原文信息：
- 标题：A Conversation with Charlie Munger and Michigan Ross in 2017
- 作者：Grahamites
- 发表时间：2017-12-23
- 链接：HTML
- 翻译：DeepL 等
- 整合：Terrellchen
A Conversation With Charlie Munger and Michigan Ross in 2017 2017年查理-芒格和密歇根-罗斯的对话
Charlie Munger joined Michigan Ross Dean Scott DeRue for a conversation about his life, career journey, philanthropic legacy, and his thoughts on a few current global trends. You can imagine how excited I got when I saw this video on Youtube.
查理-芒格（Charlie Munger）与密歇根大学罗斯学院院长斯科特-德鲁（Scott DeRue）一起畅谈了他的人生、职业历程、慈善遗产以及他对当前全球趋势的一些看法。你可以想象，当我在 Youtube 上看到这段视频时有多兴奋。
In a classic manner, Charlie dispensed knowledge and wisdom in his Mungerism style. Below are my edited transcripts of the part where DeRue interviewed Munger. There were a few places where I didn’t quite catch the words or misunderstood what Munger meant. Please correct me in the comment session if you find one.
查理以其典型的芒格主义风格，向我们传授了他的知识和智慧。以下是我编辑的德鲁采访芒格部分的文字实录。有几处我没有听清楚，或者误解了芒格的意思。如有发现，请在评论区指正。
Scott DeRue: I’d like to go back to your Early Childhood in Omaha Nebraska. What are some of the moments in your experience in Omaha that you really find memorable that shaped you and who you are today, how you think. Can you talk a little bit about growing up in Omaha?
斯科特-德鲁： 我想回到您在内布拉斯加州奥马哈市的童年时代。你在奥马哈的经历中有哪些让你难忘的时刻，这些时刻塑造了你，塑造了今天的你，塑造了你的思维方式。你能谈谈在奥马哈的成长经历吗？
Charlie Munger: I really liked Omaha. It was a size where I knew a lot of the people no matter what they did. I wasn’t lost in a great metropolis. And I was very fortunate in nature of my parents and my parents’ friends. And I was fortunate in the public schools I attended. (They) were pretty remarkable by the standard at the time. Of course most of my schooling was in great depression but that means I’m one of the very few people still alive who deeply remembers the great depression. And it’s been very helpful to me. It was so extreme. People like you have just no idea what the hell was like. That was just nobody had any money, (even) the rich people didn’t have any money. People would come and beg for a meal at the door and we had a hobo jungle not very far from my grandfather’s house, and I was forbidden to walk through (the hobo jungle) but I walked through it all the time. And I was safer in that hobo jungle in the depths of the thirties when people are starving practically than I am walking around my neighborhood now in Los Angeles. The world is changed on that. You think the crime would be less but the crime was pretty low on those days.
查理-芒格： 我非常喜欢奥马哈。在这里，无论人们从事什么工作，我都认识他们中的很多人。我不会在大都市里迷失方向。我很幸运，因为我的父母和父母的朋友。我也很幸运在公立学校上学。按照当时的标准，（这些学校）是相当不错的。当然，我的大部分学业都是在大萧条时期完成的，但这意味着我是少数几个对大萧条记忆犹新的人之一。这对我很有帮助。它是如此极端，像你这样的人根本不知道当时的情况。那时候大家都没钱，（甚至）富人也没钱。人们会到门口来乞讨，离我祖父家不远的地方有一片流浪汉丛林，我被禁止穿过（流浪汉丛林），但我一直穿过那里。在三十年代的流浪汉丛林里，我比现在在洛杉矶的街区里走得更安全，因为那时人们几乎都在挨饿。世界因此而改变。你以为犯罪率会降低，但那时候的犯罪率相当低。
I had a very unusual bunch of experience to go through civilization in various phases including the greatest recession. I’d say it’s the greatest recession in the 600 hundred years in the English speaking world. It was really something. And it was very interesting to watch and also to watch it fixed. It was fixed by the accidental Keynesianism of World War II. Very interesting. And Hitler had fixed the Great Depression in Germany by the deliberate Keynesianism. But he wasn’t doing it to stimulate the economy. He wanted to get even with all the people he hated. But he borrowed all this money and created all these armaments. Hitler’s Germany by 1939 was the strongest in Europe and nobody else was close. So you wouldn’t understand that as well as I do (because you) haven’t lived it. You could just see the place gaining traction more and more and more and more and pretty soon it was fixed. And of course in those days there were all kinds of people, most of my family for they believed in hard money based on gold and not much welfare and so on.
我有过非常不寻常的经历，经历过不同阶段的文明，包括最严重的经济衰退。我要说，这是英语世界 600 百年来最严重的衰退。这真的很了不起。 观察这个经济衰退的过程以及如何解决它都非常有趣。第二次世界大战的凯恩斯主义意外地修复了它。非常有意思。希特勒通过有意识的凯恩斯主义来解决了德国的大萧条问题。但他这样做并不是为了刺激经济，而是为了对他憎恨的人进行报复。他借了很多钱并制造了大量的军备。到1939年，希特勒的德国在欧洲是最强大的，其他国家都望尘莫及。所以你可能不像我一样理解这一点（因为你）没有亲身经历过。你可以看到这个地方越来越有活力，很快就能解决问题了。当然，在那个年代有各种各样的人，我的大部分家人都相信以金本位的硬通货，对福利等事物并不太感兴趣。
I was raised by fairly backward people by modern standards but they were backward in kind of a self-reliant way that I think was helpful. I’ve never regretted that I wasn’t raised in a more liberal establishment. I had a liberal aunt, she was my mother’s cousin and she was the second Lady Dean at the University of Chicago. And she has done her thesis on the conditions on the coal mines of course she was a screaming leftist. I would be a screaming leftist the way I observed the way the coal miners of yesteryear were treated. You couldn’t be a human being with any decency without feeling it was deeply improper to have the misery that great and have a manipulated for the benefit of the mine owners and so forth. But she sent me all these left-wing bangs books one every Christmas. I always thought she was a little nuts. Which shows sometimes a very vivid extreme acts, you know evidence misleads you on a deeper reality. You’ve got to be on guard against that. All your life. In fact the whole trick in life is to get so that your own brain doesn’t mislead you and I have found that was just a lifelong fun game and I can’t remember a time I wasn’t doing it.
按照现代标准，我是由相当落后的人抚养长大的，但他们的落后是一种自力更生的方式，我认为这对我很有帮助。我从不后悔没有在一个更自由的环境中长大。我有一个开明的姨妈，她是我母亲的表妹，是芝加哥大学的第二任女院长。她的毕业论文是关于煤矿条件的。当然，她是个左翼分子。如果我观察到昔日煤矿工人所受的待遇，我也会成为一个大声抗议的左翼分子。作为一个有良知的人，你不可能不觉得，为了矿主的利益，让矿工遭受如此巨大的苦难和操纵，是非常不应该的。但她每年圣诞节，都会寄给我一本左翼的书。我一直觉得她有点疯了，这说明有时候，一个非常生动的极端行为， 你知道证据会误导你更深层次的现实。你必须警惕这一点，一辈子都要这样。事实上，生活中的全部诀窍就是让你自己的大脑不误导你，我发现这只是一个终生有趣的游戏，我不记得有多久我没有这样做了。
I was not a prodigy or anything like that but I was a prodigy in having adults interests. I was wondering what worked and what didn’t the why. And I can see that very eminent people that I love and revered were nuts in some ways and I would say well I certainly like Dr. Davis but he’s a little nutty in one way and I’m not gonna be that way like that. So I was very judgmental and I think that helped me. And (it) also helped me that I kept changing my judgements as I learned, more and more facts came in and that created lifelong habits that were very very useful.
