Apple co-founder sells Carmel Valley ranch, will become nature preserve | Hacker News Reader

Apple co-founder sells Carmel Valley ranch, will become nature preserve

mercurynews.com

206 pointstoomuchtodo125 comments

> The conservancy, which operates 22 other preserves in California, and one in Oregon, plans to open the scenic property to the public for hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding in the coming years for free, said Frazier Haney, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy.

> “The property is the size of — and has the grandeur of — many of California’s state parks,” Haney said. “It’s a wonder land of oak-filled valleys and magnificent flower-studded ridgelines.”

So it’s effectively a new state park for outdoor enthusiasts to enjoy in Northern California. Very nice!

Yep! California, more than any other state I know, has done an absolutely tremendous job of allowing private/public reinvestment in land trusts to create publicly accessible conserved open spaces. I should probably not be surprised by this, but I am still surprised at how much valuable land is held in these trusts.

Take a peek: https://www.calandtrusts.org/map-ca-land-trusts/

I was pretty happy when the Nature Conservancy assumed ownership of Bixby Ranch. Based on my trips to nearby Hollister, Bixby/Cojo is a gorgeous piece of land. Consistently threatened with development and without access. But now no more threats and potential access!

The map seems only to show which administrative areas (counties) each trust involves? Is there a map showing how many areas they actually cover?

> publicly accessible conserved open spaces

I agree these places make nice "parks", but but they generally feel pretty not-wild to me, I'd prefer more inaccessible wilderness. In terms of philanthropy, the rich person donates the money to set the spaces aside, and the average Joe donates "I won't go in there".

Hard to access wilderness is great and all that. It also doesn't work very well for people looking to spend half a day on the weekend. Sure I'll take remote parts of Yosemite over some park in the South Bay all other things being equal--but they're not. (And those parks near population get lots of use.)

I think you and the previous poster may be missing that this land is (practically) contiguous with one of the most inaccessible and least travelled wilderness areas in California: the Ventana Wilderness. It’s amazing how few in the Bay realize that there is a stunning, brutally wild wilderness area that is a 2.5 hour drive from SF on a Friday after work.

Garland Ranch is pretty nice too and will be closer for most people.

Wait so California state granted $24 million to the private Wildlands Conservancy, who spent $35 million for the property. California should have just bought the property and turned it into a state park. This should be public land.

The article said that two former California governors threatened to sell public land to balance budgets so the private ownership seems to be a mitigation. Plus they can implement private security if needed, something that public land/parks occasionally are lacking.

> The article said that two former California governors threatened to sell public land to balance budgets so the private ownership seems to be a mitigation.

This is a well-known concern in land preservation. There's apparently an offshore island near Maine that's too small and too far out to be of much use to humans, but it's an important migratory bird resting point.

IIRC, it was donated to the state once by conservationists (long ago), sold by the state, and then repurchased and preserved by a non-profit foundation. The state won't be getting it again!

The usual approach in the US is for the land conservation foundations to split up the ownership rights between two different local organizations in a way that prevents developing the land without agreement from both organizations.

As a general rule, most towns are happy with this setup. It provides them with public walking trails, and possibly areas for other outdoor sports. Many towns choose not to tax these lands, within reason.

It's a fundamental problem with almost anything to do with the state (in the general sense), including budgets. Anything that is discretionary will eventually be raided by an opportunistic politician and binding future policy makers is very difficult, if not downright impossible.

As long as the general rule of law is strong with robust property rights, however, creating a new private organization like a trust with a strict charter that limits its future stakeholders is a lot easier.

It's not just the state. All human institutions can change. I hope these nonprofit land conservancies can continue their mission forever, but it's not guaranteed.

Hell, look at monasteries. Several societies with large religious followings couldn't prevent the dissolution of monasteries - Tang Dynasty China (cutting down Buddhist ones), and Tudor England (cutting down Christian monasteries).

> The usual approach in the US is for the land conservation foundations to split up the ownership rights between two different local organizations in a way that prevents developing the land without agreement from both organizations.

What a clever approach!

In the 1980s, to get around compulsory purchase orders able to take land from even the most determined charity, campaigners split up a field into a few thousand small parcels, sold on for a pound or two. The idea being that trying to get them all back would be unaffordable, even the most corrupt charity would be unable to sell the land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Meadow

Also sounds quite clever!

