this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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A man who owns a billion dollars worth of megayatchts is not doing everything he can to ethically spend/donate his wealth. Yes, lots of his wealth is tied up in Valve stock and he can't sell that without losing voting rights and making Valve stop being what it is, but he's rolling in other assets and cash, too
Valve doesn't have stocks
It doesn't have publicly-traded shares because it's a private company, but it's still correct to say someone has stock in a private ~~company~~ corporation (which isn't relevant as Valve is unincorporated) that they own part or all of. Like with physical objects, they don't stop existing just because they're not for sale to the public. It's an easy mistake to make, though, as the vast majority of the time people talk about stocks and shares it's in the context of buying and selling publicly-traded stock.
It is nitpicking, but in legal terms you could say he has shares in the company but not stocks. Stocks refers specifically to publicly traded shares, that is to say shares sold on a stock market. Shares is the more broad term as it can refer not only to stocks but also private equity units of various types. Valve is a Limited Liability Corporation, or LLC, which have Membership Units as the type of shares held by owners, which differs from stocks both in terms of tax treatment and limitations on how they can be transacted.
It's nitpicking and also not quite right. Stock of a corportation is shares, whether or not they're publicly traded. It becomes plural when it's shares of multiple corporation.
However, LLCs aren't corporations at all (the C is Company), and in the US, stock is specifically of corporations. I'm in the UK, where the equivalent to an LLC's shares are still considered stock, and I've been googling whether private corporations have stock in the US, which they do, so the confusion's been that the public/private distinction isn't the important one and I've been arguing the definition of a word that's defined differently in the relevant country.
hahahaha, what a mess.
The dispicableness of billionaires is measured by their actions not their worth. And despite being of high worth, Gabes actions are unquestionably not greedy. He's doing almost everything he can to minimize his wealth in favor of equality to access Steam as a game dev.
If he wanted to, he could charge far more than $100 to develop for them, and buy several more yachts.
But he hasn't.
Which makes his platform more popular. And in turn brings him even more cash to buy more yachts.
His yachts aren't indicative of his greed, but his benevolence in the face of it.
Show me a single other company the size of Valve that has chosen to forgo profit over access to something like Steam to make money yourself. That's basically non existent in the year 2025 aside from Valve. I'm not going to judge Gabe as a bad person for profiting from that. He could be profiting much much more and is choosing access for nearly everyone else instead.
Realising that ratfucking your customers and suppliers at every opportunity makes them less willing to do business with you in the future, and therefore you'll potentially make more money by not doing that, so then not doing that, is exactly what a greedy person would do if they weren't also a moron. Gabe Newell is certainly not a moron. Lots of other billionaires are, or have other empathy-limiting conditions that mean they don't realise people won't want to do repeat business with them if they got screwed over the last time.
There's obviously a majority of billionaires that are much less ethical than Newell, but one superyatcht ought to be enough for anyone, and anyone buying a second one instead of putting the money directly to good causes is not benevolent.
I see granting access for anyone to make games for Steam as a good cause.
The opportunity cost for what profit could be made by closing that is multitudes of yachts worth.
Just because you do not value this as a good cause does not mean it is not.
Does Gabe have more yachts than are needed? Yes. But again, you can't just say he's greedy because he has them. That's being incredibly biased.
Instead, how about you tell me what actions of his has made him greedy that don't involve his assets?
I can name hundreds of ways Musk should be drawn and quartered based on his actions that have nothing to do with his wealth, but rather his actual documented choices.
What choices / actions / or anything of actual greed has Gabe done that you can point to?
It's like saying anything with a swastika on it is for Nazis without realizing Hindus have been using a right oriented Swastika to represent good fortune for hundreds of years.
Gabe Newall has done the following with his 11 Billion fortune:
Co-founded "The Heart of Racing" car racing team that raises money for Children's charity.
Donates heavily to the Seattle Children's Hospital and several others around the world.
Founded Foundry10, a non profit education company that helps neuro divergent kids learn through new methods of education
Started InkFish to expand the scientific study of our oceans and is now the second highest individual donor towards marine research on the planet.
https://80.lv/articles/gabe-newell-reportedly-plans-to-invest-usd300-million-to-marine-research
That's why he has those yachts.
