180921 Why read the Ponzi Factor?

My paperback book, The Ponzi Factor came yesterday. It’s about investment profits. The subtitle is The Simple Truth About Investment Profits. How I learned about the book, I am not sure. It was probably on my Facebook page. It piqued my interest because I’m working on an investment scheme for the International Print Center Incubators, and one of the people I mentioned it to said it sounded like Ponzi Scheme.

Ponzi sold fake stock. Tan Liu says all stock that does not give the shareholder a vote, does not pay a dividend, and has no intrinsic cash value does not fit the classic definition of shares in a company. Instead of paying shareholders a piece of company profits in the form of dividends, shareholders can profit only by selling their shares at a price higher than they paid.

Which is okay. If the value of the shares goes down, of course the investor loses when they sell. When they sell at a loss, they realize their loss.

I make art, but I have never profited by it. I made a salary teaching art classes. Occasionally I still get income from instructing people on how to make prints, a type of art form. I never feel like I’m teaching art. How can anyone teach the ineffable?

Teaching art, or about art, is a different topic. My sense is that the aesthetics associated with the word art are more a matter of brain science than a field called art that’s dominated by people who reject science, technology, engineering and math in their daily lives except to benefit from scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

This, too, is a different topic. However, printmaking is my thing and it is because it is the interface of STEM and Art. I like STEAM, therefore, in the efforts of educators to correct educational policies for young people. I like STREAM, too, the efforts to put Reading in the mix.

The Ponzi Factor is part of this interest of mine. I read Tan Lui with interest in learning how I can use an artistic creation I call artistscrip to finance the International Print Center Incubators. I think I can combine the art I made over fifty-four years’ time as scrip to put money into working capital for IPCI.

If someone remarks that my scheme reminds them of the Ponzi Scheme, then I study the Ponzi Scheme like I never studied it before. Tan Lui says the whole stock market is a one big Ponzi Scheme because it is not based on products and shares of profits coming from sales of products.

The closest I came to marry the aesthetics of creation of mine to a balance of product and the art experience is the Halfwood line of etching presses. People bought it for both reasons – its aesthetic merits and its potential to produce the owners’ prints. To the people who bought the press, it looked like a hammer looks to a carpenter.

The press is a potent thing. It has potential. Like a fresh battery, if a person puts it into a device, the device works on the energy of the battery.

Artistscrip must be the batter to make IPCI go. [I noticed a typo – the “y” was not on the word, “battery” so it was funny because, yes, a batter has the potential to make a go of it!]