A follow-up to my previous post about billionaires, here’s one specific example of somebody doing it better1.

Steve Wozniak cofounded Apple with Steve Jobs, and he sold most of his stake in the company in the 1980s.

In 2025, around his 75th birthday, someone commented on this decision. Wozniak wrote this reply (emphasis mine):

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.

He is a wealthy person, worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s not nothing.

But the simple line “wealth and power are not what I live for” is a striking counterpoint to the attitudes of many of the world’s current richest people, whose primary roles have shifted from company leaders to soulless corporate politicians and power-hungry egomaniacs.

  1. As seen on Daring Fireball. ↩