我不是一个天才或其他什么，但我在拥有成年人的兴趣方面是个天才。我想知道什么有用，什么没用，为什么。我可以看到，我所热爱和尊敬的杰出人士在某些方面都是疯子，我会说，我当然喜欢戴维斯博士，但他在某方面是个小疯子，我不会那样的。所以我很有判断力，我觉得这对我很有帮助。随着我的学习，越来越多的事实出现，我不断地改变我的判断，这也帮助了我，这让我养成了非常非常有用的终身习惯。
Another thing that really helped me is, particularly on my father’s side of the family. My paternal grandfather was the only federal judge in Lincoln Nebraska, capital city of Nebraska and he’s been there forever and he stayed there forever after that I think when he left he was the longest-serving federal judge in the country. And he was a brilliant man and he’s risen from nothing. He was the child of two impoverished school teachers and when he was raised in a little town in Nebraska, they gave him a nickel to buy the meat. And he’d go to the butcher shop and he would buy the parts of the animal nobody else would eat. And that’s what two school teachers lived on in those days and the very indignity of it bothered him so much that he just determined to get out of poverty and never go back. And he did. He got ahead like Abe Lincoln, educated himself in lawyer’s offices and so on. He had to leave college because he couldn’t pay the tuition anymore. But he educated himself and since he was utterly brilliant it wasn’t all that hard and he had an attitude that was pretty damn extreme. I would say his attitude was that you have a moral duty to make yourself as an un-ignorant and un-stupid as you possibly can. And that it was pretty much your highest moral duty maybe taking care of your family came first but in the ranks of moral obligation quasi-related. But he was conventionally religious so it may have been a religious duty to him. But he really believes that rationality was a moral duty and he worked at it and he scorned people who didn’t do it. On the other hand as a judge he started with the idea of why would anybody rob a train or whatever a federal crime in those days. And he was pretty hard on people who did it. And I noticed as he got older and older and older, he was willing to call a man a good man on easier terms than when he started out with and I think that was a correct development. By the way, when he relaxed a little he was still pretty tough. But he did relax a little, which I thought was appropriate.
另一件真正对我有帮助的事情是，尤其是在我父亲的家族这边。我的祖父是内布拉斯加州首府林肯市唯一的联邦法官，他一直在那里工作，之后就一直待在那里，我想当他离开时，他是全国任职时间最长的联邦法官。他才华横溢，白手起家。他的父母都是贫困的教师。他在内布拉斯加州的一个小镇长大，父母给他五分钱买肉。他会去肉店买没人吃的动物部位。在那个年代，两个学校的老师就靠这个为生，而这种不体面的生活让他非常苦恼，于是他下定决心摆脱贫困，再也不回去了。他做到了，他像亚伯-林肯一样出人头地，在律师事务所接受教育，等等。他不得不离开大学，因为他再也付不起学费了。但他自学成才，因为他才华横溢，这并不难，而且他的态度非常极端。我想说的是，他的态度是，你有道义上的责任让自己尽可能地不愚昧、不愚蠢。这几乎是你的最高道德责任，也许照顾家人是第一位的，但在道德义务的行列中，这是准相关的。但他信奉传统宗教，所以这对他来说可能是一种宗教义务。但他确实认为理性是一种道德责任，他为此付出了努力，并蔑视那些不这样做的人。另一方面，作为一名法官，他开始思考的是为什么有人会抢劫火车，或者在那个时代，什么都是联邦犯罪。他对这样做的人很严厉。我注意到，随着他年纪越来越大，他愿意用比刚开始时更轻松的方式称呼一个人为好人，我认为这是一个正确的发展。顺便说一句，当他放松一点的时候，他还是很强硬的。但他确实放松了一点，我认为这是适当的。
But influence by such people and when the thirties came, one son in law was a musician of course he couldn’t make a living so my grandfather, who didn’t have that much money sent him to the pharmacy school carefully picking a provision that couldn’t fail and found him a bankrupt Pharmacy to buy a loan him the money. And my uncle’s soon prosperous and remained prosperous the rest of his life. My other uncle had a bank in Stromsburg Nebraska, there were 968 people in Stromsburg and there were two national Banks. And the capitalization of my uncle’s Bank was $25,000 and of course he was a lovely man, but he was an optimist and a banker should not be an optimist. And when they close the banks in 1933 the banking examiners came in and said you can’t reopen and it was the only business he had. Well judge Munger always saved this money and he had a lot of good first mortgages on homes occupied by teetotaling German butchers and people he’d carefully pitch. Of course he never had a default, I was in the right neighborhood, the people were sober and hardworking and so what my grandmother did is take 1/3 of his good mortgages which is all he had and put them in the bank and took all the lousy assets out of the bank. So he saved two out of three of his children and I thought it was a pretty good thing to do and he actually got most of his money back 10 or 15 years later out of all the lousy asses of the bank when World War II (happened). And that was a good lesson.
但受这些人的影响，到了三十年代，有一个女婿是音乐家，他当然无法谋生，于是我的祖父就把他送进了药剂学校，他没有那么多钱，但他精心挑选了一个不会失败的条款，并给他找了一家破产的药店，让他买下并借钱给他。我叔叔的生意很快就红火起来，并一直红火了一辈子。我的另一位叔叔在内布拉斯加州的斯特罗姆斯堡开了一家银行。斯特罗姆斯堡有968人，有两家国家银行。我叔叔的银行资本是25000美元，当然他是个可爱的人，但他是个乐观主义者，而银行家不应该是乐观主义者。1933年银行关闭时，银行审查员来了，说你不能重新开业，这是他唯一的生意了。芒格法官一直存着这笔钱，他有很多不错的房屋首次抵押贷款对象，都是嗜酒的德国屠夫和他精心挑选的人。当然，他从来没有违约过。我当时住的社区环境很好，人们都很清醒、勤劳，所以我祖母所做的就是把他所有的好抵押贷款中的三分之一存入银行，把所有的不良资产都从银行里取出来。因此，他救了三个孩子中的两个，我认为这是件非常好的事情。10 年或 15 年后，当第二次世界大战（发生）时，他实际上从银行的所有劣质资产中拿回了大部分钱。这是一个很好的教训。
My grandfather, on the other side, his main business had gone broke in 1922 with all the other wholesale dry goods houses and what he did. His son in law went broke he cut his house in half and move that family in. And the other family, the guy was an honors graduate of the Harvard School of Architecture and he was very prosperous in the twenties in Omaha and had a wonderful life. And the thirties came and the total building permits in Omaha was 19-25 thousand dollars a month and that was for furnace repair or something. There was just no work. None, zero. So he moved to California and he lived for several years. He finally got the County of Los Angeles to hire this great Harvard architect and he got 25 and feed himself under an old car. He could live on $109 a month. It’s amazing how poor everybody was and what happened to that grandfather’s alone came the FHA and they had a competitive civil service examination and he was a very brilliant man. Of course he was first in the exam and that made him the chief architect for the FHA in Los Angeles where he spent the rest of his life. But I watched all this family coping with all this difficulty and I’ll say this, it sounds awful but they weren’t all that unhappy.
另一方面，我的祖父，他的主要业务在 1922 年破产了，所有其他的干货批发商行和他所做的一切都破产了。他的女婿破产后，他把自己的房子分隔两半，让那家人搬了进去。另一个家庭的男主人是哈佛大学建筑学院的荣誉毕业生，二十年代他在奥马哈非常富裕，过着美好的生活。到了三十年代，奥马哈的建筑许可总额为每月1.9-2.5万美元，而这只是为了修理炉子什么的。就是没有工作，没有，零。于是他搬到了加利福尼亚，住了几年。他终于让洛杉矶县雇用了这位伟大的哈佛建筑师，扣税后每月能拿到 108.08 美元。他们让他做绘图工作，但为了省钱，他们把他们归类为洗衣工，他实际上可以用 25 美元租一间房子，用一辆旧车养活自己。他每月可以靠 109 美元生活。令人惊讶的是，当时每个人都很穷，而祖父一个人的遭遇是，联邦住房管理局来了，他们举行了一次竞争性公务员考试，他是一个非常聪明的人。当然，他在考试中获得了第一名，这让他成为了洛杉矶联邦住房管理局的首席建筑师，并在那里度过了余生。但我看到这个家庭在应对所有这些困难，我想说的是，这听起来很可怕，但他们并没有那么不开心。
You can cope pretty well ‘cause you get used to it. That’s a nice thing about the human condition. When you get my age you got a lot of horrible things to get used to. Just one new indignity all the time. A friend of mine says a good day when you’re old is when you wake up in the morning and nothing new hurts. That’s my experience in Omaha but that back ground, of all these people educated and civilized and generous and decent and a lot of them had good sense of humor. It was a pretty damn good place to grow up in. And my memory is of being surrounded by a lot of very fine people. And I’d I think the whole thing was privileged. I look at my background as absolutely privileged. I’m proud of being an Omaha boy. I sometimes use the old saying they got the boy out of the Omaha but they never got Omaha out of the boy. And so all those old - fashioned values - family comes first, be in a position so you can help others when troubles come, prudence, sense of a moral duty to be reasonable more important than anything else. More important than being rich, more important than being important. An absolute moral duty because none of my intelligent relatives suffered terribly because he didn’t advance higher.