Same reason Hindus have their swastikas.
Their actions speak louder than the symbols they use suggest. Even when those symbols are Yachts.
He has 11 Billion. Everyone else even close to his level of market control has several magnitudes more. Why does he have so little when he owns a virtual monopoly on digital distribution?
Because he's not in it for maximizing his bank account.
The billion dollars in superyatchts is just the personally-owned luxury kind that billionaries like to hoard, not marine research boats that he has funded. Him giving away some of his money doesn't mean that he's not also frivilously spent more money than most people could hope to see in a lifetime.
Fundamentally, I don't think we're going to agree here, as I fundamentally believe that there's an amount of money beyond which there are no ethical grounds for keeping it, and it's much lower than $11 billion. Newell has kept money above that threshold instead of giving everything he made beyond that threshold away (even illiquid stuff like part of his stake in Valve could, in principle, be given to a charity so the profit from Steam went straight into the charity), and I and plenty of other people would see that as greedy. Others might say that the fact that he's given anything away that he wasn't legally required to means that he's not greedy. These are subjective ethical opinions, so even though they can't be reconciled, it's not a big deal. Different people think different things are wrong.
The reason I've been replying at all is that some of the things you've stated to be facts are untrue, not that I'm trying to convince you that all billionaires are unethical.
What have I said that isn't true?
https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/billionaire-gabe-newell-oceanco-gigayacht-leviathan-1237360429/
You are just continuing to make assumptions based entirely on the assets he owns instead of his behaviour.
Something I keep pointing out, and is why I have also been responding.
I am completely on your side and feel that anyone with over a billion is an ethical and moral burden. However, I'm also wise enough to recognize that as a goal to strive towards not a destination to judge against. So I'm not going to chastise those actively working towards that goal, even if they are a billionaire.
As I said, he also owns a billion dollars worth of superyatchts for personal use in addition to the one(s) nominally for marine research.
Your assumption all his yachts were for pleasure has already been proven wrong. Now you're just moving the goal posts.
As I said, he's the second largest doner to marine research on the entire planet, and the burden of proof for proving his yachts are ALL for personal use is something you've never provided, only assumed.
I've proved 1/3 were for scientific research. I'm not going to do the other 2/3 just for you to ignore and move the goal posts elsewhere.
Prove your point, and I'll believe it.
Until then, he's still a billionaire instead of the trillionaire he could be, so I'm not going to think poorly of him just because he's not fitting some arbitrary number of currency tied to his worth that magically makes you think he's moral.
Instead I will judge him based on his actions. The ones that I have detailed have unquestionably made the world a better place for many more people than him.
How about you actually tell me something he's done wrong that's worth your judgement, instead of basing it entirely on yachts you won't research?
You know what would further more research than give offering a portion of your super yacht to scientific research? Not building a billion dollar super yacht and giving that money to scientific research instead. Let the people who know what they're doing decide what they need and not be beholden to your whims.
Like the 3000 scientists, engineers, and designers that helped him build that yacht for research?
Is there more efficient ways to spend this money on research? Sure. But don't equate this effort as meaningless just because it's not perfect. It's a great place to be a researcher, but it's still for research.
God how much money was wasted on havingthousands of people work on the design of his vanity project?
Yes, it's better than other vanity projects, but it is still a wasteful vanity project.
It's his vessel because he paid for it. That's how money works. There's no other pronoun that is appropriate.
Here's the rest of the article that completely unwinds how far you want to stretch that term:
"His" yacht made through collaboration:
"His" yacht made to have the least environmental impact from noise or oil polution (Diesel hybrid electric engine):
"His" yacht made to have little maintenance requirements so the crew can focus on science and research:
"His" thoughts on "His" yacht being used to better the scientific community instead of just him.
How about you ask yourself how many scientists and engineers HE paid to have a job to work on this?
How about you ask how much he pays their research salaries still and provided them a better vessel to do their job on than anyone else?
Why do you insist that you know how to better spend his money when it's already going to people that need it for a cause that's needed?
Just because you want to claim his money could be used better doesn't mean it currently isn't being used well.
You just see a yacht and think the worse. Worlds far less black and white.