Losing Patience with Concepts That Violate the Laws of Physics

I often write here that I’m never nasty or condescending to anyone who submits a business plan, regardless of how asinine their ideas. I have an admission to make:  while that was true early, on, it’s no longer the case.  Now, I get descriptions of perpetual motion machines and other theoretically impossible devices at the rate of approximately once a week. Each “inventor’ has one curious trait in common: he’s looking for that last couple hundred thousand dollars of investment capital to build a prototype.

True, a few years ago, I had the patience of Job with respect to garbage like this, but it’s wearing thin. I told one guy recently:

Though I don’t know anything about the securities laws in – (wherever he was from; I don’t remember) if you raise money from people here in the U.S., you’ll very likely wind up in prison.

He wrote back tersely: “I don’t need you.”  LOL.

Just now, someone wrote me from Armenia with a detailed description of a machine that makes electricity from compressed air (somehow omitting the source of the energy that was required to compress the air). I spent several minutes of my (finite) life reading this, before responding:

Sorry, what you’re describing violates the laws of physics. I’m not saying you won’t be able to find investors, just that you’ll need to target people who lack even the most basic education. Don’t fret though; that’s not too great a challenge in today’s world.

See? I can be both nasty AND condescending. Just thought I’d get that off my chest.