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Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

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191–200 of 216 posts

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#191

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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…

To whom? To "charities" owned by other billionaires such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and those owned by his children. I don't want billionaires to donate anything, I don't want them to use their money to shape the world to their liking. I want them to pay their fair share of taxes and a functional government that properly allocates those extra funds instead of funding the bare minimum.

> To "charities" owned by other billionaires such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Which are responsible among other things for the quasi-total eradication of polio from this planet, provided vaccines for billions (literally) people across the globe in poor countries and have been major contributors in malaria and hiv treatment, prevention and research.

Also, they provided funds to millions of small rural farmers in third world countries to improve productivity and yields.

When I traveled Madagascar, plenty of villages had water and waste infrastructure built with the aid of that foundation too.

By the way, their balance sheets are public, and audited every year.

I'm baffled by the low-level conspirationism encountered on HN, it feels more and more like reading boomer's facebook everyday.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#193
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excessive consumption isn't really the main problem with billionaires. It's the money they don't spend on consumption which is worst. The money spent on the pursuit of more money, buying up zero-sum goods that shouldn't even be for sale, like political power.

> Excessive consumption isn't really the main problem with billionaires. It's the money they don't spend on consumption which is worst. Which consumables do you think billionaires should spend their money on? And how would this improve the world?

From my reading, GP is saying that, if one problem is the main one, it is the problem of billionaires spending money on not-consumption. There was no praise for "excessive consumption".

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#194
post #107

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Warren Buffet is the definition of oligarchy. Dude runs a rail and insurance monopoly while buying large top stocks for yield. He maintains a persona of this traditional and nice family dude who is old and wise. But this is the US, and people are ranked/valued by how rich they are regardless of how it is acquired. Still, he avoided political scrutiny (say comparing to Musk or Bezos) by maintaining this image. That wa…

The image machine for him really is something. Buffet is a bigamist. By all intents and purposes he lived with two wives. The legal status was not that of bigamy, to be clear. He married his other wife after his first wife died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett The personal section here is not exactly false, but is a great example of how one should not trust Wikipedia outright. A careful reading of it sho…

Not a bigmaist,

Had a wife, they split up, but didn't get divorced because he had no prenup and he was one of the wealthiest people in the country.

After she died he married again.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#195
post #70

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Chance favors the prepared mind.

And compounding works wonders over the long run. Apparently he started his first investment at age 11. 8 decades is a long time to compound even at low rates.

Compounding is great, but so is return to the mean. The comparision should be his rate of return. If its continously above the average over a long period, its not luck.

Compounding ensures that he will probably have a lot of money either way, which is why total $$ is a bad proxy for luck vs skill.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your government is pretty dysfunctional the way it is. I'm not surprised billionaires don't want to waste their taxes on that crap.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you almost certainly believe that at least some billionaires carry a disproportionate responsibility for that dysfunction. Whatever they are, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, George Soros or indeed Warren Buffett aren't just passive observers of government.

Buffett has actively tried to raise taxes on the rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#197
post #42

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It's not a poker position. It is everything. At 95 you're a lot closer to the end of everything than the start, your body is really giving up and it is exceedingly difficult to enjoy anything much. The speculation is that buffet would likely give up his entire wealth and have his expertise wiped to wind back his biological clock 70 years. Would he? I don't know, ask him maybe. What can you do with $100m at 95 you wou…

>What can you do with $100m at 95 you would actually enjoy? At 95 with 100m, it's less about what I can do with that time left and more about how to make the world better off by the time I croak. I lived my life, as far as I'm concerned. Putting it another way: I'm out the door in 2 weeks, some people would spend it relaxing. I'd make sure to document as much as I can and keep the transition as low friction as possib…

Note that Warren's personal wealth has been vastly more than he and three generations of his ancestors could ever possibly spend however frivolously for /decades/ now.

The only thin you can do with that money is give it away in charity or politics.

So what has he done with that time? He doesn't seem to be into frivolous spending much at all as far as is reported.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#198

Earlier 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.

Just look at how he chopped up GEICO (his favorite company). The company imploded under Buffets hand picked snake of a CEO (Todd Combs).

Seems to be making decent profits though https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insight...

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Squirrels don't really hoard in the sense trillionaires do ("gathering a great quantity for one's own private collection"), they take seeds and bury them all over the place, which is meaning #2 in the dictionary ("save in one's mind for a future need or use"). The squirrel and other animals eat them later, the 50+% nobody finds to eat can take root. That way, squirrels play an important role in seed dispersal for man…

you're splitting hairs. Squirrels evolve to save more food for themselves, everything else is an accident

No, you're ascribing will to a blind and undirected process. Squirrels that survive in recent years and decades bury more food than they ever eat, whether that specifically helped them against certain selection pressures or whether it vestigially remains as a non-impacting behavior.
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