Charlie Munger's "Basicland"
For those that may not be aware, Charlie Munger is the less well known but equally important and older partner to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway would not be the firm it is today without Charlie, as Warren Buffett acknowledges.
With thanks to Xigris for (indirectly) leading me to this article by Charlie Munger, published earlier this year. I commend it to all Stockopedia readers (apologies to those that were ahead of me and have already read it).
The nub of the article is this (but please read the rest for a better understanding):
...The winnings of the casinos eventually amounted to 25 percent of Basicland's GDP, while 22 percent of all employee earnings in Basicland were paid to persons employed by the casinos (many of whom were engineers needed elsewhere). So much time was spent at casinos that it amounted to an average of five hours per day for every citizen of Basicland, including newborn babies and the comatose elderly. Many of the gamblers were highly talented engineers attracted partly by casino poker but mostly by bets available in the bucket shop systems, with the bets now called "financial derivatives."...
...Among the suggestions of the Good Father were the following. First, he suggested that Basicland change its laws. It should strongly discourage casino gambling, partly through a complete ban on the trading in financial derivatives, and it should encourage former casino employees—and former casino patrons—to produce and sell items that foreigners were willing to buy...
As with all of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's writings, makes you think...
Regards,
Mark
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2 comments
Didn't Munger also quite recently tell people who asked the government why the gamblers get bailed out and the workers get more Federal debt to pay off to..... "suck it up!"?
Rhetorical question - he did.
Anyway, he's advancing the too-common idea that the government needs to intervene to ban this or that kind of trading, as though the opportunists won't find ways around this soon enough. I say forget that. One measure can solve so much : cease government guaranteeing of any kind of investment, all the way down to the smallest bank deposits. Investors ( including savers ) will then have to choose their own level of participation in the casino games, which for the entirely risk-averse will include no involvement at all. If nobody pretends to protect your interests, then you will deposit your money in a bank which risks your deposit ( for higher interest ) or doesn't at all, and just holds it safe for you ( presumably for a price ).
"Public aren't educated enough for this" - they need to start learning. Government bailouts of any kind should more than cease ; they should be criminalised, just to make sure.
Munger's 24 causes of human misjudgement speech (great stuff) :
http://files.arunbansal.com/audio/MungerMono.mp3