly decided to jump the queue. I really hope Gabe isn’t going down that path.
Gabe spends a lot of time at sea since the pandemic, and kinda comes off like he has some soft libertarian vibes about self sufficiency and governance.
For me? He’s human and rich. It’s reason enough to be suspicious.
Would I get it? I won’t be first, that’s all I know.
deleted by creator
You don’t get to be a billionaire without some malfeasance.
And even if you don’t assume actively malicious intent like you should with Musk, there’s a lot of potential danger with technology like this, and if you don’t stand a lot to gain, and have reasonable controls against things going wrong, it’s probably not a good idea to be an early adopter. It’s just like a pacemaker, there are a narrow segment of people who should want to test a new model/concept for them.
Absolutely agree at every part.
My desire would be strong regulation via a real agency (not current US), or alternatively ONLY work via non-intrusive means on the scalp.
let’s not circlejerk and have a soft spot for a billionaire just because you like video games. why give gaben the benefit of the doubt just because you think steam is a good product? if they’re a billionaire doing this, we can assume this is a money making venture.
if you’re a billionaire, you’re already way into your villain phase. he’s not musk, but he’s one of them. you don’t make a billion dollars. you take a billion dollars.
So, you are reading things I didn’t write. I’m not defending him about steam games etc… The only good will here about any of it is the work toward better Linux life.
I agree billionaires shouldn’t exist.
I don’t like steam.
I don’t really do much gaming… And it’s worth stuff from GOG.
Chill out. I’m not the fanboi you are looking for.
I’m only saying perhaps he sees $$$ in a venture that is rife with much worse people doing far worse to vulnerable people.
On the off chance better access comes about from rich assholes eating each other, I’m game to at least watch.
I’m willing to say more positive things about him. His dedication to Linux is great of course, but I’ve also heard that people working for him get a lot of freedom to choose what to work on. And no crunch. In the games industry, that’s pretty good.
So yeah, he seems to me to be one of the better among the tech billionaires. But in the end, he’s still a billionaire, and he’s god that ridiculous fleet of super yachts.
First step to getting away with shithead behavior is convincing a group, any group (but preferrably one marginalized), that you’re representing them.
Idk, there are tons of good things that have happened from rich people doing stuff. Hell, that’s the reason medicine progressed — if nobles weren’t terrified of dying, who knows how long it would have taken to figure out that bloodletting with leeches doesn’t work?
I don’t think I need to point out all the bad things that have happened because of the rich.
Not saying represent by any stretch.
If I need X thing to survive, I’d rather get it from a pure and innocent source… If that’s not possible, I’d rather it from the dude with too many boats who charges too much money than the one actively gloating about destroying lives literally and on a much higher scale.
Yes I know lesser evil etc… This isn’t a philosophy course and I don’t need what they’re selling. But many do potentially and I’d rather minimize damage than just let the absolute worst be the default.
I respect that, I just try to provide context. It’s often misinterpreted, and I do succumb to emotional responses — but my goal is to make sure those that are justified approach their goals with a clear mind.
I’m not advocating for the rich. I just want people to make the right decisions when it inevitably comes to the point where we need to decide what to do with the rich. I don’t think we should treat GabeN with any more respect than we owe the poorest person, is all.
I’m not. your post is literally saying we should be nicer to him because he’s not Elon. you’re saying we should be easy on him because he might be doing some good. I’m saying we shouldn’t.
No. “Don’t immediately assume he’s doing the same exact evil” is not the same as “be nicer”.
At the least, it’s “assume other bad motives perhaps”.
My thought is this is just another way to milk money from others. That simple. Not “let’s bribe govts”.
If it’s assumed he’s doing the exact same as Musk, then we either prepare to undo the damage incorrectly, or waste time looking at the wrong stooge.
you’re quoting yourself but you never said that. you said maybe Gabe could be entering his villain phase, as if he’s not there yet. thus implying you meant he’s not a villain, so we shouldn’t assume the worse. I get what you say now, but you did not say what you meant in your original comment.
Billionaires either inherit their money or get it by being an asshole. Being nice doesn’t make people billionaires.
There are a few exceptions. JK Rowlings became a billionaire simply by writing some really popular books, and even stopped being a billionaire by giving much of her wealth away. As far as I can tell, she didn’t become an asshole until later.
I bet she was always an asshole, she just hid it from the general public.
The billionaires today have an opportunity to eliminate world hunger yet they don’t. Instead, they fly rocketships, sail on giant yachts and buy island compounds or towns in Texas. So yeah, No one at that RB club is going to win a Nobel Peace Prize. They all suck.
There is literally no evidence of that other than tankie memes.
I am ready for my 99999 downvotes and insults for not going with the propaganda. Nothing prevents someone for eventually saving up billion by making a good product in todays digital age. Nothing requires you to be evil. Countries having shit tax policies that do not get the full benefit of having hyper rich is a country policy issue. Killing people is not the solution, change in policies is.
nah. you need to be pretty fucking terrible to build a business where your share of it is worth a billion dollars. you do so by cheating your customers, employees, and competition. valve is no exception.
there are plenty of companies out there that pay their employees decently, make good products, and compete fairly. those companies usually aren’t worth that much and their leaders aren’t making a billion dollars from it. you’re right that the tax policies are shit, but it’s not like you ever accidentally become a billionaire. you do so by cheating the tax system too and screwing the general public.
and nobody said anything about killing people.
