Interesting discussion. Alea's assertion seems to be it is ineptness and not malevolence, guiding the Wave ship.
I think malevolence is not the right word. Mendacity is what I come up with.
But even at Wave's mendacious best (or worst) there was still a healthy quotient of ineptness mixed in. Still is.
Dig is right in saying if Wave should happen to sign a big deal, it does not mend the essential brokenness of Wave's approach.
The managers of Wave do operate exactly as if they had no skin in the game. What a coincidence! They don't.
Whatever missteps Wave makes in the short or long run hardly have any effect on the managers who have guaranteed performance bonuses equal to half a bloated salary (SKS).
So who pays when there is a miscue of the Safend type? We shareholders do.
We pick up the broken glass, scrub the floors and buy new fixings, which may or may not suffer the same fate with the next fumble.
The essence of capitalism is hard work, skill, boldness, performance are rewarded.
So what do we have with Wave? We have a family with undue power, paid handsomely whether Wave goes good or bad. Hard work? Skills? Performance?
Where is the incentive?
At the top, there is a sense of entitlement without any sense of responsibility. No one requires accountability. No wonder they do what they do.
They take and take and give us promise after promise, which are almost always broken.
That does not have to be actual malevolence, but it is something close enough to be uncomfortable, and it is something truly ugly.
The cluelessness, tone-deafness and utter shamelessness of Wave's top guns as they bumble and fumble about is grating. They don't even know, or else they don't care how they are perceived by those picking up the tab.
To me that is the worst kind of arrogance. Dangerous arrogance.
I think those who attribute Wave's failures to ineptness alone, miss the larger role of deception and lies in keeping the suckers in and still pitching their pennies.
Not once, in my memory has Wave ever explained a major miss on a projection--unless cornered and forced to give some explanation.
These are not the actions of honest men who admit when they have failed. These guys just make up, say, new break-even predictions. The old ones are past facts, not relevant to Wave's future success.
I think Wave should be judged by the totality of its history, past facts and all.
To me, the message coming thru Wave's long and dark history is not one of benign ignorance, or good-natured slip-ups.
Rather, it is one of deceive and deny. It is a conspiracy and confluence of deliberate lies to make one and all believe Wave is closer to success than it is, when it may not be close at all.
Within that element which intentionally and serially deceives the shareholders, financial community and even the press and public--there is something hard in the center that looks and feels a lot like malevolence.
If not its twin, then a brother.
Blue
AI