It works until one of them stops caring. I could imagine that, if a town is dying, it would be very difficult for them to justify spending resources related to nature conservation, and would then again require the conservation foundation to step in and provide resources.

I think the point is that both have to stop caring for the land to be developed. A kind of two phase commit. Also helps in case one of them becomes defunct.

Is it possible to instead write something in the terms of the donation preventing this? Maybe that would require larger action from the state, like a state congressional vote though.

My football club in the UK has a lot of ground which is legally only allowed to be used for sporting purposes according to the will of the person who donated it. Not sure how it works but this is prime City-center land which remains green due to this.

Lots of charitable trusts find themselves under new management who has a new interpretation on what the real intentions of the founder were. And then there's a lawsuit, and then a judge rules that this or that interpretation is in the public interest, regardless of what anybody wanted.

First right of refusal I think is what you're looking for.

As I understand it, the terms of the donation cannot survive forever (although they can for a very long time).

The Helsinki Foundation does this - in the constitution it states that the land use cannot be changed without permission from all donors, effectively giving each donor a veto right (and donations can be 1$).

In Finland, there's an organization literally named "The Forest Government" which takes responsibility for many forests / lands.

I haven't dug deep and the organisation probably has ton of issues, like parasites attached to a host, but the general picture I got is that the public trusts it.

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Humans never evolved to coordinate as a society. Our natural course: the most psychopathic humans ruin the environment and the masses of "good" humans don't look / react because they don't have a sense of urgency. Philip K. Dick's story Project Earth tells about Project C (Earth being Project B), a species designed to solve this.

Similarily in Poland. We have an organisation called "State's Forests" and it has 24% of the entire surface of the country under it's management. (30% of the surface of Poland are forests). These are not "old growth" forests(such are only in national parks), but we'll managed commercial forestry. In general (despite the usual issues in organisations of this size) people are pretty happy with it. It is also because of the laws we have here that essentially give certain use rights to the public. For example, everyone has the right to collect mushrooms and or berries etc. Everyone can enter and use the forests for recreation (except when it's too dry due to fire risk). Also timber production and sales are pretty transparent (anyone can bid online). But as anything that matters to national economy/security it's under attack by various groups sponsored by shady money.

If it's owned by a non-profit its generally exempt from taxation by statute.

I like it. The state can’t spend money it doesn’t have. :)

Do governors even have the power to do that? Public lands in my state can only go to sale through voter referendum. Even to lease requires referendum. A desperate governor has the power to make such decisions that takes generations to fix is unfathomable to me.

Chicago (and maybe other places) sold the rights to give parking tickets for the next 100 years to make their annual budget numbers look better. I think the company made back their investment in under 3 years.

Saves the state money in upkeep, with the tradeoff being that the private nonprofit can set its own rules on access.

I wonder if the $24M that the state contributed came with any stipulations ensuring public access to the land. It sounds like they intend to open it to the public anyway, but for that amount of money I assume there must be some binding legal agreements as well.

Yes, of course. Take a look at the Wildlands Conservancy's website to learn more. In my previous comment on this thread I also linked to this reference: https://www.calandtrusts.org/map-ca-land-trusts/

These sorts of public/private land trusts are by far the most popular way in California of ensuring wildlands are not developed and remain open for public access. It makes sense for the state to contribute to them, too, because they provide QoS guarantees - and financing largely supported through philanthropy - the state would never be able to ensure.

Worth the free goodwill. It's kinda like how Airbnb shows us the total with fees with all the jazz of an unveil, just before Biden passed a law requiring

then they have to manage the property as well

For those who haven't clicked through, the co-founder is Mike Markkula, not Jobs or Woz.

And he sold it for $32M... Bought it for $8M in 1982

It sounds like he developed it quite a bit, with buildings and even an airstrip. So the math isn't quite as simple as present-valuing the $8M from 1982 and subtracting it from the $32M in today's dollars. Still made a haul though, I'm sure!

Growing 4X in value over 41 years is only a 3.44% annual rate of return. I wouldn’t call that a haul. If you consider cost of improvements, upkeep, and inflation, it’s probably a loss.

