this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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There does not exist a good person who is also a billionaire.
Yes, they can do good things. Mark Cuban has done some good things, but a good person would feel burdened by having too much money and would be compelled to use it to help others. I think you can be a good person and still want a super-easy life for yourself, but a billion dollars is way more than you need to fulfill that goal.
Billionaires are symptoms of a failed economic system. Under the current system you don't become a billionaire by doing good things.
There are no good people who are billionaires.
Fucking what? Who was doing that?
Even GabeN.
As much as he has promoted more consumer value and rights, there's still corporate meddling bullshit in Steam. I still worry for when he does die/retire how Steam will change.
I hope when he dies his fleet of superyachts is turned into a humanitarian project.
They're already equipped and used for environmental research. It's probably just greenwashing, but it's a hell of a lot more than other billionaires have bothered with.
Something useful with them. There's an organized list of billionaires from first to last, I'd put Gabe nearer the bottom with the guy who owns Laika Studios LLC.
Yes. Definitely.
That's literally their first sentence. How are they saying billionaires are good people?
she did come from rags to riches, but once you reach past 100mil you are disconnected.
Do you mean like Melinda Gates and MacKenzie Scott?
If you gave the goodest person in the world a billion dollars, you'd technically have a good person who was a billionaire, so my declaration would be wrong. But only for as long as it takes them to get rid of it.
I don't know about Melinda Gates (literally haven't heard anything), but MacKenzie Scott does seem to be burdened by the money at least somewhat and has been shoveling it away.
But if you compare, JK Rowling couldn't bear being a billionaire, and it turns out that she's a world-class asshole. Maybe if you're MacKenzie Scott rich, it's just hard to give the money away quickly, and we'll see her end up with less than a billion however long that takes. Otherwise, I think she's got to be at least as much of an asshole as Rowling.
I don't know either of them personally, but I have met one of them. They seemed like a good person, if not a little naive and/or dumb to the world around them. I do agree with most of your points though.
Go on…
There was this young heir in the news in Austria last year who inherited stupid amounts of money and straight away said "ok lemme just give away most of this right away" and there was a whole thing about a commission having to be established to determine where money went and all that so it seems it might be somewhat difficult but I still think it's a bad excuse.
And if we instead create a program of hyper inflation so that even minimum wage workers become billionaires overnight, the world will be filled with bad people? Or perhaps this idea is so simplistic as to be meaningless.
There are no good or bad people. There are only good and bad deeds.
I'm not going to address your first paragraph, it's dumb.
But I will address your second paragraph. If a person commits many bad deeds they become a bad person. To become a billionaire you must commit many, many bad deeds. Therefore being a billionaire means you are a bad person.
Even if you believed you could become a billionaire by committing nothing but good deeds, being a billionaire requires you to have a billion dollars. Having a billion dollars over any period of time means you're committing the bad deed of inaction. Not helping those in need, not giving away your excess money, not changing the world for the better. It's watching a grandma getting assaulted and doing nothing about it - a despicable act - multiplied by billions of people and then made distant by every dollar you keep. If you had a billion dollars that means you know your friends, and your family, and the homeless of your city, and every person you know who needs expensive healthcare or university or a home is going without those things because you and you alone choose not to give it to them. Not to even speak about the people in places our ancestors abused or the planet that's dying or any other serious issue that could be meaningfully dented by anyone of these billionaire assholes.
No, I disagree with your position. There are bad people, because those people commit overwhelmingly bad deeds. Being a billionaire means you must be a bad person. Hell, owning more than let's say 20 million makes you a bad person and I think the state should tax every dollar over 5m.
How much of your excess money are you giving away? 100% of it?
Buddy I can't afford a home. That to me is a human necessity. Owning things, especially basic things like your clothes and your shelter and your tools to make a living, is necessary. I make a good amount of money and I still can't afford all of the basics.
You pretending that I'm saying every person must give every dollar away is stupid, disingenuous, and wrong. I'm not saying no one should have savings, I'm specifically saying if you have enough money to never work again in your life and still afford all the basic necessities and plenty of luxuries - which for most western countries is 5 million or so - you should be giving every other cent away. I'm not even saying donate it to charity. I'm saying buy your friend's houses, buy the city a new library, send a bunch of kids to college and set them up for success, pay your fuckin taxes. And do that so fast that you're not holding onto an extra dollar longer than you need to be because excessive money turns you evil.
