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Drawings from AMY

WARREN BUFFETT: And why do people, very bright people, risk losing something that’s very important to them, to gain something that’s totally unimportant? The added money has no utility whatsoever.

为什么会有一些人，一些非常聪明的人，愿意冒着风险可能会失去一些非常重要的东西，而去赚取一些对他们而言完全不重要的东西？这些赚来的额外的钱对他们的生活而言没有任何帮助。

And the money that was lost had enormous utility. And on top of that, reputation is tarnished and all of that sort of thing.

但如果他们失去了这些重要的东西，会对他们的生活造成重大的打击。而且更不用说其他的，名声和信誉都会扫地。

So that the gain/loss ratio, in any real sense, is just incredible. I mean, it’s like playing Russian roulette.

这个收益和损失比，说真的，完全没有道理可言，这就像是在玩俄罗斯转盘一样离谱。

I mean, if you hand me a revolver with six bullets — or six chambers — and one bullet and you say, “Pull it once for a million dollars,” and I say, “No.” And then you say, “What is your price?” The answer is there is no price.

如果你给我一把左轮手枪，里面六个弹仓只有一发子弹。然后你对我说：只要扣下扳机一次，就给你一百万美元。我肯定会拒绝。然后你接着问：给你多少钱才肯玩？我的答案是，给我多少都不玩。

And there shouldn’t be any price on taking the risk when you’re already rich, particularly, of failure and embarrassment and all of that sort of thing. But people repeatedly do it. And they do it —

说真的，如果你已经很富有了就完全没有必要去冒这种风险，特别是可能结果会让你很尴尬，名誉扫地之类的。但人们总是不断地这样做。

Whenever a bright person, a really bright person, goes broke that has a lot of money, it’s because of leverage. It — you simply — you basically can’t — it would be almost impossible to go broke without borrowed money being in the equation.

不论何时，一个非常非常聪明而且很富有的人，破产了，都是因为杠杆。可以这么说，如果没有借钱和上杠杆，基本就不可能破产。

And as you know, at Berkshire, we’ve never used any real amount of borrowed money. Now, if we’d used somewhat more, you know, we’d be really rich. But if we’d used a whole lot more, we might have gotten in trouble some times. And there’s just no upside to it, you know?

我们伯克希尔从来不借钱，我意思是小钱借过，没借过对我们可能产生影响的大钱，如果我们借大钱会变得非常富有。

ps.财产保险公司的浮存金，严格意义上讲不算借钱，因为“存钱的人（买保险的人）”不可以选择拿回这些钱。

What’s two percentage points more, you know, on a given year, that year? And run the risk of real failure. But very bright people do it, and they do it consistently, and they will continue to do it.

比方说，某一年多个2%的收益，然后冒着可能毁掉自己的风险。但非常聪明的人经常这样干，而且他们以后也会持续这样做。

And as long as explosive-type instruments are out there, they will gravitate toward them. And particularly, people will gravitate toward them who have very little to lose, but who are operating with other people’s money.

只要市场上有各种各样的杠杆产品，就会像地心引力一样把这些人吸引过去。特别是，会吸引那些没什么可以失去的人，比方说，管着其他人的钱的人。（自己的钱占基金很小一部分，甚至是没有自己钱在里面）‍