I feel a bit bad, because John Fenley is among us here on HN. But I think they also surface that John, you really need to get out of Pine Bluff and reevaluate these pie-in-the-sky ideas.
Doesn't the writer sort of revel in the misfortunes of John?
I'm not sure how he got his money, but what he is trying to do with it doesn't sound awful. He might be bad at business - it seems like that's the idea here - but a person like John, from what I can tell, is a kind of protagonist.
He wants to build his crazy ideas that seem on their face not all together sound. And he puts a ton of effort into making it happen. These ideas are meant to improve the world in some way through the market forces as he can tell. I wish him the best for it.
It seems like there is a big culture of cynicism towards people trying to improve things through action and not words. Underlying it is the assumption of negative externalities. But I think we lost sight of something here. All actions have the possibility of some negative externalities, but humanity got to where it is because of a lot of people doing their best to improve things.
The instinct to make potshots from the sidelines at the guys playing the game sucks.
John isn't a bad guy, and if he was close to achieving good things, I would be all for supporting him.
Unfortunately, he is living off a 6 figure sum he got from stock years ago. He is rapidly burning it to 0 by buying unprofitable real estate. Instead of proving out ideas on a small scale, and scaling up from there, he thinks if he just tries for a home run, he can eventually do it. But he has multiple kids that he isn't seeing when he's in Pine Bluff most of the time. It's obvious that he's burning through his savings and will go bankrupt if he doesn't change course sooner. The nuclear reactor or mayor of Pine Bluff moonshots are never going to pan out.
Yup, I don’t like to see anyone be the victim of crime like that. We can laugh at some of the poor investments he has made, but the reality is things sound pretty dire in Pine Bluff. I feel bad for him and all the residents of Pine Bluff living in a city where the rule of law has basically failed.
is the far more entertaining read.
I feel a bit bad, because John Fenley is among us here on HN. But I think they also surface that John, you really need to get out of Pine Bluff and reevaluate these pie-in-the-sky ideas.