Warren Buffett's Final Shareholder Letter [pdf]

I don't get it either but me using it is a great way to annoy my kids.

It originated as a brag - a basketball player said it like "I am 6' 7", therefore I am a high quality male and women should reproduce with me". Then shorter people picked up on it

It’s the Waaaasssssuuuupppp of the Gen Alpha.

> It’s literally just saying 6-7. No, I don’t get it either.

A linguist goes into the meme and it's history:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZpTO7IFtA

You not getting it is the main point of the saying: it's slang term that young folks (in-group) are using to differentiate themselves from the not-young folks (out-group).

Sounds like the point was both achieved and obvious.

It just gets stuck in your head and is something to laugh at. The kids who are into it are too young to remember the other catch phrases we got into. My four year old repeats it all the time, which keeps it stuck in my head.

I'm just waiting for Sesame Street to declare 6 and 7 the numbers of the day.

Oh my gosh, my six year old just said it to me today. What is going on?!

And when he found out about Wells Fargo's behavior, he liquidated the position and has remained out of it. I fail to see the problem with what he did in that case. As a ~5% holder he (Berkshire) had no special control over the company in terms of micro-audits to surface such fraudulent behavior promptly as it was happening.

Well yeah, if he wouldn't have profited from the great financialization of the US economy, he couldn't have amassed nearly the wealth that he has amassed, and we wouldn't be talking about him now, so the point is kind of moot. Let's say that, in the cut-throat world of big money, he is (or, at this point, was), one of the nicer guys...

Off the top of my head, a couple of examples.

The "white knight" purchase of Salomon Bros stake to "save" them from a hostile takeover was a redistribution of wealth from the existing shareholders who would have accepted the deal to him & his fund. Is that evil? No, I don't think so. Is it perfect ethics, that's a personal ethical call. Colluding with management to redistribute wealth from the shareholders professional managers are meant to serve to yourself? Certainly profitable. Salomon managers kept their jobs and bonuses too. Buffet spoke about how impressed with their ethics he was and that being his motivation. Ok.

The purchase of the Goldman's stake during the GFC at what was it a 20% discount to market? Evil? Again no. Did he insist instead of just taking a huge windfall, on underwriting an offer at that price and throwing it open to small investors so anyone who would back the bank in the crisis collects 20% on top of buying on market? That would be hugely admirable, democratic and patriotic but less profitable.

Going to the start, moving Berkshire's pension fund from debt to equity. Did he get the approval of all the pension plan's beneficiaries for that change in risk? He was right, fine, sure. Was that his risk to take on their behalf? Worked out great. Do you want your pension fund manager going against the accepted wisdom on risk? Well you do if it works, but you can't take on the risk in hindsight. There are no shortage of managers who /know/ they're right and the market is wrong, like he did then. Do you want them to act on that with your assets without your full and informed consent? You (and I) do if it's Warren Buffet but he was not Warren Buffet yet.

On the standards of investment managers he is pretty good, as I said. Is he this perfect paragon of ethics. Well his fans seem to think so (and loudly) and they are allowed to. As am I to differ with that assessment. This is worlds away from declaring that Buffet is in league with both Darth Vader and Sauron to torture innocent babies to an early death and a fate of never having heard of Benjamin Graham. I would say he is far more on the right side of things than wrong and has been largely a force for good in the investment industry. "Which of his perfections impresses you the most?" Give me a break. Critical faculties are worth keeping.

I feel sorrow for him. I really do.

To be washed in an addiction, in his case, money, is to give up so much of life.

I hope that his end is free of regret, and that his passing is memory of the wonderful things that he was able to build for so many people that he didn't even know he touched.

I'm sure that the way will be found to do this, as it will be for us all.

> There is no moral duty to make your own country the most economically powerful one.

No? Then why do we ask people to give their lives to make it a safe one?

I don't like Chinese companies that much either, but if you look at the current US administration's stance on electric cars (and related topics like renewables, battery storage etc.), investing in BYD was actually a smart move...

> Investing in a company from a foreign country does not make you a bad (or good) person. There is no moral duty to make your own country the most economically powerful one.

Maybe you don’t agree, but I think there is a moral duty to not make the literal enemies of the free world into a superpower. Do you think the Chinese government believes in basic human rights like free speech? No. Buffet could have invested in many other countries. He chose China because he doesn’t have the moral compass he pretends to have.

