Thread

Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Names Son to Replace Him

323 points · 221 comments · saimiam

dugmartin · 1789732295 · focus · HN ↗
I guess Warren’s quote only applies to other people, not him. "It’s like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics." (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/us/dozens-of-rich-americans-join-in-fight-to-retain-the-estate-tax.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/us/dozens-of-rich-america...)
1. nlitened · 1789734152 · focus · HN ↗
  As I understand, the son is there not to lead the company (Greg Abel is the CEO), but to oversee their family's share in the enterprise.
  1. yuuu · 1789734967 · focus · HN ↗
    I thought he was giving away 99% of his wealth?
    Waterluvian · 1789739929 · focus · HN ↗
    Most of them seemingly have control problems where even if they do, it is in the form of a giant money pile still under their control that they give away the returns of, usually also completely under their control.
    toomuchtodo · 1789740361 · focus · HN ↗
    What's interesting is they cannot, but their ex partners go much further in their giving (Melinda French, MacKenzie Scott, for example).
    Waterluvian · 1789741152 · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder if there's a survivorship bias there: those who can and do reject the status quo.
    toomuchtodo · 1789741318 · focus · HN ↗
    My hot take is that men with extreme wealth and power are desperate to keep it as part of their identity, where the women I mentioned do not have the same character and personality flaws, and therefore use it as a tool to do good because they are not optimizing for status, power, and wealth: they are optimizing to do good. Doesn't always hold, there are exceptions.
    "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority." -- Lord Action
    DennisP · 1789741793 · focus · HN ↗
    One giant exception was Chuck Feeney, who made $8 billion on duty free shops and gave almost all of it away, much of it anonymously. By the end of his life he and his wife had a couple million and lived in a rented apartment.
    toomuchtodo · 1789741877 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Philanthropies" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Philanthropies
    <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Chuck%20Feeney&sort=byDate&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
    Great human, thanks for mentioning.
    idiotsecant · 1789746422 · focus · HN ↗
    Giving away your fortune in secret is so much more virtuous than doing it with a giant foundation with your name on it. Much respect.
    fuzzfactor · 1789750543 · focus · HN ↗
    When they agreed in Nashville to rename the airport after Dolly Parton, all of the people commenting on the TV clip said it was well-deserved.
    Some were more emotional than others, but one of the proponents was very touched, she admired Parton so much because Dolly set an example of how to be as successful as a person can be, and not keep a billion for yourself.
    I can't find the clip now, but it was from the heart.
    seki285 · 1789743811 · focus · HN ↗
    There's a difference in men and women... until there's not. Very convenient.
    toomuchtodo · 1789744286 · focus · HN ↗
    There's a large body of medical research around women having more empathy than men, specifically around brain volume in the inferior frontal gyrus. Does it always hold? There are always exceptions. Broadly speaking, in most cases, it is a function of brain structure, per person. Do you have many examples of exceptional wealthy and powerful women who are monsters? I do not. I welcome corrections and citations, and am happy to be proven wrong on this.
    TLDR Show me the brain fMRI and I will show you the soul. In some cases, facial structure is enough for weak but meaningful signal (as a proxy for brain structure).
    (politics are also brain structure, citations in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634883">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634883)
    fuzzfactor · 1789752071 · focus · HN ↗
    I know what you mean, nobody in North America understands vive la différence outside of French Canadians and Louisiana Cajuns.
    And some of them only at their own convenience.
    I wouldn't let it bother me, son of a gun I'm gonna have big fun on the bayou :)
    edit: not my downvote btw
    IncreasePosts · 1789744344 · focus · HN ↗
    I think more likely is that bill and Jeff built their wealth through their businesses, which they are still directly involved in. Giving away their wealth would be equivalent to giving away the business they built from the ground up
    I think there's also a question of efficacy. Bill and Jeff are really good at turning $1 into $10. Melinda and Mackenzie? Not so much. If bill or Jeff wanted to maximize the amount they can give, the best strategy would be for them to continually earn until they die, and then donate it.
    toomuchtodo · 1789745215 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree that Bill and Jeff are better at exploitation at scale. That’s how you become that wealthy. We are lucky they’re divorced and the wealth is in the hands of better stewards to distribute it to do good.
    fuzzfactor · 1789756613 · focus · HN ↗
    I agreed right off the bat, they definitely reached scale like few others, but maybe it might have been the way they grew without stopping more so than today's well-known scaling process that got them there.
    Doubtless they got in position early to take advantage of many potential upswings.
    soperj · 1789760003 · focus · HN ↗
    That's what it's about though. The amount THEY can give, not the benefit to humanity.
    It's not like Bill and Jeff actually built any of these products themselves. Microsoft bought DOS. Right place, right time for that Nepo baby. Bezos at least had a normal family.
    IncreasePosts · 1789842505 · focus · HN ↗
    Bezos didn't build Amazon? First I heard of that
    bmitc · 1789780683 · focus · HN ↗
    > Giving away their wealth would be equivalent to giving away the business they built from the ground up
    On the backs of the government and its people's tax money with nothing given back.
    graemep · 1789754827 · focus · HN ↗
    That is because the exes were not people who had the same drive for money and power. They did not need to cling on to more than they would ever spend.

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