On 12/20/2009 12:22 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 10:56 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote:
A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to
make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the
lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors.
In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses
make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn
anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even.
The *only* winners are salaried employees.
That's just "business as usual" in the startup world -- save that in
an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often
stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow...
I wrote that it's a Ponzi scheme as an analogy, not as a literal Ponzi
scheme. I've also called Wikipedia a Ponzi or pyramid scheme.
In conversation with other parties who are not intimately familiar with
your particular use of language, it's good to stick to standard definitions.
Using "Ponzi scheme" to describe Wikipedia is a solecism, to put it
politely.
Words have meaning only to the extent that the members of the culture in
which they're used agree to that meaning. The way you're using these
words is not correct according to that agreed meaning. This leads
directly to confusion and misunderstanding, and eventually to the
suspicion that you are using "Ponzi scheme" as a synonym for "bad".
Both "Ponzi scheme" and "pyramid scheme" have standard definitions, and
they should be used in accordance with those definitions in public
discussions, unless you are intentionally trying to cloud the issues.
Neither Steorn nor Wikipedia is either a Ponzi or pyramid scheme.
...
There are a lot of details, if you read between the lines. For example,
very low-friction bearings are crucial to the technology; they are
offering them and they make this statement about them. Now, what does
that imply? It implies that if there is any excess energy here
There isn't.
