2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[The Minsky Moment]

From my personal experience, one big knock against Buffett is that companies owned by his conglomerate all seem extremely stingy with expenses....

Berkshire Hathaway is nominally set up as a conglomerate but it's really a PE fund in corporate form and always has been.  It's just that PE firms weren't a big thing in the early 60s but conglomerates were.

Buffett isn't managing companies for stingy spending because he doesn't really manage companies at all.  It would be more accurate to say that he has a tendency to favor investing in companies that have tight cost controls, which is not that surprising for a value investor.

[Josquius]

It depends on whether it's the same billions I say.
If you've an income hitting such levels then it says a lot about problems with the world but not so much the person. If they're then using this huge income for positive ends then being such a billionaire can be perfectly fine.
Can't think of an example who qualifies though.

Quibble- billionaires become billionaires because of their investments not their income.

A person can become wealthy and never have a large income.  And that is normally how it is done.  The working stiffs earning large incomes are still working.

And ever heard of the Gates foundation? 

Gates would qualify today but he hasn't always been such a positive figure. Gates of the 90s was a complete POS.

[DGuller]

From my personal experience, one big knock against Buffett is that companies owned by his conglomerate all seem extremely stingy with expenses....

Berkshire Hathaway is nominally set up as a conglomerate but it's really a PE fund in corporate form and always has been.  It's just that PE firms weren't a big thing in the early 60s but conglomerates were.

Buffett isn't managing companies for stingy spending because he doesn't really manage companies at all.  It would be more accurate to say that he has a tendency to favor investing in companies that have tight cost controls, which is not that surprising for a value investor.

I know that this is the general perception of BH:  Warren finds good companies with good management, buys them, and lets them continue doing their thing, as long as they continue being good managers.  I can't speak to whether that's the case in his consumer goods companies or the like, but I'm pretty sure it's lot more complicated in insurance, which is the industry around which Berkshire Hathaway is built.  I'm guessing that there is a strong relationship between being a tightwad manager and being considered an effective manager by the higher-ups at Berkshire Hathaway, and ultimately one way or the other it has to roll up to Buffett.

[Jacob]

I think the ethical billionaire would commit a non-trivial amount of their massive wealth - and use their greater-than-average-person societal influence - to change the system to reduce billionairism.

That said, if I had billions I don't know if I'd be able to make myself do that.

I don't think that billionaire's are necessarily inherently bad people as individuals... they may well be nice and kind to the folks around them and so on. But the systemic influence they have is unhealthy for our socieities.

... I guess class warfare is a real thing, it's just that the billionaire class are the ones who are winning.

[crazy canuck]

Gates would qualify today but he hasn't always been such a positive figure. Gates of the 90s was a complete POS.

Ok, but assuming I agree with your characterization, Gates in the 90s was not as wealthy as the Gates who set up the Gates Foundation.  I don't know when he became a billionaire but I assume it first happened during the tech bubble of the late 90s?

[Sheilbh]

I think the ethical billionaire would commit a non-trivial amount of their massive wealth - and use their greater-than-average-person societal influence - to change the system to reduce billionairism.

That said, if I had billions I don't know if I'd be able to make myself do that.

I don't think that billionaire's are necessarily inherently bad people as individuals... they may well be nice and kind to the folks around them and so on. But the systemic influence they have is unhealthy for our socieities.

... I guess class warfare is a real thing, it's just that the billionaire class are the ones who are winning.

Yeah. I also think that fundamentally, in our world you cannot have acquired or maintained that level of wealth in a way that is ethical or moral.

I think there's also all degrees of how much we live in and benefit from a social order, while maybe being aware of its negative consequences. It's always incomplete and we all live in the tension, with billionaires they are either choosing to ignore it or benefiting while complaining about it. I don't think "oh God make me chaste, but not yet" is enough given the scale of their benefit from that unjust system.

[The Minsky Moment]

I know that this is the general perception of BH:  Warren finds good companies with good management, buys them, and lets them continue doing their thing, as long as they continue being good managers.  I can't speak to whether that's the case in his consumer goods companies or the like, but I'm pretty sure it's lot more complicated in insurance, which is the industry around which Berkshire Hathaway is built.  I'm guessing that there is a strong relationship between being a tightwad manager and being considered an effective manager by the higher-ups at Berkshire Hathaway, and ultimately one way or the other it has to roll up to Buffett.

I forgot you were in insurance. 

You may be right about that, he definitely has more substantive knowledge about the insurance business and there may be more direct impact in those business lines.

