Book Notes and Big Ideas
These are the big ideas from books I have read- not summaries! Recommend or disagree with me- I'd love to hear from you
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
- Show gratitude to people - and be sincere
- Stop beating yourself up mentally. Mistakes are overblown and present one perspective
- Have a fear of failure, and an optimistic mind. Realize the worst isn't that bad
- You make money by finding and solving problems
- Be honest with yourself, recognize mistakes as soon as they surface, and course correct with no ego
- Money is made with big hairy deals with solvable problems
- Actions and feedback loops lead to rewards
- Block out the wins and losses and focus on the best thing to do right now
- Non judgemental concentration
- You have to get the big trends right
- Do deals where the downside scenario is still good and upside is off the charts
- Figure out the must haves in advance, and then say yes to everything else
- Intelligence, hunger, integrity, and collegiality are what matters in a candidate
- Go all in. It's energizing. Make it the best work they've ever done
How to Buy a Great Business With No Cash Down
- You need money to make money, but it doesn't have to be yours
- Companies fail because the financing was improperly structured
- The real enemy is procrastination, no cash down is a mentality. You can do it, but you have to believe it first
- You have to attract the right partners and know their incentives to do a no cash down deal
- What does the other side actually want? How can you get it to them? Address what they say they want, but work with them to get what they actually want
- The list is endless. Your job is to know the alternatives and decide on the financing blocks most likely to work for your deal.
- The best financing blocks allow the longest payback period with the lowest interest rates the lowest collateral and with no personal liabilities
- Leave no stones unturned. Out of sight is out of mind.
- Everything is negotiable
- Cash is so important, and never forgo profits in lieu of cash
- Buy for what the seller delivers, not on potential
- There are so many lead sources out there
- "Most experienced buyers agree that the best acquisition candidate is one that is operating at a small fraction of its true potential, can be acquired at a price consistent with its low present earnings, but can be rapidly energized into a money maker."
- This gives so many insights into what different parties want and optimize for
- Separate the problems from the assets
- "No matter how many books on the subject you read, negotiation ultimately boils down to one objective: winning what you want from someone else while convincing him he's getting what he wants."
- Recommended: Starting Your Own Business With No Money, Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future - My post
- Durability comes from monopolies comes from secrets comes from recruiting a team and taking control of your future comes from focus
- Figure out what others don't believe and are wrong to disbelieve and focus on that
- Durability is all that matters- you have to survive
- The best way to be durable is to have a monopoly
- You create your own future
- What if the opposite is true? There are often no rules
- Power laws should be the only thing you aim for
- Compelling is why you're doing something important that no one else is going to get done.
- Recruiting: we cover the basics (health insurance and rent), and you have the opportunity to do irreplacable work on a unique problem alongside great people
- People should focus on one thing at a time- even in their jobs. Super defined roles
- Technology gives us the efficiency of a hyper scaled person who doesn't want to compete with resources
Am I Being Too Subtle? - My post
- Be a long term partner
- Fierce tenacity and constantly opportunity-seeking
- Two things matter in deals: the downside and the fulcrum
- Supply, demand, and barriers to entry
- Micro opportunities in Macro events
- If you are not selling at this price you are buying
- Good assets below replacement cost from poor operators and fix them up
Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives - My post
- Not many useful or big ideas. Just a fun and interesting book
- What happens after we die?
- I love how each story is structured. Interesting concept, the good, then the bad, then the despair
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life:
- Self Improvement
- Focus, focus, focus
- Be practical and funny!
