God Is the Great Investor
(And Warrent Buffet is His Prophet)
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1511 Words)
God is Great, says the Koran, and Mohammad is His Prophet. At the beginning of each passage in the Koran, God is also declared to be compassionate and merciful. God is the creator of the world and of humans, and will be their judge on Resurrection Day. The Hebrew scriptures give similar attributes to God, who is also wrathful on occasion when His chosen people misbehave: fornicating unlawfully, worshipping idols, and neglecting to pray to Him; then God allows famine, war, pestilence, and enslavement to fall upon His people. The Christian Bible, which plagiarized the Torah in the Old Testament, speaks of all these qualities of God, who is also our Father, especially the Father of the Son, of the same substance as God, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present in the universe. He feels pity for people on occasion, forgiving their sins, intervening with a miracle or two to cure them of deadly disease or other ills. I say, God is a great investor, and Warren Buffet is His prophet.
Pray to God, the Great Investor, and honor His prophet, Warren Buffet.
Why is God an Investor, and Warren Buffet His prophet? The prophet we know and hear; then through the prophet we learn about God Investor Almighty. We know Warren Buffet as "the Oracle of Omaha" among investors, in 2008 the world's richest man, having surpassed Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation.
Bill Gates founded and managed Microsoft, growing it to become one of the most valuable corporations in the United States and the world. Buffet bought his company Berkshire-Hathaway, a textile company, converting it into an investment corporation. He has bought major positions (large chunks of stock) in traditional corporations, such as Coca Cola, Sees Candies, Geico Insurance, holding the stock and exerting some influence on the companies by appointing directors. He holds stocks for many years, usually not getting involved in company management. Occasionally, if one of his investments flounders, he will place a management team to run the company until it is on the right track.
Warren Buffet invests in companies he judges to be more valuable, having the potential to earn higher profits, than other investors recognize. He does not like to speculate, generally avoiding "hot" stocks in high technology. He has a following of devotees, like any bona fide prophet, who throw their chips on the same bets he has made. Nobody quite matches his performance.
Warren Buffet is God's prophet because he has a vision of supporting men and women with his money, i.e. any resources money can buy, people capable of turning a profit in their operations, enriching their community and the world. He pledges to donate 90% of his estate to charity; in the meantime, he holds on to his money, to keep growing it for the sake of charity when he is gone. Buffet has the best of both worlds, present and promised. I follow him, clutching my money tightly, enjoying money in life, until government, charity and heirs take it, after my body is certified dead; then seeking my reward in the next world.
Prophet Buffet preaches investing in sound companies, companies with effective management teams, marketable products, continued prospects for profits, valuable assets, and low ticker prices. Investors listen carefully to him, but most of them chase after the idols of greed, quick appreciation, and speculative profits. The true and faithful zealots prosper with Buffet, holding their shares of Berkshire-Hathaway close to their hearts at about $100,000 each.
Pay close attention to the words and deeds of Warren Buffet, the Prophet, if you want to be among the chosen few who can own stocks each at a six-figure price. His sermons are of traditional economics, not momentum strategies of going with the crowd; make Samuelson's Economics your bible, and pick your daily prayer from the Wall Street Journal.
With the help and guidance of the Great Investor, Warren Buffet performs an occasional miracle, saving from bankruptcy a desperate company, with proper intervention in the company's affairs; otherwise, he watches over his investments from afar and above in Omaha, Nebraska. Every few years, the prophet will shift his investment from a non-performing company to one with better prospects, but as a rule he is loyal to his chosen people. Buffet's chosen people must play by the rules and laws of the country and of business to deserve keeping his loyal support and compassion. When the people err in one of his companies, he and his God do not persecute, punish, or condemn, except by withdrawing investments.
God, the Investor, is Great; wise beyond our comprehension is He and His Prophet Warren Buffet.
Leave not the bulk of your estate to heirs, Buffet preaches; leave it to worthy causes that do good works, avoiding inheritance taxes. Invest most of your earnings and re-invest appreciated assets, trading up to avoid capital gains taxes. Life is short, but not for well-managed and well-positioned corporations, like Coca Cola or Geico Insurance; own stocks in corporations with unlimited life spans.
