I was better at figuring things out than I was at everything else.

 I was never going to succeed as a movie star or as a athlete or as an actor something.

 So, and I early got the idea that partly from my family, my grandfather in particular whose name I bore had the same idea that really your main duty is to become as rational as you could possibly be.

 I mean, rationality was just totally woripped by Judge Munger and and my father and others.

 And and since I was good at that, no good at anything else, I uh I was steered in something that worked well for me.

 And but I do think rationality is a is a moral duty.

 That's the reason I like Confucious.

 I he had the same idea all those years ago.

 And so and I think Bergkshire is sort of a temple of rationality.

 What's really admired around Bergkshire is somebody who sees it the way it is.

 Wouldn't you agree with that, Warren? Yeah.

 That more than anything, more than energy.

 You better see it the way it is.

 Yeah.

 You better see it the way it is.

 Yeah.

 See it the way it is.

 And so that that's the way I did it.

 But that goes beyond uh a technique for amassing wealth.

 To me, that's a that's a moral principle.

 I think if you have some easily removable ignorance and keep it, it's dishonorable.

 I don't think it's just a mistake or or a lack of diligence.

 I think I think it's dishonorable to say to stay stupider than you have to be.

 And so, uh that's my ethos.

 And I think you have to be generous because it's crazy not to be.

 We're a social animal and and we're tied to other people.

 I do think that that it's an easy game if somebody has the temperament for it and keeps at it because he's likes it and is interesting interested in it.

 I have a problem that Warren has less of.

 I don't like being too much an example to people who want to get rich by being shrewd and buying and passively holding securities.

 I don't think that's enough of a life.

 If you rest a fortune from life by being shrewder than other people and buying little pieces of paper, uh I don't think that's an adequate contribution in exchange for what you're taking.

 So, so I like it when you're investing money for an endowment or a pension fund or your relatives or something, but but I I I never considered it enough of a life to merely be shrewd in picking stocks and passively holding them.

 Yeah.

 running Bergkshire has been far far more fun than running in my case Buffett Partnership or or just an investment fund.

 I mean that you'd be less of a man if you run that partnership.

 It'd be a crazy way to go through life.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 I mean it just you know Bergkshire is incredibly more satisfying.

 So if you're good at just investing your own money, uh I hope you'll morph into doing something more.

 We basically looked for companies where we thought we could understand what the future would look like five or 10 or 15 years hence.

 And that didn't mean we have had to do it to four decimal places or anything of the sort, but we we had to have a feel for it and and uh and we had to know our limitations.

 So we stayed away from a lot of things and at that time uh prices were different.

 So we in terms of knowing we were getting enough for our money.

 It was a much easier decision than it is currently.

 But there wasn't there weren't elaborate there no planning sessions or anything of the sort.

 We just we kept reading and we kept thinking and and we kept looking at things that came along as Charlie described it in the movie and you know way comparing opportunity A with opportunity B and in those days we were capital constrained so we usually had to sell something if we were going to buy something else and that always makes for an you know that's the an interesting challenge always when you're measuring something you hold against something that has come along and to see which is more attractive and we probably lean leaned very much toward things where we felt we were certain to get a decent result than where we were hopeful of getting a brilliant result.

 That's went with our na our instincts and and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

 Charlie, what would you say? Well, that's exactly what we did.

 And and it worked wonderfully well.

 And part of it is because we're such splendid people and work so constructively and part of it is we were a little lucky.

 We had some good fortune.

 Now Warren says he was lucky to go to Geico, but not every 20-year-old was going down to Washington DC and knocking on the doors of empty buildings to try and find something out that he was curious about.

 So we made some of our luck by being curious and seeking wisdom.

 And we certainly recommend that to anybody else.

 And there's nothing that produces wisdom more thoroughly than really getting your own nose whacked hard when you make a mistake.

 And we had a fair amount of that, didn't we? We had plenty of them.

 If you'll read this book, you'll see about a few of them.

 We we uh we thought we knew about the department store business in Baltimore and we thought we knew about the trading stand business and we've we uh we've had a lot of we've had a a lot of experience with bad businesses and that makes you appreciate a good one and to some extent it it sharpens your ability to make distinctions between good and bad ones.

 And we've had a lot of fun along the way that helps too.

 I if you're enjoying what you're doing, you know, you're you're likely to get a better result than if you go to work with your teeth clenched every morning.

 I think we were helped because we came from families where there were some admirable people and we tended to identify other admirable people better than we would have coming from a different background.

