Steve Wozniak:I gave all my Apple wealth away because that's not what I live for

21 alexcos 10 8/15/2025, 8:19:49 PM m.slashdot.org ↗

Comments (10)

dtagames · 9h ago
SteveWoz 4 days ago:

"I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out."

roenxi · 8h ago
One of the joys of vast wealth and success is living your own life without anyone else telling you what to do. So from that sense, good on Woz. Money doesn't lead to happiness and if he wants happiness then his money wasn't the place to look.

That being said, what he is literally saying there is he made all his money young then coasted. I actually doubt that is what he did since he seems like one of those people who doesn't sit still, but the quote doesn't paint him in a great light. In simple terms, if good people don't take responsibility for deploying capital effectively, only bad people will make important decisions. There is no pride to be had in handing over large amount of money to a system that is, ultimately, controlled by the likes of Biden and Trump while upholding a teenage naivete that was buffered through life by vast wealth. Bill Gates sold out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat....

smitty1e · 8h ago
> That being said, what he is literally saying there is he made all his money young then coasted. I actually doubt that is what he did since he seems like one of those people who doesn't sit still, but the quote doesn't paint him in a great light.

He comes off as an active person who enjoys what he does too much to consider his work labor.

alexcos · 10h ago
You can find his comment in the replies to the linked article
throwmeaway222 · 9h ago
i wish people would stop falling for non-profits.

Show me one company that hasn’t wasted 99% of its money after being around for more than two years. Most of the employees are young and spend their time virtue signaling. Eventually, they leave and talk about how disillusioned they are, realizing all the money was just vaporized. It’s all run by Boomers and Gen Xers, and it feels like a laundering scheme.

throwaway81523 · 8h ago
I've worked in several nonprofits and don't feel disillusioned by them. Of course there are crappy or deceptive ones out there, but that was never in doubt.
throwmeaway222 · 7h ago
but you have to admit you "helped" people in need by doing 1% of what they needed. If that person just had a week of your salary, or fuck a year to help 50 families, the help would have gone way further.

Non-profits don't profit the entity, it profits the employees and that's 100% what they are designed to do. the employees are the charity recipients.

snypher · 7h ago
Not knowing anything about the nature of the work of the person you replied to means you are not qualified to comment on it.
DaveZale · 9h ago
I've worked for a non-profit based in Columbus OH that's been around for 100 years.

I also worked for a big pharma that's been around since the end of the Civil War.

Hey, there is much more to technology than what is now considered "tech" which I agree is generally either a money pit, or producing useless addictive products. Most of it deserves an early grave. Some of it deserves to survive, but gets acquired and killed by our altruistic ;-) monopolies.