Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters”
You’re not sincere, and these matters are not important. If “opening every board and blog to honest posting” is so goll-durn important, why aren’t you doing anything about it? You haven’t even tried to post anywhere else in years. You’re still talking about 1999 as if it’s a current event. “All talk, no action” is the story of Rob Bennett.
(No, waiting for a crash is not doing something. It’s literally doing nothing.)
I’ve done more than anyone else alive, Anonymous. And it’s not a close call.
Doing this work is hard. Human beings are social animals. We want to be liked. It hurts to be rejected by others. And Shiller’s message is a message that most people very, very, very much want to reject. I am telling people who have a $100,000 stock portfolio that they really have $50,000 of lasting value. I am telling people who have a $500,000 stock portfolio that they really have $250,000 of lasting value. I am telling people who have a $1 million portfolio that they really have $500,000 of lasting value. How do you think that makes them feel? And how do you think it makes me feel when they reject me out of fear that what I am saying might really be so?
Knowing the realities of stock investing benefits each and every one of us in the long run. Once we open every site to honest posting on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research, we will in all likelihood never again experience an economic crisis. It is the huge loss of consumer buying power that we experience with stock crashes that cause economic crises. And it is the ban on honest posting that causes the bull markets that bring on stock crashes. Stock prices are self-regulating so long as all investors have access to honest, research-based reports on how stock investing works. And of course we will dramatically reduce the number of failed retirements once we permit honest posting on safe withdrawal rates. And people will be able to retire many years earlier. And on and on and on.
The advance from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance that we have ever seen in the history of personal finance. So this work is of huge importance. And there is no one alive who has worked it as hard as I have. Have I taken some hard emotional hits that have slowed me down? I have indeed. But I am still kicking. And I will be coming back strong in the days following the next price crash, when I will be working with my Buy-and-Hold friends to get the word out to millions of middle-class investors as to how this stuff really works and to get all the calculators fixed and to get hundreds of exciting new books published and to get hundreds of new blogs and discussion boards formed and on and on and on.
I offer no apologies. I wish that all of the emotional hits just bounced off me. I wish that I were Superman. But i’m not. So all that I can do is all that I can do. I can assure you that I have never done one smidgen less than all that I can do. And I am 100 percent confident that not one reasonable person will in the days following the next price crash look at the materials offered at this site and conclude differently.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
My best and warmest wishes to you, dear Goon friend.
All-Talk, No-Action Rob
The comment was present tense. You immediately shifted to past tense. The question was why are you doing nothing NOW? Your answer: “I have never done one smidgen less than all that I can do.” So right now, nothing is absolutely all you can do. You’re as helpless as a newborn babe in the snow.
You may not have noticed, but newborn babes in the snow generally aren’t rich and famous. And they have the excuse of being newborn. What’s your excuse for your helplessness?
We live in communities. The community in which I live has not offered the amount of help that I need to bring down Buy-and-Hold and replace it with Valuation-Informed Indexing. That’s my explanation for why I am not rich and famous today, for why I am instead a newborn babe in the snow.
Say that you were one of the women who was attacked by Bill Cosby. And say that you tried to do something about it when it happened. And that no one cared. He just kept committing his crimes because no one cared enough to take effective action. The world would be telling you that you were helpless, right? That’s the message that the world has been sending me for 16 years.
Now —
If the world sends you a message that you are helpless, should you give up on your efforts to do good?
In some circumstances, you should. If a woman who was attacked by Bill Cosby in 1965 made efforts to seek justice and received no help, I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her if she stopped making those efforts. And I wouldn’t blame someone who has made efforts to tell the world how stock investing really works if they ran into the sort of resistance that I have run into. We are all given only so many years of life and we have to make judgments as to how to employ those years of life energy. There’s a case for me saying after 16 years:”Oh, I gave this a good shot and it hasn’t yet paid off, I think I will direct my energies elsewhere.”
But there is also a good case — I think a much better case — for me soldiering on.
