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Comment by profsummergig | Hacker News Reader

Charlie Munger had great advice in general. And I've learned a lot of good from him.

But I will never get over the hypocrisy of owning a quarter of Coca Cola and constantly criticizing Americans for being overweight (he used words like "sloth").

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Enjoying the occasional Coca Cola but not overindulging is perfectly consistent correct behaviour within those constraints

but not if Coca Cola's continuing growth depends on their ensuring that many many people are drinking it to excess

Not sure the math even comes out obviously in favour of someone who overindulges but dies an early death, vs someone who lives long and enjoys a coke every so often throughout that long life.

Of course it does. Let's just calculate the revenue of two scenairos:

Person A consumes 2L of Coke every day. Dies an early death at 45 year old. 2L coke is ~$2. From the age of 18 to 45 that person spent $19710.

Person B is good at consuming things with moderation. Drinks one 7.5 oz Coke per week, and lives to the ripe old age of 90. A ten pack of 7.5oz coke is ~$6. That person spent from the age of 18 to 90 about $2252.

You can of course tweak the assumptions, but the thing is sugar doesn't kill anyone that fast. People by and large don't drop dead in years from overconsumption of it.

Imagine being an exec at coca cola.

All your product development is done. You already got it right.

Now your only goal is coca cola displacing a greater and greater quantity of the substances humans put in their bodies.

Every quarter you want that percentage to go up. Maybe public water infrastructure should be looked upon as a competitor.

You think about the future and see vague stormclouds- vitamin supplementation can keep our consumers active a bit longer after the product displaces all sources of nutrition, but there is an absolute limit to how much matter a human can ingest over a given 24h period.

Perhaps a campaign to de-stigmatize public urination. Or maybe theres a way to grow the population…

Munger wasn't responsible for Coca Cola's continued growth (and it's worth noting that Berkshire has never owned 25% of Coca Cola as another comment here claimed, they own 9.25% at present).

And there's no reason Coca Cola couldn't diversify away from sugary drinks in the pursuit of growth, exactly as they have been doing for decades. Sugary soda drinks have been a dead-end in terms of growth for a while now. The growth has gone to eg Monster and RedBull et al.

He didn't make money on you buying the "occasional" Coke. He made money by addicting you (the royal you) to Coke to want it over, and over, and over again.

I used to be that way. I'm glad I gave it up.

Define "occasional."

I drink about one soft drink per year, and it's a Coke. (Which reminds me, I don't think I've had my drink for 2023!)

If all world citizens limited themselves to my rate of indulgence, Berkshire Hathaway's KO stake would be worth quite a bit less.

This is weird, I like drinking Coke occasionally and am not obese. Coke isn't responsible for all obesity. This is just another way to victimize yourself which makes it much harder to actually solve any problem.

> But I will never get over the hypocrisy of owning a quarter of Coca Cola and constantly criticizing Americans for being overweight.

That's not hypocrisy, that's savvy.

Hypocrisy is an American drinking Coke while complaining about their weight.

Hypocrisy is spending billions of dollars to convince people to buy sugar water and then complaining about their weight. I guess you could call it savvy, but I think predatory is a more apt description.

There's a way to avoid (conscious) hypocrisy here: Convincing oneself that marketing (propaganda?) isn't effective and you're just giving the people what they would want anyway.

I don't disagree with the sentiment, only the rhetoric. I'd settle for "unethical."

Predatory would be investing in Coke, diabetes treatment and weight-loss solutions as a package deal.

If Buffett and Munger wanted,they could certainly point out that Coca-Cola and Pepsi both benefit from being on EBT/SNAP lists as acceptable foods to purchase, and ask that soft drinks as a class of foods be removed.

Last I looked, about 9.5% of total EBT/SNAP money for food (that is, money from taxpayers that are supposed to help feed those in need properly) is spent on soft drinks. No person in need, needs soft drinks, especially when we have high rates of diabetes and obesity among the poor.

No person in need needs anything in particular, but even dirt poor Charlie Bucket got a Wonka chocolate bar on his birthday.