你可以应付得很好，因为你已经习惯了。这也是人类的一个优点。当你到了我这个年纪，你会习惯很多可怕的事情，每天都有新的侮辱。我的一个朋友说，当你老的时候，早上醒来，没有什么新的伤害，就是好日子。这就是我在奥马哈的经历，但在那里，所有的人都受过教育，文明、慷慨、正派，而且很多人都很有幽默感。这是一个非常适合成长的地方。在我的记忆中，我被很多优秀的人包围着。我觉得这一切都很幸运。我认为我的背景绝对是得天独厚的。我为自己是个奥马哈男孩而自豪。我有时会用一句老话来形容，你可以把一个男孩带出奥马哈，但奥马哈却会留在男孩心里。因此，所有这些老式的价值观—家庭第一、有地位以便在困难来临时可以帮助他人、谨慎、讲道理的道德责任感比其他任何事情都重要。比富有更重要，比成为权威更重要。这是一种绝对的道德责任，因为我那些聪明的亲戚没有一个因为没有更上一层楼而受苦受难。
Scott DeRue: One of the things I’m fascinated by this was in the twenties and thirties in the level of detail that you recall about their experiences and how that shaping your experiences naturally.
斯科特-德鲁： 我很感兴趣的一件事是，在二十年代和三十年代，你对他们经历的详细回忆，以及这些经历如何自然而然地塑造了你的经历。
Charlie Munger: I’m trying to give people a flavor of something that nobody else can remember.
查理-芒格： 我试图让人们感受到一些别人无法记住的东西。
Scott DeRue: You’re a student of the people that are experiencing. So you grew up in Omaha Nebraska and you find yourself in Ann Arbor Michigan. How does that happen?
斯科特-德鲁： 你是经历者的学生。你在内布拉斯加州的奥马哈长大，现在却来到了密歇根州的安娜堡。这是怎么发生的？
Charlie Munger: Very simple. I wanted to go to Stanford and my father said to me Charlie, I was the only son to two sisters. He said I’ve got two daughters. They educated right after you. I don’t have unlimited money. I will send you to Stanford if it really means a great deal to you but I’d rather you pick a university in the Midwest much better than mine, which is the University Nebraska and that was obviously going to be Michigan. What was I gonna say? Well screw you, send me to Stanford. Well I didn’t say that. I went to Michigan. I have never regretted that I went to Michigan at all. At Stanford, people came to Stanford in the thirties with their string of Polo ponies and it was a very upscale fraternity sorority culture. I used to call it the co-educational Princeton of the West. And people loved it and so forth. But literally you call it Stanford with a string of polo ponies? Just saying I’m bringing back to you young people, time you can’t remember, was it you ever know in college that came with a string of polo ponies. They’d be in the ROTC but they had their own string of polo ponies. You could win better if you have your own string.
查理-芒格： 非常简单。我本想去斯坦福大学，但我父亲对我说：“查理，我有两个女儿，你是家里唯一的儿子。她们在你之后接受教育。我没有那么多钱，如果斯坦福对你来说意义重大，我可以送你去，但我宁愿你选一所中西部的大学，比我的内布拉斯加大学要好得多，显然就是密歇根大学了。我还能说什么呢？“去你的，送我去斯坦福吧”。我没这么说，我去了密歇根。我从未后悔去了密歇根。在斯坦福大学，三十年代的人们带着一串马球来到斯坦福大学，那是一种非常高档的兄弟会联谊会文化。我曾称其为西方的普林斯顿大学。人们喜欢它，诸如此类。但从字面上看，你叫它斯坦福大学，有一串马球小马？我想说的是，我让你们这些年轻人回想起，你们不记得的时光，你们是否曾在大学里认识过一串马球小马？他们是预备役军人，但他们有自己的马球小马。如果你有自己的马球线，你会赢得更好。
Scott DeRue: So you come to Michigan and you study math for a year.
斯科特-德鲁： 所以你来到密歇根，学了一年数学。
Charlie Munger: Yes but I don’t get credit for that. When I was young I could get an A in any mathematical course without doing any work at all. So I always took math because it meant I never didn’t do any problems. I just did the math. And I should not get credit as some budding mathematician. I was choosing what for me was the easiest way to think about what I want to do instead of what somebody else want me to do. That has paid some dividends. This will interest you. In this world where people have all these algorithms and computer science and fancy math and so forth. Neither Warren nor I ever used any fancy math in business neither did Ben Graham who taught Warren. Everything I’ve ever done in business could be done with the simplest algebra and geometry, and addition and multiplication and so forth. I never used calculus for any practical work in my whole damn life. I was a perfect whiz at it when they taught it to me. And by the way since I’ve never touched calculus, not one after I was 19 years old, I’ve lost it. The symbols would mystify me. But I think you’ll find if you really know the basic stuff, it’s enormously useful and only a very few people are gonna need calculus.
查理-芒格： 是的，但我没有得到学分。在我年轻的时候，我可以在任何一门数学课程上不做任何作业就拿到 A。所以我总是选修数学，因为这意味着我从来没有做过任何题。我只是做数学计算。我不应该被认为是一个有潜力的数学家。我选择了对我来说最简单的方式来思考我想做的事，而不是别人想让我做的事。这让我收获颇丰。你会对此感兴趣的。在这个世界上，人们拥有各种算法、计算机科学和花哨的数学等等。沃伦和我在商业中从未使用过任何高级数学，教沃伦的本-格雷厄姆也没用过。我在商业上所做的一切，都可以用最简单的代数、几何、加法和乘法等来完成。我一辈子都没用微积分做过任何实际工作。当他们教我微积分时，我对它非常擅长。顺便说一句，自从我 19 岁以后就再也没有碰过微积分，我已经忘了。那些符号让我觉得很神秘。但我认为，如果你真正掌握了基础知识，你会发现微积分非常有用，只有极少数人需要微积分。
Scott DeRue: So you studied study math at Michigan and the war comes calling. You moved to California and you studied meteorology
斯科特-德鲁： 你在密歇根学习数学，后来战争爆发了，你搬到加州，学习气象学。
Charlie Munger: Well that was because I was too dumb to do what I should have done. With my background I should have gone to the naval ROTC ‘cause I hated infantry ROTC, which I had done four years in high school, rising to be a second lieutenant, which is a very low rank. And course I was about 5 ft 2. I got my growth late so I was not your ideal of a manly soldier in high school.
查理-芒格： 那是因为我太笨了，没有做我应该做的事。以我的背景，我应该去海军预备役军官训练营，因为我讨厌步兵预备役军官训练营，我在高中读了四年，升到了少尉，这是一个很低的军衔。当然，我当时只有5英尺2英寸高。我发育得比较晚，所以在高中时并不是你们理想中的男子汉士兵。
Scott DeRue: So why Harvard Law School?
斯科特-德鲁： 为什么选择哈佛法学院？
Charlie Munger: My grandfather and father had been lawyers. And I knew I didn’t want to do anything else. It’s very simple. I didn’t want to be a doctor. I didn’t want all the blood and misery and so forth and the repetitive work. I know I didn’t want to go to the bottom of a big organization and crawl my way up. I’m a natural contrarian and that was not going to work for me. And I found that people could tell me when I thought they were idiots and that is not a way to ride in a big organization. So I couldn’t do that and so now I’m left with law. I admired my father and grandfather and a good life for them so I naturally drift into it. I think people are still going to law school for that reason. It’s the least bad of options considering their interests and ability. I guess now people go to business school (for that reason). Many people in this room are gonna go to business school because (it is) the least bad option. And all I can say is that that’s the way it worked and it will probably work for you. I had to leave the profession. I was a dumb profession for me.
