David Rosenthal: uncertainty

Transcript context

…That sounds like six years before Warren was born. Yes, 6 ½ years before Warren was born. Where in Omaha? Al and Florence Munger, Florence gives birth to a baby boy whom they named Charles Thomas Munger, after his grandfather who is a widely respected federal judge in the Nebraska US District Court appointed by Teddy Roosevelt himself, Thomas Charles Munger. So Charles Thomas Munger, name of his grandfather, Thomas Charles Munger. He takes after his grandfather in many ways, his grandfather makes a big impression on him. Thomas's mantra in life was, concentrate on the task immediately in front of you and control your spending. It sounds similar to Ernest Buffett, similar ideals. This instills this idea of gaining wealth through controlling your spending and focusing on doing a great job at the task in front of you in young Charlie. Charlie, much like Warren, decides that he wants to become wealthy so that he can not have lots of fancy toys to play with, but so that he can be independent. He has a quote, he says, "I wanted to get rich so I could be independent like Lord John Maynard Keynes." Of course, elementary school-aged Charlie Munger is aspiring to be like John Maynard Keynes. This is where he's a little different than Warren. They really have the same aims and goals in life, but their styles around it are very different. Warren is just like, I don't want anybody telling me what to do. Charlie’s like, I want to be like Lord Keynes. As we chronicled in part one, Charlie actually goes to work for Ernest Buffett at the grocery store as a kid. Unbelievable for Warren's grandfather. Just like Warren learns, he hates manual labor and being paid a pittance of a salary, and he thinks there's got to be a better way. He can use his mind to make money rather than manual labor. Speaking of his mind, he loves to read. His parents give him and his sisters lots of books, he tears through them. Very early in life, he stumbles across Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin would become his hero in life, and that's where he develops this idea. I don't know if he stole it from Franklin or if he came up with it himself of making friends of the eminent dead. He decides he enjoys more the company of dead people—learning from them through their books—than people who are actually alive. Kind of a one-way conversation, but there's probably a lot of wisdom there. Not to mention, revisionist history, survivorship bias, yada, yada, yada.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.