Fields Are Optional--You May Leave Them Blank
These people have replaced commonsense and observation with assumptions.
These people were convinced long ago that NOBODY can beat-the-market in any way whatsoever and that stocks are always best in the long run, regardless. Nobody can benefit from market timing, regardless.
Such assertions make good rules of thumb. But they are NOT ALWAYS true. They FAIL miserably when used as axioms.
If it is possible to measure valuations, then it should be possible to take advantage of valuations. This violates an axiom. Therefore, it is not possible to measure valuations, regardless of what the data show. Because your conclusions violated an axiom, you are wrong.
Even if you point out that different people have different objectives, the axioms reject any underlying notion of arbitrage. Built into their axioms is the notion that beating-the-market means exactly the same thing to everyone.
This is similar to discussion of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Advocates of the hypothesis keep making up new definitions as soon as their newest version is disproved. It is a marvel to behold.
By preference, they disregard inconvenient facts.
Have fun.
John Walter Russell
I think there is a lot to what you are saying, John.
One thing that is very odd is that it is people who do not claim any particular expertise who often put forward the comments that make the most sense. It is the "experts" who feel that they have something at risk when the now-dominant investing paradigm is questioned.
Rob
In some cases, people just need time to digest new information.
What makes things difficult is that others go out of their way to prevent this. They cause enough of a stink to run casual observers away. One tactic that they use is to redefine history.
The 4.0% number started out as being as safe as any reasonable person could image. The odds of failure were about the same as our being hit by a major asteroid.
Gradually, 4.0% became a rule of thumb. Gradually, 4.0% became a historic relic, having little, if any, relationship to the future.
All along, I kept reading that "no one ever said..[whatever they most certainly did say, very loudly, again and again]."
Have fun.
John Walter Russell
people just need time to digest new information.
I agree.
Most people also need to be able to ask questions. That's how people come to terms with new ideas.
All of this will happen. I hope soon.
Rob
It's time to get a forum running. The only way forward is to leave the goons behind.
I left the abusive comment up so that people would know what John was making reference to with his two comments (which I will be responding to). This is not my normal practice. My normal practice is to delete posts of the sort put up by "Penrhyn."
The background here for newcomers is that John Greaney got an important number wrong in a study of safe withdrawal rates that he published at his RetireEarlyHomePage.com site. I am the person who brought the error to his attention (in an entirely kind and constructive way). Greaney elected not to acknowledge the error and instead to have his Goon Squad engage in intimidation tactics to silence anyone who posts honestly on the SWR matter. The result is that numerous Retire Early boards were burned to the ground. Hundreds of community members left us in revulsion over the tactics employed by Greaney and his Goons.
It is true that "no trick is too low" for the goons. It is important to make note of that from time to time so that people understand what is going on. It is a mistake, though, to focus on it too much. Are the Goons bad news? Yes, of course. But the more important reality for people interested in learning how to win financial freedom early in life is the story of community tolerance for the Goons.
It is not exactly front page news that there are abusive posters on the internet. Anyone who has spent any significant time at a discussion board knows this. The puzzle in this case is that community leaders have failed to take effective action on behalf of those community members seeking to learn how to retire early and against those community members making that impossible with their disruptive behavior. That question is by far the more puzzling one and by far the more important one.
The blog entry talks about how people like Bob and Jason and Gnobility are taking actions likely to cause many busted retirements in days to come. None of these individuals woke up one morning thinking "Gee, I wonder if I can come up with any good ideas today for causing people to suffer busted retirements. Wouldn't that be fine!" So why do they do what they do?
With some, it is just that they want to "defend" Greaney. People in this group could not care less what the safe withdrawal rate is. It's all about Greaney. These people obviously do not feel much concern for the community as a whole. They obviously have done numerous communities great harm. They obviously need to be removed from all of the boards.
That shouldn't be hard to do. We have rules at all of our boards describing exactly the posting bahavior at issue. Those rules are a reflection of our community norms. They are there because most of us understand how ugly things can get on the internet if there are not rules. So there is a consensus that the Greaney supporters should be banned.
The Greaney supporters have not yet been banned. Why?
That's the question we need to struggle with. We can't run away from it. We can't "leave the goons behind." The goons are part of the world, like water or air. They exist. They are a reality. We need to face the reality and deal with the reality.
