11 ms·

T. Boone Pickens Farewell Letter

179 points by cgoodmac 7y ago

jbob2000 7y ago
This guy was a mixed bag of ethics. Sure, he donated a lot of money, but some of the donations were done on the premise that they would be invested in funds that he managed. Shady. And he donated mostly to expand the athletics program at a university. Gee thanks, schools need more football. And then he did the classic old rich guy move: donate tons of money to healthcare to see if it will stave off death. And also donate money to right your wrongs! Spent a lifetime investing in planet-destroying oil? Maybe I should invest in Wind... I wouldn’t pay any attention to his musings, he’s a passionless capitalist.
jedberg 7y ago
> If you are reading this, I have passed on from this world — not as big a deal for you as it was for me. Clever. :)
CriticalCathed 7y ago
>“Yes, I’m for Donald Trump,” Pickens said at a conference in Las Vegas this week. “I’m tired of having politicians as president of the U.S. Let’s try something different.” >Trump certainly is “different.” In addition to his famed plan to build along the U.S.-Mexico border, the real estate mogul has called for banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and has repeatedly said that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese. >As for why Pickens — who gave $100,000 to Jeb Bush’s campaign — would change his mind about Trump, well, Pickens will probably be dead soon anyway. “I’m ready to take a chance on it,” the 87-year-old said in Vegas. “And just in case it’s a mistake, [I’ll] be gone.” >If only the rest of us were so lucky. Good riddance to a 91 year old man who was hell bent on burning things to the ground, but only after he died.
cybervegan 7y ago
It's his kind that got us into the climate mess we are currently in.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  He asks: "What's my legacy". It's a world which will be uninhabitable for us unless we take some drastic action now. Drastic action which his industry is throwing everything into opposing.
  - jpadkins 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan He was one of the major voices in the industry to switch to wind, and why we have some much windpower in the midwest today.
    - scblock 7y ago
      No he wasn't. He was just playing for money and for name recognition. He did absolutely nothing in the wind industry except attach his name to it. He built nothing. He developed nothing. He achieved nothing.
  - antisthenes 7y ago
    It's worth noting that the newest generations in developed nations (XYZ) are the most carbon intensive creatures this planet has had to date, in 300+ million years of vertebrate life. You can't really blame his legacy without accepting some personal responsibility at the same time. Either take the cross off or put the knickers back on as they say.
    - radicalbyte 7y ago
      I at least am! Since the scale of the problem became clear around 2012: First the big one: * Politically support the Greens (GroenLinks), switching from the center-center/right parties (D66 or VVD if you google). Then the smaller things: * I've rejected a number of contracts the last two years which required significant travel or were for the fossil industry. I'd be $200k richer if I accepted one or two of them. Climate wasn't the only reason (young kids and father in law with cancer/stroke who needed my help played a part too). * I haven't flown in 5-6 years (I live in the NL, my family in UK so this is a sacrifice). This is hard because travel is a passion of mine. * I cycle everywhere whenever possible. * I drive a tiny car and haven't upgraded it yet for environmental reasons. * I've drastically cut my meat intake especially of beef. * I'm spending $100k on my new house making it as close to 0 carbon as possible. * Generally repairing instead of replacing stuff as much as possible. Once I'm back to billing hours I'll be repaying my and my partner's climate debt by funding projects which remove carbon from the atmosphere. Only the "gold standard" projects, not the $10 clearly fraudulent "offsets" that the airlines try to sell you. What are you doing?
vincent-toups 7y ago
""“Sonny, I don’t care who you are. Some day you’re going to have to sit on your own bottom.” After more than half a century in the energy business, her advice has proven itself to be spot-on time and time again. My failures? I never have any doubt whom they can be traced back to. My successes? Most likely the same guy."" Truly insane.
- arcticfox 7y ago
  This is one of those mindsets that might not be objectively all that true but seems overwhelmingly useful.
  - vincent-toups 7y ago
    For some definitions of useful. Certainly useful if you find yourself enriched by chance and don't want to consider the circumstances of other people, less lucky.
  - alehul 7y ago
    Agreed. People often overestimate the value of truth. While it's immensely valuable to have factual information and put that information to use, truth (or objectivity, we could say) is less important in one's mindset throughout life. Take those who believed they were destined by God to succeed: they include Rockefeller, who developed pipelines to bring kerosene (and thus light) to the masses for cheaper, and even a favorite in the history of tech, Ada Lovelace. The validity of their beliefs, or lack thereof, had no impact on their inspiration to pursue their goals or their ultimate successes.
  - bredren 7y ago
    This pull yourself up by the bootstraps meme has been powering the American Dream for a long time.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Dismissal of any hint of personal agency as "truly insane" is the only truly insane thing here.
bshimmin 7y ago
I loved this tweet from him a year or so ago: https://twitter.com/boonepickens/status/953398294172102658 https://twitter.com/boonepickens/status/953398294172102658
- protomyth 7y ago
  He had some real winners on Twitter, his exchange with Drake was pretty funny https://www.businessinsider.com/oil-tycoon-t-boone-pickens-owned-rapper-drake-hard-on-twitter-this-morning-2012-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/oil-tycoon-t-boone-pickens-o...
RickJWagner 7y ago
"It’s your shot now." That statement and others show me the Pickens was trying to help others, to encourage them. I especially like the list of guidelines at the bottom of the page.
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
I had no idea who this guy was. Quick excerpt: > Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. was an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. As of November 2016, Pickens had a net worth of $500 million. So, it seems, a "financial" predator, possibly of the worst kind. Not a lot of sympathy for these kind of people. Edit: to be clear, "late" philanthropists are a nice thing, but as Ricardo Semler [0] once said, "If you need to give away money, you took too much in the first place". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler
- seibelj 7y ago