查理-芒格： 我的祖父和父亲都是律师。我知道我不想做别的事情。这很简单。我不想当医生。我不想做医生，我不想要所有的血腥和痛苦，以及重复的工作。我知道我不想在一个大组织的最底层摸爬滚打。我是一个天生的逆反者，这对我来说是行不通的。而且我发现，当我认为他们是白痴时，人们会告诉我，这不是在大组织中生存的方式。所以我做不到这一点，现在我只能从事法律工作。我钦佩我的父亲和祖父，他们过上了幸福的生活，所以我自然而然地进入了这个行业。我认为人们去法学院学习仍然是出于这个原因。考虑到他们的兴趣和能力，这是最不坏的选择。我想现在人们去商学院（也是出于这个原因）。在座的很多人都会去商学院，因为（这是）最不糟糕的选择。我只能说，事情就是这样，你也可能会这样。我不得不离开这个行业。对我来说，这是一个愚蠢的职业。
Scott DeRue: So that’s actually what I wanted to ask you. So you moved to California and you actually started a law firm and then practiced law for some period of time
斯科特-德鲁： 这正是我想问你的。你搬到了加利福尼亚，并创办了一家律师事务所，然后从事了一段时间的法律工作。
Charlie Munger: I had no alternative. I had an army of children almost immediately. I painted myself in quite a corner.
查理-芒格： 我别无选择。我几乎立刻就有了一大群孩子。我把自己逼到了绝境。
Scott DeRue: Zero choice is pretty powerful
斯科特-德鲁： 零选择是很强大的
Charlie Munger: For sure of course.
查理-芒格： 当然
Scott DeRue: So you practice law and then you leave law in the firm that you helped found and move over to Investments.
斯科特-德鲁： 所以你从事法律工作，然后你离开你帮助创建的律师事务所，转而从事投资。
Charlie Munger: Well but that sounds miraculous. In fact, it was rather interesting. I probably got paid about 300,000 in liquid instruments. And that was 10 years of living expenses so I was not a courageous venturesome admirable man. I was a cautious little squirrel saving up more nuts than I really needed and not going very deep into my pile of nuts. And so that it wasn’t that courageous. I kept one foot in the law firm while I tried my capitalist career but as soon as the capitalist career succeeded I intended to lift that second foot because I recognized that the potential of law practice as I saw then. I didn’t anticipate the boom that came to the big firms. I just saw this being more difficult and I wanted more independence. Thought I was going to have (independence?) as a lawyer. I hated sending other people invoices and needing money from richer people. I thought it was undignified. I wanted my own money not because I love either social prestige. I wanted the independence.
查理-芒格： 这听起来很神奇。事实上，这很有趣。在我最初 13 年的律师生涯中，我大概总共拿到了 35 万美元的报酬。而且我还有一帮孩子。一开始没有资本。当我选择这个另类职业时，我有 30 多万美元的流动资金。那是 10 年的生活费，所以我不是一个勇敢的、敢于冒险的、令人钦佩的人。我就像一只小心翼翼的小松鼠，攒下的坚果比我真正需要的还多，而且并没有深入到我的坚果堆里。因此，我并不勇敢。在我尝试资本主义事业的时候，我一直把一只脚留在律师事务所，但一旦资本主义事业成功，我就打算把第二只脚抬起来，因为我认识到我当时所看到的法律实践的潜力。我没有预料到大律师事务所的繁荣。我只是觉得这更加困难，我想要更多的独立性。我以为作为一名律师，我会拥有（独立性？）。我讨厌给别人寄发票，也讨厌从有钱人那里要钱。我觉得这很没面子。我想要自己的钱，并不是因为我喜欢社会声望。我想要独立。
Scott DeRue: So when you founded Wheeler Munger and Company and it was the investment firm.
斯科特-德鲁： 当你创立惠勒-芒格公司的时候，它是一家投资公司。
Charlie Munger: And five real estate projects. I did both side by side for a few years. And in a very few years I had three or four million dollars.
查理-芒格： 还有五个房地产项目。我把这两件事同时做了几年。没过几年，我就有了三四百万美元。
Scott DeRue: And for a number of years you outperformed the market 2x 3x and so why did you then leave Wheeler Munger and Company and then move to now what you’re doing.
斯科特-德鲁： 多年来，你们的业绩是市场的 2 倍 3 倍 ，为什么你离开惠勒-芒格公司，转而投身现在的工作？
Charlie Munger: Well I had three or four million dollars which is a lot of money then. And I also knew how to handle that three or four million dollars very well by that time and so I knew I didn’t need to get fees and an override some other investors. And I found that when you got into the 74-75 crunch, which is the worst since the thirties. I didn’t suffer. I knew everything was going to work out, but the quoted prices of these things really went down to ridiculous levels. And some of my investors I knew were suffering. You know I needed the money and of course I have enough of a fiduciary gene that pained me greatly. My grandfather, once they asked him how he felt when my aunt divorced my uncle and he said I feel just the way I did when they lanced my carbuncle and that’s the way (I felt about the investment business). I had a carbuncle and my fiduciary chain was giving me pain. So I lanced my carbuncle. I just lived on my own money. No fees, no overrides, no salary. Just seemed more manly to do and I know it would work.
查理-芒格： 我当时有三四百万美元，这是一笔不小的数目。当时我也知道如何很好地处理这三四百万美元，所以我知道我不需要收取费用，也不需要凌驾于其他投资者之上。我发现，当你进入 74-75 年的经济紧缩期时，那是自 30 年代以来最糟糕的时期。我没有受苦。我知道一切都会好起来的，但这些东西的报价真的跌到了荒谬的地步。我知道我的一些投资者正在遭受损失。你知道我需要钱，当然我也有足够的信托基因，这让我非常痛苦。有一次，他们问我的祖父，当我的婶婶和我的叔叔离婚时，他有什么感受，他说，我的感受就像他们给我割痈时一样，这就是（我对投资业务的感受）。我得了痈疽，我的信托链让我痛苦不堪。所以我割掉了我的痈。我只用自己的钱生活。不收费、不加价、不发工资。这样做似乎更有男子汉气概，而且我知道这样做也行得通。
Scott DeRue: So at what point did you meet Warren
斯科特-德鲁： 你是在什么时候认识沃伦的？
Charlie Munger: 1959.
查理-芒格： 1959.
Scott DeRue: And so where did Berkshire Hathaway come from in terms of this partnership that you all have now had for decades.
斯科特-德鲁： 伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司是从何而来的？ 你们现在已经有了几十年的合伙关系。
Charlie Munger: Well, Warren had been taught by Ben Graham to buy things for less than they were worth no matter how lousy the business was. You can’t imagine a more lousy business than the New England textile mills because textile is a congealed electricity and the electricity rates in New England were about 60% higher than TVA rates. So it was absolute inevitable certain liquidation. Now Warren should have known better than to buy into a totally doomed enterprise. It was so damn cheap. It was a big discount from liquidating value. So he bought a big giant chunk of the business. But the business was going to die so the only way to go forward from there was to wring enough money out of this declining textile business to have more money than he paid to get in and use it to buy something else. That’s a very indirect way to proceed and I would not recommend it to any of you just because we did some dumb thing that you don’t have to repeat our path of course. We eventually learn to not to buy these cigar butts when they’re cheap and do these painful liquidations. And instead buy better businesses. That’s the main secret of Berkshire. The reason that Berkshire has been successful was a big conglomerate, more successful than any other big conglomerate so far as I know. Any other big conglomerate in the world. The reason it’s been successful is as we try and buy things that aren’t going to require much managerial talent at headquarters. Everybody else thinks they’ve got lot of managerial talent at headquarters. That’s a lot of hubris. If a business is lousy enough and it gets a wonderful manager, the business has a lousy reputation and the manager has a good reputation. It’s the reputation of the business that’s going to remain intact. You can’t fix these really lousy businesses. You can wring the money out whatever comes the liquidation and do something else with it but most lousy businesses can’t be fixed.
