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Comment by voisin | Hacker News Reader

Buffett and Munger are among the most efficient capital allocators in history. Part of their success is patience - not feeling the need to put all their capital to work all the time and then miss out on opportunities when they arise.

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I'm sure if they kept doing it another 200 years they'd be accordingly even more successfull at it. Do we have 200 years to dick around and let the rich play economic parlor games while the rest of us overheat or starve to death and argue about the utility of capitalism and efficiency? Why should society give a fuck if Buffett misses his precious little new Coca Cola? Seems like a ridiculous preoccupation given the circumstances

I’m not sure what you are suggesting. That it is inefficient to have the cash on the books to allocate as they see fit (patience which has turned out to be efficient given their track record), or that because it’s there the government should take it to deal with climate change and famine?

Are you arguing it is inefficient or you don’t like the way capitalist democracies are structured? I can’t argue the latter as I agree with you, but the former is pretty objectively (over any period of time greater than a half decade) incorrect given their track record.

This is a more a latter-argument clash of ideals I guess. I was never arguing I know how to invest better than Buffett/Munger etc. I'm not even specifically picking on them, there's many companies with stacks in the back that slowly slip away from the society they originated from till its all in Ireland or Bahamas or wherever the current tax shelter/capital flight hotspot du jour resides.

Regardless of whether the wealthy people in your country are taxed a small bit or taxed a lot, you should want them to be efficient allocators of capital. Would you rather it be the case that every investor in your economy sank all their money into umpteen duplicates of pets.com?

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