The odds are exceptionally good that he wasn't trying to maximize profits with the sale. Additionally, the valuation of the land as an open space preserve is far different than it might be if it were estimated for development.

I did wonder (as a former tax lawyer) if he is also claiming a deduction, on the theory that he is donating a portion of the FMV to the land trust. Some land owners have donated development rights to properties they own, which reduces the future value of the land (and generates a hefty current deduction).

Especially since he owned a lot of Apple stock, haha

Apparently $8M in 1982 is worth $25M today, but property price inflation doesn’t always match CPI.

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1982?amount=80000...

Opportunity cost is higher than inflation.

Is the airstrip still usable?

Any airstrip is usable if you try hard enough.

Airstrip is always usable. Would your plane, pilot and passengers be usable afterwards is whole another matter.

If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing. Chuck Yeager.

Or if you're Tom Cruise.

He's best at altitude. I'd go with Tom Landing where runways are involved.

Doesn't look too bad https://maps.app.goo.gl/mkbRcgKVMHdeh9967

Though it was put up for sale at $59M in 2013, but it seems the family had a change of heart:

“He loves the ranch and his family loves the ranch. He raised his kids there,” Clark said. “But they all moved on to other interests and he wants others to enjoy it now.”

What a wonderful ending. I wish more wealth people would do similarly.

> I wish more wealth people would do similarly.

What exactly? Buying cheap, selling expensive to non-profit for the price from which 2/3 came from the taxes?

He could have sold it for more to private sellers but sold for less to essentially create an open space preserve.

He bought 9k acres for $8M. I didn’t see how much they paid for the remaining 6k acres.

What difference does that make?

I was curious

> In 1977, Mike Markkula gave two unknown, shaggy-haired computer programmers, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, $250,000 to help turn their young partnership into a new company.

The opening statement doesn't bode well for the factual accuracy of what follows. Jobs was not a programmer, and Markkula was an investor, not a co-founder.

Jobs did program. He was employee #40 at Atari, and worked at night on the games. He didn't end up being a programmer at Apple, but it's fair to describe him as a programmer.

> “Everybody should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think"

– Steve Jobs

It's not at all clear that he ever wrote a single line of code at Atari. He was on hardware testing, so definitely had to learn his way around electronics, but probably didn't code. Especially with Wozniak doing the heavy lifting for him on several occasions. See here for more detail: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-empl...

He probably did code, but he may not have met whatever arbitrary bar you’ve set for what you consider a programmer.

Yeah, coding is not some mystified skill LOL.

How come people are surprised Jobs and even Musk code?

It’s more envy than surprise; if they’re capable leaders then they must certainly lack in some other ability to learn and understand.

My impression of Jobs from reading his bios was that he was a top tier bullshit artist. The type of kid that would get another kid to do their homework, but would present it to the class so convincingly that nobody would know better. This was essentially how he got by at Atari with Woz doing all the coding for him.

Sometimes persuasive people are also (annoyingly) gifted. (a joke)

We have such a false dichotomy built into our culture where the brilliant engineer types are unable to communicate their ideas with precision, zeal, persuasion, and charisma.

I think it is fair that we distrust only charisma. Many people prey upon this.

Still, I could hold up at least four personal friends and three former coworkers that blow the doors off any such assumptions.

Several have worked through up and around Silicon Valley, but others have found other paths, including bureaucracy.

Is it hard for me to believe that Steve Jobs fits that pattern? Quite the opposite.

Nobody is that simple to describe.

Check out “Creativity Inc.” by Ed Catmull and it may change your mind.

This is almost comical. Have you listened to any interview he did? He is not a bullshit artist at all.

His infamous “reality distortion field” is the definition of bullshit, but it turns out that the right kind of bullshit can be turned into a trillion dollar company.

It can be useful to keep these ideas separated in at least one sense. Harry Frankfurt characterizes a bullshitter as someone who doesn’t care about truth at all. Jobs was not that kind of bullshitter.

Jobs often disagreed with people about what was attainable. Bending the perception of truth is not the same as denying or not caring about truth.

Jobs held core truths, ie testable claims, such as “design matters” and design could differentiate Apple and make it wildly valuable. He was largely correct.