查理-芒格： 本-格雷厄姆（Ben Graham）教导沃伦，无论生意多么糟糕，都要以低于其价值的价格购买。你无法想象比新英格兰纺织厂更糟糕的生意了，因为纺织业很耗电，而新英格兰的电费比 TVA 的电费高出 60%。因此，清算是绝对不可避免的。沃伦早该知道不应该买下这个注定要倒闭的企业。它太便宜了，与清算价值相差甚远，所以他买了一大部分股权，但这家企业迟早会死掉，所以唯一的出路就是从这家衰落的纺织企业里榨出足够的钱来，以获得比他买入时更多的钱，然后用这些钱去买别的东西。这是一个非常间接的方法，我不建议你们任何人这样做，仅仅因为我们做了一些愚蠢的事情，当然，你们不必重复我们的路。我们最终学会了不要在雪茄烟蒂便宜的时候买下它们，然后进行痛苦的清算。而是购买更好的企业。这就是伯克希尔的主要秘诀。伯克希尔之所以成功，是因为它是一家大企业集团。据我所知，它比其他任何一家大企业集团都要成功。世界上任何其他大企业集团。它之所以成功，是因为我们尝试购买那些不需要总部有太多管理人才的公司。其他人都认为他们总部有很多管理人才。这是一种傲慢。如果一个企业足够糟糕，却得到了一个出色的经理人，企业名声不好，经理名声很好。企业的声誉将保持不变。你无法修复这些非常糟糕的企业。你可以从清算中榨出钱来做其他事情，但大多数糟糕的企业是无法修复的。
Scott DeRue: But at the time Warren was, that’s what he was doing and so how did you convince him out of it?
斯科特-德鲁: 但当时沃伦就是这么做的，你是怎么说服他放弃的？
Charlie Munger: I helped him. He bought a windmill company in a little town in Nebraska and Warren didn’t know anything about running a windmill company. He bought it because it was cheap. He said what do you do? Why can’t you fix my windmill company? Who can you get to help me? I said I’ve got just the man for you and so one of my old colleagues from a transformer business who was an accountant. I said he will fix your windmill company and Warren was desperate and he hired him on the spot. And Harry walked in the first day in this little town of this big collection of windmills and so forth and a whistle blew and the whole plant stopped for 15 minutes. And he said what the hell is this is and well it’s a respect for the time it has a funeral, we blow this whistle and stop for 15 minutes and Harry said that’ll be the last time. And he just approached everything that way. He cut away all of fat that he didn’t need and then he found there were certain parts where we’re the sole supply. And he raised all the price of those parts. You can see what a business genius we are.
查理-芒格： 我帮了他。他在内布拉斯加州的一个小镇上买下了一家风车公司，沃伦对经营风车公司一无所知。他买下这家公司是因为它很便宜。他说你是做什么的？你为什么不能解决我的风车公司问题？你能找谁来帮我？我说我有一个人可以帮你，他是我在变压器公司的一个老同事，是个会计。我说他能搞定你的风车公司。沃伦急了，当场就雇了他。哈利第一天走进这个小镇，那里有很多风车等等，一声哨响，整个工厂停了15分钟。他说这到底是什么，这是对葬礼时间的尊重，我们吹响哨子，停15分钟，哈里说这将是最后一次。他就这样处理了一切。他砍掉了所有他不需要的累赘，然后他发现有某些部件，我们是唯一的供应者，他提高了这些部件的价格，你可以看到我们是多么的商业天才。
Scott DeRue: How did you convince Warren to stop buying the bad apples and start buying the Good Apples?
斯科特-德鲁： 你是如何说服沃伦停止购买 “坏苹果”，转而购买 “好苹果 “的？
Charlie Munger: Warren gives me credit for this but he was going to learn it anyway. He just made so much money in this other stuff and he’d been taught by Ben Graham. It was hard for him to quit when he was just cleaning money. But he saw the side and you couldn’t scale that business. And it was kind of scroungy and unpleasant. You are firing people. Who the hell wanted to do that? So we just wrung all the money out and bought better businesses. And we’ve been doing it ever since. Coming to business not as business school graduates but as people who would own portfolios of securities, we thought like capitalists because we were always in a shelter mindset. A lot of people running the business think like careerists and believe me you gotta think like a careerist to some extent if you are in a career. But also helps to look at the business strategy problems as though you’re an owner. So my advice to you is you never get to be a career so much that you don’t see it from the owners point of view. That’s what General Motors did. They had a bunch of careerists and an owner would have seen immediately that the situation was hopeless. And they just romped through it with a lot of denial and stupidity and pomposity and of course they went bankrupt. The mightiest company in the world went bankrupt. None of those hotshot executives, thought like an owner. They would have seen that it was hopeless.
查理-芒格： 沃伦把这归功于我，但他无论如何都要学会这一点。他在其他方面赚了很多钱，本-格雷厄姆也教过他。对他来说，当他只是在清理钱财时，很难放弃。但他也看到了其中的弊端，你不可能把生意做大，它是一种潦倒和不愉快。你要解雇员工，谁他妈愿意干这个？所以我们把钱都榨干，买了更好的企业。从那时起，我们就一直这么做。我们不是以商学院毕业生的身份，而是以拥有证券投资组合的身份进入商界的，我们像资本家一样思考，因为我们总是处于一种庇护心态。很多经营企业的人都是职业经理人，相信我，如果你是职业经理人，在某种程度上你必须像职业经理人那样思考。但是，把自己当成企业主来看待企业战略问题也是有帮助的。所以，我给你的建议是，你永远不要成为一个职业经理人，以至于不能从所有者的角度看待问题。通用汽车公司就是这样做的。他们有一帮职业经理人，如果是老板，就会立刻发现情况毫无希望。而他们只是一味地否认、愚蠢和浮夸，结果当然是破产了。世界上最强大的公司破产了。那些炙手可热的高管们，没有一个人像老板一样思考问题。他们本可以预见到一切都没希望了。
Scott DeRue: With Berkshire in the way that you all manage both headquarters and the businesses that you own. You are putting talent in place who think like shareholders, not career. How do you evaluate talent to see are they going to think more like a shareholder?
斯科特-德鲁： 在伯克希尔，你们管理总部和企业的方式都是如此。你们把人才安排到位，让他们像股东一样思考，而不是作为一种职业。你们如何评估人才，看他们是否更像股东？
Charlie Munger: Private Equity frequently buy a business where the founder is going to leave then they go out and hire talent to run it. That is a tough way to make a buck and I don’t like it. We generally buy with the talent in place. Not maybe some guy in the number two place and we put him in the number one place. I can’t think of any place where we bought something and put somebody and after Harry Bottle. And no we don’t do that. And it’s amazing how long we have some of those people stay. Warren always says we can we can’t teach the new dogs the old tricks.
查理-芒格： 私募股权投资公司经常会买下一家创始人即将离开的企业，然后再去聘请人才来经营。这是一种艰难的赚钱方式，我不喜欢。我们一般是在人才到位的情况下进行收购。而不是某个人在二把手的位置上，我们把他放到一把手的位置上。我想不出我们在哪个地方买了公司，然后把某个人放在哈里-博特尔之后。我们没有那么做，令人惊讶的是，其中一些人在我们这里呆了这么久。沃伦总是说，我们不能教新狗老把戏。
Scott DeRue: What’s the implication of not being able to teach the old dogs new tricks or new tricks to old dogs? When if we look at what’s happening in business today what we see is exactly…
斯科特-德鲁： 不教老狗学新把戏或老狗学新把戏的后果是什么？如果我们看看当今的商业环境，我们看到的正是…
Charlie Munger: We can’t teach the old tricks to the young dogs. That’s what we found. So we keep the old dogs in place.
