Golf Outing Etiquette

This week I played in a 4-person scramble golf outing.  I only do this 2-3 times a summer, usually for charity.  Some outings are have more perks, some are more organized than others, some use nicer golf courses, some have better food – it runs the gamut, and I’m typically satisfied that my time is well spent.

Unfortunately, this week’s outing had one big downside – I had a dipshit playing in our group.  He wasn’t unfriendly; he simply had no self-awareness, no clue about golf, nor any clue about golf etiquette.

There are almost too many examples of his dipshit-ness, but it ranged from running out of golf balls early in the round, to playing half of the round in bare feet.  And this may go without saying, but he was a terrible, terrible golfer.

None of that would have mattered if he’d been the least bit self-deprecating.  I’ve played with plenty of terrible golfers in my day, but it’s still been enjoyable.  Most just try to make the best of it, chat you up, limit their embarrassment, and play quickly.  Not this guy.

Even though he never hit the ball more than 100 yards all day (and most of those shots were chunks that went straight to the right or left), late in the round he was still asking about whether he should aim for that tree….the one, you know, 300 yards in the distance.

The bottom line on this is, if you only play golf once or twice a year, you should not be playing in a golf outing.  But if you are absolutely obligated to play, here are the rules you must follow:

• Lower the group’s expectations when introduced to them.  Just acknowledge you don’t golf much.  Any decent golfer can tell how good you are by just watching a few of your swings, and/or by the equipment you’re using.  (In other words, we know by the second hole how painful this will be for everyone.)

• Be friendly and jovial.

• Know golf etiquette.  This includes what you wear (collared shirt and shoes are a must), and what you do on the course.  You can read up about this etiquette thing, you don’t even have to be a golfer.

• Don’t make excuses all day.  

• Play first and play fast.  If you suck at golf, get your shot out of the way and step aside.  Who knows, you might actually hit a putt that others in the group can use as a read to make their own.

Above all remember that you can just politely decline if invited to a golf outing.  Or make up an excuse for being unable to attend, whatever it takes.  Do it for yourself, and every other golfer.

Thinking, Fast And Slow

For the past month or so, I've been concentrating on reading books and articles broadly related to behavioral science.  More specifically, I'm interested in how and why people make the decisions they do, with a concentration on macro-economics and finance.

This is a field I've been interested in for some time.  Over the years, I can think of several books I've read that are generally related to behavioral science.  These include the Freakonomics trilogy of books:  Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics, and Think Like A Freak, by economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.  (In the past year I've also become a regular listener to the Freakonomics podcast, which has kept me interested during thousands of miles of travel.)

I'd also include the books The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell in that list.  Those books are more about social science, but they provide real insight about way people behave the way they do.

The most recent book I've read is called Thinking, Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman, who previously won a Nobel Prize in Economics.  I thought the book would be good, but it was better than good.  It was a tour-de-force about how our brain works, and the many biases that affect it.

How the brain works is basically a matter of two 'systems' that Kahneman called System 1 (instinctive and emotional) and System 2 (deliberative and logical).  But after a few chapters about the science of that, the rest of the book focuses on psychological aspects of thinking -- the cognitive biases.  These include terms / effects like loss aversion, framing, anchoring, overconfidence, and sunk-cost theory.

Once you read about what these biases are and how they affect thinking, it becomes clear how economic / financial decisions (or are they gambles?) are made and why.  This is a good thing to know for me, both personally and professionally.

Thinking, Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman.  Read it.  Or don't, then I'll use it to my advantage.

Just Name Three

Last year on election day, I wrote about my disgust for bandwagon-ing fans, and, for that matter, bandwagon-ing voters.  Today I'm going to write about a larger offshoot of bandwagon-ers, which essentially includes the bandwagon-ers plus the 'fear of missing out' (FOMO) folks.

To identify, these are people who spend money, sometimes hefty amounts, to attend events for which they have little or no passion.  They go solely because they know other people are going.  You see this all of the time with both sporting and music events.