- Industry + Frugality
- Be curious and try any new thing
- Essence of America is ordinary people can do extraordinary things if given the chance
- Be rational, temperate, virtuous, disciplined, wise, naturalistic, and have liberty from all passions
- Nothing external can harm us
- Be charitable in thought and action
- Have singular focus on the task at hand
- Stay clear-minded, right-minded, and high-minded
- Copy the best virtues; serene, dignified, industrious, sober, frugal, considerate, frank, temperate, and carry yourself with authority
- It is a moral duty to constantly learn and stay rational
- Keep things simple, but not more simple than necessary
- Use lessons from every discipline to learn and swing hard at the no-brainier decisions
- Tear down your own ideas, avoid envy, acknowledge cognitive biases, think in reverse, and never stop improving
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
- 10 years learning, 4 years refining, 4 years with success
- Experimental and focus on what the audience loves
- Incremental steps + a few intuitive leaps + creation of luck
- Have delusion and valid inspiration
- Stand out, no matter what
- Indulging on enjoyment while performing would be a bad move. You lose your edge
- Fame came as a by-product of working really hard for two decades
- Worked like crazy. Every day was doing 10+ hours so got really good and retained mastery
- "perseverence is a great substitute for talent"
- "There is no harm in charging oneself up with delusiouns between moments of valid inspiration"
- Being great is a statistical phenomenom. Being good consistently over long periods is harder
On A Roll: How A Kid from the Bronx Started with Hot Dogs and Wound Up Making a Fortune
- Be relentless
- Just do it, always give back to others, constantly innovate & be creative
- Treat others right, self image and optimism is important, constantly reduce risk
- Never compartmentalize, catch the right waves early and ride them hard
- Partner with good people and find the key ideas
- Give people the freedom to have success
- Focus on solving problems and you will find the solution
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections
- Only be satisfied with reaching your potential
- Count your blessings often
- Happiness + freedom + peace of mind
- You are no better than others, just as good
- Make mistakes and learn forever
- Control only what you can. No more.
- Have a positive self-image
- I will do the best I am capable of doing today to bring out my best tomorrow
- Create your own data and question others
- Relentlessly resourceful
- Focus and isolate when you can
- First principles and observing natural phenomena
- Experiment everything you can
- You don't need to finish your paintings. Sometimes, beauty is enough
- Observe nature and figure out how things actually work
- Let your best ideas marinate. You don't need to always be working on it
How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis
- Getting rich is a journey with a lot of sacrifices
- Be entrepreneurial and opportunistic
- You will have to constantly learn, keep your eye on the ball, and never fear failure
- Just keep pushing
- Stop delaying life pleasures
- How much are material things holding you back from experiences and life hours?
- Be deliberate, not on autopilot
- Realize that time is your enemy. Money utility decreases, and everything has a last time
- Decisions have an implicit timeline assumption
- The best maximize performance AND survival. The later of which is more important
- Avoid things that are hard to reverse (0s). Death, injury, bankruptcy. Anything that eliminates the possibility of future returns.
- Ergodicity is the ability to take advantage of the law of large numbers instead of hitting "0"
- This is the difference between 1000 people playing Russian Roulette and one person playing 1000 times
- Over enough time, "unlikely" means "eventually"
- Resources tend to cluster
- Become irreplaceable and remember that most things can be replaced
- Centralization is only efficient to the central observer. Something can work on average and fail locally
- This book reminded me of the Howard Marks quote "never forget the 6ft man who drowned in the river that was an average of 5ft deep"
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Reciprocation, commitment/consistency bias, social proof, authority bias, liking tendency, and scarcity bias (and deprivation)
- We all have stimuli that triggers us to do certain, often dumb, things
- If you are going to be in the #1 hedge fund in the world, realize that it's going to be intense
- There are levels to this game, and money can do a lot of wonder
- Always be listening to your employees and guaging how they feel
- “Carrie,” he said, “why would you give me a book you thought was only okay? Also, why would you give me a book that you haven’t even read?”
- "“One of Boone’s refrains was “How you spend your days is how you live your life.” How you practiced was how you’d perform in the championship game. There was no task too small. No task too minor so as not to warrant maximum rigor, focus, and care.”
- “But there are the values we say we have, and the values we strive to have. There are also the values we believe we have in order to live, not to die of the horror of seeing a stranger in the mirror.”
- Stay above the fray
- Always push for faster, be prepared and you should be able to make decisions in that moment
- "“Practice. That’s all it is. If you practice enough, you can sense things. You know where the open ice will be.”