查理-芒格： 我们不能把老把戏教给新狗。这就是我们的发现。所以我们让老狗留在原地。
Scott DeRue: But that’s not that’s not the norm, right? If we look around the normal life
斯科特-德鲁: 但这不是常态，对吗？如果我们看看周围的正常生活。
Charlie Munger: No it’s the norm in life but It may not be our practices may not be the norm. But normally it’s very hard to get the (old dog to change?). You got a wise old dog and getting a young dog that can match him that’s hard. By definition he’s survived a big culling process. I mean he’s unique, he’s got a record to prove it. And by the way, everybody thinks you can judge people by the interview. And of course we know who you like you know who you don’t like. But everybody overestimates how much you can tell in prediction by meeting somebody. We all like to think that we have that capacity but it’s vastly stupid type of overconfidence. The paper record has about three times the predictive value of your impression in an interview. And of course we’re buying great paper records. It’s so simple.
查理-芒格： 不，这是生活常态，但我们的做法可能不是常态。但通常情况下，让（老狗改变）是很难的。你有一只聪明的老狗，要让一只年轻的狗与它匹敌是很难的。顾名思义，它经历过一次大的淘汰过程。我的意思是，它是独一无二的，它有记录可以证明。顺便说一句，每个人都认为，你可以通过采访来判断一个人。我们当然知道你喜欢谁，你也知道你不喜欢谁，但每个人都高估了，通过见面就能预测出一个人的能力。我们都喜欢认为自己有这种能力，但这是非常愚蠢的过度自信。纸质记录的预测价值是面试印象的三倍。当然，我们也会买很好的纸质记录。就这么简单。
Scott DeRue: It is fascinating to me, if we look around business generally, the movement of people across firms and there’s always new dogs and you taking a contrarian position to that and manage Berkshire differently.
斯科特-德鲁： 我觉得这很有趣，如果我们从商业的角度来看，人员在不同公司之间的流动，总是会有新的人加入，而你却采取了相反的立场，以不同的方式管理伯克希尔。
Charlie Munger: Of course we’re still hiring young dogs at the end of these businesses. But it’s amazing how much of the record of Berkshire has come from the old dogs who are in the business when we buy them. You can’t believe how good those people have been. There’s one huge exception in the new dog department. I almost despise the business of executive search because I find that they really want to sell you the best that’s available even if he’s no damn good and I don’t like that. But the best single expense that Berkshire ever had as we paid an executive recruiting firm to find Ajit Jain to come in our little tiny insurance operation. He doesn’t have any experience with insurance at all. He was an honors graduate of the main technical institute in India. He was a very smart man. He came in and create (our reinsurance business). And that’s the only big business we created from scratch and Ajit created the whole damn thing. And of course he talked with Warren every night. And so it’s like father and son. This is a very Confucian company and that was unbelievable. So we hired an executive recruiter and he brings us an Indian with no experience at all in insurance. He talks to the old man every night, and it’s now by far the biggest reinsurance business in the world. That’s been a gold mine. There’s at least 60 billion dollars in Berkshire of net worth that Ajit has created that we would not have credit without him. And the value was way more than just liquid net worth but the value of the business is way more than 60 billion.
查理-芒格： 当然，在这些业务的末端，我们仍在雇用年轻的员工。但令人惊讶的是，伯克希尔的业绩有多少是来自于我们收购时的老员工。你无法相信这些人有多优秀。在新员工方面有一个很大的例外。我几乎鄙视猎头行业，因为我发现他们真的想把最好的人推销给你，即使他一点也不好，我不喜欢这样。但伯克希尔公司有史以来最好的一笔支出，是我们花钱请一家高管招聘公司找到了阿吉特-吉恩（Ajit Jain），让他加入我们小小的保险业务。他根本没有任何保险经验。他是印度主要技术学院的荣誉毕业生。他是一个非常聪明的人。他进来后创建了（我们的再保险业务）。这是我们唯一从零开始创建的大业务，而阿吉特创建了这一切。当然，他每天晚上都会和沃伦聊天。就像父子一样。这是一家非常儒雅的公司，令人难以置信。所以我们雇了一个高管招聘专员，他给我们带来了一个完全没有保险经验的印度人。他每天晚上都和老人聊天，现在这家公司已经成为全球最大的再保险业务公司。这是一座金矿。阿吉特为伯克希尔创造了至少 600 亿美元的净资产，如果没有他，我们不会有这样的功劳。其价值远不止流动净资产，业务价值也远不止 600 亿美元。
Scott DeRue: We are gonna turn to a few questions from the audience as we as we start to wrap up. Probably half my questions here are about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
斯科特-德鲁： 在我们即将结束的时候，我们会请观众提几个问题。我的问题可能有一半是关于比特币和加密货币的。
Charlie Munger: I can answer those very quickly. I think it’s perfectly asinine even pause to think about them. You know it’s one thing to think that gold has some marvelous store of value because man has no way of inventing more gold or getting it very easily so it has the advantage of rarity. Believe me man is capable of somehow creating more Bitcoin. They tell you they are not gonna do it but they mean they’re not gonna do it unless they want to. That’s what they mean when they say they’re not going to do it. If you hear their rules (which say) they can’t do it. Don’t believe them. When there’s enough incentive bad things will happen. It’s bad people, crazy bubble, bad idea, luring people into the concept of the easy wealth without much insider work. It’s the last thing on earth you should think about it and even if it worked would work it would be bad for you because you could try to do it again. It’s totally insane and by the way I just laid out a wonderful life lesson for you. Give a whole lot of things a wide berth, they don’t exist. Crooks, crazies, egomaniacs. People full of resentment. People full of self-pity. People who feel like victims. There’s a whole lot of things that aren’t going to work for you. Figure out what they are and avoid them like the plague and one of them is Bitcoin. And the worst thing would happen if you won because then you’d do it again. It’s totally insanity. And it’s so easy to simplify life from just all these things that are beneath you. I don’t even know people are crowding Bitcoin I don’t even want them to know my address.
查理-芒格： 我可以很快回答这个问题。我认为停下来想想这些都是非常愚蠢的。你知道，认为黄金有某种神奇的价值储存是一回事，因为人类没有办法发明更多的黄金，也不容易得到黄金，所以黄金具有稀有性的优势。相信我，人类有能力以某种方式创造出更多的比特币。他们告诉你他们不会这么做，但他们的意思是他们不会这么做，除非他们想这么做，这就是他们说不做的意思。如果你听到他们的规则（说）他们不能这样做。不要相信他们。只要有足够的动力，坏事就会发生。这是坏人、疯狂的泡沫、糟糕的想法，引诱人们陷入无需太多内幕工作就能轻松致富的概念中。这是世界上你最不应该考虑的事情，即使它成功了，也会对你不利，因为你可以再试一次。这完全是疯了，顺便说一句，我刚刚给你上了一堂精彩的人生课。对很多事情敬而远之，它们就不存在了。骗子、疯子、自大狂。充满怨恨的人，自怨自艾的人，觉得自己是受害者的人，有很多东西都不适合你。找出它们是什么，并像躲避瘟疫一样避开它们，其中之一就是比特币。如果你赢了，最糟糕的事情就是你会再次这样做。这完全是疯了。把所有这些不属于你的东西简化生活是很容易的。我甚至不知道人们在抢购比特币，我甚至不想让他们知道我的地址。
Scott DeRue: Charlie, what I hear you saying is you’re not going to be investing in Bitcoin is that that’s fair?
Scott DeRue： 查理，我听到你说你不会投资比特币，这合理吗？
Charlie Munger: It’s fair.
查理芒格： 是合理的
Scott DeRue: So let me move to a similarly maybe controversial topic but there’s a lot of tax policy conversation going on both here in California and nationally as well what’s your thoughts on where this ends up in terms of the policy?
斯科特-德鲁： 让我转到一个类似的可能有争议的话题，但是在加利福尼亚州和全国范围内都有很多关于税收政策的讨论，你对政策的最终走向有什么看法？
Charlie Munger: I think that we will get a tax bill. I think they will squeak it through and they’ll make whatever adjustments they have to do to get the last few votes. I don’t think it’s a bit crazy to give this extra 70,000 a year and have a lot of children. That strikes me as good politics and probably good policy. I also do not think it is crazy to reduce the corporate income tax on the C corporation. If you look at the world a lot of the places that work best including Singapore and so forth, have that policy and may even have good macroeconomic consequences. A lot of the people are screaming about it. And are so sure it won’t work.
