When I was a student, we tried to get him to speak to at our school, but Woz wanted mucho $$$$ to speak. But it seems plenty people will pay what he asks. I guess if my job were to just go around talking about random shit I'm interested in, and I can make $10M doing that, I'd be the happiest person ever too. I don't think it's about naivete.
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to get paid, I'm saying his being "the happiest person ever" is directly correlated to his ability to collect millions just shooting the shit in front of a fawning audience.
it's a bit of work and effort to give a talk. And he is rich enough to not need to do it for the money. Time is important. If he'd be doing it for free he'd probably get too many requests. Adding a high $ can simply help filter down to a reasonable thing.to only the largest locations and highest number of people.
I dont want to do contract work but people ask so I just quote an unreasonably high number and on occasion someone bites. I dont need the money so I need an easy filter.
A person whose every interest and opinion gets validated by the world would indeed be very happy. Imagine just talking about whatever the hell happens to interest you to people and everyone paying attention and even paying you good money for that.
It's a bit related to how billionaires tell everyone to "just work on whatever makes you happy and it's all going to be fine".
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to get paid, I'm saying his being "the happiest person ever" is directly correlated to his ability to collect millions just shooting the shit in front of a fawning audience.