Warren Buffett is the world's richest man according to Forbes. He is estimated to be worth $62 billion. His flagship investment vehicle is Berkshire Hathaway. He has guided Berkshire's investments since the late 1960s. His investment philosophy is simple. Buy well-run disposable branded products that make loyal- repeat- user consumers. Then it's just multiplication of the population that takes over. The premise of the philosophy is at once brilliant and also vulgar.
The investment portfolio of Berkshire feature the likes of Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Buch,Gillette, McDonalds,Dairy Queen, Mars-Sees Candies, Wrigley Chewing Gum, American Express, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble etc. The consumer disposables created his wealth but also fostered human obestity and mountains of packaging and manufacturing garbage as a by-product. Most people only talk about the wealth side of the equation. But on a zero sum planet "wealth" has to come from some other thing that is diminished like water, clean environments, etc.
But things are changing. Now and increasingly in the future successful inventors and investors will have a guiding philosophy that first asks the question, " How much garbage will my product produce?" and secondly ask "How much will my product improve what nature offers perfectly?"
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