Set forth below is the text of an e-mail from Jackie (owner of the The Debt Stuff blog) to me dated October 14, 2014, followed by my response:

Some of my (unasked for) thoughts:

– I think you could really benefit from an editor to make sure you aren’t focusing on the past but instead are getting your actual message across
– I think a simpler tone (like what I posted from your emails vs. the tone of what you originally sent me) is more readable
– Shorter paragraphs are more scanable.
– Shorter comment responses make you look helpful vs. over-doing it (Most people don’t respond to comments with multiple paragraphs; that gets overwhelming)

As a side note, your message reminded me a little of what http://dropdeadmoney.com/ talks about.

Jackie:

Your comments are 100 percent welcomed. I will also pledge to read yours over again several times and to try to let the message get past my protective radar.

The last comment (re overdoing it) is the one that hits home the most.

I once wrote a guest blog at Miranda Marquit’s blog that told a story about me that I think is funny today only because I have distance from it. Basically, I had a crush on a girl when I was in my 20s and it was clear that she liked me but it was also clear that she didn’t want to get more involved and it was driving me crazy for a long time. Eventually, she broke down and told me that I was “too intense.” I never would have come up with that one because in my mind intense is the best thing that a  person can be!

I wrote only about saving strategies for several years and I was universally loved. I was the same person! It’s just that then I was being intense about a different  subject, one that did not upset people. The name of my book about saving is “Passion Saving.” I don’t think that’s an accident. When people used to praise me, the common thread was that “he’s passionate about the subject.”

I care deeply about helping people. I saved like a crazy man for nine years because I couldn’t bear to do work that I did not love, no matter how much money I made doing it. It’s not my intent here to brag. I am saying that it is my nature to be intense. In some circumstances people love that trait and in some circumstances people hate it.

I am not sure that I am capable of being non-intense. There are circumstances in which one needs to pull in the reins to be effective, and, if that’s the way it is here, I need to work harder at doing that. But it really is something deep in my nature that drives that behavior. I don’t know how effective I can be if I deny my nature.

It may well be that the intensity has hurt me in many cases. I think there is a good bit of evidence that that is indeed so. But the other side of the story is that it has led me to good places on other occasions. I really do have my name on peer-reviewed research that I believe will be featured on the front page of the New York Times one day. That’s a pretty darn amazing reality given that I never studied investing in school. That happened because Wade Pfau contacted me because of my posts at the Bogleheads Forum. It didn’t bother Wade that I was banned for writing those posts. He saw merit in them and wanted to perform research that would show whether I was right or not.

I am hearing. I know that I am offering some pushback. But I am also at least TRYING to listen. We all have a hard time listening to messages that say we have long been doing something wrong in an important way.

I AM intense. There is no question that that is a reality. I am friendly and polite and warm. But I am intense and determined. And there is no question whatsoever but that that turns a good number of people off in my discussions with them. It makes the Goons go positively mad. But it causes at least some unease on the part of lots of people who are not at all goonish in their behavior.

I would be happy to rein it in if I believed that that would bring good results for everyone. But it amazes me that Shiller’s research has been out there for 33 years now and very few people have explored the implications of it in any great depth. I didn’t know that when this started. When the Goons started attacking me, I looked around for friendly sites and found that there was not at that time one site on the internet exploring the  implications of Shiller’s ideas in depth (now my site is the one site that does that).

Think about Wade Pfau, the researcher who contacted me to work with him. He told me that he was learning new things from me on an almost daily basis. And he has a Ph.D. in Economics! It should not have been possible for someone like me to teach Wade anything. But I taught him lots of very important things, according to what he told me in the hundreds of e-mails we exchanged.

I see that as evidence that my intensity can be a positive in some circumstances. I  could have folded up when the Goons attacked me and I never would have learned these things myself. I didn’t. I dug and dug and dug and dug. And I learned and learned and learned and learned. That’s what gives my work value, in my assessment. That’s the good side of my intensity.

