Quote:
Originally Posted by mrdarcy
(Post 331413)
I bet Advogado knows what he's talking about. Advogado means "lawyer" in Portuguese. If his username equates to his profession, he's well educated. Indeed, he strikes me as learned as evidenced by the frequent cogency of his arguments, regardless whether one agrees with him or not. Critical thinking raises the quality of the debate. I appreciate Advogado's comments from that standpoint alone and thank him for offering his thoughts to the controversy.
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First, thanks to you and others who have come to my defense. I doubt that I am more "learned" than any other contributors, but I have spent a fair amount of time studying and thinking about how The Villages and Developer operate.
I have noticed that some posters, when confronted with facts or opinions that reflect unfavorably on the Developer, tend to ignore the substance of the facts or opinion and launch an []ad hominium[/I] attack on the presenter of the facts or opinion. If this forum is to have any value, I think that we should all try to avoid that tactic. If my facts are wrong or if you think my opinion is nonsense, I would ask that you say so vigorously and give the reasons that you think so. It is not productive, and frankly a little silly, to simply call me a "naysayer" or tell me to sell my house and move if I don't like it here.
By the way, I do like the lifestyle here, but the great lifestyle is irrelevant to most of the controversies involving the Developer. We should remember that the Italians justified Mussolini because he made the trains run on time. I guess we know how that turned out for Italy.
When we buy a house here, we are making an investment. It is my view that it behooves us to watch over that investment and to do what we can to protect that investment from actions by the Developer that could imperil it. Some the Developer's actions clearly have done so-- witness the facts underlying the class-action lawsuit and the multiple charges made in the IRS investigation.
Now, to return to the subject of this thread, i.e., the Morse-poaching charges. An earlier post said that the poaching charges really don't affect TV residents. That was my first reaction too. However, upon further reflection, I thought about the list of criteria I use when deciding whether or not to invest in a stock, and I think I've changed my mind about the charges not affecting TV residents. Right up at top of my list of investment criteria list is management integrity.
The reason for this is not just ethical standards on my part but is also the realization that unethical management generally causes bad things to happen to the operations of a company. In the past few years, we have seen numerous examples of this. If I were thinking of investing in a company and one of its top executives and his close associates were facing multiple felony charges, and, even worse, if that company, through its wholly owned newspaper, attempted to keep the news from the people with the most-legitimate interest in it, I would have serious misgivings about investing in that company.
