"Choose your heroes" is the first advice I've heard in a while that's making me stop and think who I hold in high regard with my actions.
"Never meet your heroes"
Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
131–140 of 216 posts
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have found that it's incredibly hard to get successful entrepreneurs to acknowledge that a lot of their success is down to luck. I think it's got something to do with the Protestant Work Ethic - that if they were smart and worked hard then they "deserve" their wealth , but if they just got lucky they don't "deserve" it. So acknowledging that luck played an important part in their success gives them bad feelings, an…
It's hard because while for a 1 in 10,000,000 achievement, even if they're lucky to get 1 in 1,000 just by being born at the right place/time, they still need to fought hard for the rest of 1 in 10,000. I've seen people attributing Taylor Swift' success entirely to luck. But eventhough of course she has inherent advantage, she still has to defeat tons of people who also has the same or even more inherent advantage as…
I think your comparison with Taylor Swift is not good, a distraction even.
Billionaires optimize for very different goals than most other people. You don't become one by accident, while you are actually focused solely on your work. That will at most get you to a few million, maybe tens of millions. At higher wealth, you need to focus on the wealth itself. I don't think that that is something good if (even) more people tried to do.
People getting better like Taylor Swift is IMHO much better than people trying to be like a billionaire. The latter is all about controlling more and more important aspects of important parts of society, from production to sales, and in the end politics in general.
Taylor Swift getting really good does not negatively influence others, or force them how to live. Billionaires controlling more and more does. It's a tradeoff. Having more centralized control, like creating a Walmart or an Amazon, has advantages, but it also has disadvantages.
Also, the reason there even is the option of becoming that wealthy, controlling so much value, is almost entirely outside the hands of the individual. Like every human, billionaires too rely almost entirely on the context they live in. The vast majority of what we have was created by the dead, knowledge, infrastructure, culture. Even the most capable human only adds a very tiny amount. Mostly billionaires are good at gaining control over already existing things and other people.
Not necessarily a negative, a central control is essential for anything higher level. The point is that one, they did NOT create most of the things they use, second, there are only so many "chief" positions available in the human network to begin with (even if that number is somewhat flexible).
However, I think the laws of competition don't work for those positions of central power like they do in other "markets". I doubt billionaires are so rich (meaning just the resources they use for themselves) because there is little supply and competition for those positions (you may have trouble finding another Warren Buffett, but many billionaire positions are about the right time and place, especially when it's about resource control and not about innovation). I think there is plenty, and many would be just as capable as many currently holding those spots, but that does not cause their "wages" to fall.
Humanity is all about specialization, but those of us close to or inside of the controlling system - i.e. closer to the money - use their positions to get a much larger share. We also have a lot of circular reasoning and justifications: It's just, otherwise the (finance) system would not have created that outcome! Which makes questioning that very system impossible, because it tautologically justifies itself no matter what.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you rather be 95 years old with a trillion dollars or 25 years old with a thousand?
If picking as a finishing poker position, I'd definitely to end up as the 95 year old with a trillion dollars. When you're 95, life is about reflecting and living more with the past - and I like reflecting about that outcome with its share of certainly many greats and bads it takes to accumulate that kind of fortune. 25 years old with a thousand dollar on the other hand, statistically speaking, is starting and will f…
After a fulfilling and education-rich childhood, you awaken from a 70 year coma to discover that, as part of a complicated tax dodge, billionaires had been putting assets in your name, while maintaining control of them while you were in a coma.
You have a trillion dollars, but not the life experiences to look back upon, or any actual personal accomplishments.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#134If only more billionaires would start sounding as aware as this 95 year-old one: > But Lady Luck is fickle and – no other term fits – wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck – which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others hav…
I have found that it's incredibly hard to get successful entrepreneurs to acknowledge that a lot of their success is down to luck. I think it's got something to do with the Protestant Work Ethic - that if they were smart and worked hard then they "deserve" their wealth , but if they just got lucky they don't "deserve" it. So acknowledging that luck played an important part in their success gives them bad feelings, an…
If I won the lottery I would say it was 100% my skill.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you in America? No one in the Us military is giving up lives to keep citizens safe. For other countries, it’s because the nation state is the current agreed upon divider for certain things like borders. To moralize nationalism is weird and anti-humanity.
What are they giving up their lives for? American soldiers die in duty every year.
medals. they all like a medal.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#136Here's a person with integrity. They're very rare these days, especially amongst the wealthy.
lined his own pockets carving out companies and making people unemployed. that americans worship a man who never worked a day in his life is telling
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The BNSF people I’ve talked to have all told me about how much they’ve loved their jobs and what their jobs allowed them to do, including adopting children from Ukraine and get them out of a war zone. Maybe you should talk to more people. The people to blame for the predicament of the US auto industry are the.. US auto industry. Perhaps turning every vehicle into a luxury car and getting rid of affordable vehicles is…
> BYD is a fantastic investment, they are not undermining us My point is that Buffet spent his fortune earned in America, on undermining America and its allies. He has effectively given a strategic boost to the CCP and its past and future abuses. > including adopting children from Ukraine and get them out of a war zone. Maybe you should talk to more people. Is this AI?
Very few billionaires earn their fortune just "in America". Buffet definitely didn't.I live outside the US and pay thousands of dollars a year to American companies for goods and services, as do many of my friends. The insular separationist view of the global economy is daft and short-sighted.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman." Keep also in mind that the cleaning lady and the receptionist usually know way way more about the insides of a company than an entire board of directors and managers ever will. It is also extremely beneficial to your own health to be nice and friendly to the people who clean, prepare your food and aid your medical well being. They will re…
//Keep also in mind that the cleaning lady and the receptionist usually know way way more about the insides of a company than an entire board of directors and managers ever will. In Buffet's time maybe. Nowadays the sanitation staff more likely to be a contractor from some form of MSP on an exploitative contract with a 3-6 month lifespan. All the more reason to be nice, but don't expect an 'Inside Baseball' level of…
That means they know way more about what's going on at many companies. Maybe listen to them for market tips.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#139> In 1958, I bought my first and only home. Of course, it was in Omaha, located about two miles from where I grew up (loosely defined), less than two blocks from my in-laws, about six blocks from the Buffett grocery store and a 6-7 -minute drive from the office building where I have worked for 64 years. Is Warren Buffett getting into the meme too?
He famously drives himself to work every day in a battered old car because he doesn't see the point in spending money where he can avoid it, so I'm sure he's timed it.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Warren Buffett is a great investor but nobody in finance buys his folksy image. Everybody knows he's an animal. I heard from folks in the room that the way 3G and Buffett came in to do layoffs at Tim Hortons was one of the most cold blooded things they've ever seen.
He's donated, already, the equivalent of 200+ billions USD (give or take 420M class B shares). Say what you want, but the list of billionaires who have donated such large amounts of money while still alive (or dead) is small. Cherry picking events like layoffs, without truly knowing how much was he involved (Berkshire directors notoriously enjoy lots of autonomy) or if the layoffs made sense, etc, seems a stretch whe…
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