Ever notice how folks like Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates as well, are very seldom heard making any uninvited comments in the media about details of current politics? Some reasons why, that I’ve been considering:
Everything they say could have an out-of-proportion impact. Buffett once joked that the has to be careful what he says in the bathroom, “even when alone”.
They’ve learned that no matter how the political environment changes, they have the resources and know-how to simply “surf” whatever wave is coming at them. Even negative changes bring opportunities, so why work so hard to affect the detail parts of them? (Plus they see now just how little our politics has to do with the stock market performance.)
They really value time spent strategizing business and technology far above having to make repeated rhetorical defenses once they made a public statement about the latest media “crisis”. If they did that all the time, no opportunities for personal pursuits would be left at all.
They have far less need for being the center of attention than those we see every day. They can initiate great things with handshake, a pen, the stroke of a keyboard. They accomplish far more in silence than many others ever can with theater and noise.
Their idea of engaging in control, is to acquire and then direct, not bloviate and argue. A lot more of the second appears to happen among the people their holdings employ, than the people they engage to acquire and direct.
When they do contribute to a cause, it’s not to try and guarantee the promotion of a narrowly focused and personal moral argument; knowing the scale of their impact, the motion must have other benefits than simply satisfying a need to bend things their own way, for that sake only.
There’s “power”, and then there’s Power…