查理-芒格： 我认为我们会通过一项税收法案。我认为他们会勉强通过，他们会做任何调整以获得最后几票。我不认为给那些年收入 7 万美元、有很多孩子的人每年多发 2000 美元有点疯狂。我认为这是很好的政治，也可能是很好的政策。我也不认为降低 C 公司的企业所得税是疯狂的。放眼世界，许多最有效的地方，包括新加坡等，都有这样的政策，甚至可能产生良好的宏观经济后果。很多人对此叫苦不迭。并确信它不会奏效。
They may not be right it may actually work pretty well. It causes the capital values of the companies to come up and there’s a wealth effect from the increased market value of all the companies. Everybody recognizes there’s an effect but some people say it’s small and some people say it’s going to be large and I’ll tell you what they all have in common. None of them knows. It is not totally inconceivable that it would work pretty well and with so much of the world doing well with similar tax policy. And of course, the Democrats go berserk on the subject. I think they’re wrong. It may actually help them. I’m not sure it’ll work. It may not but it’s not totally crazy.
他们可能并不正确，实际上可能效果很好。它能使公司的资本价值上升，所有公司的市值增加会带来财富效应，每个人都承认有这种效应，但有些人说很小，有些人说会很大，我告诉你他们的共同点。他们都不知道。这并不是完全不可想象的，世界上很多国家都在实行类似的税收政策，而且效果很好。当然，民主党人在这个问题上也很狂热。我认为他们错了。这可能真的会帮助他们。我不确定这会起作用。也许不行，但也不至于完全疯掉。
Scott DeRue: It reminds me of a piece of advice that you’ve offered and given to me, which is what people often have a point of view and the danger in having that point of view as you start to assume with certainty that you’re right.
斯科特-德鲁： 这让我想起了你给我的一个建议，那就是人们经常会有自己的观点，而当你开始肯定地认为自己是对的时候，有这种观点就会很危险。
Charlie Munger: Absolutely, totally crazy.
查理-芒格： 绝对是疯了
Scott DeRue: And I think what your point of view is you need to have a point of view.
斯科特-德鲁： 我认为你的观点就是你需要有一个观点。
Charlie Munger: Here’s a very important subject. I’ve been thinking about it all my life. You ask for my opinion. I don’t really know how well it’s going to work. I don’t think anybody else does either. I think it will work to some extent. But how much I don’t know. Well is it unfair? Well, the corporations are buy and large owned by a bunch of charitable endowments and by a bunch of pension plans. And the whole world is going into a world where they’re trying to have the business interest of the company support their huge pension obligations, which get bigger all the time. China is trying to do exactly what the Republicans are doing. China wants to have the main businesses in China owned more by the pension plans and the stocks to do well. I don’t think China’s crazy to have that. I don’t think the Republicans are crazy either. It could work pretty well. It’s not just some evil thing that people are cooking up. It’s disagreement between people and both sides who have violent hatreds and contempt for the other side. They’re wrong. It’s a disagreement on policy that ought to be civilized. When I see Congress on my television set and the degree of hatred they have, utter contempt. I mean really serious way more than as usual. It’s evil to hate that much. It’s a mistake to hate that much. It’s always been true as anger comes in reason leaves. It’s a truism. So do you want to adopt a political point of view or you are angry all the time. If you do, welcome to the house of misery. And pretty lowly worldly to boot. So that’s what you want to do. I found out how to do it (is to) behave like those people you see on the television.
查理-芒格： 这是一个非常重要的话题。我一生都在思考这个问题。你问我的意见。我真的不知道它的效果如何。我想其他人也不知道。我认为在某种程度上会有效，但能起多大作用我就不知道了，这不公平吗？这些公司都是由一些慈善基金和一些养老金计划所拥有的。全世界都在努力让公司的商业利益支持其巨额的养老金债务，而这些债务一直在增加。中国正试图做共和党人正在做的事情。中国希望中国的主要企业更多地由养老金计划所拥有以及股票表现良好，以取得良好的业绩。我认为中国这样做并不疯狂。我也不认为共和党人疯了。这样做效果会很好。这不仅仅是人们编造的邪恶的事情。这是人们之间的分歧，双方都对另一方怀有强烈的仇恨和蔑视。他们错了。这是政策上的分歧，应该是文明的分歧。当我在电视上看到国会，看到他们的仇恨程度，看到他们的蔑视。我的意思是真的比平时严重得多。如此仇恨是邪恶的 如此憎恨是个错误。愤怒的时候会失去理智，这是不言自明的。那么，你是想采取一种政治观点，还是一直在愤怒？如果是这样，欢迎来到痛苦之家。而且你还很低俗。这就是你想做的。我发现如何做到这一点，（就是）表现得像你在电视上看到的那些人。
Scott DeRue: Well the other thing is true going back to one of the earlier comments is the difference between a careerist mindset and a service or shareholder mindset, where in politics we have the emergence of a careerist mindset that is shaping how people behave because they’re trying to survive.
斯科特-德鲁： 在政治领域，我们出现了一种职业主义心态，这种心态塑造了人们的行为方式，因为他们都想生存下去。
Charlie Munger: Not only that. They have a group think just as the Moonies go crazy because they because they hand around together. So do our politicians. And do you want to go crazy? Is that what your ambition in life is? You start with some advantage, just make yourself a violent believing politician on either side. You’ll turn your brian into cabbage. You only got one brain. Why would you want to turn it into cabbage?
查理-芒格： 不仅如此。他们有一种群体思维，就像月光族发疯一样，因为他们在一起手舞足蹈。我们的政客也是如此。你想发疯吗？这就是你的人生理想吗？你从一些优势开始，只要让自己成为任何一方的暴力信仰政客。你会把你的大脑变成卷心菜的。你只有一个大脑，你为什么要把它变成卷心菜？
Scott DeRue: I’ve got a question here. What’s the new amazing technology that you’re most excited about.
斯科特-德鲁: 我有个问题，你最感兴趣的新技术是什么？
Charlie Munger: Well I tend not get very excited about (technology). I think that technology changes the world. That reminds me of a thing. If I asked you what was the worst single in the work of Adam Smith. You know I know I don’t see everybody’s big eyes lighting up. The biggest mistake in the work of Adam Smith (is that) he was totally right about markets and so on and the advantages of trade division of labor and so forth. What he missed was how much the steady advance of technology would advance wealth and standards of living.
查理-芒格： 我往往不会对（技术）感到非常兴奋。我认为技术会改变世界。这让我想起一件事。如果我问你亚当-斯密作品中最糟糕的一点是什么？你知道，我知道我没看到每个人的大眼睛都亮起来。亚当-斯密著作中最大的错误（是），他对市场等的看法以及贸易分工等的优势是完全正确的。他所忽略的是，技术的稳步发展会在多大程度上促进财富和生活水平的提高。
He in the 1700s was living not too much differently than the way they lived in the Roman Empire.
他在 1700 年代的生活方式与罗马帝国的生活方式并无太大区别。
And he just missed it. But there are in fact had been huge improvements in technology but he just missed it. He wasn’t very technically minded. And it was really stupid.
他只是忽略了这一点。但事实上，科技已经有了巨大进步，只是他错过了。他不太懂技术。这真的很愚蠢。
Now I ask you harder question - what was the worst mistake David Ricardo made. I’ll bet the Dean can’t answer this question. I’m not going to ask you to try. I’ll tell you the answer. David Ricardo got the first order consequences of trade perfectly right, and it was not an obvious insight. And it was a great achievement. But he didn’t think about the second order consequences. He wasn’t mathematical enough to see any (second order consequences). He wasn’t mathematical to think what would happen in one country which had way higher living standards than another. Like Adam Smith, he messed up my main issue. In a place like the United States. If you have an advanced nation and some other nation which is numerous but the people of any are better on average than yours in terms of their innate quality, which I think is roughly true of China. And they are in poverty living in caves and they are caught in the Malthusian trap. And you got an advanced economy. You suddenly go into free trade. What is going to happen is Ricardo proved it - both sides are going to live better, right? But the people here that are assimilating all great economies of the world like China, they are going to grow faster. So you go up 2% a year and hey go up 12% and pretty soon they are the dominant nation in the world and you aren’t. Well are you really better off and the answer is no.