Jobs had a track record of delivering. So his visions often did map on to reality. In this sense, the reality distortion field served as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Frankfurtian bullshitters, OTOH, don’t care if the truth catches up to them. To them it’s all just words you say for convenience.

disclaimer: ex Apple / like (not love — love is a word best preserved for human relationships) Apple products / strive to be generally skeptical and discontented with everything

I agree with your comment/ assessment. I just read Guy Kawasaki’s “Wise Guy” and he amongst others describes Jobs as this perfectionist. He was big on getting details and polish right.

He also described that working at Apple and under Jobs as scary. If you didn’t bring your A-game you would be fired rather quickly.

Anyway the book is interesting.

You calling having a vision and making people believe it is BS? It turns out it is actually opposite of the definition of bullshit. sent from my iPhone.

People love to say this kind of thing about extremely successful people, but you can’t just bullshit your way to creating beloved companies/products.

> > “Everybody should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think"

> – Steve Jobs

As a critique, most programming is vastly overrated in terms of what this quote is claiming. I would say mathematics, art, and philosophy actually teach you how to think. It is much easier to program systems that work without thinking than it is to do those three fields in a successful way without thinking. And programming, more than anything, is about communication. Most programming, not all, is very simple logic. Good programming, in my opinion, will indeed capture a domain through some type of domain modeling process, but I highly doubt Jobs was even aware of this way of thinking about programming.

Idk Apple history all that much but, this 1997 article in NYT also refers to Mr. Markkula as a co-founder so at least it is not the first time that someone calls him that.

> Armas Clifford (Mike) Markkula Jr., the third and perhaps least understood co-founder of Apple Computer Inc.

https://archive.is/jazes

(Also, it's funny how 1997 is actually closer to 1977 than it is to our current year of 2023..)

Steve Jobs was indeed a programmer at one point in his early career, working for Atari. But of course what he became known for was being the product/sales/vision guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Pre-Apple says he was hired as a ‘computer technician’.

Later, he was sort-of hired as a hardware designer. Same URL:

“Jobs returned to Atari in early 1975, and that summer, Bushnell assigned him to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout in as few chips as possible, knowing that Jobs would recruit Wozniak for help”

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Apple_(1976–1985) says:

Jobs's friend from Reed College and India, Daniel Kottke, recalled that as an early Apple employee, he “was the only person who worked in the garage … Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn't get his hands dirty in that sense.”

Also, there’s Woz’s statement (https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-compu...):

”Steve didn't ever code," writes Wozniak. "He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs.”

⇒ I don’t think he did much, if any, programming.

He demoed NeXT’s programming environment dozens of times.

Demo != coding

Perhaps, but most accounts describe him as having done QA on circuit boards at Atari and not actually writing any kind of software.

So Markkula didn't sell his ranch to the Wildlands Conservancy? Confused as to what inaccuracies you're talking about.

Just wondering. In the country I live in, we need to pay annual land tax. So if you own a huge land, every year you have huge tax to pay. What's the thought process of people buying vast land like this in the first place? To develop private housing?

There is a different land use tax. Agricultural land is taxed very little. And unincorporated land is taxed almost nothing. Since it's undeveloped it requires little in government resources. Now, stick houses and stores on it and you have to add water, sewage, traffic, police, fire, trash, and roads. And that does cost a lot for a government to provide.

Recently watched the Ken Burns documentary about the US National Parks - really great. As in this example, it's remarkable how much private money (John D. Rockefeller for instance) was donated to divert these beautiful places to the public.

Great news! Hoping to be able to hike and mountain bike the new trails in a few years. The trails around fort ord are more popular than ever and this should make it easier for people to have more space, if they want it.

I read this as "an apple co-founder selling some type of ranch dressing that will turn into a fruit jam"

Sorry but why not just give the entire plot back to the Esselen tribe, from whom it was stolen, rather than just selling them (!) a fraction of it?

Peninsula Open Space Trust also acquires a lot of land that it opens to the public.

With respect to future-proofing it: there's no way to be 100% sure what will happen. Any laws, wills, or trusts can be broken, given enough time and lawyers.

Another evil billionaire being a terrible burden on humanity's fate /s

Call me crazy, but I don't think we should depend on the graciousness and good will of the incredibly wealthy.

Thanks for sharing! I didn’t know about the wildlands conservancy and found a nice one near to where I live. Looking forward to enjoying a bike ride there one day!

