Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Did you ever stop to think that these questions are posed as a way of watching you make a fool of yourself?
I certainly don’t put it past you Goons to do something like that, Douche. It would be consistent with other behavior I have seen from you for you for you to do something like that.
I cannot control that, can I?
If it were up to me, there would be no Goons. Or, if there were Goons, the owner of every investing site on the internet would honor the published promises he made to protect those of us using the boards and blogs for good purposes from you Goons.
Every site owner has not honored their promises. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever lived. We are the first to know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We are on the one-yard line. We have 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing us how stock investing works in the real world. We have this wonderful internet technology that permits us to spread the word far and wide. We have seen over and over again that a good percentage of the middle-class population LONGS to hear honest and accurate investing advice for the first time. There are hundreds of blog owners and publishers and practitioners who stand to make millions by spreading this information. Things couldn’t be better.
Except for one thing — You Goons mess it up every time we get a fire going. People feel afraid of individuals who resort to threats of physical violence when others report honestly on what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field says. The Wall Street Con Men back you up and people worry that the Con Men will use their power and money and influence to destroy them. People feel ashamed and sickened to see human beings sink so low. They flee communities that don’t take prompt action to remove you from the premises rather than sticking around to defend the community by insisting on reasonable enforcement of the published posting rules.
I cannot change all that, Douche. Not by myself. I can speak out against it. But if the site owners don’t back me up, your intimidation tactics achieve their goal. If my fellow community members don’t speak up in strong and firm and uncompromising language, a lot of the site owners don’t feel compelled to honor their promises. They stand to make money by pushing the Get Rich Quick garbage just as the Wall Street Con Men do, afterall. Not as much. But the basic behavior driver is the same.
So I need to get you Goons sent to prison. When you are sent to prison, the story is going to go viral. I am sure. When the story goes viral, people will be curious about the substantive issues that caused people to be willing to risk prison sentences just to silence those seeking to let people know about the findings of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That will be the end of Buy-and-Hold. There have been a lot of people who have converted from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I think it would be safe to say that no one has ever converted back. Once we open the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other investment-related topics, I think it would be safe to say that within a year or so there will be no more Buy-and-Hold. We will have pulled together as a community to bury that Get Rich Quick garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
The laws against financial fraud were adopted for a good reason, Douche. We need to pull together as a society and enforce them and then move on to a much brighter financial future than any of us ever imagined possible back in the Buy-and-Hold Era.
No?
Rob
x says
So I need to get you Goons sent to prison.
That’s rather vindictive, isn’t it? Previously you lamented the sad fact that the Goons were destined for prison. Now you’re on a mission to make it so.
Anyway, you should be celebrating “VG Day”. The Goon Central board is no more! Well, technically it just moved, but let’s face it, their dark hearts aren’t in it anymore. You defeated your foes by boring them to death. With this victory in hand, will we see more of Rob Bennett across the web?
Rob says
I’m on a mission to make it so, X. But not with any vindictive purpose.
We are today a good number of years past the point at which you Goons could come clean and thereby avoid prison. If I had a magic wand that I could wave in the air to take us back to the morning of May 13, 2002, so that you Goons could have a do-over, I would wave that sucker in the air and get you off the hook. I don’t have a magic wand. So that’s out, you know?
The possibilities before me are to do all I can to see that your prison sentence begins soon and is therefore a bit shorter than it would be if it were delayed further and to see that your prison sentence is delayed and is therefore even longer than what it would be if you came clean today. Given those options, I go for getting that darn prison sentence of yours started as soon as humanly possible. Does that not make good sense?
Please point me to someone else working as hard on your behalf on a daily basis. There is no one. There is no one in a close second place to your good friend Rob. Is that not so?
If boring your Goon hearts to death is what works, I can live with that, X. Whatever works is what we all should do, in my assessment.
There are obviously SOME dark hearts still in it. You’re here today, aren’t you?
I believe that you will be seeing a LOT more of Rob Bennett across the web in days to come. I wouldn’t say that the shutdown of Goon Central is the marker for when all the good stuff begins to happen. I would look to see one major site open itself to honest posting on every aspect of my 12-year effort to get the internet opened to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics, including the ugly, process-oriented stuff and including discussion of the role played by people like my good friend Jack Bogle.
