“We Need to Have Everyone Speaking Up re the Process Issues If We Ever are As a Society Going to Make Complete Sense of the Substance Issues. No One Should Discount the Importance of Us All Working Up the Courage to Speak Up. We All Should Be Sticking Up for Each Other and Encouraging Each Other to Stand Up to You Goons.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Of course Bogle, like any ordinary person, would recommend getting a job and working if you haven’t saved enough for retirement.

Rob- you do seem to put in a lot of effort in avoiding work. What do you find so terrible about having to work a job in order to support your family?

If he felt confident that Buy-and-Hold can stand up to scrutiny, he would be fine with people advancing challenges to it. In fact, he would encourage that because that’s how we all learn.

Bogle encourages you Goons to engage in your harassment and abusiveness. Why?

It’s because he knows that Shiller’s findings cannot be reconciled with Fama’s findings (which are the foundation of the Buy-and-Hold strategy). If we have open discussion at every site on the internet, we are through the process of back-and-forth discussion going to learn who is right and which strategy will own the future. Bogle has grave doubts as to whether Buy-and-Hold will prevail. So he lets his name be used at a discussion board where you Goons control what can be said.

That tells us something important, Sammy. That’s the thing that needs to change for us all to move forward in our understanding. You ask me all the time whether the dominance of Buy-and-Hold is the result of a “conspiracy.” I have not seen any evidence of a conspiracy in the early days. Fama is a serious researcher; he was awarded a Nobel prize on the same day that Shiller was awarded one. But there is indeed a sort of conspiracy in place today. People who have doubts about Buy-and-Hold (we are very much a minority but there are far more of us than most Buy-and-Holders realize) are afraid to give voice to their doubts because when they have tried to do so they have seen how Buy-and-Holders react and they don’t want to see their careers destroyed.

That has to stop. And it won’t stop until you Goons are called out on your behavior. Not just by me. We need to have everyone speaking up re the process issues if we ever are as a society going to make complete sense of the substance issues. We need Bogle helping out. We need Bogle speaking up against the behavior he has seen from you Goons.

That’s the hard step. If he had spoken up in 1981, it would have been a lot easier. It gets harder for him with every day that passes. But it is only when Bogle and people like him speak up that we will all be able to move forward. There is no other way to get from the horrible place where we are today to the wonderful place where deep in our hearts we all want to be tomorrow. So no one should discount the importance of us all working up the courage to speak up. We all should be sticking up for each other and encouraging each other to stand up to you Goons.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, old friend.

Rob