The bad side of it is that it may turn some people off. I need to deal with that if that really  is so (and I think there is a good bit of evidence that you are right on this point). I am not dismissing what you are saying. I am struggling with the puzzle of how to be intense when that is a good thing to be and to be more reserved when that is the better thing. The intense person is inclined to see the good in intensity and not the bad, even though seeing only the good may hurt him in some ways.

It’s very hard for me to write short responses. When I detect that someone has an interest in the ideas, I want to share EVERYTHING. Sometimes I write an absurdly long response and people complain about it and they don’t realize that I cut it in half before posting it because I didn’t want to upset people by going on too long. That really happens! There was one woman at Motley Fool who put up a thread about me that she called “Death by Verbosity.” So you are pointing to something real. I acknowledge that.

My challenge is to retain the good that comes from caring deeply without scaring people or turning them off. It’s my problem, not yours. I am grateful to you for trying to help. I am not agreeing 100 percent because I feel that I see good that comes from the intensity too. I don’t feel that I can apologize for caring so much. But my ultimate goal is to get the message out and, if you point me in a direction that makes me more effective in getting the message out, you are doing me a big favor.

Thanks for trying to break through my super-strong defenses!

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail sent to me by Ken Evoy, owner of the SiteSell web hosting company, on April 16, 2014:

Hi Rob,

I think you’d be perfect for this! How much time could you spend on it? If this happens, we can talk more about it at the time.

You emailed 30,000 people on SSRN?! Individually? Wow!

Re the academic, Wade sounds like he’d fill the bill. It’s Momentum-based, pushed in interesting directions. If he’s interested in getting involved, please let me know. If not, don’t waste time contacting anyone else, not until/if I feel we have a product.

And re the rest of your letter, we’re on pretty much the same page. I can see several possible ways to enable folks to get better-than-passive returns without having to do what I’m doing (and that’s IF this works).

This part of it, very few could do it well. But we can turn what works into simplified models that pretty much guarantees they get similar results without forcing folks to do exactly the same thing with the same EFTS.

Anyway, it’s still hazy. My first priority is to wrap up Phase 1 of this research and put a model into play. I have a former fund manager who’ll sanity-test it. If Wade is interested at that time, so much the better.

Or if he wants to communicate with me before then, we could talk any time during the next few weeks.

No need to go further than that for now. We’d only turn this into a product when we’re sure that we’re doing something that works and is better than anything else out there. For that, I need third party verification.

All the best,
Ken

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on November 7, 2013:

Jaime:

Thanks for being honest. That is 100 percent appropriate and helpful.

Thanks also for the report on what the millionaires said. What I told my family when I
got back from the conference is that “I wish I knew what people who heard the talk
were thinking after they heard it.” Your group isn’t everyone. But my guess is that
their views are widely held. So you have told me something valuable.

I agree 100 percent that letting the haters into the story turns the story into a negative one.
LOTS of people I respect have told me what you are telling me. I still respect them.
I believe that they are right about the general rule. I don’t believe that the general rule
applies in this case.

I DON’T think the talk was filled with bitterness. I intentionally chose images that were
playful to avoid giving the talk a bitter feel. But I know from the reactions I get that
the millionaires are giving voice to what they truly feel. People HEAR bitterness.
But I am going out of my way not to project it (while still reporting on the essential
elements of the story that must be told).

I agree 100 percent that the haters will join my side somewhere down the road.
I ALWAYS work to get us all to that place. I PRAISE the haters to the skies.
I say that Jack Bogle is my hero. He is. I say that the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers
have been responsible for huge advances in our understanding. They have been.
I say that I want to work with these people. I do. I say that I consider these people
my friends. I do.

The hate comes all from one side, Jaime.

I REPORT on the hate. I certainly don’t dispute that part. But reporting on hate
is not the same thing as ENGAGING in hate. I report on the hate with the aim of
bringing the hate to an end. In ordinary circumstances, we ALL would be united
in saying that the hate should be brought to an end. Every board and blog on
the internet has rules for dealing with this sort of problem. This is the only case
I know of where a large number of the people participating at the boards and blogs
have elected not to seek enforcement of those rules.

Please understand that Shiller did not publish his findings last week. He published
them 32 YEARS ago.

Is it not an amazing fact that the findings were published 32 years ago and
Wade Pfau, who holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton, had never thought
through a number of fairly obvious IMPLICATIONS of those findings? I worked with
Wade for 16 months. He told me over and over again how AMAZED he was when
he found that the 140 years of data available to us backs up everything I have been
saying for 11 years now. He couldn’t get over it. He kept asking himself: “Am I missing
something? Why wasn’t the research that Rob and I are doing today done many years
ago?”

Now he knows.

The reason why research on the implications of Shiller’s findings hasn’t been done
for 32 years is that the researchers who see why it needs to be done are AFRAID
to do it. If they publish the research we all need to see, they will be hated as much as
I am. And, if they ask that something be done about the torrent of hate directed at
them for publishing accurate and honest research, they will be called haters themselves
for having called attention to the hate directed at them by others.

To understand this, you need to go outside the world of investing and see how the
same general phenomenon has played out in other areas.

I was watching an old episode of “Mad Men” a few weeks ago and I laughed when
I saw the phenomenon play out on that show. The heads of a tobacco company were
talking about how to respond to an article in Reader’s Digest that reported on research
showing that smoking causes cancer. The conclusion was — We don’t need to respond
with any logic, our customers already WANT to smoke, all we need to do is to provide
them some silly excuse to continue doing what they want to do and they will do it.

So they came up with this slogan saying “Luckies — They’re Toasted!” ALL cigarettes
are toasted. The slogan is meaningless. But the fellow who wants to smoke and whose
conscience is bothering him because he suspects that the research is getting at something
real now feels better. HIS brand is toasted! So he is okay.

The killer is that the executives who were coming up with the trickery were smoking
while they were doing it! They weren’t just killing millions of others. They were killing
themselves at the same time! They believed their own marketing garbage.

That’s Buy-and-Hold.

That’s the story here.

People hate me because I am holding a mirror up to them and urging them to face
the fears that they carry around inside their heads. I don’t use force. I am 100 percent
friendly. But I don’t go along with the b.s. either. I insist on recognition of my rights.
I afford the Buy-and-Holders no easy way out, no way to pretend that there is not 32 years
of research showing that their “strategy” never works in the long run.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. Buy-and-Hold is the past. You have to believe
that and to understand why it is the case to be able to help me. Watering down the message
is not the answer. The message has to be potent to prevail over the powerful forces lined
up against its transmission.

There are changes in the way I transmit the message that could be made. I am obviously
not perfect. It could be that different ways of saying things would be more effective.
But I cannot ever apologize for telling people the truth (according to 32 years of peer-reviewed
research) about stock investing. And I have to have some answer to the obvious
question. If there really is 32 years of research showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing
is so wonderful, why doesn’t everyone know about it already?

Few know about it because no one prior to me was willing to take on the haters.
If this is every going to go mainstream, someone needs to do that. If we are going
to persuade people to quit smoking, we need to say clearly that it causes cancer
and that cancer is bad, bad stuff. We beat cancer by saying it is awful and that smoking
causes it. We beat Get Rich Quick investing by saying it is awful and that believing in
Buy-and-Hold principles causes it. There is no other way to get from the horrible place
where we all are today to the wonderful place where deep in our hearts we all want to be tomorrow.

The fact that following Buy-and-Hold strategies makes people so intensely emotional is the reason why it doesn’t ever work. I am saying that the primary goal of investment advice should be to make people
LESS emotional. Buy-and-Hold makes people more emotional than any other strategy. That
aspect of the question MUST be addressed. Avoiding emotion to the extent possible is the key
to long-term success, according to the last three decades of research.

I definitely respect you and I definitely like you. I am obviously not happy to hear what those
millionaires said. But I NEED to hear what you told me. I need to win them over. I believe that
their views will change following the next price crash. I believe that I will be in an amazing spot
then because I will have the only site on the internet that explores all the stuff that today
is being called “hate” but that I believe in the future will be called “the stuff you need to look at to avoid
the #1 pitfall in investing — becoming so emotional about pretend gains that you become
defensive when people report on what the research says.”

I FULLY understand if you do not care to go forward. I don’t regret exploring the possibility
because I have learned from our interactions.

You may have run into Joe Taxpayer at the conference. We have been having one of
those insane discussions (insanely great and insanely awful in about equal portions)
at his blog for the last day or two. My guess is that both “sides”
read the words and draw opposite conclusions as to where the hate is coming from.

Good Bye St Louis

Thank you again for being blunt about things. That’s what is great about you. I wish you
every possible success and will take joy in hearing about them (as I know I will).

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail sent to me by Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on November 7, 2013:

Hi Rob!

So I’m going to be completely honest here. If thats ok! (If not, stop reading! 😉

I think you need to let go of the attacks. I think it makes the story a negative one instead of a positive one. Yes- there are haters, but we can’t let the haters get into the story.

I saw your speech at ignite. I was sitting with a few millionaires, and their reaction was that you were very bitter about this. They didn’t understand why you were talking about the haters so much.

I know you are starting a movement – and a movement has haters. (just look at politics!) But they don’t need to be a part of the story in my opinion. (they are a product of the movement – and hopefully one day they will see the light and join your side!)

Does that make sense?
🙂

Hope you have an amazing day Rob. I know you are passionate about what you do- your persistence in the face of everything is inspiring!

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on November 4, 2013:

Jaime:

The same Goons are still doing the same things. I don’t go to other sites as often as I once did because I have seen the same dynamic play out so many times. But, when I do, they do all the same things and generally obtain the same results.

Part of what you are saying makes sense to me and part does not.

I agree 100 percent that people listen only to people they LIKE. The negativity is POISON and it hurts me in very serious ways. I am in favor of having more videos and of doing more to have my site visitors identify with me as a person. All of that is 100 percent right on, in my assessment.

I don’t agree with the part about forgetting the attacks. The attacks are a huge part of the story that needs to be told. Valuation-Informed Indexing is so far superior to Buy-and-Hold that the two are not in the same universe. So there has to be some explanation why for 32 years people have ignored what the research says. The explanation is that Buy-and-Hold has emotional appeal and the attacks demonstrate how emotional Buy-and-Hold makes people.

I believe that the big change will come when we have the next stock crash. I believe that people are then going to turn on the Buy-and-Holders. They are going to be looking for someone to blame for their troubles and the Buy-and-Holders will be the obvious choices.

My role is to pull everyone together. I will have a level of credibility that no one else will have because I have been talking about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold publicly for 11 years. I see that changing from a detriment to a benefit when Buy-and-Hold fails in a concrete way rather than just in a theoretical way. I will be able to say following the next crash that the losses that people have suffered show the benefits of HONEST investing advice and that I am the  only one out there who possessed the integrity and courage to be fully honest on a whole host of important issues.

Here is a post about a woman who gets the “vision” that I have re this matter:

Carol Osler, Program Director for the Lemberg Masters in International Economics and Finance at the Brandeis International Business School: “I Certainly Have Seen the Academic Profession in Action Squelching Unfashionable Ideas….My Other Suggestion Is to Tone Down Your Rhetoric (‘Goons,’ Etc.). Prose Like That Almost Always Backfires.”

 

She points out that Kuhn (who wrote “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”) “shows how pathbreaking scientific ideas are rejected at first, usually for decades.” That is what is happening here and there is strong reason to believe that the days of rejection for Shiller’s ideas are close to coming to an end.

I of course do not enjoy the attacks. But the attacks point to a huge opportunity. The attacks show that Shiller is RIGHT (people do not attack when they have confidence in their position). And Shiller’s model changes EVERYTHING we think we know today about how stock investing works. Once Shiller’s ideas catch on (and we have already seen a big move in the right direction since the first crash), we will be seeing THOUSANDS of new millionaires in this field. I want to be one of them and I want to help lots of others become others of them. I intend to earn my millions doing good and important work.