When we have that, we are off to the races. Shortly after that, we will be seeing Jack walk to the front of a big room and say The Three Magic Words. Then we will see his “I Was Wrong” speech written up in the New York Times. Then we will not have one site permitting honest posting but all of them. From that point forward, it gets better and better and better for every single person involved. Including Old Saint Jack and all my other Buy-and-Hold friends. And including you Goons too, X.
I think it is interesting that you say that you Goons were ultimately defeated by being bored to death. Valuation-Informed Indexing NEVER gets boring. Each time there is a powerful new insight, we are left with MORE to talk about, not less. The implications of Shiller’s “revolutioary” insight just continue to take us to more and more and more new and exciting places.
Death threats seem sort of exciting the first time they are employed because of the novelty effect. But they become a stone cold bore with overuse.
It’s the same with demands for unjustified board bannings. And with tens of thousands of acts of defamation. And with threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.
There is a reason why outside of the investing advice field we encourage people to advance their careers through the use of reason and honestly and kindness rather than through the use of abusiveness and hate and trickery. It’s because reason and honesty and kindness work IN THE LONG TERM while the practices used to spread Get Rich Quick investing strategies are effective ONLY IN THE SHORT TERM.
As you now know.
My best wishes to you and yours, X.
Rob
Anonymous says
Without posts from the people you call “goons”, you wouldn’t have any content. When do you expect to actually post something original?
Rob says
The Goons are the story today, Anonymous.
We have known intellectually what works in stock investing for 33 years now. That knowledge has been suppressed for 33 years now because it causes the Buy-and-Holders psychic and financial pain to acknowledge their mistake. We cannot continue like this indefinitely. We are destroying millions of dollars of wealth EVERY DAY as a result of our unwillingness to acknowledge the mistakes of the past and move on. The total losses are now in the TRILLIONS of dollars.
Something that cannot be continued eventually comes to an end. No?
You are simply wrong when you say that I do not post original content here every day. The process stuff is both original and important. The 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies is the most important finance-related story in the history of the United States. We all need to come to terms with the human misery we have caused by not following the laws and traditions of the United States. My daily blog entries help us to come to terms with what has gone down. The fact that only Goons comment here does not show that these blog entries are unimportant. It shows that they are SO important and so far-reaching in their significance that most of us don’t feel comfortable “getting involved.”
I’ll switch back to content-oriented stuff when the Ban on Honest Posting has been lifted at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. I obviously love that stuff. I have already written HUNDREDS of content-oriented articles and HUNDREDS of content-oriented column entries and THOUSANDS of content-oriented blog entries and THOUSANDS of content-oriented discussion-board and blog comments and SCORES of content-oriented podcasts and FIVE unique and powerful calculators. And I obviously have only scratched the surface of what can be done by those exploring the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings of 1981.
So there is going to be tons and tons of content-based stuff in coming days to add to the tons and tons of content-based stuff already available. But the process-oriented stuff is ten times more important today. Once the Ban on Honest Posting is lifted, we will be seeing honest investing advice with Jack Bogle’s name on it on a daily basis. We will be seeing honest investing advice with Bill Bernstein’s name on it on a daily basis. We will be seeing honest investing advice with Scott Burns’ name on it on a daily basis. And on and on and on and on and on.
The leverage that comes with opening the entire internet to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is nothing short of mind-blowing. Holy moly!
I would be failing to honor my responsibilities as a journalist to write about anything else until the Ban on Honest Posting has been lifted, Anonymous. I do make one exception. The majority of my entries for the Value Walk column relate to matters of substance. I like to keep those focused on substance as a way of forcing me to spend some time each week looking for new insights of a substance-oriented nature. So I allow myself that little luxury. Other than that, though, I mostly write today about the need to open every board and blog on the internet to honest posting as I see that as being the area in which the long-term leverage benefits are greatest by far.
Does all of that make good sense to you, my long-time abusive posting friend?
It certainly makes good sense to me.
Rob