Good criticisms and I think I’m in rough agreement with many of them, but I’d suggest cutting/shortening the beginning. ~everyone already knows what Ponzi schemes are, and the whole extended “confidence game” introduction frames your post in a more hostile way than I think you intended, by leading your readers to think that you’re about to accuse EA of being intentionally fraudulent.
I’d like to register disagreement, I found the opening walked me through the analogy at a very helpful pace. Actually, I didn’t quite know how ponzi schemes work. Perhaps I’m the odd one out.
This seems a little unfair to Charles Ponzi. He was emulating the practices of Banco Zarossi, the bank where he got his first good job. Maybe it seemed like a normal accepted business practice to him.
He told his investors the money would come from postal stamp arbitrage. He’d really found an arbitrage opportunity, albeit one it was hard to cash out. Maybe he really thought he’d be able to make those kinds of returns, and then just never went back to check once the money started rolling in.
It’s not obvious to me that he consciously formed an intent to deceive. Maybe he was fooling himself too.
Good criticisms and I think I’m in rough agreement with many of them, but I’d suggest cutting/shortening the beginning. ~everyone already knows what Ponzi schemes are, and the whole extended “confidence game” introduction frames your post in a more hostile way than I think you intended, by leading your readers to think that you’re about to accuse EA of being intentionally fraudulent.
I’d like to register disagreement, I found the opening walked me through the analogy at a very helpful pace. Actually, I didn’t quite know how ponzi schemes work. Perhaps I’m the odd one out.
This seems a little unfair to Charles Ponzi. He was emulating the practices of Banco Zarossi, the bank where he got his first good job. Maybe it seemed like a normal accepted business practice to him.
He told his investors the money would come from postal stamp arbitrage. He’d really found an arbitrage opportunity, albeit one it was hard to cash out. Maybe he really thought he’d be able to make those kinds of returns, and then just never went back to check once the money started rolling in.
It’s not obvious to me that he consciously formed an intent to deceive. Maybe he was fooling himself too.