60%
There is little to see here in the details, no delicate work to compel belief, the death that George died is one broad stroke of the brush.
Every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he can not really improve himself...without in some degree improving other men. ~Charles Dickens
I cannot tell you how to decipher George, there is no secret decoder ring to wring meaning from his words, any conclusions about George will have to be drawn in your mind. The bulk of the material left on SI by George could in many ways be the voice of any member of the community, any one of us might believe many of the things that George said, his view appears to be consonant with the structure of the new reality. In reviewing the things that were said to George by others during the battle it is apparent that some considered George an insider, other messages also indicate that there were those who liked George and considered him a real investor. It doesn't matter which group you fall into and it is important only to George. What I would rather recount is the effect that George had on his community, he was a disaster. If George was an insider then he was very successful, if he was a real person then he was very successful, look at the number of dead, that is the measure of George's success in either case. George wasn't directly responsible for anyone's death, but those who listened to George died just the same. They were killed because they didn't invest money, they invested belief. To many readers this story is about an underhanded company preying upon unsuspecting investors, and I will not disabuse anyone of the notion that this is true. There are unscrupulous companies that steal money from investors, this lesson is one that most investors learn from experience. I would like to adjust the focus by emphasizing that in this battle the victims were intended to be those who believed in the new land, those who could be lured into believing the promoters, these would be the ones that fell, a shield blocks no blows when lowered. Looking at the list of dead it should be apparent that not all were fighters. I can go into that battlefield and find messages from those who were truly hurt, real investors, who really believed, who really fell. I suspect every last person in that battle had aspirations, every person there wanted to make money.
We are all investors and each of us sees value differently. Investing money can lead to diminishing returns, investing belief can have far more serious consequences. |
