Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
What they take issue with is the way you seek to take over every discussion and make it about yourself and your views.
I don’t seek to take over any discussions, Sensible.
It just happens.
The reason why it happens is that the things I say make so much sense to most people and most people have never before heard anybody say these things. So they naturally are interested and want to learn more. So they naturally ask lots of questions. And the next thing you know one of the Buy-and=Holders feels bad that I have yet again “taken over” a discussion.
There is a solution to this problem. The solution is to open the entire internet to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Then there will be hundreds or perhaps thousands of people saying all the same things that I say. No one will need to ask lots of questions because they will have had all their questions asked and answered many, many times. People will have access to all the information they need and they will decide for themselves what to believe and there will be no problem.
The problem today is that there are just not enough people advocating Valuation-Informed Indexing. So it shocks people when I advance perfectly natural and understandable claims like “the Old School SWR claims get the numbers wrong” or “the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies caused the economic crisis” or “we will likely see a price crash of 65 percent within the next year or two or three.”
There’s nothing odd or radical or extreme about these claims. They follow logically from an understanding of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. But they SOUND odd and radical and extreme to most people because they have never heard such claims before. The claims scare people because they have their retirement money invested pursuant to Buy-and-Hold principles. So these claims are always going to attract a lot of attention until we reach a point at which everyone has heard them and understands what is behind them.
To get to that place, we need to open every site to honest posting. There is no other way to get the job done.
I have been advocating this for 12 years now. Stop opposing me and support me instead and we can make this happen together. That’s the answer. If you don’t want people to be shocked when they hear research-based stuff, you need to stop supporting the Ban on Honest Posting. People are not shocked by claims they hear on a daily basis. Let’s work together to insure that every investor on the planet hears about Valuation-Informed Indexing on a daily basis and therefore no longer feels the tiniest bit of shock when these ideas are advanced at internet boards and blogs.
This came up just the other day. One of you Goons made a good point by saying that I wouldn’t be banned at any site if I limited myself to expressing these ideas only on rare occasions rather than on every thread at which they are relevant. I want to express them on every thread! That’s how we will all get to a point where no one will be shocking by the ideas. We all want that. You don’t want the discussions to be about me and I don’t want the discussions to be about me. Let’s get to work! Let’ get THOUSANDS of people talking about these ideas.
People need to be incentivized to advance these ideas. You Goons punished Wade Pfau for publishing honest research showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. Let’s take it in the other direction. Let’s applaud him for the research that he co-authored with me. Let’s award him a Noble prize. Let’s invite him to post honestly re what he really believes at the Bogleheads Forum. Let’s write threads about his e-mail to the authors of the Trinity study asking them to correct the errors in their study and ask the Trinity authors to respond.
Let’s change the world! For the better!
I’m ready to get started today.
Are you?
If you’re not, then stop complaining that I get so much attention when I put forward these ideas. The only reason why I am not sharing the attention with thousands of others is that you Goons have intimidated the thousands of others into silence. STOP DOING THAT!
Rob
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