- "For Carbon, the march was twofold: world-class investment efforts on a set number of well-selected companies each year alongside continuous improvement of the Firm’s culture and processes”
- "Compounding. Boone had a quote about it in his office. Stay in the market as much as possible. Have it, invest it. Wait out any panic and let it ride, let it grow. (Exponentially.) It gets easier to compound the richer you are. You can borrow to live. You never have to touch the principal. You never have to lock yourself into a price you don’t like.Risk/reward trade-off. Because the rich are so rich, they are able to risk a higher percentage of their net worth and invest in riskier assets. These two effects multiply and allow for the potential of much, much higher returns. This is why billionaires love crises. When others are sidetracked, they can scoop up assets on the cheap, take on extra risk at a time when everyone else is playing it safe, then wait for the world to return to a new normal”
- Write simply and cleanly
- Be clear in the head and on the paper
- Be unexpected + refreshing
- Have humanity and warmth in your writing
- Be precise and tug the reader forward
- Get rid of the useless stuff and write when you think "that is interesting"
- Focus on everybody's core interests
- Having an opinion puts you in a box
- Leverage/power comes from your Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement
- Give others a stake in the decision
- Judge results with clear and pre-determined standards
- Ask why a lot to understand the other party
- Be different and bold
- Always be opportunistic
- Empower great people to do interesting things for the long term
- Simplify everything and have tenacity
- Protect your downside and stay optimistic
- Create safe, comfortable, and cozy environments
- Love natural and organic based materials
- Be silly + simple with others
- Savor the best in life
- Workouts, merger arb, spinoffs, distressed debt, stubs
- Figure out who you should be the bat boy for
- Predictable earnings with temporary distress, underlying high quality
- Used borrowed money for workouts
- Personal portfolio has higher turnover and better returns
100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-1 and where to find them
- Find great companies at not-crazy valuations and hold on to them for dear life
- 100-baggers take time, but can come from anywhere
- Capital allocation is important, as is growth and returns on incremental capital invested
- Accelerating earnings + revenues with different business models
- The best investors are right 50% of the time
- adapt when losing (usually kill losers or average down aggressively)
- have a plan when losers and winners come
- stay around for the big winners
- concentrate in their best ideas
- stay liquid
- Losers take profits quickly
- Losers convince themselves they are right
- Losers stay with losers
- Losers widely diversify
- The long-term returns come from preservation of capital and a few home run investments.
- Stocks are part ownership in businesses
- Buy with a margin of safety
- Take advantage of Mr. Market when possible
- Develop your own discipline and courage
The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization
- Companies do not borrow because of balance sheet problems and lack of domestic reinvestment opportunities
- Many savers + no borrowers shrinks the economy ($ that would have been borrowed is sitting idle)
- Pre-industrial revolution: little reinvestment opportunities
- Urbanization was seen as the golden area for most countries as there was constant upward mobility
- Companies that went through urbanization are now going through being pursued
The Little Book That Beats the Market
- Remember that you own part of a company's future earnings
- Buy high return on capital businesses for bargain prices, and stick to your strategy
- Try to make as little predictions as possible, find what works, save all the time
- Use the Magic Formula!
- Opportunity when people flow between fear and greed
- Avoidance of risk is margin of safety
- Understand institutional investors + their weaknesses
- Use every relevant valuation technique
- Be ready to change your mind
- Look for flaws
- Value, growth, 1-year momentum, and small-stuff works best in markets
- Combining multiple factors together can outperform the market even more than single-factor models
- The best strategy is something you are able to stick with and is a sound strategy
- Your job as a communicator is to remove all reason for distraction
- Build credibility as a reliable person and communicator before making moves
- Don't make others work for the information you are giving them
Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle
- Respect the capital cycle
- Everybody eventually falls to it, but fate can be cheated for a while
- Focus on good capital allocators and moats
- Supply side economics runs the capital cycle
- Your own case is not unique- look at relevant parallels
- Always remain skeptical, logical, and safe
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
- Buy great companies out of favor that have good long-term plans
- Scuttlebutt all the time, ask people questions: customers, competitors, suppliers
- Be forward looking, rational, and focus on management
- Activists should let managers manage, but focus on capital allocation
- Where is the company's true value? Massive arbitrage between public market value and private value with a different management team
- Truly a messy space
Adolf Lundin: No Guts No Glory
- You need an ego
- Be constantly optimistic, yet calm and competitive
- Be more opportunistic than competitors
- Never give up
- No pain, no gain
- Find great partners and let them share in the profits
- Find asymmetric risk/reward scenarios
- The best risk reward is 0 risk, unlimited reward. No brainers
- Heads I win, tails I don't lose much
- Work hard and save all you can with equity
- Distress and uncertainty can provide returns
- Use simple websites as a hub
- Be remarkable, not unique
- Write good niche content with calls to action
- Focus on being a hub, not an advertisement
- Focus on titles. Like, a lot
The Innovator's Hypothesis - My post
- Cheap Experimental ideas are important
- Say: the team believes exploring X action will likely result in Y outcome. We will know this because Z metric changed
- Lean on testable ideas
- Be simple, fast, cheap, smart, lean, and important
Aiming High: Masa Son, Softbank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley - My post
- Be cartoonishly ambitious
- Show true enthusiasm
- Set a long term strategy for winning, have self-belief and constant persistence
- Make it easy for the other party to say yes, find the root of the problem, and tell a story
- Excuses are reprehensible because you still have the ability to act
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire
- We are not sure what we want. So we look to others (models) and desire what they desire. We make many choices according to the desires of others.
