......
that was interesting.
sounds like Warren didn't like his dad.
I've read a number of Buffet bios, as well as much of his own writings. I believe he very much liked and respected his father. I think the divide is due to different generations and experiences. By the time Warren was an adult, he was lucky to start his investing career during one of the biggest bull markets, and rises in aggregate living standards, in human history. I think that very much formed his opinion of the world. He's an eternal American optimist. Which is indeed great in many ways. He (probably) correctly asserts that life will, over the long-haul, keep getting better for most people. And further, that Western-style business and innovation will be the driver of such in the upcoming century as it has been in the past couple.
And so he chooses to, again pretty much correctly, focus on investing in companies; in the underlying organizations that generate new efficiencies for humankind (ie, rising living standards).
So it's no surprise that he hates gold. Indeed, gold is a ridiculous asset to hold. Since the moment we humans have needed to transact quickly over distance, gold has ceased being a good money, and hasn't been all that rational to hold for its own merits. Various geo-political dynamics have been the drivers, but all that stuff is so far removed from the underlying purity of efficiency generation that Buffet invests upon that he (mostly correctly, at least in the longrun) views gold "investing" as stupid, archaic, and absurd.
The irony is that Warren is something of a hard-headed purist just like his father. Again, he just focuses on the core drivers of human advancement (ie, companies generating innovation and efficiencies), while his father focused on the same from a different angle (ie, ensuring a playing field of pure/true free-market capitalism). I think the fact that Warren has lived and invested exclusively in probably the richest country and richest period in human history has very much *allowed* him to focus on the firm-internals side without having to worry all that much about the overarching economic-system side. To his mind, at least empirically, the latter has been totally fine....why worry about it?
Sitenote: I remember reading that many of the House votes ended up being: All-Reps-Besides-HowardBuffet vs. Howard Buffet. Reminds me a better-spoken (and probably smarter) Ron Paul.
I personally agree almost entirely with Warren's investment approach; including his opinion of gold. I obviously diverge with him on bitcoin. As a technically-educated person, it's far easier for me to see bitcoin as the ideal-money-for-our-times that it is than it is for Warren to see it and really appreciate that fact. I also haven't lived and invested through the biggest bull-generation in human history, so some of my thinking is more like his father Howard's as well. Those facts combined lead to me to consider bitcoin a fantastic investment; the fact that it's better money means it'll naturally gain market share (transaction volume), and I also find it to be an important freedom-ensuring innovation that fits nicely into the decentralizing tendencies of modern times.
But make no mistake; once bitcoin obtains mature transaction volume and adoption, I will not hold it as an investment, choosing instead to invest as best I can like Warren Buffet.