An example:  Last week, I attended a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert.  The following day at lunch, I overhead a 30-something year-old woman talking to others about it.  She admitted she didn't really know any of his music, but tagged along with friends anyway.  This way she could say she was there, not to mention she could party / drink beer.

Who knows, maybe she didn't have to pay between $60 - $100 to go to the concert like the rest of us.  But probably she did, and regardless, she took away a ticket for a sold out show from a real fan who wanted to go.

I've called people out on this before, and when they get all defensive about it I give them a simple test.  That is, for a big-time concert, can you name three songs (just titles, not even the lyrics!) by that artist?  And for a sporting event, can you name three players on the team for which you're supposedly a fan?

The vast majority of those I ask cannot successfully answer.  If you can't do that, you aren't a fan, and definitely not a passionate one.

However, that isn't going to stop them from paying big bucks to take a seat that a true fan would love to have.  (By and large, the artist or athlete would love for the true fan to have that seat as well.)  But never mind all that.  What's important is being seen as a cool person partying with others at a big event.  And of course, posting their fake superfan-dom on social media.

I suppose it's really not that surprising, in the age of reality TV and social media stars.  People make entire careers out of being seen at events they couldn't care less about.

The difference is, those people get paid, rather then paying for the right to do nothing more than warm a seat.

Dear Graduating Class of 2017

It's time for another edition of giving my latest advice to graduating seniors.  I'm sticking with college graduates again this year, for reasons which I outlined last year.

To the college graduates of 2017:

You're facing a tough situation.  The good times are over, your future job prospects aren't great, and our nation's social and political environment has never been more toxic.  Oh, and for some of you, you're student loan debt may be brutally high.

Start with this:  As soon as possible, forget about your college degree.  Once you have a job, your employer won't care about your grades, or where you attended school, or where you spent your summers volunteering for some social good.  All your employer will care about is whether you can add more value than you cost, and if you can, they win again by looking good for hiring you.  Everything else is pretend.

So forget being a college graduate..... but don't forget to live like a college student for as long as possible.  There’s no need, nor should you have any expectation, to live in a nice place the first five or so years post-college.  Instead, try to live like you did in college, by living sparsely with or without roommates.  (So don't move into your parents basement!  Did your parents live with you in college?)

And ignore any peers who you may soon start to see driving expensive cars, and purchasing nice homes. It should be obvious to a college-educated person such as yourself that they're doing this with the parents' money.  Look at it this way -- if your parents are still changing your diapers at 25, that doesn't make you a success.

Last but not least, tackle this tough situation with toughness -- show some grit.  Seriously.  You can start by watching this brief TED Talk by a researcher named Angela Duckworth, who has spent a considerable portion of her life studying how 'grit' leads to success.

Oh, and congratulations.

I-80 East

I made a one-way road trip from Des Moines to Philadelphia last week.  Among other things, this provided me with 1100 miles worth of observations while driving east, with all but the last 100 miles or so on Interstate 80:

* Iowa gets stereotyped for flat terrain, but across the fruited plain east of the Mississippi River, it's actually much flatter through the northern parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.  I suppose this is due to the proximity of the Great Lakes, but I never hear anyone refer to Ohio being flat.

* Once you cross the state line from Ohio into Pennsylvania, it suddenly gets hilly, and you spend most of the road time crossing the Allegheny Mountains, then the Pocono Mountains.  A much more scenic drive, but a much more difficult drive.

* Although I missed the toll roads in Illinois the lead to Chicago, it was all tollways through Indiana and Ohio.  Why?  The roads weren't any better in those states.  I was particularly discouraged about this in Indiana, a not-so-populous state that can't possibly need toll/road money any more than Iowa, which has no tolls on I-80.

* Did you know that there's an RV / Motor Home Hall of Fame and Museum along I-80 in Elkhart, Indiana.  Again, why?  This was the most memorable, cheezy site of interest along the way.

* It's no surprise that traffic was thick near Chicago, even mid-day.  But the worst of it was eastern Pennsylvania.  Once you get to Allentown, it's high traffic the rest of the way, because for some reason millions of people choose to live on a tiny section of America on the northeastern seaboard.