I remember a thread put to the FIRE board back in December 2002. I was saying the same things way back then. I was saying that we needed to get 10 people together, head over to the Motley Fool board, demand Greaney's removal from the site administrators, and not walk away again until we were given satisfaction. It is our community. Hundreds of us together built this wonderful resource. We have every right in the world to protect it from those intent on doing it harm.
I don't mean to pick on you, John, buy do you remember the answer you gave me then? You said that you were too "exhausted" from dealing with the Goons at that point to do something like that. If you were exhausted then, I hate to think what you are today, more than three years later. The problem doesn't go away by everyone agreeing to put their heads in the sand about the problem. The problem goes away by everyone working together to solve the problem.
At that time, the answer that some people gave was "Oh, just start a new board to escape the Goons." It's the same thing you are saying today. That's the purpose for which a group of us started the FIRE board. The entire point was to escape Greaney and his Goons, to be able to post honestly on the subject matter of the board once again.
Did it work?
If it worked, you wouldn't be saying what you are saying here today. It didn't work to start the SWR Research Group board either, as we were told it would by those who didn't want to deal with the problem through the obvious approach of just enforcing the rules that already exist at the boards that already exist. It didn't work to move to the Early Retirement Forum. It didn't work to form the Alternate SWR Methodlogy Board.
If Goons moved into your house, would it be your response to say: "Well, In guess I need to find a new house." No! When Goons move in to your house, you call the police. They are taking from you something that you built with your time and money, something that belongs to you. The reason why we have police is to deal with situations like that. And the reason why we have posting rules at our discussion boards is to deal with people like John Greaney. We need to call the police and have this individual removed.
I am gong to start a discussion board here in days to come. That's a great idea. But I suffer no illusions that it is that step that is going to solve the Goon problem. The Goons are posting to the Blog, are they not? The Goons moved to each new board that our community created to escape them, did they not? Goons are Goons. They can be counted on to do Goony things. It's a natural for them.
We owe something to the hundreds of people who built our community. That's one thing. It is wrong to abandon those people to the Goons after the work they have done for us. I have no intention of abandoning those people.Those people are my friends, and I am not going to sell out my friends.
The other thing is that we need our friends. How the heck do you think we developed the wonderful insights that are explore at this site and at your site? You and me did a lot of the work, of course. But there were scores and scores of others who lent a helping hand. We need those people to be able to continue moving forward. So even if we felt no sense of loyalty to people who have shared adventures with us in the past, out of pure self-interest we should want to open the existing boards to honest SWR posting once again.
Your idea of starting a new board is a winner. I'm waiting until there are more people coming here on a regular basis. I want the board to be a lively place and it is only a small fraction of the people who come to a site who participate at a discussion board. So I think we need more people. I also am reluctant to commit the time to the project of building up a board until I have done more work building up the site.
But those are small things. More people will come as word gets out about the site. So that's just a time thing. And I will find a way to make time to build up a new board when the time is right to get one going. The big thing is -- What do we do about all of the wonderful people who have asked that they be free to post honestly at the existing boards? Those people are our friends and our co-adventurers. Those people matter.
If we abandon those people, that will leave a mark on our movement for many years to come. We are part of a loving, life-affirming movement. That would be a cowardly thing to do. We would be turning our back on our history. It would be like a parent giving up on a child because he got into some trouble with some bullies at school. It would be wrong.
I feel as strongly as you do (and as most others do too, of course) about getting rid of the Goons. I do not think that the way to do it is to abandon all of the fine people who comprise most of the existing board communities. I think we owe those people something, and I would like to see us all begin making more serious efforts to pay back the debt that we owe them.
I've devoted a lot of words to the matter of "People Who Do What They Do Because They Support Greaney." The larger problem is "People Who Do What They Do Because They Are Reluctant to Accept the Implications re Investing Strategy of What the Historical Data Says." I made a bit of an effort to struggle with that one in the article that is linked to at the "More on This Topic" link at the bottom of the blog entry for which these comments were posted.
Rob
Rob,
The 1:08am and 1:09 am comments are not mine.
Have fun.
John Walter Russell
The 1:08am and 1:09 am comments are not mine.
Thanks for letting me know, John. I'm sorry that that happened.
I deleted those two comments, and since those are gone, I was able to delete the "Penryhn" comment as well. I left my post up since the issues discussed are of relevance to the community regardless of the deletion of the comments that I was responding to in writing them.
He's some nice guy to ask people to behave this way on his behalf, huh?
Rob
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