“The Moment in Which I Pushed the “Send” Button on That Famous Post of the Morning of May 13, 2002, Was My Finest Moment in the 62 Years in Which I Have Been Walking Planet Earth. All of the Learning Experiences That We Have Enjoyed Together Over the Past 17 Years Had Their Origins in That Single Moment of Personal Courage and Honesty and Good Will Toward My Fellow Community Members.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted in response to another blog entry at this site:

I guess Shiller is going to prison as well, right?

We will decide as a society who goes to prison and who does not.

I doubt very much that Shiller will be in the group that will be going to prison. But I am highly confident that Shiller will be expressing regret that he did not speak up re lots of critically important investment-related topics in a clear and firm and simple and bold way.

Harvey Weinstein will probably be going to prison for crimes he committed that have been brought to light as a result of the Me Too movement. Many people have noted that it is virtually impossible that Meryl Streep did not have some suspicions about Weinstein’s behavior for years before he was publicly exposed. Yet she referred to him as a “God” in those days. Streep is not going to prison. But I think it would be fair to say that she today feels regret that she did not come forward with her suspicions at a time when she could have done a huge amount of good for many people by doing so.

We will work it out, Anonymous. We will not work it out by living in fear of what you Goons will do to us if we post honestly. We will work it out by working up the courage to stand up to you and to say what we truly believe about how stock investing works, just as we do in our discussions of hundreds of other important topics.

Intimidation tactics ain’t the way. Each time one of you Goons advances an intimidation post, I feel that much more confident that I was wrong to keep quiet about what I knew about safe withdrawal rates from May 1999 through May 2002 and that I was right to work up the courage to begin posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics on the morning of May 13, 2002. The moment in which I pushed the “Send” button on that famous post was my finest moment in the 62 years in which I have been walking Planet Earth. All of the learning experiences that we have enjoyed together over the past 17 years had their origins in that single moment of personal courage and honesty and good will toward my fellow community members.

Yes?

Rob