Berkshire had a pivot where, decades back, Munger convinced Buffett to switch from investing in bad companies at a great price to good companies at a good price. Their new strategy is still active.
That said, the turnaround 'mission' you mention about still happens, but is more associated with private equity than Berkshire.
Not quite right. The pivot was from good companies at a great price to great companies at a good price (unless you can get a great price, but that’s unlikely).
Over the long run the latter is a better and more scalable strategy.
They also have a history of buying good private companies at a good price and then let the management keep cooking. This is especially relevant to family businesses that want liquidity for the heirs and good long-term (indefinite) stewardship rather than selling to some PE vulture that will destroy their legacy.
I heard about aerogel as a kid and only recently learned how extremely hard it is to make [0], so this seems like a cool and more accessible material in the same vein.
I would call it "splitting hairs," which experts tend to do.
The practical reality is acknowledged at the end of the post.
Even if, technically speaking, using gift cards as a payments instrument is not a scam 100% of the time, anyone but a non-expert should behave as if it's 100%.
I am also an expert in the field of payments. The only thing that makes gift cards stand out from other transaction media is there are many fewer guardrails around them money movement wise.
I'd pretty much back up AARP on this one. Asking for payment by gift card should in the majority of cases put one on guard.
Author works in payments industry which issues and accepts gift cards, benefits from the lack of consumer protections, and incidentally doesn’t make any revenue on cash payments.
Is he an expert in the field of old people being scammed out of lots of money? Telling non tech-savvy people that it's ok to listen to the nice man on the phone and send him a lot of gift cards?
mo·nop·so·ny /məˈnäpsənē/ a market situation in which there is only one buyer.
It seems like the issue we're having is that we are buyers who are competing against OpenAI, who is another buyer. There isn't only 1 buyer or 1 seller of RAM.
Like monopolies, monopsony power exists on a spectrum. For example, Walmart exercises extreme monopsony power over suppliers, despite not being the only retailer in town.
I find it interesting, perhaps ironic, how much the cause of social ownership of businesses/'means of production' will be advanced by ... Trump, via the 530A a.k.a. Trump Account.
"At the other end of the scale are Australia, Chile, Iceland, Ireland and South Korea, with spending on pensions below 4% of GDP, albeit for different reasons."
Singapore started earlier with national pension schemes - the caning laws and extreme policing aside, the financials of Singapore and support for the population through jobs and life is worth a serious look.
Australia has the 1907 Harvester case that set minimum wage to be indexed at a level which would supposedly allow an unskilled labourer to support a wife and three children, to feed, house, and clothe them. By the 1920s it applied to over half of the Australian workforce. It became known as the ‘basic wage’.
That's been tweaked since, but it still carries weight in wage setting and goes a long way to explaining a lack of tipping culture in Australia.
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