'Envy': Charlie Munger discusses the greatest cardinal sin in business

© Reuters

By Laura Sánchez

Investing.com - Billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) vice chairman Charlie Munger is back to talking about wealth management and investing.

He did so at the annual meeting of the Daily Journal, the media group of which he is a director.

Warren Buffett's longtime right-hand man said, "The world is not driven by greed. It’s driven by envy."

For Munger, the goal of accumulating wealth has always been to ensure his independence and his freedom to do what he wants in business and in life. But, he said, investors in general do not share this same vision.

Munger, 98, with an estimated fortune of $2.2 billion according to Forbes, pointed out how easy it is for people to be envious. "I have conquered envy in my own life. I don’t envy anybody. I don’t give a damn what someone else has. But other people are driven crazy by it," noted the billionaire investor, in statements picked up by CNBC.

This is not the first time Munger has referred to envy. In 2017, he said in an interview that he always tries to avoid feelings of "envy and jealousy" in business. "Those types of thoughts can hurt your career, because you’ll be more likely to make biased decisions that could turn out poorly," he said.

In 2019, he again spoke out against envy and said that avoiding envy is one of the "simple" secrets to living a long and happy life, CNBC reported.

In fact, a 2018 study gathered that people driven by envy are more likely to experience poorer mental health and well-being.

The rise of social media has also been criticized for fueling people's feelings of envy and materialism by constantly providing windows into the lives of people who have, or appear to have, particularly luxurious lives.

Envy is simply "built into the nature of things," Munger told the Daily Journal meeting. The billionaire added that he can't understand why people today aren't happier with what they have, especially compared to the hard times previous generations went through.

(Translated from Spanish)