  I am very happy that specialists exist who can take struggling businesses and fix their management and processes. Your 401k agrees with me.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    There are good corporate raiders and bad ones, T. Boone Pickens ends up near the far end of bad. His main shtick was to propose a buy-out or merger, wait for the stock to rise on the news, dump it and then never follow through. That doesn't take care of 'struggling businesses', nor does it 'fix their management processes'. Your 401k might still agree but for wholly different reasons than you think. Earlier in his career I'd say he was a lot better.
- tootie 7y ago
  He was the main sponsor of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that spread a bunch of lies about John Kerry's Vietnam service during the 2016 presidential campaign.
- imgabe 7y ago
  > "If you need to give away money, you took too much in the first place". This is a strange sentiment to find on a board that is at least partially targeted at aspiring company founders. For example the money Bill Gates is giving away is mostly in the form of shares of Microsoft. Those didn't exist before he started the company (with others of course). He signed some paperwork, then later 500 million shares (or however many) came into existence and he had them. Who did he take them from? Later on other people decided they also wanted shares of Microsoft and assigned them a monetary value. Did Bill Gates somehow force them to want the shares he had? To the extent that he "took" money it was in exchange for shares of a company that other people found valuable.
stephen 7y ago
The comments on this thread are terrible. I don't know enough about him to pass moral judgement, but it seems like many others think that they do (after a quick scan of Wikipedia, meh, that's good enough). It just seems crass to be flippantly judgmental when the guy just died, and in response to his last elegant / humble / insightful "post" to the world. I'm also confused at the implicit viewpoints that, IMO, are at odds with the HN/YC ethos of "individual hussle/initiative/hack your way to huge growth/etc". I.e. if Pickens wasn't from another generation and another industry, I think he'd fit in very well with the HN/YC types (disclaimer/ha, I'm making an assumption that I just chastised others for doing). Anyway, makes me wonder if the "real HN" crowd has moved on elsewhere.
- Clubber 7y ago
  Our culture seems to have just gotten angry all the time and at everybody. Probably not healthy. Definitely a waste of emotional energy.
- adrr 7y ago
  Because he was terrible person who tried to con people out their water under guise of clean energy. He's best forgotten.
- kragen 7y ago
  Hacking is the playful application of ingenuity, or achieving things the experts in the field thought were impossible. Pickens, whatever his merits, didn't do that and didn't value it. Hacking is not tricking people and ripping them off.
- _match 7y ago
  Agreed. Currently reading the biography of Disney, and it’s so depressing to hear he was the punching bag of every writer, journalist, critic, and university professor throughout the 60s. Was Disney the conformist racist simpleminded backwater troglodyte they claimed, or were they? It’s hard to not be bothered by the pettiness of the “cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat”. But I once felt hacker news had fewer of those voices.
throwaway5752 7y ago
"Learn to analyze well. Assess the risks and the prospective rewards, and keep it simple." "Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health." It's a good final letter and has good advice. Complicated guy, complicated legacy, but good advice.
everybodyknows 7y ago
The quote from "Indispensable Man” reminds me of this from Charles de Gaulle: "Indispensable men? The graveyards are full of them."
oh_sigh 7y ago
I wish there was a block user feature on hn. Frankly, with about half the commenters in this thread, I think I would be better off if I didn't run across their inane comments on any subject any more.
- specialist 7y ago
  100%. Back in the day our offline mail readers (for BBSs, CompuServe, BIX) had "twit filters" (black lists). An essential feature missing from most online forums today.
  - prepend 7y ago
    I used to have grease monkey scripts for reddit years ago before mobile, but it just was too clunky. I want a way to quickly apply dom actions on my mobile browser that should do the trick. I used to worry about creating an echo chamber by black listing people but now I’m just so tired, I’d rather have an echo chamber than a frequent “what the fuck is this garbage, oh it’s another comment by prepend”
dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
> Don’t look to government to solve problems — the strength of this country is in its people. I’ve been reading One-Storied America[0], a book from 1935 by two Soviet humorists visiting the United States. The book echos this perspective on every page. [0] you can find a good 1937 translation online under the title Little Golden America by Charles Malamuth.
- eatbitseveryday 7y ago
  Thanks for giving me another interesting book to add to my list :)
  - dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
    Glad to hear. I’m two thirds of the way through and it’s so interesting.
michalu 7y ago
> Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health. This. Many people don't realize that staying fit isn't a quest to live longer but to live physically better in the later ages. I cringe when someone tells me stuff like "yeah but that dude smoked and never exercised and lived until 80s while the fit guy got cancer and it didn't help him" ... yes but you forgot to mention that living life in his body became a miserable experience since 45 vs. someone else who may have died in 60s of cancer but in fact spent something like 50 fulfilling years feeling great. Staying fit may not save you from cancer or car accident, but but the life is so much better when you live in a fit body.
DubiousPusher 7y ago
I find it mesmerizing that people on this thread have a problem with the criticism of a highly influential person upon their death. I mean were people bound to say only positive things when Augusto Pinochet and Robert Mugabe dusted off? Obviously I don't think T Boone shares the legacy of violent dictators but my point is that those clutching their pearls here trying to categorically separate themselves from those who speak ill of the dead are not separate at all. They either don't believe what Pickens did was all that bad or they don't believe he did bad things. On their spectrum of "posthumous criticism" Pickens lies on the positive side of their personal threshold.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  The man in the arena will always command a respect the gravedancing haters will never know.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    I'd hate to live in the authoritarian minded society that applied this maxim universally.

