Monday, June 26, 2006

Buffet's anouncement.

Not for the first time I am blogging about something that I have a very sketchy idea about.
So Warren Buffet has decided to give his considerable wealth to charity , changing his long held views on the subject.
We should all be breaking out the champagne . And yet I am left with a feeling of unease. Maybe its the realisation that dawned on Warren Buffet himself, he wasn't going to be around forever. All the shares he holds will be tranferred to charitable trusts(Bill and Melinda Gates mostly).
No doubt those trusts have very competent managers, but for all their competence they are not Gates or Buffet or any of those other remarkable men who will no doubt be thinking on similar lines.
History has taught us that the mightiest empires have stumbled when leadership changed hands from those who were great to those who were competent. Men like Gates and Buffet have been at the forefront of the prosperity that America has seen in the past few decades.
Fact is ownership brings with it an incentive to make things grow and improve. I am not convinced that will continue to be the case when such large business giants are run by charitable trusts.
On the flipside, this is the best shot we have of finding a cure to AIDS.

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