- What have you helped others desire?
- Jealousy and conflict comes from mimetic desire
- The harder it is to get- the more we want it
- Everybody has models
- Hidden models show the illusion of autonomy
- Rivalry is a function of proximity. Eventually the object becomes moot
- Companies are monopolies or in perfect competition
- Focus on network effects, mimetic desire
- Focus on being bold and different
- Reduce the role of luck and take control
- Bias thoughts influence action which influence results
- Market biases move markets
- Credit cycles matter above all else
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
- Rationality + be focused on cognitive biases
- Take advantage of your luck
- Avoid controversy
- Highlight your contradictions/biases
- Take time to reflect
- Do not blindly follow others
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work - My post
- There are no problems, only people problems
- You can get a lot of cool stuff by doing cool things and asking nicely
- Get rid of your problem people early and head one- it will compound
- Understand why opportunities came to you, and what the downside might be
- Take the low-hanging fruit, and what others are throwing away may be valuable
- Take a niche and take it hard
- Control the supply and diversify, have a good reputation, beware of debt, stay ambitious
- Run as lean as possible and trust the people on the ground- stay nimble
- Work with great people
- Don't be afraid of doing something unconventional or odd- even when others think you are crazy!
- Give everybody compensated on overall success, and have a great infrastructure
- Share ideas and be intellectually honest with others
- Do something new, never give up, and hope for good luck!
- Bad ideas are good, good ideas are great, no ideas are terrible.
Chapters in My Life: Frederick Taylor Gates
- Anything is possible with brains, will, and energy
- Understand everybody's incentives and how to get them ahead
- Have solid reasons with worthy ends
- Common sense diligently applied
The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
- Take advantage of any luck
- Concentrate in ideas, wealth, and partners
- Everybody has a unique task only they are able to fulfill
- Focus on what drives you
- Get your why and stick with it
- Why can change over time
- Be industrious/entrepreneurial and ambitious
- Focus on customers
- Own an under-served niche
- Create win-win scenarios
- Great values are not taught
- Reputation across family, friends, customers, and employees is what matters
How to Sell Anything to Anybody
- Help the customer get what they want
- Keep your reputation pristine
- Keep personalized contact with customers
- Constantly market
- Our assumptions are usually wrong. We have lazy thinking
- Answer the easy questions first
- Study failures, be aware of cognitive biases (recency bias, exposure effect, uncertainty, halo effect, framing effects, anchoring bias, availability bias)
- Focus on finding the correct processes, not the outcomes
- Quality of life = quality of bets + luck
- Acknowledge uncertainty- don't be afraid to say "I'm not sure"
- Be skeptical of your beliefs
- Think long-term, backwards, and do postmortems
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs
- Great owner-operators can create tremendous value over time
- Outsiders tend to be idiosyncratic, independent, analytical, understated, and versatile
- If you want to become not just a lawyer, but a trusted strategic advisor that clients request, you should read this book
- The majority of a transactional lawyer's time is spent on structuring, advising on strategy, negotiating/drafting contracts, orchestrating closing, and keeping deals organized
- Your unique position as a negotiator requires mastering both client advocacy and bridge-building with opposing counsel
- Understand the inherent tension between buyers and sellers - each driven by different goals and incentives
- Master both technical foundations (reps & warranties, covenants, remedies) and strategic instincts/emotional intelligence
- Guide clients toward productive compromises while protecting their interests
- Be a master negotiator who understands what both sides are optimizing for
Seven Days in the Art World - My post
- There are levels to this game
- Real artists are focused on doing, not asking about what art is
End of the Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T
- Mis-alignment of financial inflows and obligations created problems
- Giving up the good businesses for the sexy business killed them
- Succession and politic issues
- Management wanted form over function