179 points by cgoodmac 7y ago

jbob2000 7y ago

This guy was a mixed bag of ethics. Sure, he donated a lot of money, but some of the donations were done on the premise that they would be invested in funds that he managed. Shady. And he donated mostly to expand the athletics program at a university. Gee thanks, schools need more football. And then he did the classic old rich guy move: donate tons of money to healthcare to see if it will stave off death. And also donate money to right your wrongs! Spent a lifetime investing in planet-destroying oil? Maybe I should invest in Wind... I wouldn’t pay any attention to his musings, he’s a passionless capitalist.

jedberg 7y ago

> If you are reading this, I have passed on from this world — not as big a deal for you as it was for me. Clever. :)

CriticalCathed 7y ago

>“Yes, I’m for Donald Trump,” Pickens said at a conference in Las Vegas this week. “I’m tired of having politicians as president of the U.S. Let’s try something different.” >Trump certainly is “different.” In addition to his famed plan to build along the U.S.-Mexico border, the real estate mogul has called for banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and has repeatedly said that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese. >As for why Pickens — who gave $100,000 to Jeb Bush’s campaign — would change his mind about Trump, well, Pickens will probably be dead soon anyway. “I’m ready to take a chance on it,” the 87-year-old said in Vegas. “And just in case it’s a mistake, [I’ll] be gone.” >If only the rest of us were so lucky. Good riddance to a 91 year old man who was hell bent on burning things to the ground, but only after he died.

cybervegan 7y ago

It's his kind that got us into the climate mess we are currently in.

