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Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

Sad story, but I love that he is at it again.

According to Wikipedia: "Beginning in February 2010, John started a new venture in the field of bacterial quorum sensing. His new company QuorumEx is headquartered in Belize and is working towards producing commercial all natural antibiotics based on anti-quorum sensing technology."

I just love how the man, even at 66, still swings for the fences. He doesn't dick around with small projects and SaaS. He seems to have a track record of going after game changing technologies.

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There's nothing sad about this story. He's still worth $10m. He will never want for food, shelter, a new Porsche, etc.

Sure, a lot of money was wasted on extravagant things, and he's found that the market value of a private playground in a desolate stretch of desert is not very high. But, that doesn't make the story sad. He's not a stupid man; he can't have imagined that these things would sell for what he spent on them.

Perhaps we have a different perception. To me, destruction of his personal wealth (going from $100M to $4M) is sad. Sure, he made bad investment choices, and I'm in no way implying that he'll starve or go homeless, but I still find it sad. On the plus side, the man seems to have rediscovered his true self in the process.

True, though he actually seems to personally feel relieved by the loss. It sounds like he got stuck in a luxury-consumption trap, where he was spending all his time trying to live a multimillionaire's life (because he could), instead of things like starting companies. Now that most of it's gone he's back to new intellectual endeavors.

No actual wealth was destroyed. The real wealth may have gone from one rich man's pockets to another's. Or, in this case, a lot of it "trickled down" into the pockets of all the people who built his expensive playground and toys. Money is a representation of value; some of the "wealth" in this story was merely the result of a real estate bubble...it wasn't actually representative of longterm value, and he made poor bets on those properties. Some of it was transferred from one person to another, for the enjoyment of the spender, and resulted in goods that have much lower value to the market in general than to the original purchaser. That's pretty common of luxury goods. A new million dollar yacht will sell for dramatically less a few years later. It's not sad, it's just normal depreciation on luxury goods, and should be expected by anyone purchasing luxury goods. The extreme specificity and quirkiness of his luxury goods spending makes it even more likely to experience extreme depreciation.

Not true. If his bank simply deleted his accounts, then no real wealth was destroyed. Unfortunately, he used his money to encourage the production of useless things. Real resources were consumed. As you point out, some of the value was saved through the producers' profits (and whatever real value the consumer received). However, if the sum of the final value of the product/experience and the value of the profits was less than what was initially paid, then real wealth was destroyed.

In that case, pretty much all luxury goods are destroying some wealth, every time they're purchased. Which, I suppose I wouldn't argue with. But, I'm not sure that I buy that it's "sad" when luxury goods are produced or purchased.

Maybe it is, though.

On the plus side, the man seems to have rediscovered his true self in the process

Don't you think that's worth $96M?

Sometimes people engineer these things unconsciously. There's a story in Jack Schwager's second Market Wizards book about a losing investor who, under hypnosis, says that he is trying to lose his money so his wife will leave him. To an outsider, that seems like an awfully complicated way to go about it. But who knows? We are fraught with contradiction.

I don't know -- this article at FastCompany linked from Wikipedia puts a different light on his move to Belize: http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1615167/print

Hard to say what the truth is here, but it's an interesting story nonetheless.

Interesting paragraph from the FastCompany article:

"As all this information [about the wrongful death lawsuit] unfolds for me, many things that had seemed odd begin to make sense: McAfee's publicity campaign to promote the idea that he'd lost 96% of his wealth; the fact that he told me he has sold all of his U.S. assets; his having given away all the companies he set up in Belize; and his quorum-sensing research, a topic that gave his relocation to Belize a noble spin, even though in practice he seemed to devote little attention to it."

So is the ABC News story one of the results of that publicity campaign?

The print version of the article linked to here jumps into the middle of the story. You have to go through a page at a time to get the whole thing.

Frankly, the Fast Company article makes a lot more sense. This, "I lost all my assets, but I'm a happier guy, and now I'm off to Belize with a few pennies in my pocket," stuff is pretty convenient for a guy with five pending lawsuits including a wrongful death that could cost him, well, all his assets.

Wow, fascinating. That article paints McAfee and this story in an entirely different light, doesn't it? Thanks.

edit: I should add, I wonder which is more accurate? About 10 years ago my uncle's family was involved in a lawsuit which ended up going to the supreme court. 20/20 and 60 Minutes (I think it was those two) did shows on the story, and it was very interesting to see each show spin the story a different way. So, the media can definitely pick a side which they think will sell well, and selectively quote and share details. I wonder if that's happening here.

That article really makes him out to be a serial liar and sort of a con-man.

Another interesting factoid about him is that he didn't start his software company until he was 44.

Good to keep in mind in these times when you start feeling too old at 30: "twenty nine, past my prime; I feel so behind the time"

As much as I would have loved to get awed by him going for game changing technologies, it appears that reason behind him relocating to Belize is to escape lawsuits in the US, and his focus is hardly on research. See the link in the wikipedia article: http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1615167/print

Can't blame the guy, the only reason he got sued is because he has money.

Another thing that is possibly part of this is that people feel the need to lay blame for everything, they can't just accept that someone died and that's that.

It's tough to lose a loved one but no amount of money will bring them back and blaming the guy that bankrolled the operation seems a little weird to me. The pilot was responsible, he should have known the limits of his license. But the pilot is dead and probably was penniless anyway so the blame gets shifted to the nearest entity with money.

In the end, the people that will win are the lawyers, everybody else just loses, even if they get some money they've still lost, for all the time that they could spend to heal they kept the wound wide open.

The guy who sets up the flight school, collects the money, and hires an unqualified instructor bears no responsibility for the outcome?

Responsibility = criminal matter.

This should not be about the money at all.

Sad story?

I think you miss the point. He was never in it for the money. The toys, houses, and cars were a distraction. Read his quotes in the article. The sad part is that he wasted so many years showing off when he could have been fulfilling his passions.

"he could have been fulfilling his passions."

and given his talents and interests those passions could have helped us all by creating new and awesome products. Paradoxically, if he spent more time following his passion instead of consuming he'd probably have a lot more money too.

and given his talents and interests those passions could have helped us all by creating new and awesome products

Sorry, but maybe his life is not about creating awesome products for others. We aren't entitled to his time and skills.

Can't upvote this enough.

Not sad at all - he is better for it. He did what rich people are expected to do - buy shit, and found out that it isn't as satisfying as people are lead to believe.

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