Citizen Buffett

Orson Welles' character Citizen Kane gives it up with his last word ," Rosebud". It was a reference to his boyhood sled and happier times. The "Rosebud" decal on the sled pointed to the promise of spring in the midst of winters gloom.

Warren Buffett's recent autobiography is titled "Snowball". It refers to the compounding of wealth through the dynamic of buying sound companies and never selling. This is Buffett's version of reflection on happier times now that he's nearer the end of his career. Eh!

Buffett has pledged his fortune to charities. Buffett will use his wealth to help many people who sadly shouldn't have been born. These people now suffer deprivation. They will be helped by a man who spent his whole life accumulating more than he needed.

Bill Gates : Hung Up On Redundant Humans

Bill Gates retires today at age 52. He's one of the wealthiest at app. $52 billion. He plans to spend the rest of his life giving away the money that he spent the first part of his life accumulating. I wonder. When did it occur to him that making money as a goal was not all it was cracked up to be? He's joined in his philanthropic plans by the worlds richest-Warren Buffett. Like Bill, he is giving all his money away and will use Bill's personal foundation as the executor. Presumably Warren has second thoughts about wealth as a goal .But he is somewhat suspect. Because at 78 of years age, he is running up against the "can't take it with you" proverb.

How and where is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation going to spend the combined philanthropic fortune? It looks like Bill is headed back to Africa. We all came out of Africa some 50,000 years ago. Bill is a descendant of one of the more adventuresome primates that left Africa. He's going back to help the more "stay at home" Africans that never left the continent.

Malnutrition is the biggest killer in Africa. Bill plans on spending the bulk of the money on feeding the underfed. And then what Bill? It's easier to have children than to feed children. The stay at home Africans never quite grasped that truism. It's ironic. Bill Gates has become fabulously wealthy by replacing hard-working people with software and effectively making them redundant. But now he wants to spend the profit from that enterprise in a de facto breeding program of particularly redundant people who can't feed their own redundant children.

Warren Buffett: Richest Man & Garbage Man

Warren Buffett is the world's richest man according to Forbes. He is estimated to be worth $62 billion. His flagship investment vehicle is Berkshire Hathaway. He has guided Berkshire's investments since the late 1960s. His investment philosophy is simple. Buy well-run disposable branded products that make loyal- repeat- user consumers. Then it's just multiplication of the population that takes over. The premise of the philosophy is at once brilliant and also vulgar.

The investment portfolio of Berkshire feature the likes of Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Buch,Gillette, McDonalds,Dairy Queen, Mars-Sees Candies, Wrigley Chewing Gum, American Express, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble etc. The consumer disposables created his wealth but also fostered human obestity and mountains of packaging and manufacturing garbage as a by-product. Most people only talk about the wealth side of the equation. But on a zero sum planet "wealth" has to come from some other thing that is diminished like water, clean environments, etc.

But things are changing. Now and increasingly in the future successful inventors and investors will have a guiding philosophy that first asks the question, " How much garbage will my product produce?" and secondly ask "How much will my product improve what nature offers perfectly?"