I completely agree. Read about Buffet’s favorite investment: See’s Candies. They bought a beloved, family-owned brand, cut costs, and jacked up prices. What does that sound like to you? It’s the typical private equity playbook that’s almost universally derided. Buffet and Munger were the original pioneers of PE. Their legacy is not positive.
>They bought a beloved, family-owned brand, cut costs, and jacked up prices.
Berkshire by design doesn't influence how the companies they bought are run.
Speaking as a person with an architecture degree, it is, in my opinion, plainly a completely stupid idea. I cannot imagine one person I have ever met with similar professional training who would consider it anything other than completely stupid. As a person who hasn’t paid any attention to his corner of the finance sector, this horrible dorm was my introduction to the man. My immediate conclusion was that he rose to…
I was just on a campus this past weekend and half the windows were blacked out by the residents themselves. Natural light shining into where you sleep is overrated.
I really dislike the "Light On Two Sides Of Every Room" pattern of Christopher Alexander, which is ideally accomplished with two externally facing windows on different walls. Windows compromise how I would like to layout the room's interior to my own preferences. I don't care what an architect envisioned for a generic human habitability, I want a space to feel habitable to me. Most of the time that means eliminating natural light.
I actually agreed with his reasoning on this and don't think it was motivated by greed at all. Firstly it would have been cheaper for the students. But secondly and more importantly, the buildings did have windows, it was only the dorms themselves which didn't, but the reasoning for this was that were primarily built for sleeping so he argued they didn't need windows. And not requiring windows meant that each student…
Speaking as a person with an architecture degree, it is, in my opinion, plainly a completely stupid idea. I cannot imagine one person I have ever met with similar professional training who would consider it anything other than completely stupid. As a person who hasn’t paid any attention to his corner of the finance sector, this horrible dorm was my introduction to the man. My immediate conclusion was that he rose to…
Get off your high horse. You don’t know what everybody wants. To choose between having a dorm mate or having no windows I would absolutely pick no windows.
Bitcoin is on its way to $0, probably within 40 years.
Some studies say that average life of companies on the S&P 500 is less than 20 years. So if Bitcoin does double that it is quite successful. https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/disruption/articles/w... .
Successful by what metric?
Companies on the S&P 500 don’t exist exclusively as investment vehicles. They make things. They often go bankrupt trying to make things.
If your metric for success is a market’s lifetime, feel free to invest in gold or silver.
Why? What does this dude have to do with Hacker News?
Every now and then the mask fully slips and you see how many users here really think. Munger was famously anti modern tech and even called the internet a "net negative" for capitalism at one point in 2000, but it doesn't matter because he was rich. Also he made so much money that all the comments where he praised a brutal dictatorship are apparently no big deal, for example for cracking down on Jack Ma who dared to m…
> but it doesn't matter because he was rich
i think it does matter. Also let me take a minute to disconnect the person - which anyone dying even at this age is tragic - from the persona that many people here seem to worship. Personally I don't think that he was a net positive for the hackers that are still around here but I may be wrong.
He was absolutely correct about bitcpin and history will vindicate his perspective.
time will tell. I don't think there is anything to vindicate here. Also, really smart people are wrong about a lot of things all the time - being wrong about one thing should not diminish your other contributions.
One of my favorite quotes from Munger > It’s very important to not put your brain in chains too young by what you shout out. From his speech at Harvard in '95, he's talking about how loudly proclaiming something, shouting about it even, locks our brains into this, making us resistant to contradictory ideas, regardless of evidence. This observation has felt more and more important over the last decade.
That’s a great advice. I happened to learn that naturally and I’m thankful I did. Proclaiming things also creates expectations from others and people generally tend to be prone to fulfill those outside expectations. This effect seems to be particularly magnified by social media, where everyone assume a certain persona online. Seems to be at the root of bigotry, too. How can you change your mind if your entire networking is made up of people who confirms the biases you’ve been preaching for the longest time? There’s a great line of dialogue from the movie Millennium, where Daniel Craig’s character breaks into the house of the killer, only for him to show up at the next minute. Craig tries to escape but the villain notices him. They both know what the other is up to. But the killer is smart, and he pretends he doesn’t. So he invites Craig to come inside, and he accepts it. Later, when Craig is subdued by the killer, tied up and about to be killed, the villain reminds him of how stupid he was to have accepted the invitation, noting how this is a trait common to people, who go to great lengths to avoid letting others down, and that, in this specific scenario, Craig did exactly that even though he knew the danger, just so he would not pass for a dismissive character, just to maintain his status as a nice person. And even though I know that, I still find myself falling for that trap from time to time. It’s so hard to be true to yourself when we are social beings, ultimately dependent on others in various ways, for various reasons. Being true and truthful is so scary, as you risk burning so many bridges, but we hardly consider that by being true we may end up building other, better bridges, more aligned with who we are, or at least ought to be. Attachment is enemy with progress, Charlie certainly knew that. Rest In Peace.