- There are usually one or two key measures that can be used to predict long term success (eg strike out rate)
- "Being in the arena" does not mean knowledge
- Higher dispersion means more opportunities and a better outperformance pond
- Think carefuly about what it means to truly isolate noise
- Consistency + explosiveness, which hardly comes in pairs
- Sizing (or changing it) didn't matter as much as getting into the position
- You can't predict when you'll produce alpha
- Returns most often came from activism, a highly concentrated portfolio, independent research, and a great filter
- Net nets had a temporary earnings and cash increase from WWII, but management was not great at allocating this cash. Returns came from changes in capital allocation (sometimes Buffett had to do it himself)
- Buffett kept debt always below 20% of assets. But, he usually used debt
- Buffett was better than many other investors at the time because he thought beyond the numbers and would "read the tea leaves" and truly understand the business and people behind it
- Tiny companies created more opportunities, but not everything was so small
- "The stock didn't work because it was cheap- it worked because management returned capital to shareholders"
- Best recap of Philadelpha & Reading, which was the Berkshire blueprint
- Value > price + kicker + downside protection
- Buffett was so good of an investor, that selling these companies (Grief, Disney, American Express) decades ago for a quick gain was the right financial decision
- Lots of sharing of ideas and thoughts with other investors
- He knew all the little details, but focused on the essential ones
- Look for mis priced bets and load up on them!
Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
- Scams and speculation tend to be hyper-cyclical
- Europe's first central bank was developed in the Netherlands, 1609. No interest on deposits no loans, issued notes only against its gold holdings
- Most manias have people placing orders with money they don't have. Always hyper derivative
- Needs a scape-goat- Michael Milken John Law and more. Pilloried, stripped of wealth, imprisoned
- Carefully doing PR for your company was super important
- The gold the devil gives his paramours turns into excrement after his departure
- Post south sea bubble, the bankrupticies did not increase significantly and the economy was fine
- The south sea bubble was a technological revolution for converting government war debts into easy to exchange low interest long term securities
- bubbles are nearly always killed by raising interest rates or expecting delivery
- there were always arguments of the business cycle being removed
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric
- Focus on cash flow, not reported earnings. GE got this backwards!
- At GE: bad news was not tolerated
- Make sure marketing does not get ahead of the products
- Board needs to provide consistent and adequate oversight and understanding of the business
- Constant training + improvements
- Honest, open, candid
- Set clear rules + expectations
- Constant feedback loops
- Be natural and do not force actions
- Just do. Stop thinking
- Trust yourself fully
- Focus on the goal and let your body and unconscious mind do the work
- See reality and adapt
- Let go of your ego
- Keep it simple. Keep it natural
The Making of a Blockbuster: Wayne Huizenga
- Have an over-arching plan, but hustle to make sure all of the little details fit
- Focus on what matters/cut to the meat of the problem
- surround yourself with great partners who have skin in the game and want more than just money from you (treat all employees really well!)
- Reputation truly matters, so protect it with everything.
- Always stay close to the customer, constantly improve from their feedback
- Help people succeed and celebrate them in your organization
- Think outside of the box and make goals that others may think are impossible
Zeckendorf: The autobiography of the man who played a real-life game of Monopoly
- Be a connector
- Understand where the true power lies in a new system
- Public opinion is important to get large scale projects done
- Stay open to new ideas and expanding into new areas
- Do not overleverage and be caught out with different commitments
- Good investing and business creation is creative
- Grit + luck leads to anything
- Texas oilman influence everything in their areas
- Bold will win and lose in new/budding industries
- Uncover information by asking questions
- Understand people, product, and peripheral functions
- Who works for the customers, company, or service providers
- Become fluent in the business. Ask why
- Who is the decision maker for the product? Who uses it? Who sends the check?