What is broken inside of you that you're defending billionaires? Why are you defending the very people who harm you daily? That steal from you and your kids? The hundred millionaires that are actively choosing to kill the planet or defend pedophiles or allow starvation and homelessness to happen?
No, I do not believe everyone making less than 200k a year should have no savings and single handedly attempt to fix all the problems the ultra rich are causing. That's a stupid suggestion. I do believe everyone should chip in to their community, build infrastructure both physically and socially to better society, but God damnit that'd be a lot easier if half the wealth of the world held captive by evil assholes was more equitably distributed.
I’m not defending billionaires. I’ve never defended a billionaire. I’m pushing back on the idea that a billionaire is the same as a regular person but they have a billion dollars in their bank account and they can just give the money away with no consequences. It’s almost never like that!
So like let’s say you owned a company with 10,000 employees and your company was worth over a billion dollars. Congratulations you’re a billionaire! But if you’re gonna give away a billion dollars that means selling off the company and those 10,000 people losing their jobs! Or you’re selling the company as a whole and the new owner is a billionaire who is responsible for those employees.
Other suggestions I’ve heard are things like having the government take over the business, like that worked so well in the Soviet Union! Great way to create another Putin!
So do you have any suggestions for what to do with a billion dollar company without tearing it down, selling it off, or handing it over to the government?
What the fuck are you talking about? That's not how any of that works. Are you young or something because there's no way you're going around pretending having a billion dollars is the same thing as owning a billion dollar company and then defending that fictional billionaire because you're fuckin bored?
I think what you're trying to say, and not making a lick of sense, is that in this hypothetical scenario this person owns a publicly traded company and owns 100% of the shares worth 1 billion dollars. If that is what you're saying, that person doesn't have a billion dollars, they have the ability to sell shares and theoretically, and only theoretically, make a billon dollars. That's not what were talking about. We're talking about if a person HAD A BILLION DOLLARS.
Not if they had a billion dollars but it was lost at sea, not if they had a billion dollars but it's all in gold buried on an island, not if they have a billion bitEthereumDogecoins and technically they're worth a billion dollars as long as they never sell them. We're not talking about any hypothetical scenario you want to come up with right now. We're talking about a random schmuck who has a billion dollars. Now do you believe that person should give all their money away except for, let's be generous, and say the last 10 million dollars? Enough money to never work again, for their partner to never work again, for their kids to never have to worry. Do you believe that? If not, and all you're doing is making up hypothetical scenarios as to why the poor billionaires have their hands tied when trying to not be billionaires, then you're just defending them. You're going online, and defending the people robbing you of a better life.
Now if you'd like to talk about your hypothetical scenario, we can do that. That's fine, but that's a different thing. So let's say my interpretation of what you said is true. That person could keep on owning that company and, as long as their take home is reasonable, and they're not able to leverage those assets for loans to make themselves live a rich asshole lifestyle. That's fine. But the moment they do sell those assets or do leverage them for self-gain, then they need to be getting rid of that money as fast as possible. Taxation, donation, gifting. Right now loans are capable of being taken out again owned assets and essentially escaping a large chunk of taxation and distribution, that should be prevented.
But if that is the minimum, I'd say the correct thing for your hypothetical person to do would be to additionally pay their employees partially in stocks. That way even if the billion dollar's in stocks is being leveraged, it's being leveraged ideally equally amongst all creaters of that profit.
Every person should own a portion of the company they work for, that's just common sense. A portion of the land their business is on, if not the whole thing. Their entire house (but maybe not the land). Their car or a portion of any private mass transit (although of course public is better). Their tools, their food, their art, their hobbies on and on and on.
There is no hypothetical situation where someone is justly living as if they had 20 million dollars or more. They cannot be good people and have that much wealth. Especially at the billion dollar figure.
The average person could donate a fraction of a cent and be giving away more excess than a billionaire when speaking in relative terms
That’s not the logic we’re operating with here. The GP claimed that if you’re not giving away your excess money, you’re committing the bad deed of inaction. Thus no one should have any savings whatsoever. Every penny beyond what you need to survive should be given away or it’s a bad deed.
They're not gonna pay you for bootlicking here
Exactly. They didn't make the billions. You can't do that morally. They got it in a sudden payoff, and both seem to be working on reversing the issue, though not as fast as I feel they should. If they don't continue to speedily reverse of the issue of them having billions, then I would say no they are not moral people, they are actually horrible disgusting people, just because of the amount of lives they could save and good they could do with that money, and instead choosing the hoard it.