"The secret of life is weak competition" · Transcript · BuffettMungerGPT

CharlieAn interesting question is to think about it. If you had 500 Jack Welch's and they were running the Fortune, they're cloned, and they were running all of the Fortune 500 companies, would returns on equity for American business to be higher or lower than they are presently? I mean, if you have 500 sensational competitors, they can all be rational, but that doesn't — and they will be, and they'll be smart, and they'll keep trying to do all the right things. But there's a self-neutralizing effect. It's like having 500 expert chess players or 500 expert bridge players. You still have a lot of losers if they get together and play in a tournament. So it's not at all clear that if all American management were dramatically better, leaving out the competition against foreign enterprises, that returns on equity would be a lot better. They might very well drive things down. That's what, to some extent, can easily happen in securities markets. It's way better to be in securities markets. If you have 100 IQ and And everybody else operating has an 80, and if you have 140, and all the rest of them also have 140. So the secret of life is weak competition. Somebody said, how do you beat Bobby Fisher, you know, and you say, you play him any game except chess. Well, that's how you beat Jack Welch. You play him any game except business. Oh, he's a very good golfer, I want to point out. He would — he shot a 69 a few months ago when I saw him at a very tough course. Jack manages to play 70 or 80 rounds of golf a year and come in subpar occasionally while still doing what he does at G. He's a great manager. But 500 Jack Welch's, I'm not at all sure, would make stocks more valuable in this country.