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Need opinions and guidance building a space elevator.
- Thread starter mcglyph
- Start date
I'm saying it's a grey area, because while he didn't blow up an oil well, or let's say benefit from one, "disappearing", something happened for which Michael Laine has been quizzed about, and had to answer publicly for. Judging from your posts you wouldn't believe him, though you can dig his answers up too. I didn't post his publicly stated reasons, (though I believe them), as I don't think it really matters to any of you. The thing is, while you guys don't think people should be able to make mistakes, pay whatever penalty the law says is sufficient, and then be able to move forward with their lives, I do.
I dont think you know me, and probably not most others here, to make such a statement.
I'm going by what I read on a screen, clearly I don't know you.
The man made a mistake, and considering the scale of those possible in this particular realm, a fairly minor one.
A mistake is not the same as getting caught trying to scam, steal, pilfer, rob, heist, pull a fast one, five finger discount, mislead for monetary gain or moral douche-baggary, "pay the price" then have your representatives, fain boi, co-hort, accomplice, minion, side kick, partner in crime, or semi pro BS artist continue on, dare I say, exploiting a "grey area".
The willful intent is the difference. The continued willful intent is despicable.
The willful intent is the difference. The continued willful intent is despicable.
Continued willful intent. Meh. Says you. There is no knowing whether it was a willful mistake or not. If I thought it was willful, I wouldn't be a supporter. And I'm guessing the six pages of members on the site probably wouldn't be so willing to help, volunteer, give their time, money, ideas, etc. So you and some others say willful, and I and at least 3200 others say, it was an honest mistake. Simple.
How does one honestly commit fraud?
You see what you are ignoring is that he admitted to fraud in the facts of the consent order. That's not an "honest mistake", that's an admitted incident of conscious wrongdoing. Believing that is an honest mistake means you're being either wilfully ignorant or are trying to perpetuate a con on the members of TB.
If you were to google his response, you can choose to believe it or not, because there was a response, one which if you want can be easily dismissed. You can dismiss whatever you like, what I said remains true, the man made a mistake either willfully or not, no one knows, paid whatever price was applicable and that was that. As for this continual con nonsense, it is just that, nonsense. There is no con, the campaign is over, your dollars and children are safe from whatever you believe they should be protected from! No one is trying to con anyone.
I have to say that I am impressed my mcglyph's conviction, and I admire him for staying with this thread.
Thank you for your kind words. And may I say I really admire your name! Very smooth. I've often thought about changing mine to something more interesting, or maybe adding a tag line, like some of you.
Staying with this thread is important to me, because I feel like I didn't do so well with it at first. Plus, there is this lingering idea that I'm a scammer or helping someone to pull a con, which as you can understand, even in an internet setting isn't what you want associated with your name.
mcglyph said:
Whether it is a scam or not is irrelevant. Bad science is what it is. And despite your 'staying power', admiration is not a word I'd use. I am continually dumbfounded by your insistence that this will somehow come to fruition. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
On that note, I'm bailing. Waste of time.
What are you talking about? The man admitted to fraud in the settlement document:
Settlement Document said:
Its simply not the case that "noone knows", everyone knows because he signed a public document admitting to it.
Look, think about this from a common sense point of view. What you are being asked to do is to fund a business venture. There is a well established way of doing that, its called subscribing for securities. Why use that method? Well, in exchange for funding the business you receive a part ownership share of the business and will ultimately share in the profits / success of the business. Secondly, the business and the directors are accountable to you as shareholder for their actions. If they don't do what they said, the shareholders can sack the directors or even sue them. Now, its not very difficult to set up such a company and arrange for the company to be funding in this way, it really isn't, lots of "penny stock" companies do it all the time. Now, what's happened here is the owner couldn't even get that right and ended up admitting to ilegally issuing securities as per the settlement document and now cannot do that.
