• osanna@lemmy.vg
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    9 hours ago

    He could have been Elon rich, but he gave it all away and instead donates his meagre wealth tj schools and museums and shit. He was on slashdot recently and he said he was happy with his life. He’s a good guy. I wish him well.

    • 1984@lemmy.today
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      6 hours ago

      He always was a good guy. Ripped off by Steve Jobs. Steve was brilliant but he ranked very low on empathy. It’s surprising that he was a good speaker. Sam Altman and Zuckerberg is more like the pictures of a smart psychopath but Steve wasn’t like that.

    • auntieclokwise@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Woz’s net worth is estimated to be $100 million to $140 million. So, he’s certainly no billionaire, but he doesn’t exactly have meager wealth either. Honestly, I view $100 million as about the most a person should realistically have to still be remotely a normal person. After that, it’s really just excess and power. That’s enough where you’ve definitely won life - you can have lots of toys, a mansion, never need to work again, a very nice income in perpetuity, etc.

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      There’s a lie that incredible wealth makes people happier. That has never been true. It can remove certain stressors from your life, but it’s a trade. It comes at a cost. You have new stressors and those cannot ever be satisfied.

      It’s not just a belief. There’s been studies confirming this. After a certain point adding wealth does nothing to your happiness. Go far enough and you end up miserable, enslaved by your wealth.

      It’s a trap. Only a fool wants to be rich.

      Woz understood this. He’s the real deal. Jobs did not. Jobs was a pretty damaged person and kept trying to fill that hole with wealth. It didn’t work. It just made him rich and angry. Woz was well adjusted and comfortable. He’s getting what he actually wanted out of life.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        John Carmack is another one. For all he’s done, his net worth is only 50 million, but he spends his time developing new tech. I wouldn’t say Carmack is well adjusted, but he doesn’t seem to think making the lives of other people worse will make his life better.

        • NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Carmack very visibly just enjoys mental exercise. Watch any of his Quakecon keynotes if anyone needs to see it for themselves. The fact that it results in groundbreaking code for game engines, VR hyper-low latency algorithms, and rocketships is just a byproduct.

          And that’s probably the best way to not be turned into an alien by money: never be in it for the result, always find happiness in the process.

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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      9 hours ago

      I thought we hated all billionaires. When we eat the rich, will he be spared?

      I would… Just wondering what the rest of ya’ll think. There are some pretty hardcore folks on lemmy who would guillotine anyone with even $1M net worth.

      • ddplf@szmer.info
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        2 hours ago

        I know a lot of folk that are among the 1% in my country (Poland). I used to be there either, but then the bracket went higher and I lost my income. It’s actually not that hard to get there and most of people thete are aware that they are just a glorified middle class, not the nobility. I’m talking about the people earning 3-4x the median, as it is enough to get you to the 1%.

        I say, let them aspire for their supercars, just never allow them to possess a wealth vast enough they could militarize it.

      • Glytch@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        He’s not a billionaire (net worth 140 million) and donates a significant portion of his wealth to worthy causes. Of course we spare The Woz.

      • Whitebrow@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        A million is earnable through hard work and smart decisions through one’s lifetime, a billion is absolutely not.

        • auntieclokwise@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          I’d put another zero or 2 on there for what’s earnable with hard work and smart decisions. A million these days is like upper middle class. It’s a nice, but fairly normal, house in most parts of the country and a good start on a retirement fund. Point is still valid though.

          • bridgeburner@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Yeah maybe in California where the Cost of Living is abnormally high compared to the rest of the US and the rest of western countries.

            • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              Speaking from Norway: I can agree that order-of-magnitude 10 million USD is earnable in a lifetime. A wage of 100 k USD / yr isn’t absurdly high, and after 45 years that brings you to 4.5 million. So getting to like 10-30 million in a lifetime is still within what I would consider reasonably possible. At 100 mill. it’s getting pretty absurd though.