From the notoriously flat structure of Valve to the support of free software to the extremely laissez faire way of running steam to the main Dota tournament being named “The International”… Is Gabe Newell a card carrying Anarchist?
That’s not anarchy, that’s libertarianism. And to answer your question, at least going on People Make Games’s investigation of Valve’s culture, he does seem to be very libertarian.
not the good kind
he literally bought one of those new zealand prepper bunkers
Why does that make him bad?
Typically the tech bro billionaires buying those tend to fall into the realm of people who expect to be unquestioned dictators of their own little fiefdoms in a post-apocalyose scenario. To the point of shock collars to keep other people in line, etc.
Like /u/spez.
Look, I think billionaires existing is ridiculous, look at my username, but that seems like a leap to me.
You may enjoy these two reads:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
Always enjoyed this gem:
Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
This one is also interesting:
https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
Relevant to the thread:
Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
[…]
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.
They live in a different reality. These questions are normal for them. Not all of them, obviously, but the doomsday prep shit is aaaallll over Silicon Valley and the rich in general.
And they are also dumb in that situation where people with guns would wear such collar and instead torture you until you spit out the combination. There are no unbreakable lock where the weakest link is human. Human can be fucking nasty in situation like that.
Also, the guards could simply cut off power supply(to the storage/locks) and brute force it to be traditional bunker. Before the overlord wannabe comes to their new hideout.
Also the tiny tiny percentage of cases where this doesn’t happen will just mean that the combined forces of the former guards from the other bunkers come kill everyone and take their stuff by force.
Astonishing level of self-delusion by people to think they can use their position of wealth and power in one society to protect themselves and maintain that wealth and power if they cause that society to entirely fail.
Ultimately, most of these people have that wealth and power because they are so frightened and insecure that they cannot let a moment pass without fighting and clawing to have more power as a false sense of security.
He’s a billionaire who owns a company that has pulled some shady (and illegal) anti-consumer bullshit in the past, I’d say it’s pretty unlikely that he’s a anarchist - more likely, the flat management structure and use of FOSS software is simply profitable.
This is entirely silly. Specially when you consider they removed the flat structure at Valve recently. Also even when it was flat it was still structured as more important people’s opinions carried more weight. It made it feel like high school according to one developer where there was cliques and entourageous. That’s not anarchy.
Additionally Valve is not overall for Foss projects. Steam itself is still very closed and very restrictive. Proton was created to keep costs down and because Windows at one point threatened to enforce the windows store for outside apps. Potentially destroying steam.
Steam and Valve only contribute to open source as far as it benefits them. They are ex Microsoft employees that understand the embrace and extend side and are embracing Linux and it’s community. Extending wine. And potentially one day extinguishing the broad availability of Linux to replace it with steam os. You see this on their storefront already. Years ago when a game supported Linux on steam you’d see an icon of tux. Now you see an icon of steam os. A subtle reminder that Valve does not care about Linux but instead of being a thriving business.
Gabe is a capitalist. You don’t become a billionaire without abusing workers.