Whats being used as an alternative? Kickstarter, that's right, now funding is being solicited in a way that gives the investors absolutely no guarantee of "interest" in the venture or accountability from the directors. IF I was going to give money to this venture (given its ultimately a private, for profit venture), then the ONLY way I would do it was by way of either a loan at commercial rates (you'd never see that money again) or by way of a subscription for securities. This makes no sense from a "donor" point of view, you may as well give the money to charity as you don't get any share in the profits that the actual shareholders of the company could actually make (but won't - as noted, this is a bad idea). This is basically just a way to get people to give moeny to a company to fund a venture that it can't otherwise fund through the normal established routes (because of said ilegal securities issue) using social media and "true believers", but it ultimately boils down to funding someone elses commercial venture with no profit to you.
Hell, you would have a better benefit to society phoning up a big drug company researching caner treatments and giving them $1000 to put towards their reserach.
Out of interest, is anybody else here actually interested in the space elevator? Or are you all just here to gang up on the one guy that is actually passionate about it and give him **** for it? Something tells me that if this was a scam, he'd have cut his losses quite some time ago. Besides, if the kick starter and liftport are a scam, don't donate?
If someone were to start another thread on the space elevator with no mention of a kickstarter or donations, would we be able to discuss it there in some sort of adult manner? Or would everybody just head over there to say how crazy it is and why it is unnecessary.
Sure, it might be a pretty crazy idea, and I think we've got a long way to go yet, but these same crazy ideas and peoples commitment to make them a reality when everybody tells them they're wrong is why we are all here today, sitting on our computers and driving our cars and using mass produced technology from the other side of the globe. It's why we know where we are in the universe and what our planet looks like, or that it is a planet, and it's why some form of modern medicine has probably saved your life on many occasions already.
And if it doesn't work? If it never happens? So what. At least somebody was willing to give it a go, to take their goals and dreams and do their best to make it a reality, and if that's not important I don't know what is.
If we're all still around the place in 50-100 years, I'm quite confident you'll eat those words
If someone were to start another thread on the space elevator with no mention of a kickstarter or donations, would we be able to discuss it there in some sort of adult manner? Or would everybody just head over there to say how crazy it is and why it is unnecessary.
Sure, it might be a pretty crazy idea, and I think we've got a long way to go yet, but these same crazy ideas and peoples commitment to make them a reality when everybody tells them they're wrong is why we are all here today, sitting on our computers and driving our cars and using mass produced technology from the other side of the globe. It's why we know where we are in the universe and what our planet looks like, or that it is a planet, and it's why some form of modern medicine has probably saved your life on many occasions already.
And if it doesn't work? If it never happens? So what. At least somebody was willing to give it a go, to take their goals and dreams and do their best to make it a reality, and if that's not important I don't know what is.
If we're all still around the place in 50-100 years, I'm quite confident you'll eat those words
Put simply: you don't donate to "for profit" businesses, you invest. Liftport is not a "not for profit", its a "for profit" business. They are using kickstarter because they were ordered to stop trying to issue securties (ie allow investment) and are now seeking "donations". The "donors" get nothing but bric a brac or empty promises (look at what you get for pledging $10,000 or more) when they should be recieving an interest in the business.
This has nothing to do with the quality of the idea or the chance or it coming to fruition, but rather business ethics and getting people to donate cash to a for profit business.
Look at it this way. There have been $110,000 worth of donations. What if the business decided not to pursue the space elevator concept and instead, made good on the bric a brac its promised to people who pledged (lets say that cost it all of $5,000) and paid a dividend of $105,000 to the shareholders. What could the donors do about that?
Yep. I think it's an elegant idea. Just don't think it's doable in the foreseeable future. Dont know if this is a scam or not but considering that the engineering and materials science isnt going to be here anytime soon this venture strikes me as a complete waste of time and money if not an outright scam.
The OPs insistence on continuing this conversation isn't in any way evidence that Liftport isn't a scam. He may well simply be a well intentioned true believer.
Personally I don't mind chucking a few dollars towards helping a project get off the ground that I believe in and maybe get some knick-knacks or a T-shirt, even if they do plan to make a profit out of it. However I think you'd have to be fairly fanatical or fairly stupid (or more than a little of both) to donate a substantial amount of money towards a private venture without securing some sort of investment in the project, or at least some sort of guarantee or agreement.