How many times a year do you estimate, that poor Charlie Bucket has a birthday?

Just because someone is in need doesn't mean they can't spend some money on soft drinks. This is classist. It's basically "because you're poor you don't deserve chocolate, because you're more likely to be obese".

9.5% of that money being spent on soft drinks is not the problem. The problem is the amount of processed garbage and sugar in most American food.

Buying healthy food is unfortunately a privilege. To have the time to stay fit/healthy (whether going to the gym or taking walks) in this world of processed garbage is a privilege, because time is a precious resource that some people seriously cannot afford.

Did he actually say this? I can't find any reference to this. (google search)

He used words like "sloth".

He sponsored what essentially was a prison style dorm. He might have great advice, but it will probably make you a worse human.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90740511/heres-what-its-like-liv...

I had read about this dorm plan, and thought it was very brutal.

Then I found myself in a windowless room for a day (voluntarily) with a PC and no internet. Literally staring at a wall.

The most productive day I've had in a couple of decades.

And I started to have second thoughts about his dorm plan. Maybe he was on to something.

I want to hear what day 100 of that is like, not day 1.

I’ve worked in such a room/rooms for most of my professional career (20 years now). It seriously makes zero difference. When you need fresh air you simply get up and go for a walk.

People work in submarines for 6 months at a time. Humans are adaptable.

>Munger’s $200 million donation to the university is contingent on the structure being built to his windowless specifications.

Reason being:

>“Our design is clever,” Munger assured skeptics. “Our buildings are going to be efficient.” In addition to cutting costs and foiling potential defenestrations, his design would force students out of their sleeping cubbies and into communal spaces—with real sunlight—where, he said, they would engage with one another.

It seems to me encouraging university students to spend more time alone would be more conducive to getting work done. Overall Munger seemed to have had this notion a lot of old people have that the youth need to suffer because of-course they suffered more.

Munger clearly understands the real suffering crippling debt causes and seems to be trying to move the needle on that front.

For all the posts here about the excessive costs of higher education, people sure seem to be mad that this fellow tried to do something about it. I'd have been fine with a "prison style dorm" if it had reduced my educational costs.

A private room for a reasonable price in the world’s most desirable climate that a student can just go walk to on a lark. Why don’t we just send them to a super max!

Munger is an awful person for trying to help students get an education without resorting to crippling debt.

Why? For the most part, people are overweight by choice, not by some unavoidable draw of Coke. Not to mention that they have a ton of zero or low calorie coke options that people could choose.

Many people are overweight by choice in the same way alcoholics or crack addicts are addicted to substances by choice. There are very powerful chemical and subconscious factors at play that make it incredibly difficult to exercise one's will. That semiglutides are proving to be remarkably effective at helping people both make better dietary decisions as well as reduce substance use, should tell you that the problem isn't as simplistic as you've made it out to be.

Making sugary caffeinated beverages supported by billions in ads sure seems like a method to try to affect peoples choice though.

Perhaps although I really think a lot of food people are eating today will be considered poisonous at some point.

This is kind of missing the point. People are in groups that do all kinds of things normatively that add up to obesity, like dualistic thinking leading to depression while be embedded in a culture of dissociation. Yes, it's a choice, and as the cultures that gatekeep people from meeting their needs grows and spreads, making and sustaining that choice becomes harder. Maintaining cultures that harm is also a choice. No one is an island. We're all programming each other and ourselves in every moment while not taking care about how we do it.

The phenomenon of people from skinnier (but developed) countries spending some time in the US and complaining that they gain a lot of weight suggests a pretty damn strong environmental component. Strong to the point of overwhelming most other factors, to my eye, at least.

Is there some study about this “phenomenon” this or is it all anecdotes?

My very first, naive attempt at DDG’ing this revealed a bunch, yeah. Quantified weight gain in immigrants, studies of gain then loss again once moving back to the original country, all kinds of angles of approaching it.

A second search with a slightly more specific topic of “weight gain in us immigrants” on DDG was mostly studies (or pages collecting multiple studies) on page 1 of the results.

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