Between this and the brutalization of railway workers, I have a more negative view of Buffett personally. But somehow he has a very positive reputation. Why is that?
Probably some modern interpretation of noblesse oblige. If a rising tide lifts all ships, great and small, then Buffett is the rain man. He’s probably the closest anyone came to making trickle down economics more than just a theory as an individual in business. He made a lot of folks very wealthy simply by making investing boring and easy through his focus on value investing.
I don’t know much about him, but I know Berkshire Hathaway. He didn’t even found it; he took it over by monetary force. He knew who worked their ass off and who just talked shit. He came across someone who wronged him in a business deal at Berkshire Hathaway before he ran it, and he literally drove the prior owners out of their own company over it. He says it was the biggest mistake he made, which leads me to believe he is generally a serious person, but he’s also principled. He’s a case study on overcoming yourself in order to make better decisions.
His business sense may not be as learnable, but I have tried to apply his lessons to my own life, and I didn’t have to pay anything for that.
Best as I can tell, (wannabe) investor types celebrate his accumulation of wealth. I appreciated his public statements about tax policy, rising inequity, etc. Otherwise, I was ambivalent about Buffet.
Buffet is a rentier. He does not create wealth; he merely transfers it.
His most successful strategy is to find tranches of underutilized capital, and buy a controlling interest. Which he then ladders up to buy yet more tranches. Most famously Geico.
It's fair to say that I'm far less impressed by this strategy than Acquired's hosts.
Rentier is distinct from the raider (aka private equity) play of buying controlling interest in a corporation, looting it, loading it up with debt, and then unloading the resulting dumpster fire.
So at least Buffet isn't actively destroying jobs and wealth. As far as I know.
Money, also they fake I drink X coke a day while knowing he can pay for any medication or doctor in the world. The humble rich is a facade to stay in power.
There's no magic medication or doctor that can do much to compensate for a bad diet, including excess sugar. Plenty of wealthy people have died of type-2 diabetes. But one or maybe two Cokes per day isn't a problem for most people.
