[safety1st]

"The major reason is they are a private company with good business..."

This is unquestionably, undoubtedly incorrect. It is a really low information meme that's racing around the Internet right now. If you want a contemporary counterexample take a look at NASCAR. They're also not publicly traded, they're family owned, yet they are abusive toward drivers, teams and fans, and they're gradually ruining the sport that made them rich. We know all of this because it got so bad Michael Jordan decided to sue them and there's a ton of information coming out in discovery at the moment.

The real reason Valve are being the "good guys" at the moment (not really, but yes they're doing some amazing stuff for Linux) is because they feel threatened by Windows and Microsoft, they perceive a long term competitive threat to Steam. Competition makes businesses both private and public work for your dollar. The US economy has been characterized by a decrease in competition and an increase in monopolies for decades now which is the root of many price hikes and anti-consumer practices.

[int_19h]

It's not that being private guarantees that the company will behave well. But it does make it possible.

[AuthAuth]

public companies are not forced to maximize shareholder value contrary to the popular meme that always gets thrown around.

[philip-b]

>The real reason Valve are being the "good guys" at the moment

Ok, but this “at the moment” has lasted at least since 2011. Basically my whole adult life Valve gas been a pretty great company delivering value and not being annoying.

[xethos]

> The real reason Valve are being the "good guys" at the moment

Yep. Valve is seen as virtuous because Microsoft is greedy and the default Windows 11 install is generally viewed as a tire-fire of an OS

Are they doing good things for Linux? Absolutely. As a long-time Linux user I am over the moon that we are where we are. But the general populaton only gives a shit because Microsoft is abusive.

[palata]

> But the general populaton only gives a shit because Microsoft is abusive.

I hear that for every major Windows release. And after 6 months everybody is fine with it.

[ahartmetz]

It seems different this time. Windows is worse and Linux is better than at previous defenestration opportunities.

[jszymborski]

> ...they're family owned

Well that's your problem there.

I do overall agree that Valve is only situationally the good guy here, but they do also have a sustainable approach to business and growth which I think helps this.

[whatshisface]

Companies doing things for the common good because they feel threatened by competiton is the whole idea behind Capitalism.

[palata]

Except when Capitalism has favoured monopolies for decades and is actually closer to Feodalism.

[z3t4]

Monopolies need to be restricted by regulations. In micro economics there is a term marginal cost, and economy of scale. In the software as a service era, the cost of serving one extra customer is minimal, so it make economic sense for such companies to grow infinitely. This is why our current system do not work. As the best strategy is to become as big as possible and capture the entire market.

[safety1st]

There is a bit of a debate about what to call the American economic system these days, but I think we should all agree it's not a capitalist one. It's not one that Adam Smith would look at, approve, and say oh yeah baby that's exactly what I was writing about in Wealth of Nations.

It looks a lot closer to the economic policies of the most successful fascist regimes - the best term for modern American economics might be "democratic fascist." There is a facade of a market economy, but there's heavy intervention to privilege not just domestic businesses, but a specific set of big ones that have close ties to the ruling party. This is not much different from how Hitler and Mussolini approached economic policy. Basically have your system revolve around private ownership, pretend to have a market economy but actually make very centralized decisions and execute them through a small number of private oligarchs you're buddies with. The uniquely American flavor is that there are two parties which do this instead of one (but three would be unimaginable), and you can choose which pack of bandits you signal loyalty to without being executed.

[palata]

Very insightful, thanks for that comment!

I find it interesting that this "feature" of the US (having those big monopolies) is often mentioned as a "weakness" of e.g. Europe, where companies cannot get as big (I guess partly due to regulations).

And in turn, when US companies "lose" against, say, Chinese companies, they will say it's because they get help from their authoritarian system (through the government). Which is a bit ironic given that the US monopolies do exactly that to the rest of the western world, right?

[simonh]

On the spectrum of authoritarian oligarchy of the type you describe, from 0 (liberal democracy with well regulated free market capitalism) to 100 (totalitarian oligarchy), where would you put: The USA; The average EU country; Russia.