X-Message-Number: 30263
Date: Sun,  6 Jan 2008 11:34:57 -0700
Subject: Taking over the Alcor board
From:  (Tim Freeman)


I haven't been reading the discussion carefully.  My apologies if I'm repeating.

The Cult Awareness Network had a member-elected board and was taken
over by the scientologists.  Now they aren't critical of the
scientologists any more, and people who pay attention to them do
indeed become aware of at least one cult.  Their original purpose has
been totally subverted.

If Alcor goes with a member-elected board, the history of the Cult
Awareness Network should be taken into account.  There should at least
be a requirement to be signed up, perhaps for some number of years,
before being allowed to vote for board members.  The intent there is
to require someone attempting a takeover by adding a bunch of bogus
voters to make a large financial commitment to put the bogus voters in
place.

It is unwise to assume there is a probability distribution of takeover
attempts or otherwise bad votes from a member-elected advisory board.
The goal should be to make a hostile takeover totally impossible,
since there only has to be one successful hostile takeover during the
next few decades to kill the whole enterprise.  If the hostile
takeover is impossible, then there won't be any attempts, and the
concerns about it will appear to be protection against something that
doesn't exist.
-- 
Tim Freeman               http://www.fungible.com           

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30263