radicalbyte 7y ago
He asks: "What's my legacy". It's a world which will be uninhabitable for us unless we take some drastic action now. Drastic action which his industry is throwing everything into opposing.
- jpadkins 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan He was one of the major voices in the industry to switch to wind, and why we have some much windpower in the midwest today.
  - scblock 7y ago
    No he wasn't. He was just playing for money and for name recognition. He did absolutely nothing in the wind industry except attach his name to it. He built nothing. He developed nothing. He achieved nothing.
- antisthenes 7y ago
  It's worth noting that the newest generations in developed nations (XYZ) are the most carbon intensive creatures this planet has had to date, in 300+ million years of vertebrate life. You can't really blame his legacy without accepting some personal responsibility at the same time. Either take the cross off or put the knickers back on as they say.
  - radicalbyte 7y ago
    I at least am! Since the scale of the problem became clear around 2012: First the big one: * Politically support the Greens (GroenLinks), switching from the center-center/right parties (D66 or VVD if you google). Then the smaller things: * I've rejected a number of contracts the last two years which required significant travel or were for the fossil industry. I'd be $200k richer if I accepted one or two of them. Climate wasn't the only reason (young kids and father in law with cancer/stroke who needed my help played a part too). * I haven't flown in 5-6 years (I live in the NL, my family in UK so this is a sacrifice). This is hard because travel is a passion of mine. * I cycle everywhere whenever possible. * I drive a tiny car and haven't upgraded it yet for environmental reasons. * I've drastically cut my meat intake especially of beef. * I'm spending $100k on my new house making it as close to 0 carbon as possible. * Generally repairing instead of replacing stuff as much as possible. Once I'm back to billing hours I'll be repaying my and my partner's climate debt by funding projects which remove carbon from the atmosphere. Only the "gold standard" projects, not the $10 clearly fraudulent "offsets" that the airlines try to sell you. What are you doing?

vincent-toups 7y ago

""“Sonny, I don’t care who you are. Some day you’re going to have to sit on your own bottom.” After more than half a century in the energy business, her advice has proven itself to be spot-on time and time again. My failures? I never have any doubt whom they can be traced back to. My successes? Most likely the same guy."" Truly insane.

arcticfox 7y ago
This is one of those mindsets that might not be objectively all that true but seems overwhelmingly useful.
- vincent-toups 7y ago
  For some definitions of useful. Certainly useful if you find yourself enriched by chance and don't want to consider the circumstances of other people, less lucky.
- alehul 7y ago
  Agreed. People often overestimate the value of truth. While it's immensely valuable to have factual information and put that information to use, truth (or objectivity, we could say) is less important in one's mindset throughout life. Take those who believed they were destined by God to succeed: they include Rockefeller, who developed pipelines to bring kerosene (and thus light) to the masses for cheaper, and even a favorite in the history of tech, Ada Lovelace. The validity of their beliefs, or lack thereof, had no impact on their inspiration to pursue their goals or their ultimate successes.
- bredren 7y ago
  This pull yourself up by the bootstraps meme has been powering the American Dream for a long time.
imgabe 7y ago
Dismissal of any hint of personal agency as "truly insane" is the only truly insane thing here.

bshimmin 7y ago

I loved this tweet from him a year or so ago: https://twitter.com/boonepickens/status/953398294172102658 https://twitter.com/boonepickens/status/953398294172102658

protomyth 7y ago
He had some real winners on Twitter, his exchange with Drake was pretty funny https://www.businessinsider.com/oil-tycoon-t-boone-pickens-owned-rapper-drake-hard-on-twitter-this-morning-2012-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/oil-tycoon-t-boone-pickens-o...

RickJWagner 7y ago

"It’s your shot now." That statement and others show me the Pickens was trying to help others, to encourage them. I especially like the list of guidelines at the bottom of the page.

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

I had no idea who this guy was. Quick excerpt: > Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. was an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. As of November 2016, Pickens had a net worth of $500 million. So, it seems, a "financial" predator, possibly of the worst kind. Not a lot of sympathy for these kind of people. Edit: to be clear, "late" philanthropists are a nice thing, but as Ricardo Semler [0] once said, "If you need to give away money, you took too much in the first place". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler

seibelj 7y ago
I am very happy that specialists exist who can take struggling businesses and fix their management and processes. Your 401k agrees with me.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  There are good corporate raiders and bad ones, T. Boone Pickens ends up near the far end of bad. His main shtick was to propose a buy-out or merger, wait for the stock to rise on the news, dump it and then never follow through. That doesn't take care of 'struggling businesses', nor does it 'fix their management processes'. Your 401k might still agree but for wholly different reasons than you think. Earlier in his career I'd say he was a lot better.
tootie 7y ago
He was the main sponsor of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that spread a bunch of lies about John Kerry's Vietnam service during the 2016 presidential campaign.
imgabe 7y ago
> "If you need to give away money, you took too much in the first place". This is a strange sentiment to find on a board that is at least partially targeted at aspiring company founders. For example the money Bill Gates is giving away is mostly in the form of shares of Microsoft. Those didn't exist before he started the company (with others of course). He signed some paperwork, then later 500 million shares (or however many) came into existence and he had them. Who did he take them from? Later on other people decided they also wanted shares of Microsoft and assigned them a monetary value. Did Bill Gates somehow force them to want the shares he had? To the extent that he "took" money it was in exchange for shares of a company that other people found valuable.