Like Mary Poppins, Warren Buffet is very nearly perfect, at least as an investor. His God is the ideal of perfection in investment knowhow, as He is our ideal for other attributes: wisdom, knowledge, kindness, and power.
What we sense about God is an entity like Nature, laying down laws, rules, or regularities in the phenomena we observe, regularities such as gravitation, electromagnetism, relativity, evolution, or justice. Make use of the laws of Nature or God; you are more likely to succeed, flourish, survive. Ignore the rules; you are not going to be around for long as a living person or an investor. Democritus, 600 B.C., spoke of necessity and chance ruling the world. The laws are necessary; but chance is behind the scenes, churning events. Even the most regular phenomena possess random elements. Who expected venerable Citigroup to lose billions in mortgage securities? As an investor, you face risk; the greater the apparent risk, the larger is the profit potential, because risk scares off others, afraid of it more than you are. You can take calculated risks, as Warren Buffet does, to succeed more often than timid people in investments.
God likes to play dice with the universe, to misquote Einstein on quantum mechanics.
Why so? God-Nature challenges every living thing to change, evolve, getter better; He gives us all random testing, even investors, especially with investors, because He is the ideal, Great Investor. We face the unexpected, even the bizarre, outcome in our investments at irregular intervals. The business cycle puzzles us, with a recession starting the moment our head is turned away from the economy, or a big boom in assets and profits, when we are on a long vacation. Thus God-Nature promotes and distills our spirits, separating the sheep from the goats: those who are to continue His works from those cast aside to oblivion.
Some people believe God arranges events to determine our fate; others, say Nature is a blind force, acting on its own, with no regard for us favorable or unkind. Certainly, God is a passive investor in the universe, in our own lives, and our societies, letting chips fall where they may, allowing us the freedom to succeed or fail; on rare occasions, He appears to intervene in our affairs, performing a small or large miracle that we do not expect from blind chance. Is that not how life emerged on our planet billions of years ago?
Science explains the vast majority of phenomena we observe through the actions of natural laws, without Divine Intervention. A few events we encounter are puzzling for science and reason. Such is the appearance every century or so of a gifted person, talented with skills, imagination, creativity of fantastic proportions: Democritus, Archimedes, da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Shakespeare, Gauss, van Beethoven, Einstein, and such, luminaries who guide our progress to the future. A rare combination of genes explains such phenomena for some commentators; for others, such innovators and creators are miracles of God.
By and large, God applies the Star Trek principle of non-intervention on our planet. We are free agents to determine our own fate, good, bad, or indifferent. Like Warren Buffet, God is an investor allowing us the managers of our world to make own decisions freely, and take credit or blame for our mistakes. If we manage poorly, we simply lose out on resources to carry on with our lives.
We should take this lesson to heart in considering the use of Earth's resources; they are finite, and spoilable. When the forests are gone from the face of our lands, their cool comfort does come back readily; when the ozone layer is depleted, when with excess CO2 planetary warming has run away, when the oceans, land, and air are polluted, our blue-white planet is not as hospitable and profitable for humans or other living things. Then without recrimination or wrath, God invests His resources in a different planet, with better managers of operations than Homo sapiens.
Showing posts with label Meaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meaning. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
A Career on Four Legs
A Career on Four Legs
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1116 Words)
The work we do on a regular basis should be a career as much as it is possible. That is, all work we do should tie in with our lifelong goals for the things we want to accomplish in our chosen field, vocation, avocation, or main interest. Sure, we need to have a variety of experiences if what we want to do is write or manage, but even the variety should aim for our major goal in life. Why so? Would you buy the idea that “life is too short, the art too long?” Fix your work activities then, if you can, to your planned career, and run your career on four legs: enthusiasm, service, artcraft, and profit.
Profit? Yes, profit. What shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own purse on the way to bank? Profit is what business people call the bottom line, after all expenses are deducted from all receipts. The bottom line is where you begin figuring out how to run your business or career, before you do anything else. The whole variety of living things on the planet operate the same way. Each species must see to its profit from operations in order to survive and thrive, and not become like the dodo bird.