- Who is doing what to whom and why
- Rare + extreme impact + predictable in retrospect
- Respect and adjust to unknowable unknowns
- People love narratives, no matter how flawed
- Do not accept status quo
Happy City: Transforming Through Design
- People want to be able to walk
- Have easy connections with others
- Ability to appreciate beauty in nature
- Private space for retreating when people get too much
- This was one of the better personal finance books I have read
- This is now how to get rich- but how to take control of your financial life
- Focus on the big things that matter- not always the minute. Focus on the big picture first and be simple
- Spend a lot on things you love, be ruthless on those you do not love
- Online banks often have better rewards due to low overhead
- Automate everything so you do not have to think
- Millionaires are low-key
- Millionaires are compulsive savers, investors, and business owners
- Millionaires are great at allocating time, energy, and money
- Millionaires are disciplined and willing to sacrifice for financial freedom
- Countries are poor due to their institutions
- Dis-incentives for innovation and investment
- Avoiding accountability leads to weak institutions
- Increased education makes nations rich
How the Scots Invented the Modern World
- Much of the American revolution can be attributed to Scots or Scottish-born ideas
- Focus on the inner self instead of the outward form
- Emphasis on education and literacy for all
- Focus on survival and honor
- Goal of intellectual life was to understand in order to teach others and allow others to build on your work
- Being good means doing good for others. Make others happy
- Highlands felt lawless and impoverished. Super violent
- Wealth was created by pooling family risk and get capital from all over while cutting costs
- Social creatures have sympathy for others
- Division of labor means what we produce is no longer ours
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon
- customer obsession over competitor obsession
- a lot of the processes about Amazon have not persisted. Their scar tissue and feedback/learning process is why they have succeeded. You cannot import this
- you can't tell which seeds will grow into an oak
- what is now possible that wasn't before with this new technology and how can we dominate
- "it has to be perfect". One bad customer experience would undo the goodwill of hundreds of perfect ones
- speed dominated a lot. high expectations mixed with speed
- "devestagintly effective at providing clarity"
- simplify + bias for action
- good intentions don't work. mechanisms do
- if you don't change teh underlying condition that created a problem, you should expect the problem to recur
- should only expect about 50% of goals should be achieved
- is this person adding or multiplying to the team
- always be generating feedback loops
- "while the growth in employees was linear, the number of their possible lines of communication grew exponentially"
- the natural extreme of speed --> none. eg the speediest communication isn't 100 convos/second but 0
- don't manage dependencies. figure out how to remove them
- the better you are at course correcting, the less painful being wrong is
- Bezos assumes each sentence he reads is wrong until he can prove otherwise
- didn't focus on the what but the who and the how. that is more important predictor for success
- build a moat around your best customers
- Eastern dictators are enabled by western institutions
- It is never a good idea to work with a criminal
- Criminals are generally greedy and act irrationally
- Always look for the true facts
- Media distorts the truth
- Remain skeptical of all second hand data
State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World
- Most countries have used or are using state capitalism to their advantage- but with varying success
- Blurring of lines between political action and commerce
- Some use State Owned Enterprises to buy loyalty, some use it for political weapons
- SOEs seem to succeed with good economics and political rules, and fail when governments act extractive
- SOEs spawn because of political regime change, or economic/market failures
- Advantages come from starting circumstances (such as geography)
- Intelligence, drive, or divinity do not determine much if you are delt a bad/great hand
- Everybody is the same. Differences come from starting circumstances
- your main job is to orient everybody to a common goal
- focus on how much others know. if you are smart, forget about it. your ego isn't helpful
- believe and empower your people to make the best choices
- create tight feedback loops in everything you want to improve on
- Purposeful narratives are used to dislodge facts
- Catch 22s are great for dislodging facts
- Language creates a powerful image
- The native American struggle is ongoing and has been shaped by lies
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
- Copy from other cultures
- Take care of your best partners
- Discipline above all else. Even for your partners.
- Control public opinion/narrative for a competitive advantage
- Break another's spirit before attacking
- Hire engineers
The Millennium: A Comedy of the Year 2000
- Mostly just talked about the breakdown of society and socialism is good
- People will abuse power given the chance, so you need checks
- Always treat people justly
Capital Allocation: The Financials of a New England Textile Mill 1955 - 1985
- Berkshire started with 3 failed companies
- Buffett remained super concentrated throughout his career- especially early on
- Financial companies could become more aggressive under Berkshire, as well as be more rational such as not taking unprofitable business