Peter Buffett: Freedom over Money

Not everything is about money. Peter Buffett, son of one of the world's richest and investing savant Warren Buffett, gave up his inheritance of Berkshire Hathaway shares (worth about $72 million in 2010) for the freedom to live a life as musician.

Peter Buffett writes, (hat tip Professor Russ Roberts) [bold emphasis mine]

My inheritance was relatively modest, but it was more than most young people receive to get a start in life. Having that money was a privilege, a gift I had not earned. If I'd faced the necessity of making a living from day one, I would not have been able to follow the path I chose.

Would my father have helped me get started if I'd chosen a career on Wall Street? I'm sure he would have. Would he have given me a job at Berkshire Hathaway if I'd asked for one? I suppose so. But in either of those cases, the onus would have been on me to demonstrate that I felt a true vocation for those fields, rather than simply taking the course of least resistance. My father would not have served as an enabler of my taking the easy way out. That would not have been an exercise of privilege, but of diminishment.

This demonstrates the differences of value preferences. Peter's priorities are different from his father's. One cannot measure individual choices from aggregates or statistics.

Yet like Professor Roberts, who counselled his students “not to take the job that pays the most money” but instead go for trade which delivers “satisfaction, meaning, leisure, beauty, pride, and honor,” I recently advised my newly graduate eldest son not to seek the pursuit of money as the primary objective for career development, but to go for specialization in the field which he feels comfortable with.

After all, achieving career excellence is about the ability to serve consumers; where consumers ultimately determine one’s market value or career success (outside the political spectrum).

The Importance of Choice

This is great stuff from marketing guru Seth Godin,

With so many options in media, interaction and venues, you now get to choose what you expose yourself to.

Expose yourself to art, and you'll come to appreciate it and aspire to make it.

Expose yourself to anonymous scathing critics and you will begin to believe them (or flinch in anticipation of their next appearance.)

Expose yourself to get-rich-quick stories and you'll want to become one.

Expose yourself to fast food ads and you'll crave french fries.

Expose yourself to angry mobs of uninformed, easily manipulated protesters and you'll want to join a mob.

Expose yourself to metrics about your brand or business or performance and you'll work to improve them.

Expose yourself to anger and you might get angry too.

Expose yourself to people making smart decisions and you'll probably learn how to do it as well.

Expose yourself to eager long-term investors (of every kind) and you'll likely to start making what they want to support.

It's a choice if you want it to be.

There is a political aspect to this message; that's if we are made free to make that choice.

Unfortunately, many people would like to have such privilege taken away from us.

They prefer individual choice to be substituted by choice made by some elite group, particularly, technocrats, officials, bureaucrats or politicians, expecting that you and I are not qualified to make the right decisions on ourselves. And worst, they force their choices on us!

The moral as I see it from Seth's message, is best said by Archibald MacLeish [(1892-1982) Poet, playwright, Librarian of Congress, & Assistant Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt],

"Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice, a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing."