“There’s No Point in Putting Things for Sale in a Store If There Are People Standing at the Front Door Threatening to Murder Anyone Who Dares to Enter and Ask Questions About the Goods That They Are Thinking of Buying. The First Step to Getting to a Good Place Is Applying the Same Laws That Apply in Every Field Other Than the Investment Advice Field in the Investment Advice Field as Well.”

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

Let’s look at this yet another way. You have this website and you have your weekly column on ValueWalk. Neither one generates any material income, despite your ability to post anything you want. Further, you don’t sell any products on this website. Why? Therefore, if you are merely regurgitating the same stuff elsewhere, what’s different for you that suddenly generates an income? What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? How much are you charging? It’s like opening up a store, but you have nothing on the shelf.

There’s no point in putting things for sale in a store if there are people standing at the front door threatening to murder anyone who dares to enter and ask questions about the goods that they are thinking of buying. The first step to getting to a good place is applying the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well.

It’s all downhill sledding from there. There are mountains and mountains of money to be made telling people the straight story about stock investing. Not just by me. By thousands of people. If there is one thing that we have learned from the first 20 years of The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate, it’s that most people who work in this field are positively longing for the day when they will be able to offer honest investment advice without putting their careers or the lives of their loved ones in jeopardy by doing so.

I think we are all going to make it safely to the other side of The Big Black Mountain in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, Anonymous. I have seen two many brave and smart and kind people putting their lives and their careers on the line to believe otherwise. We need more of that to break through. If we are a good people, we will see more of it following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I believe that we are fundamentally a good people. We wouldn’t have seen thousands of people express a desire that honest posting be permitted if that were not so.

Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is hanging on by a thread. The criminal behavior is a sign of desperation. There’s no other possible explanation for it.

Rob