So leaders at the very top, including Xi Jinping, were expected to stay in office for two five-year terms. The successor would be anointed in advance-- usually five years in advance, potentially earlier than that-- thus smoothing the power transition, allowing that person to develop cache within the system and experience. There would be well-established retirement ages, so people would be forced to leave office and wouldn't hang on too long.
So let me talk a little bit about the future. The successor to the Kepler mission has already been approved for launch in August of 2017. It's called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or TESS.
And if leaders on top think it's their organization, it's not. His successor , Ken Frazier, is as well today.
We didn't have time for a procurement. My successor , Todd Park, was CTO at HHS. And we worked it out that him and my colleague, Macon Phillips, would kind of lead this startup to create healthcare.gov.
And so this was another factor in the debate. His successors were much more orthodox and unyielding, let's say.
And periodically, it would kick out a good idea that would bring in a billion dollars or so. Its successors , I would say, are not people who make cameras like Nikon, but places like this, Google, or Apple, or other companies that really are in the business of coming up with things you didn't know you wanted, then showing those
'So do you think the feelings are lies? Are they bad?' 'No, not bad, Ambrose. Quite the opposite. They're too important to be badly handled. The successors to the Pythagoreans went wrong. They tried to reduce them to a superstitious system, to explain these poetic and highly individual experiences in terms of a simplistic universal, like reincarnation or numbers. I can’t prove it, but the original Pythagoreans to my mind clearly believed in living in the world. Memory—historical, personal—of
of kids in poverty or people who don't have housing or or whatever. um your goal is just to be that species that gets the next worthy successor into existence. Um, the other like really important political implication to my mind is this can really easily lead to a eugenicist view and I know eugenics is a
240 miles an hour. Then its successor is my favorite car of all time, the McLaren P1, member of the holy trinity of the first three hybrid supercars... I was lucky enough to get to drive one. Unreal car.
We are constantly sort of online, doing our bit. I was a successor .
He just gets away with so much egregious shit, it's extraordinary. And then his successor 's successor has been shot.
That way people stuck around even after the race. they're picking the successor of their brand today, who's cross-training with the founder of the organization.
That's actually four out of the new seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee. There was no successor announced. So remember, I talked about institutions.
Yep. How does this happen? And my successor actually agreed to buy out their interests.
Another story which I use in the book, and which I developed, is the ancient historical story of what happened after Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. His heir and putative successor , Octavian, ended up in a civil war against Antony, who'd been one of Caesar's best friends, because they could tell the big prize was out there. Only one of them would be the big dog in this great superpower that was the early Roman Empire.
I mean, the lack of understanding is a relatively personal quality that Buffett has. And so if his successor were more tech savvy and able to understand it, there's great possibility that you would see some tech companies within the Berkshire family. The piece about rapidity of change, though, is a question mark.
Berkshire prefers rudimentary businesses, those that have been around a long time, that change relatively little. And so if the successor were to adhere to that aspect of the rationale, I wouldn't expect to see a great many come into the Berkshire fold. So we'll have to see.
And his successor , Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated, at the same park, in the same place where, 56 years later, Benazir Bhutto
Gutenberg and his successors in minds, Johann Fust and Peter Schoffer, a business that lasted 100 years after Gutenberg,
as well as their successors .
I have 40 dharma successors .
of moral value than we ever could then let it rip, right? Just just let the AI uh go ahead and be a worthy successor to humanity. That's how they phrase it. I am practicing enormous restraint right now because there is so much about this
That way people stuck around even after the race. And they're going to build their successor today.
announced, that these people were going to take over from Xi Jinping. There would be a new successor in waiting. So first thing we learned this fall is that there actually-- when this new leader-- this is the event, this image that I'm showing here.
And instantly, that person who is the successor in waiting becomes quite powerful, and you're a lame duck for five years. And so maybe by not anointing a successor and signaling that he might want to stay, he's just maintaining his own bargaining leverage. So that's one other interpretation that I think is important to think about.
Either way, my own feeling is that whether or not he stays in office or retires, it actually doesn't matter as much as you might think because if he does install a successor , he will likely try to install a lackey of his own. So he will install someone who is loyal to him, and he will rule from behind the scenes.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
He's in the room somewhere-- my successor as CEO of Citizen Schools, who's an amazing person, Steven Rothstein in the back.
I think the first thing to appreciate about mistakes is that Berkshire has made a lot of them in its history. And the first thing that the successor and his community will need to remember is that they're going to make them again. You with me? People should avoid-- I think the one big risk for Berkshire beyond Buffett is the nostalgia trap, when people think, oh,
There may be some pressure. Activist shareholders might pressure a successor to sell this company, that company, or the other one to get the cash rather than having these companies sit inside the broad conglomerate.
Fast in health care, slow out of health care. And the reason for that is my successor . Todd Park came out of the Department of Health and Human Services.
and the advent of a new successor paradigm to replace it.
because he was aware that his handpicked successor President William Howard Taft would be
But then every year they produce their successors , and so I'm really excited about the successors coming in, some of them sitting right in front of me.
So the Scythians still have successors , as it were, in our world, but in very remote places.
to see is a couple of successors come down the line which changed the way these you know these guys think the
So I have colleagues now thinking about the successor to Webb because it will take so long to build it.
He just gets away with so much egregious shit, it's extraordinary. Seriously. And then his successor has also been shot.
from endorsing the president's proposal of Drucker as his successor .
And I was invited in not by my successor , because he was let go after the Gulf spill, but his successor , who
If the mistake she or he makes is a mistake of violating traditional Berkshire culture, undermining some of these principles, then I think there would be serious cause for concern. For example, if a successor were to say, we are not going to continue to own Forest River. We've had enough of it.
And just down the road they're building the successor to Kepler, which should find us 10,000 more.
'The main reason I came to a temple to select my successor is because I wanted a devout like me.
and Exchange Commission uh I mentioned the homeowners loan corporation whose successor was Fanny May uh all these things are still with
There came a point where the Pilgrims and their successors kept coming and saying, we need a little more land.
Um, many of them think both. So it's common to hear AI successionists say, look, AI is going to be our worthy successor . It is desirable for them to succeed us, and it's also inevitable. So there's no point resisting it.
Yeah. So, there is some diversity of opinion among this group and I want to give them a fair shake. So, okay. Dan Fella, who is the organizer of this worthy successor symposium, he actually says, "Look, what I care about is the flame of consciousness. You know, it's like a really dumb thing to
In his view, he wants to be the successor of the family business.
You might value life forms with higher forms of consciousness and think that your successor should be such an individual.
And that's why there's now this streamlined thing that my wonderful successor Emily Wood has put into place.