There are huge piles of cash snapping up smaller firms as a business model, so anything with any visible charms gets sold. That's true whether it's a listed microcap/smallcap or private. What's left is not inspiring.

This is a depressing consequence of the accelerating concentration of capital in the hands of the top tenth of a percent. One of the benefits of immense wealth is the ability to buy whole companies and take them private, as Buffett did.

The twentieth century witnessed the democratization of ownership as declining wealth inequality and rising incomes led to the emergence of investment pooling instruments like stock and bond funds, and the broadening of ownership into the upper middle and middle classes. With the steepening of income and wealth inequality, and the corresponding emergence of private equity and family offices, a greater and greater share of ownership opportunities are becoming inaccessible to ordinary investors.

I worry that even the very well off—the top 5%—are at risk being closed out of the most lucrative segments of the economy. Indeed the billionaire class seems to be not only embracing a politics of neo-feudalism but also a neo-enclosure movement as it walls off greater and greater shares of our national wealth from public access.

Berkshire Hathaway FAQ

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