Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the discussion of a blog entry at this site:
If you think that the Bogleheads Forum does not have great power to help or hurt people, we have a very, very different take re the matter.
When I was at Bogleheads, there were hundreds of very smart and good people who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted. Mel Lindauer hated that idea. He was willing to destroy the board rather than permit honest posting there. But how did he pull that off? He’s one guy and there are hundreds on the other side. How did he do it?
He did it with Jack Bogle’s help.
Jack never personally advanced death threats. But he appeared in threads with Mel. He got Mel that column with Forbes. He showed up at events with Mel. I saw a photo once at the Goon Central board in which Jack and Mel are standing close enough together that you can see them both in the same photo!
People respect and admire Jack Bogle. When he sees a Mel Linduaer behaving in the manner in which Mel Lindauer behaves and does nothing about it, that scares people. Bogle has power in this world. And when he fails to speak up about a Mel Linduaer, he puts that power to a very great negative use.
The other side of the story is that that board has the power to bring the economic crisis to an end. That’s a big deal. There are many influential people who participate or lurk at Bogleheads. If we had been talking there about the true cause of the economic crisis going back to the first day, that front-page New York Times story on Buy-and-Hold that we all deep in our hearts long to see would have appeared a long, long time ago.
The internet discussion board is a powerful communications medium of the future, What. You couldn’t be more wrong than you are in the suggestion you make here.
The question is whether the power of that board community is going to be put to use serving good purposes or bad ones. I entertain both hopes and fears re that one. I know how much good that board can do and I hope to see the day it gets about the business of doing it. And I know how much harm that board is doing in its current incarnation and I fear for how those doing the harm are going to feel about themselves when they finally come to realize how many human lives have been destroyed.
There is a power that comes with being the biggest investing board on Planet Internet, What. And with power must come a sense of responsibility.
I am sure.
Rob
what says
Who is scared? And who even knows who ‘Mel Lindauer’ is?
Seems like you are just making excuses for your failures again. Inventing an insurmountable oppression called ‘Mel Lindauer’ as the reason you have had 0 success.
Ya, Mel is real scary – not.
bannwd plop contributor says
At about nine minutes into this video you made, Rob, you claim credit for “at least 50% of the work that Wade Pfau put into his published research.”
Do you suppose he agrees with your assessment?
Rob says
We disagree, What.
Mel is scary.
Not because of anything that Mel brings to the table himself. On his own, Mel is just some internet Goon, one of thousands of social misfits who gained some temporary fame on the internet and let it go to his head.
Mel is scary because of his connection to my good friend Jack Bogle.
Bogle is a respected figure in this field. He has money. He has fame. He has power. He has connections.
I think it would be fair to say that, if Jack owned a barber shop here in Purcellville and he learned that Mel Lindauer was using his name to promote some discussion board at which the most insanely abusive practices known to Planet Internet were employed on a daily basis to keep people from posting honestly about the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research, Bogle would be on the phone to the Purcellville police and to his legal team within 20 minutes demanding that something be done to protect his good name.
Bogle has not made any such calls, What. That’s what scares people like Wade Pfau and Bill Bernstein and Scott Burns and and Larry Swedroe.
Wade has financial responsibility for two small children. He wants to tell the truth. He also wants to be able to make a living in this field.
Bogle’s failure to speak up about the Lindauer matter is a national scandal, one that we will be working through as a nation for many years to come in civil and criminal proceedings and in congressional hearings.
Yes, Bogle is a Hero of the First Rank to millions of middle-class investors and properly so, in my assessment. He has also let himself and all his followers down in a very, very big way.
It is a tragedy of King Lear proportions for all Buy-and-Holders and for all Valuation-Informed Indexers. For our entire society, really. Our entire society has been affected in a serious way by this economic crisis.
Rob
Rob says
Do you suppose he agrees with your assessment?
Nothing could be more clear, Banned.
Here is the article at which I provide links to the blog entries reporting on the 16 months of e-mail correspondence in which we developed together our breakthrough research showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/the-buy-and-hold-crisis/corruption-in-the-investing-advice-field-the-wade-pfau-story/
Wade over and over and over makes clear that he views me as the teacher and himself as the student.
I obviously do not intend any dig at Wade with those words. Wade made a huge contribution and I have said publicly that his contribution merits a Nobel prize in Economics. I just happened to be placed in circumstances that permitted me to gain a jump of several years over him and that of course came through in the work we did together.
When Wade felt safe posting honestly, he had no problem saying such things. It was only after you Goons (with the implicit support of my good friend Jack Bogle) made clear that you would destroy his career if he continued to post honestly that Wade ever came forward with any comments 100 percent the opposite of the viewpoints he expressed over and over and over again during the 16 months in which he believed that there would be no penalties imposed on him for the “crime” of saying what he truly believed about safe withdrawal rates and many other critically important investment-related topics.
Rob
bannwd plop contributor says
Why have you deleted posts that only asked about assertions YOU made in your own voluntary videos, Rob?
Rob says
I have deleted posts that contained links to the videos, Banned. I haven’t yet decided which of the videos I am going to post on the new home page for the site. So such links are not appropriate at this time.
It will of course be fine to link to any video that I post to the site once I do indeed post that video to the site
There are no points that I make in any of the videos that I haven’t made at numerous different places at numerous different times. So you can refer to any point made in the videos without linking to the videos. If you want to quote from any of the videos, that’s fine.
Rob
bannwd plop contributor says
There is NO evidence, including at the link you provided, that Wade considered your input to be anything more important than just a few emails from an interested layman. There is no evidence you ever gathered data, designed experiments, conducted research, understood premises of theories, edited, wrote, synthesized, or otherwise contributed to any of Wade’s (or other’s) published works, EXCEPT for as noted in a teeny footnote Wade graciously added, provided for after the fact, as a sop to your overabundant ego.
Rob says
Okay, Banned.
Rob