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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
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Author: james22   😊 😞
Number: of 21942 
Subject: Re: Dividends
Date: 01/15/24 3:05 PM
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preparedness

I'm not blind to Risk.

"Most people just assume improbable events don’t happen, but technical people tend to view risk very mathematically." He continued, "The tech preppers do not necessarily think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote event, but one with a very severe downside, so, given how much money they have, spending a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this . . . is a logical thing to do.”

newyorker.com - Doomsday prep for the super rich

The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case of the Tin Foil Hat Gun Prepper

medium.com - The surprisingly solid mathematical case of the tin foil hat gun prepper

It could be that if you spend all day thinking of ways to break a system, you realize how easily everything can be broken.

nytimes.com - Coronavirus preppers

The Design Margin is rooted in the notion that life is uncertain; that since things have often collapsed in the past and may collapse again we actually need to have more reserves than we think. Asteroid strikes, wars and natural calamities happen — and with far more frequency than the space alien invasions that Paul Krugman suggests we prepare against.

Bad times are frequent events.

The idea that the office on the corner will always be able to dispense Government Cheese does not reflect the normal historical experience. Rather it reflects that peculiar period of stability and prosperity which followed the end of the Second World War: the Pax Americana, which the Left hates. Our civilizational attitudes have been formed on the basis of the exception, not the rule.

pjmedia.com - You cant take it with you

The unimaginable can occur. That is a notion at once banal and perennially useful to recall.

theatlantic.com - Yes it could happen again

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. Chesterton

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game. Taleb

I just believe one has to consider the opportunity cost of insurance.

What is logical for the wealthy tech prepper to hedge against (remote events), isn't for the average Poor.
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This community has written 21,448 posts about Berkshire Hathaway. The article-length ones it recommended most:
BRK: Why Not XOM? · 62 recs · 2024
Second quarter comments · 60 recs · 2023
Berkshire's Profit Contributors · 57 recs · 2023
Summary of 2Q 2026 · 54 recs · 2026
3Q Summary · 53 recs · 2024
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