每年5月份，初夏，在美国小镇奥马哈，沃伦巴菲特和查理芒格都会举行长达6小时的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司年会。年会上有个传统环节，由股东现场提问，巴菲特和芒格现场回答。这个环节占用了年会绝大部分时间，里面很多问题都非常有趣，包含了看待事物的方式、人生哲理、投资方法。
目前能搜罗到的伯克希尔年会问答实录，从1994到2023合共三十年，当时读的是中文翻译的版本。读完之后想再读，但我想既然再读为啥不直接读英文原版呢，于是找到了英文原版重读，同时这次做了一些精彩的摘录。当然了，其他部分也很精彩，只是我对这些摘录更有共鸣，你去读有共鸣的部分肯定是不一样的，所以推荐大家去读全文。这份问答录适合想在生活中和工作中获得长久的独立、充实、理性、愉悦的人。
人生中能找到一个品行卓越的老师，并且他还可以以某种方式深入地影响你，是一辈子最幸运的事情。沃伦巴菲特找到了本格雷厄姆，查理芒格找到了本杰明富兰克林。
以下以摘录的形式，把某个问题的原文原封不动摘录下来，然后某些段落后面加上我自己的感想。
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“We let .400 hitters swing the way they want to swing”
WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 4?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Peter Borma (PH), Chicago.
Every year, you have your operating companies send a check back to Omaha. What percentage do the heads of the operating companies keep as a bonus, and how do you set that figure?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we have different bonus arrangements at different companies. It would be a big mistake, with businesses with as many different economic characteristics, or as varying economic characteristics existing, as they do at Berkshire, to try and have some formula approach that paid managers in all of these different businesses based on a simple formula of one kind.
So, we have, I think, four businesses where they own a part of it. And we have varying arrangements with the various businesses.
Some businesses, capital employed is unimportant. There simply isn’t a way to employ a lot of capital. So, we do not have a capital charge, even, at those businesses. We don’t believe in going through a lot of machinations if it’s going to involve peanuts at the end.
So, some businesses have a capital charge, some businesses don’t have a capital charge. If they use a lot of capital, they’re going to have a capital charge, is what it amounts to.
Some businesses are easy businesses, some businesses are tougher businesses. So, we have different thresholds where things kick in based on that.
We simply sit down and try and figure out, in the case of each business, what makes sense. And that usually isn’t very hard to figure out.
I mean, we want something that’s fair. The best managers, we aren’t going to change their behavior much by the compensation thing. We may a little bit, in terms of teaching them how we think about capital employed.
But in terms of their enthusiasm for the business, imagination, and marketing, and all that, basically we usually buy businesses with those people in place.
But it would be — A, it’d be wrong not to treat people fairly, and they would resent it if they weren’t treated fairly, too, understandably.
So we try to have a system that rewards the things that we want to have rewarded, and treats them fairly in a way that they understand they’re treated fairly.
And I don’t think we have any two businesses that have the same arrangement. They’re different in each case.
Incidentally, that applies in their policies, too. We don’t get into — very seldom, I should say, maybe once or twice — but they have different arrangements in terms of compensating their employees.
Some of our businesses have budgets, some of them don’t. We don’t have any budgets that come up to headquarters. We let .400 hitters swing the way they want to swing. And some of them, you know, have a little different swings than others, but overall, they’re extremely effective.
巴菲特这里用了棒球手的击球率来举例，棒球手都有一个自己的挥棒区，在这个挥棒区域内击球率会显著上升。意思就是，让这些人用自己擅长的方式去运营公司，就是最好的管理。无为而无不为。伯克希尔在奥马哈总部一共14个人，而伯克希尔所有公司的人数超过30万人，仅已购买的私人公司而不包括上市公司。
And they feel, and we want them to feel, like they own their own business. If they felt — if somebody that’s independently wealthy sold us a business and we started telling them how to swing, they would tell us what we could do with it very quickly, because they don’t need that in life.
So, what we have to do is create a situation, or maintain a situation, where they are having more fun doing what they’re doing than anything else they can do in life, and that’s what’s we’re designing for. And then we have to treat them fairly in respect to that.
这一点不仅仅适用于商业，生活和教育上也同样适用。最好的老师就是热爱，努力创造一个做自己喜欢的事情的氛围和环境。巴菲特和芒格实际上是推己及人，自己希望被怎么对待，就怎么去对待别人。他说过，如果自己在伯克希尔时不时要向董事会报告和安排各种开会，那么即使给再高的薪酬估计自己也会很快干不下去，离开伯克希尔了。因为自己并不缺钱，做这件事情是因为自己热爱，如果拘泥于外在的形式把这种乐趣给剥夺了，那是得不偿失。同样的，运营这些公司的人往往也早已财富自由了，真正想追随的是自己的热情和喜欢做的事情。
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.
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