I undertand that not everyone who tries something like this succeeds. All that I can say is that I am a VERY cautious person and that I have checked for every possible hole in the plan and I have not found any. I AM going to make changes in the site with the aim of bringing out my personality. But I am more inclined to playing UP the attacks than to playing them down. I titled my Ignite presentation “How to Become the Most Hated Blogger on the Internet.” I could see doing more of that sort of thing, letting people know right up front that they get honesty from me and that I have paid a price for that honesty and that they can take it or leave it (those who take it will of course be good customers).

I think this is a winning message, so I don;t want to water it down. I want to promote myself as “The One Investing Advisor Who Will Not Compromise on Issues of Integrity.” I’ve EARNED that designation and I want to cash in on what I have earned with 11 years of difficult work.

The reason I approach you is that you are strongest where I am weakest. I need to approach big names and persuade one to endorse my work. I have been successful in doing this in a limited number of cases. I had a researcher agree to spend 8 years of his life researching my stuff. That was a big win. I persuaded another researcher to publish research he co-aurthored with me in a peer-reviewed journal. That was another biggie. And I have had people like Mr. Money Mustache say that he agrees with my ideas but that he doesn’t want to put his name on them because of the attacks. He COULD change that view just enough for me to be a big hit. Or someone else as big as Mr. Money Mustache might come to see the opportunity in this (which I think is huge — we are talking about rewriting ALL the rules of investing)
and do for me what Mr. Money Mustache elected not to do. I on occasion force myself to go up to big names and ask for their help. But I think I need to do a LOT more of that. My sense is that doing that comes a lot easier to you and that you might be able to help me see  how to proceed re that side of things.

My question to you is whether you see any possibilities. What I need is someone either to connect me to big names or to point me to big names that I did not think of pursuing and possibly to give me some advice on how to proceed so as to win them over.

I am grateful for the thoughts you have offered in any event. You will not hurt my feelings if you respond with a gentle “no.” I approached you because I thought that it was POSSIBLE that you possess the skills needed to make the key turn. I am not trying to say that I know for sure that our working together is a good idea. I saw something in you that I lack and thought that I should make an effort to see if it would be a good idea for us to work together.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail sent to me by Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on November 4, 2013:

This does provide a summary for sure 🙂 Though most of them are from years ago – are the same goons still around doing things? Or have you given up going to other sites now since you are banned at others?

I would challenge you to forget the past on all of this.

Because everything comes back to the negativity and talking about your story.

I don’t think we should focus on that at all.

I would first really hone in on your target market (one that doesn’t include the goons of course!)
If it’s a general average guy- maybe you do guest posts where you do a generic post on a site like GetRichSlowly and then compel them to come to your site.

I would go through your site- and redo it (which I know you are already working on!) make sure it would be as transparent as possible. Get more video content on your site, and have people identify with YOU as a person.

THEN I would bring out the info.

They need to know, like and trust YOU before you can throw the information at them.

Otherwise they distrust YOU, since your view is so contrarian.

So I’d walk you through that process:
1. target exactly WHO (and figure out where they are)
2. Set the foundation on your site to get people to trust YOU
3. Soft sell off your site to get people to come in
4. Then slowly introduce the concepts that are contrarian.

Does all that make sense?

🙂

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail sent to me by Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on October 29, 2013:

So on what grounds can the haters sue a site for publishing a post of yours? Also why the aim on women? Just curious since it’s a very data driven point that you are trying to make and many women aren’t driven by data (I am, but most are not!)

I think there is a disconnect (as I think you know!) between your site, and YOU. You are very friendly and approachable, and almost unbiased (even though you have a bent of course!) but I don’t get that from the site.

Can you send me some of the specific guest posts you have had so I can see an example?
I mean, I’ve seen haters, but not this much as you say, I’d love to wrap my head around it a bit more!

I think rebranding, and maybe even using video to portray you more is extremely important.
And the traffic and conversion strategy might be different because of the haters, but maybe not! I’d have to see some examples to really know for certain.

Does that make sense?

