QuestionerWhat do you do to gain the trust of founders or owners of the companies you have bought out in the past?
WarrenWell, we've kept our word to them. Now, we have to be very careful about what we promise because we can't promise, for example, never to have a layoff in a business we buy because who knows what the world holds. But we can promise that we won't sell their business, for example, if it turns out to be disappointing, as long as it doesn't run into, the prospect of continuing losses or having significant labor problems. But we keep, we are keeping certain businesses that you would not get a passing grade at business school on if you wrote down our reasons for keeping them. But the reason is we made a promise. And we put that, we now make the promise, we put it in the back of the annual report now. I've done it for 30 years or so, where we list the economic principles. And we put it there because we believe it, but we put it there also so that the managers who sell us their business, the owners who sell us their business, know they can count on it. And if we behave differently, you know, the word would get around and it should get around. So we can make problems. We can't make promises that will ever change employment. We can't even make a promise that we'll keep a business forever. But we can promise what we do promise, which is that if it turns out to be somewhat disappointing on earnings but does not promise sort of unending losses, or if we don't, or if we have labor problems, we can keep that promise. And we have kept that promise. We've only had to get rid of a few businesses, including our business. our original textile business. We promised the managers that they are going to continue to run their businesses. And believe me, if we didn't do it, the word would get around on that very quickly. But we've been doing it now for 49 years, and we have put ourselves in a class that is hard for other people to compete with, if that's important to the seller of a business. A private equity firm is going to be totally unimpressed by by what's in the back of our annual report. They don't care. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's their business. But for somebody that's built up their company over 20 or 30 or 40 years and maybe their father or grandfather built it up, but even before that, some of those people care about where their businesses go. They're very rich. They've accomplished all kinds of things in life. And they don't want to build up something which somebody else tears apart very quickly because they've they're handing it over to a few MBAs who want to show their stuff. So we do have a unique or close to a unique asset at Berkshire and as long as we behave properly, we will maintain that asset and really no one else will have much luck in competing with us.