 So my deceased wife used to say, you can't accomplish much in one generation.

 We owe a considerable amount, both of us, to the families we were raised in.

 I think the family standards helped us to identify the good people more easily than we would have if we'd had a more disadvantaged background.

 Do you agree with that? Yeah.

 Yeah.

 Have you still got your father's briefcase or I still got it, but I don't know where it is.

 I can't carry it anymore.

 It's worn out.

 It's got holes in it.

 Yeah.

 I've got my dad's um I got my dad's desk from 75 years ago.

 I think everybody's going to be doing more things on the internet.

 It is growing in importance and so like it or not, we're dragged into modern reality.

 Uh doesn't sound like he likes it, does it? No, I don't like it.

 I don't like multitasking.

 I see these people doing three things at once and I think, God, what a terrible way that is to think.

 Uh I am so stupid that I have to think hard about a thing for a long time and the idea of multitasking my way to glory has never occurred to me and but anyway the internet is here and it's going to be more and more important and everybody's going to think more about it and do more about it like it or not and of course the younger people are way more prone to use it than than we are but but Bergkshire You have what? How many Bloombergs now in the office? Yeah.

 You have two or three, Mark? I know.

 They don't tell me about them.

 They sort of hide them when I come in.

 Anyway, we're into the modern world.

 We have We have Mark Bark Hamburg tells me we have three, but um we'll re-evaluate that situation when I get back to the office.

 What's that? We're not paying for one.

 Oh, we're not paying for one.

 I like that.

 Let's see if we can now pay for two.

 Now, the internet and it's changed many of our businesses.

 I mean, it's changed Geico's business very very dramatically.

 And it it it's it's affecting it affects them all to one degree or another.

 And it's it's amazing to me.

 I mean, people get pessimistic about America.

 Just think in the last 20 or 25 years.

 Well, just 20 years on the internet, uh, how dramatically it's changed your life.

 It's not over yet.

 There's all kinds of things are going to happen to make life better.

 And Charlie may not think the internet makes life better, but when I compare trying to round up three other guys on a snowy day to come over to my house to play bridge versus snapping the thing on and having having my partner in the in in San Francisco there and two other friends and so on in 10 or 20 seconds, I I think the world has improved.

 Well, if I had your partner, I think it would improve, too.

 Okay.

 And they say, "But college educated people do better.

 It's a big bargain.

 But maybe they do better because they were better to start with before they ever went to college.

" And they never tell you that.

 It's a ridiculous argument.

 And and so I think that's one of the silliest statistics that they publish.

 I mean to to say that a college education is worth X because people that go to college earn this much more than the ones that don't.

 You're talking about two different universes.

 And to attribute the entire difference to the one variable that they went to college as opposed to the difference between the people who want to go to college and have the ability to get into college.

 It's completely nutty and about 70% of the people believe in it.

 So it gives you a certain hesitation about relying on your fellow man.

 So I think most people just have to struggle through with the system the way it is.

 There's a big tendency to have prices rise to what can be collected and people just rationalize that the service is worth it.

 And I think a lot of that has happened in education and and of course a lot is taught in higher education that isn't very useful to the people who are who are learning it.

 And of course all those people would never learn much from anything.

 So it's really wasting your time and and that's just the way it works.

 So I think there's a lot wrong.

 What I noticed that was very interesting is that when the great recession came, every successful university in America was horribly overstaffed and they all behaved just like 3G.

 They all with a shortage of money laid off a lot of people.

 The net result is they all worked better when it was all over with the people gone.

 And so this right sizing is is not all bad.

 I don't think there's a college in America that wants to go back to its old habits.

 And uh but you put your finger on it is a real problem to look at those sticker shocks and it's like any other problem in life.

 You you have just to figure out your best option and just live with it.

 We can't change Villanova or Fordom.

 They're going to do what they're going to do and and as long as it works, they'll keep raising the prices and it'll keep working.

 Yes.

 And that's pretty much the way the the system works.

 When it really gets awful, there's finally a rebellion.

 In my place in Los Angeles, the little traffic accident got so cost too much to everybody because of so much fraud and the chiropractors and some of the plaintiff's attorneys and so on.

 And finally, the little accidents were costing so much that that they worried about the guy who lived in a tough neighborhood would couldn't afford to drive out of it to get a job.

 And the auto insurance companies thought, "My god, the price is going up like this.

 They'll have legislation creating state auto insurance or something.

" So the net result is they put the plaint attorneys to trial on every case.

 And that fixed it.

 And maybe something like that will happen in higher education.