Excellent Book: Charlie Munger For All Seasons
Have you ever noticed that most children are better looking than their parents? Personally, I have not met a daughter who’s uglier than her mother appearance-wise. This makes sense. If succeeding generations are always uglier than the preceding generations, then it makes for a world inhabited by ugly humans!
It’s kind of a tough question: Can it come to stage where world records in athletics will never be broken? The answer is probably not. If records can’t be broken based on what’s noticeable to the human eye, they can always break it down to infinitesimal measurements, for example, to 0.0000001 of a second for the 100 meter sprint run. And the world may come to an end long before improving on infinitesimal measurements become a technological challenge.
Much have been written about the success of Berkshire Hathaway under the tutelage of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger that it may not be necessary to repeat it here. However, our two gurus are not just about achieving super-human returns for the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. They help make the world a better place by teaching, sharing and stepping-forward in terms of doing what’s right to make for a better civilization.
To answer the question “Can Someone Come Along and Do Better Than Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger?”, we’ll revert to what Mr. Charlie Munger once said:
“Ben Graham was a truly formidable mind, and he also had a clarity in writing, and we talk over and over again about the power of a few simple ideas thoroughly assimilated, and that happened with Graham’s ideas which came to me indirectly through Warren, but some also directly from Graham. The interesting thing for me is that Buffett the former protégé — by the way Buffett was the best student Graham had in 30 years of teaching at Columbia — became better than Graham. That’s the natural outcome — as Milton said, ‘If I’ve seen a little farther than other men, it’s by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ So, Warren stood on Ben’s shoulders, but he ended up seeing more than Ben. No doubt somebody will come along and do a lot better than we have.”
Chances are that in the distant future, someone could come along and do better, in terms on returns on investment for the same level of risks. But not for their humor, camaraderieship, life-long friendship and deep understanding of human nature. To us Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger purists, we would say: Not Better, Only Different.