There have been several occasions on which the Greaney Goons have invaded this site and tried to bring the discussions held here into the sewer to which they have pulled discussions held at a number of our Retire Early discussions boards. My reaction? I deleted the posts. In several instances, I banned the posters involved from further participation here.
David Forrest has banned honest posting on safe withdrawal rates at the Motley Fool site. Bill Sholar has banned honest posting on safe withdrawal rates at the Early Retirement Forum. ES has banned honest posting on safe withdrawal rates at the NoFeeBoards.com site. There’s a sense in which you could say that Forrest, Sholar and ES are on one side of a battle, and that I am on the other (I often argue that honest posting should be permitted at our boards). There’s another sense, though, in which you could say that the four of us are all doing much the same thing.
Why is it that I banned abusive posting at this site? I fear it. I’ve seen the damage that abusive posting has done to a number of Retire Early boards, and I don’t want to see it do that sort of damage to this place. So I took action against it. I banned what I feared.
Why is it that Forrest, Sholar and ES banned honest posting on safe withdrawal rates at their sites? They fear it. They’ve seen the damage that abusive posting has done to their sites, and they are not able to bring themselves to exercise their responsibilities reasonably by banning the posters who engaged in the abusive posting. They saw that it was honest posting on safe withdrawal rates that was upsetting the abusive posters. So they came to fear honest posting and took action against it. They banned what they feared.
I’m different from Forrest, Sholar and ES in that I believe that our community is strong enough and smart enough and good enough to overcome the hell it has been put through by the Goons. Forrest, Sholar and ES patronize us by concluding that we are just not a mature enough people to accept that action needs to be taken against community members who we once respected but who turned against us in pursuit of their personal agendas. The differences between us are real.
That said, the core motivations for our actions are similar. The core motivation for both sorts of responses to the abusive posting problem is fear. We ban what we fear.
How is it that several people who we think of as leaders in our community have come to fear honest posting on the safe withdrawal rate question? It didn’t happen because most community members came to think of the question of what the historical stock-return data says about the effect of valuations on long-term stock returns as a trivial matter. It happened because most community members came to think of the question of what the historical stock-return data says about the effect of valuations on long-term stock returns as a significant matter indeed.
It’s not just common sense that tells us that valuations matter. It’s not just the testimony of a good number of the best-informed investing experts in the world that tells us that valuations matter. It’s not just a reasoned examination of the historical data that tells us that valuations matter. The bans on honest posting tell us this too. The behavior of our fellow community members when the topic is brought to the table tells us this. The failure of nerve of our leaders tell us this.
People reveal themselves through their participation on discussion boards. Not always in the ways they intend. They reveal themselves by showing us what upsets them. They reveal themselves by showing us what sorts of tactics they are willing to employ to make their case. They reveal themselves by showing us what sorts of tactics they are willing to tolerate from others and how the personal discomfort they experience during discussions of particular topics causes them to change their usual views on abusive posting when discussions of those particular topics are commanding the attention of their fellow community members.
We ban what we fear. I fear abusive posting. But I sure don’t fear honest reports of what the historical data says about the effect of valuations on long-term stock returns. How about you?
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