现在我问你们一个更难的问题，大卫-李嘉图犯的最严重的错误是什么？我敢打赌，院长肯定回答不了这个问题。我不打算让你试。我来告诉你答案。大卫-李嘉图完全正确地解释了贸易的一阶后果，这并不是一个显而易见的见解，这是一项伟大的成就。但他没有考虑到二阶后果。他没有足够的数学知识来看待任何（二阶后果）。他没有足够的数学能力去思考一个国家的生活水平远远高于另一个国家会发生什么。和亚当-斯密一样，他把我的主要问题搞砸了。在美国这样的地方。如果你有一个先进的国家和其他一些人口众多的国家，但其中任何一个国家的人民在先天素质方面平均都比你的好，我认为中国的情况大致如此。他们生活在贫困中，住在山洞里，陷入了马尔萨斯陷阱。而你的经济发达。你突然进入自由贸易。李嘉图证明了这一点—双方都会生活得更好，对吗？但这里的人们正在同化世界上所有伟大的经济体，比如中国，他们会增长得更快。所以你每年增长 2%，而他们增长 12%，很快他们就会成为世界上的主导国家，而你却不是。那么，你真的过得更好吗，答案是否定的。
Ricardo never figured out any of that stuff. So I’m telling you that so that you can fix your inadequate knowledge of Ricardo. And one of the interesting questions of that is you can’t understand Ricardo properly and thinking about the United States vis-à -vis free trade with China without thinking about the tragedy of the commons. Because if we had the only nation in the world except for china we could say we won’t trade with them. We’ll just leave them in their damn agricultural poverty. And we could probably have done that but with the whole rest of the world (which will trade with China) they’ll rise anyway. So we don’t have any power to hold back the rise of China by not trading with them. So we had to do what we did. And once you do that, now they are going to be a greater power than we are. And the two of us are going to be big enough so we can accomplish anything we both want to do. So we have to be friendly with China. So you can imagine how I like Donald Trump complaining about the Chinese. It’s really stupid. It’s a compulsory friendship. You’d be out of your mind to do anything else. Why wouldn’t you want to have an intimate friendly relationship with the biggest other power in the whole damn world, particularly when they got a few atom bombs. It’s just nutty. We have no alternative but to do this and when that happens you’re going to get a certain amount of misery at the people who are competing with the Chinese as they rise from poverty with trades and so forth. That was inevitable it’s not the fault of your evil Republicans who love the poor. That is just total balderdash. It just happened and we didn’t have all these choices.
李嘉图从来就没想明白这些问题。所以我告诉你这些，是为了让你弥补你对李嘉图知识的不足。其中一个有趣的问题是，如果不思考公地悲剧，你就无法正确理解李嘉图，也无法思考美国与中国的自由贸易。因为如果我们拥有世界上除中国之外的唯一国家，我们就可以说我们不会与他们进行贸易。我们只会让他们继续生活在该死的农业贫困中。我们或许可以这样做，但随着整个世界（将与中国进行贸易）的发展，他们还是会崛起。因此，我们没有任何力量通过不与中国贸易来阻止中国的崛起。所以，我们不得不这么做。一旦你这么做了，现在他们就会成为比我们更强大的国家。我们两个将变得足够大，因此我们可以完成我们都想做的任何事情。因此，我们必须与中国友好相处。所以你可以想象我是多么喜欢唐纳德-特朗普抱怨中国人。这真的很愚蠢。这是一种强制性的友谊。如果你想做别的事，那你就疯了。你为什么不想与世界上最大的强国建立亲密的友好关系，尤其是当他们拥有几颗原子弹的时候。这太疯狂了，我们别无选择，只能这样做，而当这一切发生时，与中国人竞争的人们将遭受一定程度的痛苦，因为他们通过贸易等方式摆脱了贫困。这是不可避免的，这不是你们那些热爱穷人的邪恶共和党人的错。这完全是胡说八道。这一切就这么发生了，我们没有这些选择。
Scott DeRue: So Charlie in wrapping up we’ve got, I don’t know, roughly 250 or 300 people in the room tonight and many of them looking at their futures, their careers with many decades ahead of them.
斯科特・德鲁： 今晚在座的大约有250到300人 他们中的很多人都在展望未来，他们的职业生涯还有几十年呢。
Charlie Munger: I’d trade some large numbers if I could just buy some life expectancy.
查理-芒格： 如果能买到一些预期寿命，我愿意用一些大价钱来交换。
Scott DeRue: As you look back on your life experience. What’s the most important piece of advice that you would offer everyone in the room tonight as they look forward in their futures?
斯科特-德鲁： 当你回顾自己的人生经历时。在展望未来时，你想给今晚在座的各位最重要的建议是什么？
Charlie Munger: Well there are a few obvious ones. They are all ancient. Marriage is the most important decision you have to make, not your business career. It will do more for you, good or bad than anything else. Ben Franklin have the best advice ever given on marriage. He said keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut thereafter. It’s amazing how if you just get up every morning, and keep plugging and have some discipline, keep learning. And it’s amazing how it works out okay. I don’t think it’s wise to have an ambition to be President of United States or a billionaire or something like that because the odds are too much against you. Much better to aim low. I did not intend to get rich. I wanted to get independent. I just over shot. And by the way while you’re clapping, some of the overshooting was accidental. You can be very deserving and very intelligent and very disciplined. But there’s also a factor of luck that comes into this thing and the people will get the good outcomes that seem extraordinary. Those are people who have discipline and intelligent and good virtues plus a hell of a lot of luck. Why wouldn’t the world work like that? So you shouldn’t give credit for the unusual. A friend of mine said about a colleague of his in his fraternity. He says old George was a duck sitting on a pond and they raise the level of a pond. There are a lot of people would just luck into the right place and rise and then there are a lot of very eminent people who have many advantages and they got one little flaw or one bit of bad luck. And they are mired in misery all their lives. But that makes it interesting to have all this variation.
查理-芒格： 有几个显而易见的。它们都很古老。婚姻是你必须做出的最重要的决定，而不是你的事业。无论对你是好是坏，它都比其他任何事情都重要。本-富兰克林（Ben Franklin）对婚姻给出了最好的建议。他说，结婚前要睁大眼睛，结婚后睁一只眼闭一只眼。如果你每天早上起床，坚持不懈地学习，遵守纪律，不断学习，就会有奇妙的效果。结果也很神奇。我不认为立志成为美国总统或亿万富翁之类的人是明智的，因为胜算太小了。目标低一点会好得多。我没打算发财。我想独立。我只是赚多了些。顺便说一句，在你们鼓掌的时候，有些过高的目标是意外造成的。你可以非常值得拥有，非常聪明，非常自律。但这其中也有运气的因素，有些人会得到看似非凡的好结果。这些人有纪律、有智慧、有良好的品德，再加上大量的运气。世界何尝不是这样呢？所以，你不应该为不寻常的事情点赞。我的一个朋友说起他兄弟会里的一个同事。他说老乔治是一只坐在池塘上的鸭子，他们把池塘的水位提高了。有很多人只是运气好到了正确的地方，然后崛起，也有很多非常杰出的人，他们有很多优势，但他们有一个小缺陷或一点坏运气。他们一生都深陷痛苦之中。不过，这样的变化也很有趣。
Scott DeRue: Charlie, on behalf of everyone here, thank you! Your wisdom. I often say as an educational institution we not only can provide people with knowledge but the most important thing we can do is give them wisdom, and judgment. And your comments, I know for me, and I expect for everyone in this room tonight, have added to our wisdom and our judgment and also inspiring at the same time. Thank you very much.
斯科特-德鲁： 查理，我代表在座的各位谢谢你！你的智慧。我常说，作为一个教育机构，我们不仅可以为人们提供知识，最重要的是给他们智慧和判断力。我知道，对我来说，我希望今晚在座的每一位都能从你的评论中获得智慧和判断力，同时也得到启发。非常感谢。