I’d also love to figure out what the main goals are – if it’s to generate revenue, like I said before you don’t need a TON of people if you want to coach a handful of them. (and if Todd is saying similar things and not having this level of hate, that’s good to know too!!)

Cast is off! Walking cast is on, even though I’m not actually walking without crutches yet!
A pain still, but getting better!

Warmest,
-Jaime

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on October 25, 2013:

Jaime:

It’s nice to hear from you. Yes, that makes sense.

The average person believes that valuations matter. Almost everyone agrees with me on the principle. But the average person does not think it is even remotely possible that valuations matter as much
as I say they do. My belief is that the reason why is that they have never run the numbers. I didn’t believe that valuations could matter that much either before I did the math.

When I wrote my May 13, 2002, post questioning the safe withdrawal rate number, the Buy-and-Holders were saying that the SWR is 4 percent. I said I thought that valuations would have pushed it lower but I did not know how low. Someone asked me to guess and I said that I thought it was perhaps 3 percent. Then I joined up with John Walter Russell (an engineer with statistics training). He showed that the SWR in January 2000 was 1.6 percent. This is a shocking number. An asset class that provided zero growth would provide an SWR of 3.3 percent. I think that the problem is that Buy-and-Hold taught us not to pay attention to valuations, so the problem just kept getting worse and worse. It is similar to what happens to people who don’t have a budget. They end up deep in debt and cannot understand why. You need to keep track or things get out of hand over time.

Yes, I have been able to convince others and that goes back to the very first day. Hundreds of people at Motley Fool said in 2002 that the discussion I started was the best we ever had there. And that
remains true today when I do guest blog entries at large sites — I usually get a number of people who say highly positive things. I have never lacked for positive feedback. The problem is that the
intensity of the Haters is 50 times greater than that of the Normals. The Normals would like to participate in or hear the discussion. But they have close to zero tolerance for the angry, nasty stuff. And
I have never found a site administrator willing to take effective action against the Haters. So the Haters always win. The most extreme case was when I had a guest blog for a site where the owner said
I was exactly what he was looking for — he liked controversial stuff. The Haters threatened to sue him and he folded.

The site is going through a redesign. The logo that I have at the top of the page on the left-hand side is intended to reflect my view of the positioning/branding of the site. The colors are a bit on the
feminine side. I believe that I appeal more to women than to men. The color and design are certainly not stuffy (in contrast to many personal finance sites). I am trying to convey an impression that “this place is informal and non-intimidating,” that I don’t use jargon and that I keep things simple. The slogan used (and the tons of material provided) is intended to convey intensity. I am informal but I am hard-working. I see myself as an advocate of the average middle-class person. My writing certainly conveys idealism. I very much want to convey friendliness, which is naturally a part of my persona. I worry that the conflict that surrounds discussions of Valuation-Informed Indexing subtracts from the feeling of friendliness. But I see myself as a friendly REPORTER and I feel that reporters cannot be ONLY friendly — they must also be fighters and have the courage to stand up to power. So I have regretfully accepted that the site does not have as much of a friendly feeling as I very much want it to have. The writing is heavy on consideration of emotional factors.

I am a believer in Behavioral Finance. That is the innovation here. Even the stuff that discusses negative (non-friendly) factors discuss EMOTIONS. One of the problems in personal finance is that people try
to reduce it to numbers and leave out emotions. I take it in the other direction in a big way. Emotional stuff is common in many other fields (discussion of movies or politics or health). The intensely emotional
stuff that I discuss is Taboo in the personal finance field today.

Please just reply when there is time. Good luck with the cast removal!

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Then under what circumstance would finally lead you to conclude that you, in fact, are wrong? If (as I suspect) you can’t answer that, then saying “it’s possible that I am wrong” is nothing but false humility.

I would need to see peer-reviewed research supporting the idea that there is no need for investors to practice price discipline when buying stocks. That is, research showing that staying at the same stock allocation at all times can work in the long term.

