How To Practice AWFL Philanthropy - Laurene Powell Jobs

Translating Laurene Powell Jobs' sanctimonious WSJ op-ed - why does she hide who she is handing out billions to?

Comrades: Laurene Powell Jobs has donated a deluge of demoralization dollars.

Last week, she penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal called “Beware of Philanthropists Who Want Control in Exchange for Their Giving”. She criticized her fellow billionaires for not doing philanthropy the right way. Her argument is that true enlightenment comes from handing out billions to NGOs with no strings attached. Despite her sanctimony and idiocy, she is playing to win the patronage game. She single handedly gives more money to leftist causes and commissars than everyone on the right combined does to conservative causes.

Let’s knock AWFL LPJ off her high horse by translating her haughty double-speak and countering her cancerous campaigns.

---

Eight hundred years ago, the philosopher Maimonides wrote that the supreme purpose of giving is to make charity itself unnecessary. True generosity, he taught, restores dignity and agency rather than diminishing it.

That wisdom should feel timeless, but lately it feels contested. We are living in a moment when giving is too often used not to serve but to control—to decide what matters and which rules should apply. Some of the loudest voices in public life now assert that their donations give them carte blanche to dictate the terms of belonging.

Laurene Powell Jobs is complaining about loud voices when she owns The Atlantic and publishes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Giving without control and accountability leads to waste and theft. What are the terms of belonging? Being a goodthinker like her? I doubt she writes checks to any groups that are to the right of Mao.

---

In a recent interview, Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, called for military intervention to “save” San Francisco, a city he once celebrated—and where he no longer lives. When challenged, Benioff invoked his own donations as proof of authority: No one, he claims, has given more to San Francisco. Then, as if to underscore the point, he added, “If there is anyone who’s doing more for the local community, I want their name, because I’m very competitive.”

The message beneath that comment was unmistakable: In his eyes, generosity is an auction—and policy is the prize awarded to the highest bidder. But giving that expects control is anything but generous.

Important lesson for capitalists. Even if you give your fortune to communists, they will still hate you. Benioff doled out millions to leftist NGOs. Then he fled to his massive compound in Hawaii after they destroyed SF. Despite his $10 billion in wealth, he still cowers in fear of the red guard mobs and retracted his support for military intervention after a struggle session. Agitators also tried to wipe Zuckerberg’s name from San Francisco’s hospital after he donated $75 million. Jobs ($12 billion net worth) is in a spite spending competition with the demoralized divorcee duo of Mackenzie Bezos ($42 billion) and Melinda Gates ($30 billion) on who can wreck civilization the most.

---

When wealth becomes a substitute for participation, giving is reduced to performance art—proof of virtue, a way to appear magnanimous while still demanding ownership. Recipients become props in donors’ narratives, rather than agents of change. Problems get framed around donors’ interests instead of people’s needs. Solutions start to serve personal recognition instead of results.

That’s the quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy: the ability to give as a license to impose one’s will. It’s a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest.

The projection is off the charts. Laurene heavily publicized a virtue signaling manifesto when she signed The Giving Pledge. The photo headlining this op-ed, her Twitter cover photo, and her charity’s website all feature her standing amongst her props, yet she lacks the self-awareness to own it. Using The Atlantic to pump propaganda for her besties Kamala and Ghislaine is the definition of quiet corruption, imposing one’s will, and moral laundering.

---

The cost reaches far beyond any single donor’s ego. When giving becomes a spectacle, it distorts the very idea of civic responsibility. Public institutions bend toward the priorities of the wealthy, and communities begin to measure worth in proximity to power. The generosity that was meant to bind us together instead becomes a means of control—a way to shape policy by applause rather than by consent.

But there is another path: Real progress happens from the ground up. It’s built through proximity, trust and endurance—in classrooms and clinics, in small businesses and neighborhood coalitions, in the people who stay long after the cameras move on. These are the citizens who hold communities together: teachers, nurses, organizers, small-business owners, the quiet network of people who repair what they can reach.

Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave. He earned his big ego because he changed the world through capitalist innovation. Steve was maniacally focused on creating products that we all use every day, while avoiding politics and conspicuous consumption. His widow is using his money as a bonfire for her ego to engineer communist spectacle. She lives far away from the diverse communities she lauds and will never suffer the consequences of the disfunction she enables. Will she ever let the illegals, activists, and BIPOC communities live in her many mansions?

---

Philanthropy can and should stand with them, but only when its place is clear—when it remembers what it is and what it isn’t. Money can open doors, but it can’t speak for a community or dictate its future. Lasting change happens when the people already doing the work have the tools and trust to lead and shape what comes next.

True generosity works in the opposite direction. It flows quietly to communities that already know what they need. It builds capacity, not dependency. It measures success by voices strengthened, not by names engraved.

Laurene is regurgitating her friend Kamala’s word salad. When people already doing the work have more tools (cash) and the trust (AWFL naivete), they will pull a BLM and steal it. She repeats the word quietly for the third time in this article. How can you measure voices strengthened? By the decibel level of the shrieks from protestors’ megaphones? Why does she hide the NGOs she is donating to? Have they done anything violent or illegal? Time for deeper investigations and subpoenas - democracy dies in the darkness!

---

The most effective giving empowers existing institutions, supports local leadership and creates space for communities to tackle challenges on their own terms. It’s an approach to sustainable change that doesn’t depend on the whims or ego of any individual donor. And it recognizes what Maimonides understood: that the purpose of charity is not the donor’s satisfaction but the recipient’s well-being, and that the people closest to a problem are best positioned to understand and address it.

The work of philanthropy, then, isn’t to command or correct—and it certainly isn’t to demean and disparage. It’s to sustain. And its truest measure is not what it buys but what it actually helps to build.

“Tackle challenges on their own terms” means gimme handouts with no accountability. If the people closest to the problem understand it so well, why haven’t they solved it after decades with billions of taxpayer and philanthropist funding? You get more of what you incentivize. The only thing she is sustaining is subversion and destruction.

---

Laurene Powell Jobs is the founder and president of Emerson Collective, lead investor and chair of the Atlantic and founder and board member of College Track.

Laurene still needs to LinkedIn flex. She is free to pursue a utopia with her money, even though it will fail and harm many in the process. Will anyone on the right other than Elon step up to counter Laurene’s subversion at scale?