stephen 7y ago

The comments on this thread are terrible. I don't know enough about him to pass moral judgement, but it seems like many others think that they do (after a quick scan of Wikipedia, meh, that's good enough). It just seems crass to be flippantly judgmental when the guy just died, and in response to his last elegant / humble / insightful "post" to the world. I'm also confused at the implicit viewpoints that, IMO, are at odds with the HN/YC ethos of "individual hussle/initiative/hack your way to huge growth/etc". I.e. if Pickens wasn't from another generation and another industry, I think he'd fit in very well with the HN/YC types (disclaimer/ha, I'm making an assumption that I just chastised others for doing). Anyway, makes me wonder if the "real HN" crowd has moved on elsewhere.

Clubber 7y ago
Our culture seems to have just gotten angry all the time and at everybody. Probably not healthy. Definitely a waste of emotional energy.
adrr 7y ago
Because he was terrible person who tried to con people out their water under guise of clean energy. He's best forgotten.
kragen 7y ago
Hacking is the playful application of ingenuity, or achieving things the experts in the field thought were impossible. Pickens, whatever his merits, didn't do that and didn't value it. Hacking is not tricking people and ripping them off.
_match 7y ago
Agreed. Currently reading the biography of Disney, and it’s so depressing to hear he was the punching bag of every writer, journalist, critic, and university professor throughout the 60s. Was Disney the conformist racist simpleminded backwater troglodyte they claimed, or were they? It’s hard to not be bothered by the pettiness of the “cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat”. But I once felt hacker news had fewer of those voices.

throwaway5752 7y ago

"Learn to analyze well. Assess the risks and the prospective rewards, and keep it simple." "Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health." It's a good final letter and has good advice. Complicated guy, complicated legacy, but good advice.

everybodyknows 7y ago

The quote from "Indispensable Man” reminds me of this from Charles de Gaulle: "Indispensable men? The graveyards are full of them."

oh_sigh 7y ago

I wish there was a block user feature on hn. Frankly, with about half the commenters in this thread, I think I would be better off if I didn't run across their inane comments on any subject any more.

specialist 7y ago
100%. Back in the day our offline mail readers (for BBSs, CompuServe, BIX) had "twit filters" (black lists). An essential feature missing from most online forums today.
- prepend 7y ago
  I used to have grease monkey scripts for reddit years ago before mobile, but it just was too clunky. I want a way to quickly apply dom actions on my mobile browser that should do the trick. I used to worry about creating an echo chamber by black listing people but now I’m just so tired, I’d rather have an echo chamber than a frequent “what the fuck is this garbage, oh it’s another comment by prepend”

dmitryminkovsky 7y ago

> Don’t look to government to solve problems — the strength of this country is in its people. I’ve been reading One-Storied America[0], a book from 1935 by two Soviet humorists visiting the United States. The book echos this perspective on every page. [0] you can find a good 1937 translation online under the title Little Golden America by Charles Malamuth.

eatbitseveryday 7y ago
Thanks for giving me another interesting book to add to my list :)
- dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
  Glad to hear. I’m two thirds of the way through and it’s so interesting.

michalu 7y ago

> Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health. This. Many people don't realize that staying fit isn't a quest to live longer but to live physically better in the later ages. I cringe when someone tells me stuff like "yeah but that dude smoked and never exercised and lived until 80s while the fit guy got cancer and it didn't help him" ... yes but you forgot to mention that living life in his body became a miserable experience since 45 vs. someone else who may have died in 60s of cancer but in fact spent something like 50 fulfilling years feeling great. Staying fit may not save you from cancer or car accident, but but the life is so much better when you live in a fit body.

DubiousPusher 7y ago

I find it mesmerizing that people on this thread have a problem with the criticism of a highly influential person upon their death. I mean were people bound to say only positive things when Augusto Pinochet and Robert Mugabe dusted off? Obviously I don't think T Boone shares the legacy of violent dictators but my point is that those clutching their pearls here trying to categorically separate themselves from those who speak ill of the dead are not separate at all. They either don't believe what Pickens did was all that bad or they don't believe he did bad things. On their spectrum of "posthumous criticism" Pickens lies on the positive side of their personal threshold.

creaghpatr 7y ago
The man in the arena will always command a respect the gravedancing haters will never know.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  I'd hate to live in the authoritarian minded society that applied this maxim universally.