I think you're referring to Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. I'm not aware of any that exist.
Banks do not store their deposits in a cash vault. They loan it out (except for a reserve percentage), and charge interest on the loan. That's how they make money. That's why they offer free checking - so they can loan your money out and charge interest. They will even pay you to deposit your money, so they can loan it out and make money on it.
Wealthy people know how to make money, which means putting the money to productive use creating goods and services that people want. If that money is confiscated from them, there's that much less money creating goods and services people want.
He lives in the same home in Omaha that he had in the 60's. BH does not own any corporate jets but they do own NetJets that sells/leases fractional shares of their jet fleet of which Buffet uses for his travel.
Funny how the goal posts shift. From modest house in Omaha to multi-million dollar property in Laguna Beach. If more properties are revealed are those "pretty meager" too? It's amazing the degree to which normal people will simp for billionaires.
Since I hadn't established any goal posts, I couldn't have shifted them.
But I get your point. I'm happy to make billionaires illegal by taxing them back to being millionaires, but to try and hoist Warren Buffet up as the problem ignores the much, much worst offenders out there.
> … but it’s not like you can wait around to find that perfect opportunity forever, right?
> Some times you have to find something and work …
Rather than waiting for a perfect choice, I read Hamming as reminding us that are making choices all the time and cannot avoid doing so. Even not choosing, e.g., staying in a less-than-ideal role, is a choice. Given that we have no choice but to choose, Hamming suggests knowing up front where we want to go in the long term and biasing choices in that general direction.
Swizec mentioned Cal Newport elsewhere[0], and Newport’s recommendations around lifestyle-centric career planning provide an interesting bridge between your comments about occasionally needing to weather a storm and Hamming.
Some view titles, particular projects, or certain roles to be worthwhile goals in themselves. “I just graduated law school, so I want to make partner at a big NYC law firm” is a goal that a motivated new attorney might set. Does that career goal serve her if she despises traffic, subway travel, and apartment living? Newport advocates beginning with a vision of an ideal lifestyle and working backward from there by setting career goals to achieve the desired lifestyle.
Where he may be in a conflict with Hamming is warning people about what he calls the grand goal theory, of which the fresh law school grad aiming at partner shows the pitfalls. Hamming’s advice will help you go far. Newport warns that if you’re going to go far, be sure it’s in the direction you want to go.
In the case you mentioned of someone who is long-term unemployed, having a job that produces income is certainly nearer to any Hamming career goal and any Newport ideal lifestyle than that person’s present circumstance of draining savings or, worse, accumulating debt for basic living expenses.
I would recommend the 2021 three-part Acquired podcast series on Berkshire. Episodes are long, though there are transcripts if you prefer reading over listening.
>“I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that Tim Cook has made Berkshire a lot more money than I've ever made,” Buffett told the audience, referencing the remarkable 680% surge in Apple's stock since Berkshire first began acquiring shares in early 2016.
This is HN. We understood exactly what “exposed … confidential files” meant before reading your overly dramatic scenario. As overdone as it is, it’s not even realistic. A likely single mother is likely tiny potatoes in comparison to deep-pocketed legal firms or large corporations.
The story is an example of the market self-correcting, but out comes this “building code” hobby horse anyway. All a software “building code” will do is ossify certain current practices, not even necessarily the best ones. It will tilt the playing field in favor of large existing players and to the disadvantage of innovative startups.
The model fails to apply in multiple ways. Building physical buildings is a much simpler, much less complex process with many fewer degrees of freedom than building software. Local city workers inspecting by the local municipality’s code at least has clear jurisdiction because of where the physical fixed location is. Who will write the “building code”? Who will be the inspectors?
This is HN. Of all places, I’d expect to see this presented as an opportunity for new startups, not calls for slovenly bureaucracy and more coercion. The private market is perfectly capable of performing this function. E&O and professional liability insurers if they don’t already will be soon motivated after seeing lawsuits to demand regular pentests.
The reported incident is a great reminder of caveat emptor.
> Building physical buildings is a much simpler, much less complex process with many fewer degrees of freedom than building software.
I don't...think this is true? Google has no problems shipping complex software projects, their London HQ is years behind schedule and vastly over budget.
Construction is really complex. These can be mega-projects with tens of thousands of people involved, where the consequences of failure are injury or even death. When software failure does have those consequences - things like aviation control software, or medical device firmware - engineers are held to a considerably higher standard.
> The private market is perfectly capable of performing this function
But it's totally not! There are so many examples in the construction space of private markets being wholly unable to perform quality control because there are financial incentives not to.
The reason building codes exist and are enforced by municipalities is because the private market is incapable of doing so.
> As COVID-19 sent the world indoors, Ann Bedsole found herself in a position like the rest of us — holed up inside with no idea how long she would be there. Not one for inactivity (or squandered time), she decided to use the opportunity to write her life story.
> Bedsole had plenty of material to work with. Born in Selma in 1930 and raised in Jackson, she eventually moved to Mobile, where she became the first Republican woman elected to the Alabama House of Representatives and the first woman elected to the state Senate. Oh, and she was also a founder of the Alabama School of Math and Science, a founder of Mobile Historic Homes Tours and chairman of the Mobile Tricentennial Committee. The list goes on.
Rather than an absolute lie, I’m more inclined to characterize it as naïve or black-and-white thinking, outside of CRUD apps and undergraduate intro projects.
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