Charlie Munger on Why Bureaucracy Is an "Unfixable Problem" | Final Interview with CNBC 2023

[Transcript]

BECKY QUICK: Charlie, let’s talk a little bit about bureaucracies. Because you have duly noted the problems with bureaucracies, whether it be a big company, whether it be the government.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Have I ever.

BECKY QUICK: Right. So how would you fix some of the bloated bureaucracies out there? Let’s start with the federal government.

CHARLIE MUNGER: That comes in my Too Hard Pile. I can’t tell you how to do that. That would be really hard because you have the problem of (a) of figuring it out and (b) getting it done. And to solve both those problems are really — that is really climbing up — it's like picking the high peak on Everest and saying, “I’ll waltz up there in a day.” You know, you aren’t going to waltz up there. It takes several days to do.

BECKY QUICK: There was a presidential candidate who recently said that his solution for that would just be to fire everybody in the federal government whose Social Security Number ends with an odd number. Does that sound like a good way to fix it?

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, it does not. It’s too arbitrary — and it may be that you need some bigger fix than that. And it may be that you’re never going to get it, too. It may be that it’s just something like old age that we’re never going to get rid of.
 

Source: https://youtu.be/H5Oom5Rjp_Y?si=ZEkkZkAN6WyOWcl9

[YAPSS Takeaway]