Bill Cosby wouldn’t be in prison today if a few of the women who he attacked did not eventually work up the courage to testify against him. They were no doubt afraid that the community of people around them would ignore them once again. But that’s not what happened this time. Cosby is now in prison. The community came through. It took a long time for that to happen. But it eventually happened. By continuing to fight the good fight, those women made the world a better place. Good for them, you know?
That’s what I expect to be able to do in time. The community of people around me has not helped me to the extent that I need it to help me to get the job done. But it has sure helped me in hundreds of very exciting ways. The research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is the most important research published in this field in 30 years. That research wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t made efforts to do the right thing without having certainty in advance as to what the payoff would be. My decision to do the right thing in the face of uncertainty as to what the payoff would be paid off big time in that case.
And that is of course not the only time that happened. There are hundreds of cases in which something similar happened. The catch-phrase that I use is that the good news here has been 50 times more good than the bad news here has been bad. I don’t deny the bad news. I don’t say that the community of people around me has done enough for us as a society to bring down Buy-and-Hold and replace it with Valuation-Informed Indexing. But I don’t deny the good news either. I try to let in both realities.
The fact that we as a people have enacted laws against financial fraud reveals what we think of the tactics employed by you Goons, Anonymous. If you Goons are so powerful, why don’t you get those laws repealed? You can’t do it. You are newborn babes in the snow in your own way. You are helpless in the face of a community of people not willing to help you out when it comes to getting the laws against financial fraud repealed.
Will I be able to get more people to help me out in the days following the next price crash? I sure think so. I am not the only person who loves this country. There are millions of us. We will all be working together in the days following the next crash to do good things.
You are the Bill Cosby of Investoworld. Not this boy, you know? The women who testified against Cosby did a good thing. They made the world a better place. We will see fewer cases of people behaving as he did as a result of their courage. Good for them.
I believe that I can make the world a better place by insisting on my right (and the right of all others) to post honestly re the implications of the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. So I am going to soldier on. I won’t ever make it to the other side of The Big Black Mountain without more help from the community of people around me than I have seen in the first 16 years of this, I believe that I will enjoy more help in the days following the next crash. I believe that we will all make it together to a better place and that the Bill Cosby’s of InvestoWorld will end up in prison cells.
We’ll see, you know? Me saying it doesn’t make it so. I have been wrong before. If it were happening again, I would probably be the last to know.
But that’s what I believe. I believe that as a society we are very close to making some amazing leaps forward in our understanding of how stock investing works in the real world. Good for us. And good for me for hanging in there despite some temporary setbacks on the road to that better place.
I wish you all good things, dear Goon friend.
Newborn Babe Rob
Your analogy is flawed, not to mention stupid, not to mention horribly insulting to sexual assault victims.
Cosby’s victims really did do all they could. You haven’t. You could create new accounts on every single board you were banned from TODAY. You could start writing your next book TODAY. You could start making a difference TODAY. No one is stopping you. You simply choose not to. As you should have realized by now, society doesn’t have much sympathy for someone who chooses to be a helpless victim.
I’m not willing to create new accounts.
If I did that, would I use my real name or not? If I used my real name, I would just be banned again. If I didn’t, I would essentially be lying. I would be appearing at a board that banned me under another name, knowing that I would be banned if I appeared under my true name. Huh? What the f?
I have done nothing to justify a ban. Not once. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have helped people. I have pointed out the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. People need to know about those errors. A failed retirement is a serious life setback.
I am happy to lend my efforts to any board that will have me and where I can help out. But I don’t approve of games-playing re these matters. I am Rob Bennett. I pointed out the error in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies in a post that I put to the Motley Fool board on early retirement on the morning of May 13, 2002. The post generated a huge reaction, some insanely positive and some insanely negative. I am happy to answer any questions that anyone has, both those advanced by my supporters and those advanced by my critics. But I am not interested in pretending to be someone other than who I am. I am the fellow who put forward that famous post, I am proud of it, and I see no reason to make an effort to appear anywhere under another name.
I hope that helps a small bit, my dear Goon friend.
The True Rob Bennett (and No One Else)
“I’m not willing to create new accounts.”
Then you’re not doing everything you could. You’re like crazy Cousin Eddie, still broke and unemployed after all these years because he’s holding out for a management position.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Cousin Eddie