LazyBane

I'd argue that Valve does more than just take 30% as a middle man. Between Steam Input, Proton, the beta built in recording system, the Forums for every game, community system and the marketplace, having your game on Steam is a massive value generator for the consumer and by extension developers.

30% might not be what the industry standard should be, but Valve isn't just providing a standard digital distribution service.

There was the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. It's not a whole country going anarchist and no doubt the limited amount of people with the nessisary skill sets to have a functioning society (judging from the food garden they set up) held back the viability of the protest, but in general the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest was widly seen as a wild failure.

It's an interesting thing to look up on, and I'd definitely recommend anyone who is serious about anarchism to study it for the potential pit falls of an anarchist society that they would need to work out first.

Tech companies as soon as they are publicly traded:

I've been using Nobara for gaming a while now, and it's certainly a good choice from by experience. It's a modified Fedora distro that's designed for gaming.

It does for software becuase when somthing gains enough marketshare it then becomes somthing that businesses start to consider as a general option.

Like the reason Adobe gets by despite the culture for just pirating their software is becuase even piracy gives market share, and Adobe products are so commonly used that corporations feel obliged to use Adobe licences in their projects.

It's crazy to think that people are still making new games on Unity after it's been made painfully obvious that the company is in the corporate downward spiral of enshittification.

It won't fix it, but it can mitigate it to an extent.

Pets are a expense and a responsibility, with conversations being one sided, so their less than ideal for shut ins who struggle to function to begin with.

Therapy could help, but is also an expense and still has the barrier of a direct interpersonal interaction.

Both of these also have the issue of intimacy being non-existent. An AI offers a chance for low stakes, human like interaction that can be intimate.

I've heard of a guy who married a hologram app of Hatusne Miku, and it literally turned his life around having anything to talk to.

The loneliness epidemic is real, and as a former NEET, crippling social anxiety is a killer. Something that can put these vulnerable people in the position where they can function and get though the day is an objective good.