* Thank you to Google Maps, and Waze, and any other tech app that helps people with directions and traffic.  It's hard to remember how people could successfully made epic drives with only paper maps at their disposal.

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2017

It's time for the latest Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting summary, the 2017 version of  Woodstock for Capitalists that was held in Omaha last week.  Last year I focused on some of the funnier lines said at the meeting, and other times I've focused on specific topic, but this year I'm going more observational.

On the scramble to enter the meeting
The Wall Street Journal published an article the day before the meeting about the secrets of some frequent meeting-goers in their attempts to get good seats once the arena doors open at 7am.  (It’s first-come, first-served seating.)  I have my own strategy that I’ve refined over the years, which includes knowing where the shortest entrance line always is, and also where to find the limited supply of free pastries and beverages are once inside the venue.  I almost – almost – feel bad for those who stand in line outside for so long, only to get much worse seats than I do.

On Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, as one late-day questioner put it, must have iron bladders.  They sit on chairs answering questions for hours at a time, always drinking Coke, and never have to take a bathroom break.  They are ages 86 and 93, respectively.

On protesters
For the first time in several years, one of the questioners was actually a protester.  She had another person hold up a sign behind her while going on a rant about how capitalism is bad, using slavery, wealth and the sugar in Coca-Cola(!) as examples.   She was soon boo-ed loudly enough that no one could hear her speak.  Note to interrupting protesters:  Meeting attendees will only hate you and your cause more for wasting their time doing this.  Also, most of us love sugar.

On foreign meeting attendees
There have always been large numbers of international visitors at the meeting.   However, this year I felt the number of Asians not only far exceeded Europeans, it actually rivaled Americans in attendance.  Many appeared to be there as members of large tour groups.  I sat among a crowd of friendly Chinese folks, and there were also a few questions during the meeting about the Chinese stock market.  Not sure what to make of this trend, if anything.

On Jack Bogle
In this year’s shareholder letter, Buffett went out of his way to point out how much money that Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Funds and the father of index fund investing, had saved for investors.  It’s in the billions of dollars, collectively.  Bogle happened to be in the reserved seating area this year, and Buffett introduced him.  It was an historic moment, knowing that Buffett, Munger, Bogle, and I were all in the same room together.

Iowa's Medical Marijuana "Victory"

Let's briefly ignore the fact that we should legalize recreational marijuana, and instead make time for an Iowa medical marijuana update.....

When last we visited the Iowa legislative and executive branch, our soon-to-be-gone Republican Governor Branstad (leaving to become the biggest dufus ambassador to China we've ever had) and the Republican-controlled House were still doing everything they could to pretend that even highly-regulated medical marijuana was a gateway drug.

More specifically, Iowa law allowed certain medically-eligible patients to possess a small amount of pot, but it can't be grown or purchased in Iowa nor imported it from another state.  It's a joke.

A glimmer of hope for the future occurred at the end of this year's legislative session, when the Iowa Senate -- where there is now also a majority of Republicans, just fewer dumb ones -- overwhelmingly passed a bill that would expand medical marijuana to many more afflictions, and well as allow a few Iowa-based regulated growing centers.

Unfortunately, the House watered it down to the point that there won't be enough THC (the psychoactive constitute in cannabis that matters to medical marijuana patients) in the drug to make a difference for most who need it.  And who knows if the outgoing governor will sign it into law, although he probably will because it will politically help the incoming governor.

So in summary, it's another hollow victory for medical marijuana in Iowa, which is actually a step up from the completely empty victory of the past.  The state remains mired in a stupid, fearful 'unintended consequences' attitude that has prevailed in Iowa for some time, even in the middle of the biggest opioid addiction crisis in history, and a still-increasing number of alcohol-related deaths.

The bottom line is, if my child or I was suffering physically, and I knew using marijuana helped, I would go get it anywhere, anyhow, and dare somebody to arrest me for possessing or using it.  Also, I'd laugh at the fact Iowa is missing out on getting taxes from me out of the deal.....Idiots!