I like it. Why are people so negative about rich people doing something good with their money?

One or two days ago there was a post here about the ex CEO of Patagonia and her husband. Their work includes rewilding and succesfully bringing Jaguars back to Chile and Argentina.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWothcLpazU

https://films.nationalgeographic.com/wild-life

I think it's mostly because think about how much wealth they are hoarding after donating, rather than the amount they are donating. Line of thinking is something like "Cool that you donated 1B but what about the rest of the 278B you have, what are you going to do with that?"

Not saying it's wrong or right, just outlining how I think a lot of people think with this type of philanthropy.

Why should i care how much they keep? Is it envy?

Learning to focus on the positive things to be grateful about is something i fully recommend.

Focussing on the negative is our evolutionary heritage and useful survival mechanism The the inviduals who did not got snacked by predators. In the western world it leads to depression and anxiety in individuals with a disposition i'd say. I think it is the reason tabloids and TV report so much about horrible stuff. Abusing fear sells.

There is a website that only writes about positive things [0]. Got to actively remind myself to go there, worth it though.

[0] https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

Get rid of the paywall by running this right after opening the page

    var id = window.setTimeout(function() {}, 0);
    while (id--) window.clearTimeout(id);

wow ..

Co-founder? Really? I am pretty sure that isn’t how that works.

A case could be made... From wikipedia:

He was the original angel investor, first chairman, and second CEO for Apple Computer, Inc., providing critical early funding and managerial support. At the company's founding, Markkula owned 26% of Apple, equivalent to each of the shares owned by cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

The article also says he was the third employee after Jobs and Wozniak.

Jeez, 26% of $3 trillion?!

owner != founder

He wasn't just an owner, though. Being 3rd on the payroll, 1st CEO and having as much shares as the other 2 co-founders definitely blurs the line (and crosses over into co-founder territory, IMO).

Additionally, depending when when incorporation happened, he may even be officially a cofounder (and not just a logical one)

Fine! I guess I have to reconsider what a founder is.

When Apple Computer was founded, it's cap table contained three people - Jobs, Woz, and Markkula. That seems like a reasonable definition of cofounder, even if he wasn't an active participant in the company.

What about Ronald Wayne?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Wayne

Wouldn't deny him either, as he was there at the beginning, though of a slightly different iteration. By the time the "modern" apple computer corporation had formed, though, he was out.

Lots of people are founders in title and historical reconning. I keep seeing Aaron Schwartz listed as a founder of Reddit, and I personally agree - he was the first employee in legal fact, but he was there before there was a product, which makes him a founder in an important sense.

That’s not true at all. Apple was founded in 1976. Nine months later Markkula was added to the cap. table, in 1977, thanks to his investment. Early investor and employee, yes, founder, no.

Maybe they made him solder a resistor.

Well apparently he did write a check book balancing program for the Apple II, so by that measure he probably wrote more code than Steve Jobs.

Don't tell that to all the people who believe Elon Musk founded Tesla.

True. Yet there wouldn't be a Tesla today without Elon. Arguably that is a kind of founder in its own right.

And Elon wouldn’t exist without his parents. Tesla wouldn’t exist if George Washington hadn’t won the war of independence from England. Does that make them founders of Tesla? Everyone contributed, but truth matters.

Elon's experience at Tesla is a great example of why the technicals of who incorporated the original entity doesn't matter.

Are you kidding? Without the founders Tesla would not have existed. They took the risk and had the vision. Musk then came in later as an opportunist.

Tesla would not exist without Musk either. It was on life support even with Musk nearly going bankrupt throwing money into it while he was running it.

Are you kidding? Without the founders Tesla would not have existed. They took the risk and had the vision. Musk then came in later as an opportunist. Definitions very much matter. Truth matters.

I'm going to assume this is a good-faith confusion about the history of Tesla, so I'll link to it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.

The company existed for 6 months before Musk became involved. It had no product, no prototype, and not even a real design for a product. It took most of a decade to turn that into a real car, all of which time Elon was involved.

Yes. Investor in Apple, rather than 'third co-founder' as the title is complete clickbait.

Woz considers him a co-founder. He says it in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/1633261412373127168

Followed by this photo of them having dinner:

https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/1633262344964038656

Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan.

Post-success it's pretty common to play around with that definition.

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