Not that long ago, ignoring starving children whilst lobbying the government to improve your own situation from the top 10% to the top 5% in the world was called greed ...
We can walk and chew gum. We can move on multiple fronts. They are not mutually exclusive. Just because I agitate for change in Australian policy doesn't mean I can't donate to charity (and I do).
We can walk and chew gum. We can move on multiple fronts. They are not mutually exclusive. Just because I agitate for change in Australian policy doesn't mean I can't donate to charity (and I do).
Good on you But forgive me as I focus my energies and attention on more worthwhile causes.
I put trolls and time wasters on my ignore list so if I don't respond to you, you are probably on it ....
Firstly it can't be stressed enough that we are all lucky to be in Australia and not some third world shit hole.
I would rather be at the bottom of the barrel in this country than 'well off' in a bad part of Sudan.
I did like the way the article was summed up:
Quote:
What it does mean is that the rich and successful should be more humble.
Personally I believe anyone who believes luck isn't a signifigant factor in financial success is deluding themselves.
Taking property investment as an example, consider a hypothetical 25 year old who decided he wanted to get into property investing in Melbourne in the 90's. Lets assume he did extremely well. Take the exact same person at the same stage in their life, same education, desire and mindset for property and let's place him in the booming US market in 2006 and chances are he would have been castrated.
Japanese man born to wealthy parents is accidentally switched at birth and endures life of poverty Link
Japanese man switched at birth and grew up in poverty, only to discover the infant he had traded places with had grown up in luxury.
By Julian Ryall, Tokyo3:02PM GMT 28 Nov 2013 A Japanese man born to wealthy parents grew up in poverty after being given to another couple in a hospital six decades ago, while the infant who took his place went to live a privileged life of private tutoring, university and is today head of a property firm The 60-year-old man - who has declined to give his name - was raised reliant on hand-outs from the state after the man he thought was his father died when he was just two. The woman he considered his mother had to support his three older brothers and there were few comforts in their one-room apartment as he grew up. The man had to study at night-school while working day shifts in a factory before finding steady employments as a driver with a transport company. He never married and helps take care of three men who are not his brothers, including one who has suffered a stroke. Meanwhile, the infant that was given to the man’s biological parents was born 13 minutes later at the San-Ikukai Hospital, in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, and grew up in relative affluence. The boy had a personal tutor, went to university and is the head of a successful real estate company. His three other brothers work for major companies, according to media reports.
Any expressed market opinion is my own and is not to be taken as financial advice
Think it may have been MacArthur who is reputed to have said: "Do not send me competent officers; Send me lucky ones!" ?
I think of a past boss of mine who quipped that before going through applicants' resumes for a job he randomly selected half and tossed them in the bin; As he didn't want to have unlucky people as employees ...
"Most of us regard good luck as our right, and bad luck as a betrayal of that right." William Feather
Fortuna was a goddess of the Romans - While not an especially nice chap himself (though unquestionably competent and hard working) Lucius Cornelius Sulla was very fond of her.
PS: I'm pretty fond of the Egyptian god Bes meself.
Warren Buffett recently met with a group of MBA students. A student asked him what shaped his political views (Buffett is a Democrat). The famous investor offered a great through experiment, which helped him think through the kind of world he wants to live in. In it he characterizes something he calls the 'Ovarian Lottery':
My political views were formed by this process. Just imagine that it is 24 hours before you are born. A genie comes and says to you in the womb, “You look like an extraordinarily responsible, intelligent, potential human being. Going to emerge in 24 hours and it is an enormous responsibility I am going to assign to you – determination of the political, economic and social system into which you are going to emerge. You set the rules, any political system, democracy, parliamentary, anything you wish, can set the economic structure, communistic, capitalistic, set anything in motion and I guarantee you that when you emerge this world will exist for you, your children and grandchildren.
What’s the catch? One catch – just before you emerge you have to go through a huge bucket with 7 billion slips, one for each human. Dip your hand in and that is what you get – you could be born intelligent or not intelligent, born healthy or disabled, born black or white, born in the US or in Bangladesh, etc. You have no idea which slip you will get. Not knowing which slip you are going to get, how would you design the world? Do you want men to push around females? It’s a 50/50 chance you get female. If you think about the political world, you want a system that gets what people want. You want more and more output because you’ll have more wealth to share around.
The US is a great system, turns out $50,000 GDP per capita, 6 times the amount when I was born in just one lifetime. But not knowing what slip you get, you want a system that once it produces output, you don’t want anyone to be left behind. You want to incentivize the top performers, don’t want equality in results, but do want something that those who get the bad tickets still have a decent life. You also don’t want fear in people’s minds – fear of lack of money in old age, fear of cost of health care. I call this the “Ovarian Lottery”.
My sisters didn’t get the same ticket. Expectations for them were that they would marry well, or if they work, would work as a nurse, teacher, etc. If you are designing the world knowing 50/50 male or female, you don’t want this type of world for women – you could get female. Design your world this way; this should be your philosophy. I look at Forbes 400, look at their figures and see how it’s gone up in the last 30 years. Americans at the bottom are also improving, and that is great, but we don’t want that degree of inequality. Only governments can correct that. Right way to look at it is the standpoint of how you would view the world if you didn’t know who you would be. If you’re not willing to gamble with your slip out of 100 random slips, you are lucky! The top 1% of 7 billion people. Everyone is wired differently. You can’t say you do everything yourself. We all have teachers, and people before us who led us to where we are. We can’t let people fall too far behind. You all definitely got good slips.
Even if you don't buy Buffett's idea that only government can alleviate certain forms of inequality, one thing that's great about Buffett is his appreciation of luck, and the realization that he won a lottery ticket by dint of his birth. So many of our elites can't stop talking about how hard they worked, or the importance of taking risk and all that. Buffett readily acknowledges that he had incredible fortune from the moment he was born.
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