Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
There’s a point that I need to add that did not hit my brain until a moment after I pushed the “send” button.
It is our need as a society for better answers to this sort of question that compels me to soldier on re these matters. We all should want to see the studies that could be produced re this question if every academic researcher alive today felt free to do honest work in this field. No researcher should feel intimidated re performing ANY research whatsoever. We all lose when researchers are afraid to research certain questions. I want to see this sort of research go forward. Not just one study either. I would like to see dueling studies. Let’s have a Buy-and-Holder do a study and then have a Valuation-Informed Indexer do a counter-study and then on and on and on until we are all exhausted with our studies of the question.
What’s the freakin’ downside? That’s a win/win/win/win. That’s what our discussion boards and blogs were created to do. That’s why we have people like Wade Pfau spend years in school learning how to do competent research. We want them looking at questions like this because we all live better lives when we become empowered by their research to form better informed views re questions like this.
I feel this so strongly. This is what drives me. I believe that God put me on earth to make the case for opening up this field to honest research because it is so important that we all get on the same page re this one. This is not a case where the Buy-and-Holders have to win or lose and the Valuation-Informed Indexers need to win or lose. Everybody wins when this kind of research goes forward. Learning Together is the proverbial free lunch. It is because I believe so strongly in the Learning Together concept that I built that Retire Early board into the #1 most successful board in the history of the Motley Fool site. This stuff matters. Big time.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, in any event.
This is the sort of question that I live for, Anonymous. Thanks for getting my blood going so early this Wednesday morning. Yowsa!
My meds! Where are those darn meds?!
Rob
Anonymous says
What did god put us goons on earth for? Are we mere tests along your divinely preordained path?
Rob says
You’re going to have to ask The Big Guy (and I don’t mean Bogle!) that one, Anonymous.
I have heard that He has been known to work in mysterious ways.
If I were to go back to my catechism from grade-school days, it would say that you are helping me suffer for my sins before I die so that I will not need to burn as long in Purgatory.
I must have been a very, very bad boy somewhere along the line!
Rob