In the US throughout the 1900’s the highest income tax brackets were often in the 70%'s, reaching into the 90%'s at times, and we did not see what you are suggesting.

We did not see what I’m suggesting because that’s an income tax, and in order to abolish billionaires we’d need a wealth tax.

Increasing the taxes on Gabe Newell’s profits from owning Valve would not suddenly cause him to lose money, just to gain less money.

Yes, but if you slow the income of a person who is already a billionaire, you get a billionaire who is still getting richer, only more slowly. This does not get rid of billionaires, and everything I’ve been saying was based on your initial comment that Gabe is a billionaire, and billionaires should not exist.

In order to take someone who is already a multibillionaire and make them not a billionaire, you have to take away property that they already own until their net worth falls below a billion dollars. In the case of Gabe, since most of his wealth is tied up in Valve stock, in order to make him not a billionaire you’d need to make him sell some of his stock in Valve, which would dilute his ownership and control over the company.

Do you understand the problem now?

Again, I want to find a sensible way to eliminate billionaires - I’m just not sure how to do so without throwing corporate ownership into chaos. I’d love to hear other recommendations if anyone has any.

1. I don’t think this would solve the problem. Even if all of the outside investors are restricted to less than $1 billion in capital each, pooling their funds would easily be able to outweigh Gabe if he’s subject to the same restriction.

2. If we increase taxes on all companies across the board, the overall appeal of each individual corporation would likely stay about the same. In fact, since Steam is so profitable that might make them more appealing as an investment in a world where corporate taxes are much higher.

3. Corporate taxes are usually on profits, but in order to tax Gabe enough for him to no longer be a billionaire the vast majority of those taxes would have to come out of Gabe’s ownership in Valve. I’m not sure why you don’t think this would be an issue.

4. This seems pretty unrealistic/idealistic. I guess we are already positing an unrealistic world where billionaries are taxed out of existence, so imagining functioning regulation and antitrust suits isn’t that much more of a stretch. Still, that does seem to support my point that without significant other societal change taxing Gabe so much that he’s no longer a billionaire would likely significantly worsen Valve as a company.

I’m certainly not against taxing billionaires out of existence, but I still think that the question of what that would mean for corporate ownership is a difficult/complex one, and I don’t think your answers here really take that complexity into account.

How do we tax Gabe that much without necessarily watering down his share in the company and ensuring that outside investors enshittify it in the process?

Yeah, you’ve overshot and ended up in Japan.

Edit: Explanation: the Japanese word for “green light”, “aoshingou”, means “blue light” even though their lights are green too.

First game I ever remember buying was Final Fantasy II. I was probably about 11 and it was definitely worth it. A friend had let me borrow it for a few days and I immediately knew that I needed to get my own copy. Still one of my favorite games ever.

For me the most important marks of an intelligent person are, similar to other responses in this thread, the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it, and the willingness to update your beliefs when confronted with convincing evidence.

All too often on Lemmy we see people immediately jumping to one side of an issue or the other as a knee-jerk reaction, uncritically parroting their side’s talking points and lambasting anyone with the audacity to disagree without even listening to what they have to say. The comments that get my strongest upvotes are the ones that go against the grain of a thread while also bringing up additional relevant information or perspectives. Not because they’re necessarily right, but because they’re positively contributing to a thread in a way that circlejerking doesn’t.

And no, this doesn’t mean that the enlightened centrist take is necessarily the correct one, but it does mean that you should at least consider counterarguments to your position.

And while yes, sealioning exists, I see Lemmings talking past each other far more often than I see them constructively engaging with each other when they disagree.

And “updating your beliefs” doesn’t need to mean “completely changing your mind about something” (though that should always be a possibility). It can mean adding nuance to your position, or replacing one peripheral idea with another.

As a random example, acknowledging that AI does have a few genuinely useful use cases doesn’t mean that its current implementation isn’t also mostly a dystopian and environmental disaster. This nuance helps ensure that we take the right action in addressing the problem, instead of a knee-jerk blanket response that, while popular, might end up being just as harmful as the status quo.

While I think Lemmings in general are a good deal smarter (or at least more educated) than the average person, I honestly don’t think they’re all that much more intelligent.

Thank you! I don’t need the modern equivalent of laugh tracks to tell me whether or not a social media post is funny.

That’s her mom IIRC

I know. We’ve had this conversation before.

That’s the only one where the pronunciation actually is thorn. The rest are eth (ð).

Yup

This entire thread is /c/badlinguistics.

Americans Languages do love redundancies.

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Nobody here is upset - I pointed out that Lemmings are hypocrites in one specific area, they predictably didn’t like that and upped the vitriol, and I returned as good as I got. I’m very used to voicing uncomfortable truths on the internet - there’s no need for this weird, patronizing coddling thing you’ve got going on.

I’m more concerned with the hypocrisy than the tone policing myself, but either way I’m only returning the energy I’m being given.

You’re giving me the same “well if you don’t like it then you should just leave” rhetoric that Republicans use in response to my efforts to make this a better place? This thread is a hell of a trip.

The irony of posting this comment in this specific chain would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

Whatever gets you past the cognitive dissonance, chief.

I mean, federal overreach can certainly be seen as kinda like fascism, I suppose, though I think it dilutes an important term to say so under normal circumstances.

Under the current administration, though, yeah, it’s definitely fascism.