It never has. Not once in 145 years. I find it impossible to believe that that’s a coincidence. In a theoretical sense, anything is possible. It might be that the moon really is made of green cheese. But that seems so remote a possibility that I cannot imagine putting my name to a statement saying that that is so. I would need to see some sort of scientific evidence to believe that the moon is truly made of green cheese. There’s a lot of intellectual resistance to overcome there. That’s how I feel about Buy-and-Hold. I find the idea that price discipline is not required to be preposterous, insanely far-fetched. But if I saw scientific evidence, that could bring me around.

When I say that I could be wrong, it’s not false humility, it’s a position that I have come to as the result of life experience. There was a thing that happened a number of months back with my boy Timothy. We were playing a card game (Dominion) and a question re the application of an obscure rule came up. Neither of us wanted to stop in the middle of the game to check the rulebook but we both were sure of our positions. He agreed to go with what I believed and then we checked the rulebook after the game. It turned out that his understanding of the rule was the proper one. I was amazed. I had been sure that I was right. But I wasn’t. That left an impression on me.

That sort of thing of course happens all the time with all of us. Humans are vulnerable creatures. We are inclined to have too much confidence in our beliefs because it is scary to not be sure about things that are more important to us than the rules for card games. How many people get divorced? They build their entire lives around their love for this one particular person. They bring children into the world with that person. They move to a different part of the country to make that person happy. They take on financial obligations that they would never dream of taking on but for their love of that person. And then they wake up one day to conclude that the person was not the person they thought he or she was. How could they be proven wrong about a matter so important to them, about a matter re which they were so sure?

It happens. Humans get things wrong all the time. Our political system and our economic system were built with an understanding of this reality in mind. Our systems are built so that mistakes can in time be discovered and corrected. This is why our systems are so dynamic, it is why our way of life is in many ways superior to the ways of life delivered by less open and less flexible systems. I love my country. I love the dynamism of our political and economic systems.

It’s important that we get our understanding of how stock investing works right. A lot is riding on it. Paradoxically, it is because these matters are so important that the Buy-and-Holders are so reluctant to acknowledge the mistake that the peer-reviewed research in this field revealed 35 years ago. The Buy-and-Holders cannot bear to acknowledge that the mistake that they made 50 years ago has destroyed millions of lives. They intended to help people and instead they destroyed millions of lives. They just cannot accept this reality.

I feel that as a friend of the Buy-and-Holders it is my job to help them accept that they made a mistake, or at the very bare minimum to at least accept the POSSIBILITY that they made a mistake. Once they accept the possibility, we are back to normal business and over time things will become clearer and Buy-and-Hold will either be affirmed or rejected. That’s the way things are supposed to work in our country.

Because these matters are of such great importance, we have as a society not permitted the process by which mistakes are corrected over time to proceed in this particular case. People don’t point out the contradictions in the Buy-and-Hold concept because they know that their careers will be destroyed if they do so in an effective manner. So this awful cover-up that is killing us all continues.

Deep in their hearts that not what the Buy-and-Holders want. Deep in their hearts the Buy-and-Holders want what we all want. We all just need to work up the courage and love that we need to evidence to get past this obstacle standing in our path to the future and thereby put everything on a better track. We need to persuade Jack Bogle to give a speech in which he says “I Was Wrong” (or at the very bare minimum “I’m Not Sure”) and then everything changes. No one would feel intimidated into silence from that day forward. Everyone will be saying what he or she truly believes from that day forward and working together in pursuit of a common purpose we will be able to take things to a better place.

I believe that I could be wrong, Sammy. I don’t believe that I am wrong. But I believe that I could be. Experience has taught me that lesson. There have been occasions when I was as sure as sure can be about something and later it turned out that I was wrong. I need to keep that in mind when I put forward statements re what I BELIEVE about how stock investing works.

So does Jack Bogle.

When Jack realizes that he is human just like all the rest of us and capable of making mistakes just like all the rest of us, we all start moving forward at an amazing pace. That’s when things start changing for the better in a very big way.

I look forward to the day when we are all working together to make that happen. We have achieved huge advances over the past 35 years. We should be celebrating them, not trying to intimidate the thousands of good people who want to share what they have learned about an important subject into silence.

My take.

Rob