Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on December 10, 2018, to Summer Anne Burton, author of an article titled PETA Is Right and All of You Need to Stop Revving a Dead Porsche.
Summer:
My name is Rob Bennett. I read your article titled “PETA Is Right and All of You Need to Stop Revving a Dead Porsche.” I eat meat. I have occasionally given a tiny bit of thought to not doing that. But I have never engaged in much effort in that direction. I strongly share your belief that “what we do to animals to achieve cheap meat at massive scale is wrong.” But I just wish that different practices were followed by the corporate farms (I of course understand that that would cost me some money). You are probably on to something when you say that this ambivalence — which is probably experienced by a lot of people other than me — “is why it’s so appealing to draw attention to vagans and animal activists who seem kooky, annoying and tone deaf — it’s a way of changing the subject and of keeping away the creeping feeling that you just might be on the wrong side of history.”
Somehow those words made me want to share with you my pet (ha!) ethical cause — the need to tell people about the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold investing strategy. Buy-and-Hold has been discredited by 37 years of peer-reviewed research. Wall Street continues to push it because there’s money in it and because it appeals to our human weakness for Get Rich Quick schemes. In the event that Nobel-Prize-Winning Economist Robert Shiller is right about how stock investing really works, the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold will probably cause another economic crisis, causing hundreds of thousands of businesses to fail and millions of people to be thrown out of work. It makes me sick that as a society we are permitting this to happen at a time when the knowledge needed to help so many people live better lives is so easily available to us. So I see at least a sliver of a parallel to the vegan issue (I admit that the issues do not seem at all similar on the surface).
Anyway I wanted to send you the attached article, which tells the story in some depth. If it pulls you in at all, please let me know and I will be thrilled to answer any questions that you might have. If it does not hold any interest, I of course understand (I have a hard enough time getting people who work in the field interested). Please know that I also sent the article to the “Tips” editors at Buzzfeed.
Please continue your good efforts re the vegan stuff. Perhaps someday you will wear me down. The odds are probably against you — but stranger things have happened in this mixed-up world.
Rob
PETA??? Really???
Maybe you can somehow link VII to 2-ply toilet paper.
You are obviously being sarcastic. But the point that you are making in your sarcastic tone is right on. Valuation-Informed Indexing is linked to everything. Absolutely everything.
The money that people have in their retirement accounts is what they have to show for decades of work in our economic system. People go to work each day knowing that there will come a time when they will not be able to do it anymore and so they put money aside into a retirement account to provide for that day. We show great disrespect to them if we lie to them about how much money they have in that account. Their futures depend on it. They cannot plan their futures effectively unless we talk straight with them.
The Buy-and-Holders have a theory as to how much money people have in their retirement accounts. The strategy was developed in the days before Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) peer-reviewed research. The popular idea at the time was that the market is efficient. If that were so, it would mean that the stock price is the product of millions of rational assessments of the value of the market. We would all be able to trust the numbers on our portfolio statements as reflecting something real and lasting. We would all be able to plan our futures effectively making use of the investment advice available today at hundreds of different discussion boards and blogs.
But what if Shiller’s research if legitimate research? What is Shiller merited that Nobel prize of his? What if the Yale Economics professor is on to something?
Shiller tells a very different story about the real value of portfolio statements. He says that the stock price is set by humans, who are emotional creatures. So, when prices are as insanely high as they are today, close to half of the amount purporting to be in a stock portfolio is really the product of irrational exuberance, nothing more. People who are misled into believing that those numbers reflect a real and lasting value are going to be hurt in very serious ways in days to come.
I believe that Shiller is on to something. And I care about the people who read my stuff. So I feel a need to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and re lots of other critically important investment-related topics. The Buy-and-Holders don’t want to learn how to pronounce the words “I” and “Was’ and “Wrong.” So they don’t like the idea of permitting me or anyone else to post honestly re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research at even a single board or blog. Yucko, you know? I call “foul!” But there’s not too much that I can do about for so long as prices remain at these insanely high levels. I think it would be fair to say that much at this point in the proceedings.
I love my country. That means that I believe in the goodness of my country. People support PETA out of the goodness inside them. So, yes, PETA supporters might well be drawn in time to support my cause of opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re safe withdrawal rates and lots of other critically important investment-related topics. I certainly plan to give it a try, in any event. I can do no more and I can do no less.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
I wish you the best of luck with it. I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
My best wishes to you, dear Goon friend.
2-Ply Rob
“Valuation-Informed Indexing is linked to everything. Absolutely everything.”
Wrong again, Sluggo.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But I obviously hold a different opinion.
When I am considering what to do with the hours of life given me, I obviously have to go by my opinion when making decisions. Yes?
You do not need to go by my opinion when making decisions as to what to do with your life. You’re not me.
But I sincerely believe that it is important to get the retirement planning numbers (and much else) right. I think it would be better not to have any investing boards than to have them and to ban honest posting on the past 38 years of peer-reviewed research at them. You will say that that’s a “strident” viewpoint or some such thing. But I don’t think so. I think it is common sense.
I wish you the best of luck in your life endeavors, Anonymous. But I cannot go down the path that you have chosen for yourself. I cannot do it. I care about the people who read my stuff and I feel an obligation to share with them my honest beliefs about any matters that I post on.
I am not a Buy-and-Holder. I am a Valuation-Informed Indexer. It would make me happy if that were okay with you. But if it is not, I just have to accept that reality. I cannot pretend to be something that I am not. That one’s a non-starter and it has been for 17 years now. I wish that I could say that I posted with complete honesty even prior to May 13, 2002. It shames me that I cannot say that. I know that I never want to go back to pretending that I believe that Greaney got the numbers right in his retirement study.
And I think that posting honestly re all the other topics that have come up over the past 17 years is a good idea too. If we were all thinking clearly, I don’t think there would be a single voice raised in dissent to the proposition that we all need to feel free to post honestly for any of our boards or blogs to serve any good purpose. I acknowledge that more than a single voice has been raised in dissent. But I have to observe that it scrambles my brain each time I try to get it around that one. Holy moly!
Your good friend,
Sluggo