Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger
Charles Thomas Mungeris an American businessman, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; in this capacity, Buffett describes Charlie Munger as “my partner." Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth1 January 1924
CountryUnited States of America
Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won.
The tradition of always looking for the answer in the most fundamental way available - that is a great tradition, and it saves a lot of time in this world.
If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it.
If you have competence, you know the edge. It wouldnt be a competence if you didnt know where the boundaries lie. Asking whether youve passed the boundary is a question that almost answers itself.
What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you're unreliable it doesn't matter what your virtues are. You're going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.
If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change.
I believe Costco does more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation. I think it's a better place. You get a bunch of very intelligent people sitting around trying to do good, I immediately get kind of suspicious and squirm in my seat.
There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.'
The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses.
People are trying to be smart - all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it's harder than most people think.
Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.
When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.
Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but I think civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses.
I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.