QuestionerWarren, you've commented in the press that you are concerned about the hotel price gouging in the Omaha area during the Berkshire meeting weekend. Please elaborate further on that position as it seems to contradict free market capitalism. Shouldn't the law of supply and demand apply in this case?
WarrenAbsolutely. And so therefore, since we want to increase the demand, the proper thing to do is increase the supply, right? And that's why we have encouraged, for example, Airbnb to come in and they supplied some rooms this year. But it's very logical. If you think about most cities, the big events that come to their convention centers and use their hotels, they size themselves in deciding where to go. If you have a relatively small industry, they can pick a moderate size. And they can have their convention there, and they don't outstrip the supply of rooms. If you have a very big industry and you're having a convention, you know, you have to go to someplace like Vegas or someplace that has a lot of rooms because otherwise you do throw the supply demand out of whack. So if you have an event which isn't sized by the people that are scheduling it, can't be sized by the people who are scheduling it, then you can totally outstrip. rational supply of rooms. Omaha cannot size its hotel supply to the Berkshire meeting. You can size it to the kind of conventions that normally gets in all of that, but the Berkshire meeting is growing beyond what we anticipated. So, fortunately, there's developed, and for that reason, people started putting in what really bothered me with the three-day minimums. I mean, you know, I think there's something particularly irritating about somebody's coming in for a one-day event. day event, you have to buy, have a three-day minimum, and the prices were getting high. Omaha people love this event, it's an economic boon for Omaha, but, and people get a good impression of Omaha when they come here generally. So it's, there's a lot of good things about having the meeting in Omaha, and we can't expect anybody to build new hotels to take care of three days a year. So fortunately, something like Airbnb is sort of a flex supply. uh arrangement that that seems to me to make a lot of sense for it and i think that it will be more developed by next year and i think that the hotels will do extremely well next year but i don't think they can push it to the ultimate extreme of a total scarcity product and we want them to do well and that's why we've gone where we have