Pawn - Q7 ... Checkmate?

cthia wrote:At any rate, the BoD has paper trails. If they are still breathing they can bring the entire house down at any time.

Yes, of course. Among criminals, the only leverage you have is threat. Threat of exposure, threat of physical or emotional violence, etc.

So yes, the board may have had some leverage on the Detweiler in charge. One of them being that he was the Detweiler.

But conversely, the Detweiler also had leverage on them. It's mutually-assured destruction after a while. So you end up with a modicum of honour among thieves, otherwise in the land of an eye for an eye, everyone is blind. So the Detweiler may have been willing to listen to opposing points of view -- if he's smart, not only would he listen, he would welcome and ask for them. But in the end, he may have always been the final decision maker.

We don't know for sure this was the case or when it became so. My guess is that it was and happened before the last official Leonard descendant faked his own death.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Leonard Detweiler could not have afforded any part of it alone. Seed capital was needed on a massive scale. Contacts were needed on a massive scale. Financiers are not going to put up that kind of capital without some of the controlling interest.

Stop saying Leonard Detweiler; he created Mesa and certainly had fellow investors in that. He did not create the Mesan Alignment, that was not created until after he was dead and his original vision was corrupted. By then the Detweiler fortune would have been enormous; well past that of Bruce Wayne.

I am sorry but I cannot do that. You are correct that the MA could be the Detweilers pet project. Funded after they became rich. But I don't think so, because then they would control everything and there would be no need to worry about any part of your organization disagreeing with you.

But then, there is the Benign and malignant MAligns.

At any rate, this discussion was in support of a BoD. And that would have been created in Leonard's time.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:At any rate, the BoD has paper trails. If they are still breathing they can bring the entire house down at any time.

Yes, of course. Among criminals, the only leverage you have is threat. Threat of exposure, threat of physical or emotional violence, etc.

So yes, the board may have had some leverage on the Detweiler in charge. One of them being that he was the Detweiler.

But conversely, the Detweiler also had leverage on them. It's mutually-assured destruction after a while. So you end up with a modicum of honour among thieves, otherwise in the land of an eye for an eye, everyone is blind. So the Detweiler may have been willing to listen to opposing points of view -- if he's smart, not only would he listen, he would welcome and ask for them. But in the end, he may have always been the final decision maker.

We don't know for sure this was the case or when it became so. My guess is that it was and happened before the last official Leonard descendant faked his own death.

Think of our former President. The ones holding the true cards are the ones with all of the documents. And the BoD is a veritable repository of documents. They can simply let the Detweilers hang themselves.

cthia wrote:At any rate, this discussion was in support of a BoD. And that would have been created in Leonard's time.

There's no reason to believe that to be true and in fact there's good reason to believe it isn't. The story we've been told, more than once, is that the Alignment didn't come to existence until long after Leonard's death. The Benign Alignment's own storytelling of when they assumed the name "Alignment" was definitely so.

Now, it's possible that Leonard himself had turned away from his official vision and gone darker, planting the seeds for the Alignment's creation by gathering his closest supporters around him. But we don't know that.

Don't confuse the Alignment with Manpower. Manpower was definitely founded by Leonard after he came to Mesa. But it originally did not make slaves.

Think of our former President. The ones holding the true cards are the ones with all of the documents. And the BoD is a veritable repository of documents. They can simply let the Detweilers hang themselves.

Indeed, but they'd hang themselves in the process. You can count on greedy people to look after their self-interest and it's not in their interest to be hanged. Or you don't think the Detweilers didn't keep kompromat on their board?

cthia wrote:Leonard Detweiler could not have afforded any part of it alone. Seed capital was needed on a massive scale. Contacts were needed on a massive scale. Financiers are not going to put up that kind of capital without some of the controlling interest.

tlb wrote:Stop saying Leonard Detweiler; he created Mesa and certainly had fellow investors in that. He did not create the Mesan Alignment, that was not created until after he was dead and his original vision was corrupted. By then the Detweiler fortune would have been enormous; well past that of Bruce Wayne.

cthia wrote:I am sorry but I cannot do that. You are correct that the MA could be the Detweilers pet project. Funded after they became rich. But I don't think so, because then they would control everything and there would be no need to worry about any part of your organization disagreeing with you.

But then, there is the Benign and malignant MAligns.

At any rate, this discussion was in support of a BoD. And that would have been created in Leonard's time.

I believe that there was a Board of Directors for Mesa (in effect); but the Mesan Alignment was not created until well after Leonard's time, so there is no reason to expect a directorate to be set up before the time of its organization.

But where do you get the crazy idea that factions cannot occur inside an organization that was under family control? In particular the Benign Alignment broke away from the Mesan Alignment as it drifted further from Leonard's vision and became more Malign.

tlb wrote:But where do you get the crazy idea that factions cannot occur inside an organization that was under family control? In particular the Benign Alignment broke away from the Mesan Alignment as it drifted further from Leonard's vision and became more Malign.

That's backwards. What we now call the MA evolved as a secret faction of what is now called the Benign Alignment.

tlb wrote:But where do you get the crazy idea that factions cannot occur inside an organization that was under family control? In particular the Benign Alignment broke away from the Mesan Alignment as it drifted further from Leonard's vision and became more Malign.

kzt wrote:That's backwards. What we now call the MA evolved as a secret faction of what is now called the Benign Alignment.

Okay, that shows the danger of working only from memory. Still they split as the BA continued to support Leonard's original vision while the MA moved toward imposing its more malignant vision.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Leonard Detweiler could not have afforded any part of it alone. Seed capital was needed on a massive scale. Contacts were needed on a massive scale. Financiers are not going to put up that kind of capital without some of the controlling interest.

tlb wrote:Stop saying Leonard Detweiler; he created Mesa and certainly had fellow investors in that. He did not create the Mesan Alignment, that was not created until after he was dead and his original vision was corrupted. By then the Detweiler fortune would have been enormous; well past that of Bruce Wayne.

cthia wrote:I am sorry but I cannot do that. You are correct that the MA could be the Detweilers pet project. Funded after they became rich. But I don't think so, because then they would control everything and there would be no need to worry about any part of your organization disagreeing with you.

But then, there is the Benign and malignant MAligns.

At any rate, this discussion was in support of a BoD. And that would have been created in Leonard's time.

I believe that there was a Board of Directors for Mesa (in effect); but the Mesan Alignment was not created until well after Leonard's time, so there is no reason to expect a directorate to be set up before the time of its organization.

But where do you get the crazy idea that factions cannot occur inside an organization that was under family control? In particular the Benign Alignment broke away from the Mesan Alignment as it drifted further from Leonard's vision and became more Malign.

You really must begin reading my posts. I specifically said that it can, and I even properly labeled it. It is called internecine politics/warfare. It happens often enough. And I agree that it can happen with the BoD even if they have the majority of the controlling interest. If the Detweilers wanted to do it above board, they simply need to recruit enough % points to their side. It then becomes a voting war of attrition. Like the Senate and the House? :shrug:

But I still think we need the author's input here. Personally, I have never really been comfortable about how he handles finance in the HV. But it is his party.

tlb wrote:But where do you get the crazy idea that factions cannot occur inside an organization that was under family control?

Not enough watching of Succession?

cthia wrote:But I still think we need the author's input here. Personally, I have never really been comfortable about how he handles finance in the HV. But it is his party.

True on both accounts: finance is not David's forte and we would indeed need him to explicitly explain what happened. All we have are suppositions.

Even including whether the division of decision-making power was based on finances.