[The Minsky Moment]

For those in the billionaire = evil camp, I'm curious - what is the level of wealth that tips someone over into the irredeemably damned?  It is only when the 1B threshhold is met?  500M?  100?  10M?  Is there an adjustment for local housing costs?  Is there a purgatory if one is short of a cool billion but making upward progress from a nine figure base?

[garbon]

For those in the billionaire = evil camp, I'm curious - what is the level of wealth that tips someone over into the irredeemably damned?  It is only when the 1B threshhold is met?  500M?  100?  10M?  Is there an adjustment for local housing costs?  Is there a purgatory if one is short of a cool billion but making upward progress from a nine figure base?

Already asked and answered.

[Josquius]

Gates would qualify today but he hasn't always been such a positive figure. Gates of the 90s was a complete POS.

Ok, but assuming I agree with your characterization, Gates in the 90s was not as wealthy as the Gates who set up the Gates Foundation.  I don't know when he became a billionaire but I assume it first happened during the tech bubble of the late 90s?

Youngest ever in 1987 Google says. Worlds richest from 95.
And back then and into the 00s I recall him and M$ being quite the villain figures.

[Valmy]

For those in the billionaire = evil camp, I'm curious - what is the level of wealth that tips someone over into the irredeemably damned?  It is only when the 1B threshhold is met?  500M?  100?  10M?  Is there an adjustment for local housing costs?  Is there a purgatory if one is short of a cool billion but making upward progress from a nine figure base?

I don't know but I do notice when managing my mother's affairs that I do end up doing some pretty morally grey stuff in order to do what I believe is my fiduciary responsibility to my family. Raising rents on her properties, dealing with big oil, investments in stuff like Blackrock. Nothing mustache twirling but not exactly making the world a better place either.

It is kind of eye opening how dealing with even a relatively small fortune does at least make you feel a little compromised. I have been thinking about when half of this is just my money what I will do with it. I know people try to do things like ethical investing but my state government tends to not like those kinds of shenanigans.

I can only imagine if I was really trying to aggressively grow this into a billion dollars or something I would have to go even further into even shadier areas.

Gates would qualify today but he hasn't always been such a positive figure. Gates of the 90s was a complete POS.

The Andrew Carnegie of the 21st century. Complete monster to make his fortune then beloved philanthropist and public conscience later.

Of course Bill Gates trying to do good made him a force of infinite evil to the right wing conspiracy types. Trying to be ethical with your money enrages right wingers so much.

But in a way I kind of get it. Here is a private person accountable to absolutely nobody out there determining big public questions with just money. That sucks. But they can't say that phenomenon in itself is bad so instead they pretend it is just because some individual people are bad. Having private people accountable to nobody deciding big public questions is great, so long as they do what we want.

[crazy canuck]

I think the ethical billionaire would commit a non-trivial amount of their massive wealth - and use their greater-than-average-person societal influence - to change the system to reduce billionairism.

That said, if I had billions I don't know if I'd be able to make myself do that.

I don't think that billionaire's are necessarily inherently bad people as individuals... they may well be nice and kind to the folks around them and so on. But the systemic influence they have is unhealthy for our socieities.

... I guess class warfare is a real thing, it's just that the billionaire class are the ones who are winning.

Yeah. I also think that fundamentally, in our world you cannot have acquired or maintained that level of wealth in a way that is ethical or moral.

So Boeing stock in a company is unethical?  Better dispose of any stock that might bring you over the billion air mark because that will automatically then make you an immoral person. It just makes no sense or at the very least is incredibly arbitrary. Rather than talking about a measure of wealth and try to be quick that to unethical behaviour you're probably better off, naming what the unethical behaviour is. Plenty of poor people act on ethically and immorally.

Wealth, or, rather, the absence of it is not a signifier of an angel. Nor is wealth, or rather the presence of it the signifier of a devil.

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah. I also think that fundamentally, in our world you cannot have acquired or maintained that level of wealth in a way that is ethical or moral.

Buffet saved and invested.  How is that unethical or immoral?

[Jacob]

I think the point being made is that "investing" can potentially include perpetuating or amplifying exploitative and unethical activities - and once this is done at the scale of billionaires it is inevitable.

Personally I agree that "investing" - especially at scale - is not inherently value neutral or benign. I don't think it's a given that large scale investing is inherently unethical (are pension funds unethical), but it certainly could be in any number of cases.

[DGuller]

I've read an article recently that puts Jerry Seinfeld's net worth at almost a billion dollars, as apparently the residuals for Seinfeld episodes are still astronomically lucrative.  Where does he rank on ethics?