You certainly do make some very valid points, and the ethics of donating to a for-profit business are somewhat questionable, but nobody is forcing anyone to donate. The people who do donate money to something like this are people who want to see the project happen, and they part with their money willingly, they trust that the people receiving their money are doing what they are supposed to do with it. They donate because they believe in a cause, or a project, or a common goal, and that they don't have the time or drive or ability or whatever to pursue these goals themselves, so they do what little they can to get the ball rolling.
Yes, they could just take the money and run and nobody could really do a damn thing about it, but I'd hope people are smart enough to work this out before they go donating. As you said, it's a donation, not an investment, they are never going to see the money again anyway, and they're are willing to take a gamble in the hopes that somebody will follow through with this project to the end and help make their dream one step closer to being a reality.
The title of the thread was "Need opinions and guidance on building a space elevator", not "Discuss the ethics of donating money to a for-profit business", and whilst the sideline discussion is certainly relevant to the topic at hand, I get the impression that more people are here to ****-stir and nay say rather than contribute to the discussion in a constructive manner.
True, no one is forcing anyone to donate, but the OP has mentioned the website and the kickstarter many times and both are encouraging people to donate without disclosing all the relavant facts. The point of my posts was most certainly to ensure that any TBers thinking about this are aware of all the relevant facts before donating. If they choose to do so knowing the CEO's history with ilegal issuing of securities, fraud etc and that their donation means they will have no accountability, then that is fine.
When the OP points to the kickstarter in the first post of the thread and then brings it up on a regular basis, I think its fairly germaine to discuss whether it makes sense to donate to a for profit business. The two discussions can run in parallel. It seems that naysayers seem to split down both threads of discussion, which, from what I have seen about this company and its plans, appears to be merited.
I've read the kickstarter, and their goals and outlines seem fairly realistic and well-intentioned, obviously I'd do a bit more background research before I go donating any money, especially more than a few dollars, but from what I've seen they have a good concept. I think people get the wrong impression from this thread, their plan isn't to raise money to build a space elevator, their plan is to raise money to work on smaller projects which will be useful in the interim, and that also help work towards an overall goal of someday building a space elevator.
Sure, the whole thing could just be an elaborate scam, but from the little I've seen it looks fairly credible. Most people who dismiss it as a scam seem to have not even actually read their kickstarter page from what I can tell.
All I mean is that it seems to me that if it is a scam, he isn't "in on it" or trying to drum up business.
Opinions here on the direct validity aside, I think the financial situation itself paints a picture of the project.
To be attempting such a project, particularly with the credentials being floated about by the company owner, it surprises me that they were trying to gain some finances through the kickstarter website. While it may seem odd, that manner of generating funds for a scientific project strikes me as it being either a scam or it being so outlandish that they couldn't recieve conventional fundings (ie experts in the field saw their plan as unfeasible).
Not even on the ethics front, the manner of promotion and fund generation, to me, strikes questions into the viability of the project. Throw in the questionable legal history with the company, and it looks even less positive.
Inflammatory responses from the OP, however sugar coated, aren't too constructive to the discussion either.
I'll also close with saying that he asked for opinions and guidance. Asking for guidance is indicative of wanting constructive discussion, and there has been constructive critisism from a number of members about issues with the claims being made, from the problems generated at a chemical engineering standpoint to astronomical effects. However, the OP also asked for opinions, which he has also recieved.
To be attempting such a project, particularly with the credentials being floated about by the company owner, it surprises me that they were trying to gain some finances through the kickstarter website. While it may seem odd, that manner of generating funds for a scientific project strikes me as it being either a scam or it being so outlandish that they couldn't recieve conventional fundings (ie experts in the field saw their plan as unfeasible).
Not even on the ethics front, the manner of promotion and fund generation, to me, strikes questions into the viability of the project. Throw in the questionable legal history with the company, and it looks even less positive.
Inflammatory responses from the OP, however sugar coated, aren't too constructive to the discussion either.
I'll also close with saying that he asked for opinions and guidance. Asking for guidance is indicative of wanting constructive discussion, and there has been constructive critisism from a number of members about issues with the claims being made, from the problems generated at a chemical engineering standpoint to astronomical effects. However, the OP also asked for opinions, which he has also recieved.