You ignore survival values, i.e. Money, at your own peril. Even if your parents left you plenty of the green stuff or you have already earned enough of it on your own, where is the guarantee you will keep it till the end of your road or that of your offspring? Earn it and leave it to your heirs or worthy causes in your will. Payment received for your efforts certifies also that what you have produced is worth something to your fellows. Payment is sweeter by far than compliments, honors, or admiring looks. Money is the most sincere form of appreciation.
Going backwards, I now examine the second leg: artcraft. All work and
careers run on a collection of acquired skills: a craft, or, for some people of outstanding talent, an art.
Before we established colleges and universities training multitudes of young people with books, lectures, laboratories, libraries, and computers for a vast variety of professions, we had the apprentice system. Very often the son apprenticed with his father, as Jesus did with Joseph in carpentry, starting from age five or six, because very little formal schooling was available for ordinary people. The daughter trained with her mother in household tasks, cleaning, cooking, fetching water from spring or well, taking care of babies, tending the garden and caring for a few animals. At thirteen or so, boy and girl were old enough for adult responsibilities.
For those without a skilled father or mother, an uncle, aunt, or other master in some craft provided the apprenticeship. Those who sought a different craft from the family's, served a master for five years without wages, just room and board, working next to the master, picking up technique and learning. After that the apprentice served another five years as a journeyman, or the female equivalent, on small wages. Now the apprentice could do the work well enough to earn enough money still working for the master or independently, could settle down and marry. The skills and knowledge the apprentice acquired during all these years was practical, immediately useful, not theories, words from books and lectures. That was a good training system, in many ways superior to ours today, and it cost the parents little or nothing, one of its main superiorities.
If you have a chance at a close apprenticeship to a recognized master in your chosen field, grab it. If not, collect the works of an outstanding master you admire, and model your own efforts to those works for a while. I have modeled my own efforts in philosophy on the writings of British philosopher, logician, and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Lord Bertrand Russell, which I have admired since I was a teenager.
First you choose a field of endeavor for a first, second, or--like me--a third career. When you start your career, pick an artcraft that you naturally do well; perhaps you have the talent for it. Anyway, you'll run faster on a good artcraft leg. If you have fun practicing your craft, that's great, because you will need to practice it every day for many hours to become productive and competitive so your output is saleable. Everybody who hears Mozart admires his great music, but how many people appreciate that he practiced his art constantly, starting when he was an infant?
My career is applied, practical, philosophy; I sleep, eat, think, write, think, write questions and answers of applied philosophy. But first where is the profit? Why should people pay for my advice, information, or entertainment? Yes, my readers will pay for my advice if they see a payoff in it for themselves, and if they find my writings interesting. But until they pay me, I must keep practicing my writing skills and my thought processes daily for many hours on end.
People may pay well for what you do for them; you may be very good at producing large amounts of what your customers want to buy. Are these two legs of a career, profit and artcraft, sufficient? Yes, they are sufficient for making some money, even sufficient for amassing fortune and fame. Drug dealers, casinos, cigarette makers, candy companies, prostitutes and pornographers do as much.
The third leg of a career, true service to the people must run well too. A sound, ethical career, needs to see to the welfare of the customers. The product you sell to the public should do good, do no harm; it should appeal to the customer's virtues, not vices. Serve your community well with your career to assure its longevity and that of your spirit.
You will not serve very well, you will not practice your artcraft long and hard, you will not profit handsomely in your career without applying yourself with enthusiasm to your work. The Greeks meant with enthusiasm the entrance of the god inside of you, or at least of the muse. This fourth leg of a career I left for last to discuss because it keeps the other three in motion.
It is a deep and abiding interest in what you do, a love for your work as
strong as that for your spouse or children. It is a love which fills you with energy, with confidence, and with inspiration—your spirit is on the wing, creating, producing things of value. Passion drives you to furious achievement. What great things were ever done without passion?
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1116 Words)
The work we do on a regular basis should be a career as much as it is possible. That is, all work we do should tie in with our lifelong goals for the things we want to accomplish in our chosen field, vocation, avocation, or main interest. Sure, we need to have a variety of experiences if what we want to do is write or manage, but even the variety should aim for our major goal in life. Why so? Would you buy the idea that “life is too short, the art too long?” Fix your work activities then, if you can, to your planned career, and run your career on four legs: enthusiasm, service, artcraft, and profit.
