that moment when the One Good Billionaire™ casually orders a boat that costs several times more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes 🙃

i get that there’s worse out there but i’m tired of people acting like newell is a saint… he’s just another billionaire.

A billionaire whose hobby is Marine conservation. That yacht is a floating lab.

Inkfish, founded by Gabe Newell, aims to advance marine science by providing tools and access for deep-ocean exploration, focusing on serving the scientific community rather than personal interests. The organization’s mission is to integrate marine science, engineering, and technology to map uncharted seafloor, study biodiversity, discover new species, and protect ocean ecosystems, while also providing open-source data and technical support to scientists

While all that is indeed good, we shouldn’t have to rely on the benevolence of the wealthy to be able to have a better world. No offense, but that kind of stuff should be paid for by taxation. He is doing some good here, but it’s also his pet project, his choice where the money goes, no one else, no input from society at large. It’s still overall not a real great thing, because it means that we have to just hope that billionaires have pet projects that help society and the earth at large. The majority of them don’t. Hell, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk think the future is for digital-post-humans and the things they are trying to do “for the future” are revolving around a plan where humans as we know them effectively become an extinct species, which is inherently elitist and definitely not beneficial to overall society since it means they effectively don’t care if any of us die to achieve it. Just because Newell has better values than the rest doesn’t mean the situation doesn’t still suck ass.

Whether the concept of billionaires is bad is irrelevant when deciding whether one specific billionaire is bad.

Why? It’s still bad. He still isn’t taking societal input on whether the projects he invests his money into are actually the most wise and sound investments to help the future of all living humans. It’s a distinction without a difference.

Why does he need society’s input? Last I checked, charities didn’t ask society at large, they just get funding from the people who care. Am I wrong to go to the park to pick up litter without asking society at large if that’s the best use of my time?

We don’t need to have everything go through a committee. If he wants to do a good thing, that’s awesome.

That wooshing sound you hear is the point going over your head.

No, I’m explicitly rejecting your point.

It can be both, you’re rejecting it because you fail to understand it. Dude, in a rationally organized world we wouldn’t need fucking charities, because things would just be funded by reasonable tax structures and governments that care more about taking care of their own people instead of bombing foreign nations. Why would we need charities if things were funded well enough as it is? You’re deliberately missing the point.