The Alien's View
October 13th
[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.
The irrationality of assigning enormous value to an inert metal like gold and going to great lengths to secure it, despite it offering no practical utility beyond a certain point, highlights the oddities in our systems and values.
This Martian perspective on our behavior unveils the prevailing irrationality in our markets. Investments, at times, are based more on perception and less on intrinsic worth.
Buffett’s philosophy implores us to invest in businesses with inherent value, companies that provide products or services that people need and want. It prompts us to reassess our understanding of value in the context of investment decisions and align them more with logic and practicality rather than tradition and perception.
This shift in perspective, then, is not just about making sound investment decisions. It's a fundamental reassessment of what we consider valuable. An alien perspective, so to speak, can lead us to question whether our investments—and the systems that uphold them—truly make sense.
Copyright © 2023 by Scott Sansovich