Profit? Yes, profit. What shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own purse on the way to bank? Profit is what business people call the bottom line, after all expenses are deducted from all receipts. The bottom line is where you begin figuring out how to run your business or career, before you do anything else. The whole variety of living things on the planet operate the same way. Each species must see to its profit from operations in order to survive and thrive, and not become like the dodo bird.
You ignore survival values, i.e. Money, at your own peril. Even if your parents left you plenty of the green stuff or you have already earned enough of it on your own, where is the guarantee you will keep it till the end of your road or that of your offspring? Earn it and leave it to your heirs or worthy causes in your will. Payment received for your efforts certifies also that what you have produced is worth something to your fellows. Payment is sweeter by far than compliments, honors, or admiring looks. Money is the most sincere form of appreciation.
Going backwards, I now examine the second leg: artcraft. All work and
careers run on a collection of acquired skills: a craft, or, for some people of outstanding talent, an art.
Before we established colleges and universities training multitudes of young people with books, lectures, laboratories, libraries, and computers for a vast variety of professions, we had the apprentice system. Very often the son apprenticed with his father, as Jesus did with Joseph in carpentry, starting from age five or six, because very little formal schooling was available for ordinary people. The daughter trained with her mother in household tasks, cleaning, cooking, fetching water from spring or well, taking care of babies, tending the garden and caring for a few animals. At thirteen or so, boy and girl were old enough for adult responsibilities.
For those without a skilled father or mother, an uncle, aunt, or other master in some craft provided the apprenticeship. Those who sought a different craft from the family's, served a master for five years without wages, just room and board, working next to the master, picking up technique and learning. After that the apprentice served another five years as a journeyman, or the female equivalent, on small wages. Now the apprentice could do the work well enough to earn enough money still working for the master or independently, could settle down and marry. The skills and knowledge the apprentice acquired during all these years was practical, immediately useful, not theories, words from books and lectures. That was a good training system, in many ways superior to ours today, and it cost the parents little or nothing, one of its main superiorities.
If you have a chance at a close apprenticeship to a recognized master in your chosen field, grab it. If not, collect the works of an outstanding master you admire, and model your own efforts to those works for a while. I have modeled my own efforts in philosophy on the writings of British philosopher, logician, and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Lord Bertrand Russell, which I have admired since I was a teenager.
First you choose a field of endeavor for a first, second, or--like me--a third career. When you start your career, pick an artcraft that you naturally do well; perhaps you have the talent for it. Anyway, you'll run faster on a good artcraft leg. If you have fun practicing your craft, that's great, because you will need to practice it every day for many hours to become productive and competitive so your output is saleable. Everybody who hears Mozart admires his great music, but how many people appreciate that he practiced his art constantly, starting when he was an infant?
My career is applied, practical, philosophy; I sleep, eat, think, write, think, write questions and answers of applied philosophy. But first where is the profit? Why should people pay for my advice, information, or entertainment? Yes, my readers will pay for my advice if they see a payoff in it for themselves, and if they find my writings interesting. But until they pay me, I must keep practicing my writing skills and my thought processes daily for many hours on end.
People may pay well for what you do for them; you may be very good at producing large amounts of what your customers want to buy. Are these two legs of a career, profit and artcraft, sufficient? Yes, they are sufficient for making some money, even sufficient for amassing fortune and fame. Drug dealers, casinos, cigarette makers, candy companies, prostitutes and pornographers do as much.
The third leg of a career, true service to the people must run well too. A sound, ethical career, needs to see to the welfare of the customers. The product you sell to the public should do good, do no harm; it should appeal to the customer's virtues, not vices. Serve your community well with your career to assure its longevity and that of your spirit.
You will not serve very well, you will not practice your artcraft long and hard, you will not profit handsomely in your career without applying yourself with enthusiasm to your work. The Greeks meant with enthusiasm the entrance of the god inside of you, or at least of the muse. This fourth leg of a career I left for last to discuss because it keeps the other three in motion.
It is a deep and abiding interest in what you do, a love for your work as
strong as that for your spouse or children. It is a love which fills you with energy, with confidence, and with inspiration—your spirit is on the wing, creating, producing things of value. Passion drives you to furious achievement. What great things were ever done without passion?
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