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Minecraft Creator Notch's $70 Million Mansion Recreated In Minecraft
theodp writes In case you've fallen behind on your TMZ reading, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson used his Microsoft money to outbid Beyonce and Jay Z for the most expensive mansion in Beverly Hills. Now, the Minecraft mogul's new $70 million mega-mansion has been recreated inside the game that made him rich.
Makes you wonder what kind of good could have been done or how many lives could have been saved with that $70 million.
It's not like he's throwing bills into a fire. That money goes back into the economy which is good for everybody, and its recipients are still free to spend it on whatever good deeds they want.
After 8 years of onsite computer repairs, I have a deep insight into this sort of thing. At my company we have a nickname for people who make $10,000 a month and have $5,000 of it go to their 5000 sq ft mansion. They're "poor people living in a big house." Why the hell do people spend that much money on a house? If I won $200,000,000 in the powerball, I'd buy a 3000 sq ft house. Then I'd spend the rest on awesome stuff. Who the hell wants a giant house like that? Plus, that's how NFL players keep going broke. You know if you make it to the NFL or make Minecraft that you're making a ton of money ONCE. Like one and done, surprise you're poor. I'd hoard that money like crazy and budget it out over 100 years. What and idiot.
To anyone about to say real estate is an investment, go look at his electric bill, cleaning bill, and property taxes.
I wonder what kind of good could have been done, or how many lives could have been saved, with the thousands of dollars you've spent on a computer, a car, and a phone that you really don't need.
Or does your outrage only apply to rich people?
That's his iron fire extinguisher, gold fire extinguisher, and diamond fire extinguisher.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The fault is that your argument builds a straw man that the wealthy do *no* good by holding/using wealth, but that isn't the argument. The argument is that they do relatively little with that wealth. One two million dollar car churns the economy, as in, provides jobs, taxes through fees, etc, much less than one hundred 20 thousand dollar cars. A similar thing could be said of a house. A 70 million dollar house doesn't generate 100x the economic activity of 100x 700k dollar houses. Partly this is because many "premium" materials don't generate more economic activity than less premium materials at a fraction of the cost...but the increase in cost is due to rarity and desirability only. Another part is that high priced items tend to require a one team work longer rather than more teams work, concentrating the transfer of wealth rather than spreading it out over broad actors who can trickle wealth down much faster and efficiently than a few who have a large share of it. The idea of "trickle down" is valid, it does happen, but it is more like accidentally watering some plants from a leak in water tank rather than watering a field with irrigation. And when your goal is to grow a crop like an economy, relying on minimal rainfall and tank leaks just isn't a productive way to go about it, as our Norse neighbors have shown.
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