> 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?

The people I know from BNSF will tell you that name stands for Better Not Start a Family.

I’ve worked with and known former engineers who left, took lower paying jobs in other industries and not one has ever said I miss it there.

Let’s not even get started on what that industry has evolved into with precision scheduled railroading and the dramatic increase in risk and real derailments that have followed.

Investing in BYD is propping up the CCP and their dystopian authoritarian regime. Your phrasing of “imperial core” is meaningless. But the CCP is literally authoritarian in its political system.

That is interesting, because the chinese do care about in-groups

Yeah of course it isn’t deterministic?

That’s why I used the word “opportunities” and not “guarantees”.

This is actually a pretty hard question for me because you’re basically asking. Do you want the power to be able to change the world in radical ways by giving up your life? Suicidal Brewster’s millions..

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 finish with mediocre chip stack. Just the laws of averages sorry.

If picking as a starting poker position, I'd definitely want to be the 25 year old with a thousand because you'll be able to play more hands and have more experiences and hopefully have more fun even if you'll most likely end up very average or lose your entire chip-stack. I guess what I'm saying is there's no virtue in poverty and no guarantee wealth will bring you ultimate satisfaction either. Your choice is a false mutual exclusivity imho (in that everyone is 25 AND 95 [assuming that that they in everyone lives to 95], someone wanting to be 25 again doesn't imply that their previous journey to 95 is somehow intrinsically worth less - like an adrenaline junkie wanting to ride again the rollercoaster he just got off from).

Well, both, obviously.

But in all seriousness, if I had to choose, I think I'd rather be 25 with $1k.

I really don't need a trillion dollars, at any point in my life (and certainly not with too few years left to do anything with but the tiniest fraction of it). I don't need a billion dollars, even. I figure $20M would allow me to do anything I wanted to do, with a healthy cushion in case anything went wrong. (Well, with $20M, even if I were to triple my spending habits, I'd likely still die with more money than I started with.)

I'm not sure that I fear death, but I do recognize at middle age that time is finite, and there are so many things to do in this world. Even with close to nothing as a $1k-holding 25-year-old, I could strive to make things better for myself, and likely look forward to a lifetime of experiences. At 95 that would nearly all be behind me.

Put another way: if I was 95 and had a trillion dollars, and there was some highly advanced, crazy-expensive procedure I could undergo to reduce my biological age down to 25, even if I'd only have $1k left over afterward, I expect I'd do it.

Depending on what you want to do in life, a trillion dollars will not help and it may even stop you from doing many things you would like to do otherwise.

95. I'd spend what little time I have left un-screwimg the system I clearly helped break.

25 with a thousand is out on the streets unless you have good famili connections. I'll be long dead before that money starts making money for me anyway.

The thing is, when you're 95 years old with a trillion dollars, you have lived 70 years making a trillion dollars (which can be quite fun! Warren B certainly seems to have enjoyed it) and along the way you've - no doubt - spent a decent amount of time as a billionaire. Do not discount the part of life behind you... it's just as real as the part ahead.

This is the great tragedy of 21st century western life. When you are 25 with a thousand dollars in realized wealth it is so hard to understand the incredible value of the deep out of the money call option you hold on life.

While the 95 year old trillionaire is really just deeply in debt with the creditor about to collect any day now.

I would rather be 25 with zero dollars than 95 with infinite dollars. At 95, you’re just waiting for it to be your turn.

Chipmunks and Squirrels.

> What other creatures show this kind of hoarding pattern in nature?

Acorn woodpeckers, beavers, and corvids exhibit true, generational hoarding behavior.

Younger generations learn and maintain the same caches, structures, or techniques as their elders.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

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.

That means they know way more about what's going on at many companies. Maybe listen to them for market tips.

Oh i was not referring to corporate or investments strategies here. I was talking about what is actually going on inside the building and who hates who. Always assume the highest-ups hate everything and each other, it is all fake, ever.

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 shows his lifelong relationships/marriage with two women at the same time.

Look, I'm not going to yuck his yum. Do whatever you want man. But the homely aww shucks image is very intentional. And very much against his actual life choices. Homespun he ain't.

> Warren Buffet is the definition of oligarchy.

Find a better dictionary.

If somebody focuses on something negative, it's cherry-picking, but if you focus on something positive it isn't?

How much money has he saved dodging taxes over the years[1]?

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

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.