“Is It a Conspiracy When People Drive Too Fast? Is It a Conspiracy When People Smoke? Is It a Conspiracy When People Gamble Money They Cannot Afford to Lose? Humans Are Self-Destructive in Many Ways. Thinking That Stock Returns That Were Generated By Irrational Exuberance Are Real Is Just One More Way. Following Buy-and-Hold Investment Strategies Is No More or Less a ‘Conspiracy’ Than Any of the Other Self-Destructive Behaviors to Which Humans Are Prone.”

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

There is obviously a big issue when all these people won’t talk to you.  As said before, i5 is a mass conspiracy or it is you.  There is no in-between.

I completely agree that there is a big issue. I have devoted 19 years of my life to solving the puzzle. So I clearly see it as being an important matter.

It can’t be me. Because I was right in what I said on May 13, 2002. It is as obvious as obvious can be that errors in retirement studies need to be corrected promptly. If we all were thinking clearly, there would not be one person who disagreed with that. There should not be any “controversy” re that question,

If you want to say that there is a conspiracy of ignorance, I could go along with that. We all are worried that we have not saved enough for retirement and, if Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, it turns out that the true and lasting value of our stock portfolios is 60 percent less than what we have been led to believe is the case. That’s scary. The difficulty that we all have coming to terms with that reality is the biggest thing going on. That’s not exactly a conspiracy in the way the word is usually used. But the vast majority of us have a strong emotional desire that this stuff be hushed up. And people who work in the field have to take that strong emotional desire into account when offering advice or they won’t be able to make a living in this field for long. So they are part of the “conspiracy” as well.

There was a day when we did not have a vaccine for polio. Would you say that there was a “conspiracy” in favor of polio at that time? I think that that would be an odd way to look at things. Well, until Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold, we did not know how important it was to encourage all investors to practice market timing. Now we know. At least intellectually. But our intellectual knowledge has not been able to help us much because we have such a strong emotional desire to tune out what the recent research says. Is the Get Rich Quick impulse that resides within all of us part of the “conspiracy”? I would sat that it is just part of being human. We certainly need to work harder to protect ourselves from it. But I do not see what is added by using the word “conspiracy.”?

Is it a conspiracy when people drive too fast? Is it a conspiracy when people smoke? Is it a conspiracy when people gamble money they cannot afford to lose? Humans are self-destructive in many ways. Thinking that stock returns that were generated by irrational exuberance are real is just one more way. Following Buy-and-Hold investment strategies is no more or less a “conspiracy” than any of the other self-destructive behaviors to which humans are prone.

My sincere take.

Rob