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hocus2004
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Post by hocus2004 »

http://www.nofeeboards.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2677

JWR1945: " It seems like ancient history, only it is current history....

"There have been quite a few remarks dismissing my use of P/E10, but nothing dealing with substance. Just slogans....

"For the most part, those who want to suppress discussions of substance have succeeded. They have the technical ability, but not the willingness, to help..."
th
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Post by th »

Oh for chrissakes.

Try not to step in the snake oil. You will slip and fall and hurt your ass.

Now...how about them Red Sox?? :twisted:
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Nietzsche
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ataloss
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Post by ataloss »

Th, I like the "son with a spare room system" (SRS) I think it has the potential to completely change our understanding of early retirement, asset allocation and multigenerational living.

I have an intense desire to advance the world's knowledge of the realities of SRSs. That desire doesn't do anyone any good unless I have tools available to me to put it to practical, constructive purposes. You have provided me such a tool, and I am grateful.

You things off with a bang. The posts you put up this morning are among the most important ever posted in the history of FIRE discussion boards. If you care about this stuff, you need to read those posts. Not just once. You need to study those posts, and let the implications sink in. Then, when you are clear on the implications, you need to act on what you have learned.

The SRS issue is not just something nice for aspiring early retirees to talk about. SRS analysis is a powerful tool for putting together a FIRE plan. Properly employed, it is a tool that allows you to retire safer and sooner. Not a little bit safer and a little bit sooner. A lot safer and a lot sooner. SRSs matter.

Because SRSs matter, it makes sense to want to calculate them properly. The same tool that, properly employed, can be a powerful force to aid you in achieving financial independence early in life, can, if improperly employed, cause you terrible life setbacks. Using historical data as a guide to putting together a FIRE plan makes sense. Using an improperly calculated SWR to do so does not.

The purpose of this board is to help aspiring early retirees learn what they need to know to calculate SRSs properly. There has been a lot of great research and insights published at two discussion board communities since the day that The Great Debate on SRSs commenced. Too little has been done with that research and those insights in the 14 months of the debate, in my view. I want to change that. I believe that this board can help me in my effort to do so.

What makes this board diffferent is that this is not a board aimed primarily at facilitating talk about FIRE. There are already several boards available that do that. This is an action-oriented board. The goal here is to make things happen. Exciting, enriching, life-enhancing things. If we are lucky, what we do at this board could change the world.

That's a bold claim, but I don't think it is far-fetched. Here's the logic chain: (1) achieving financial indepenence frees people to do more fulfilling things with their lives; (2) the accurate calculation of SRSs allows people to achieve financial independence years sooner; and (3) this board is going to help get information out to people about how to accurately calculate SRSs. This little discussion board is going to take on the world and change it for the better. Good for us.

An SRS is a number. Numbers are boring. In ordinary circumstances, you could not pay me enough to even read such a board as this, much less post to it, much less moderate it. But the number to which we will direct our energies at this board is a special sort of number. Knowing this number liberates you to do new and exciting things with your life. Knowing this magic number sets you free. That makes all the difference, doesn't it?

In earlier discussions of SRSs, I have referred here and there to "the Wave." That's a term I use to refer to the growing interest among middle-class workers in attaining financial independence early in life. For several years, I have been posting to discussion boards about "the soft side" of FIRE, generally how to save for financial independence. That's important; I have spent close to three years of my life writing a book on the subject, so I had better think it is important. But my sense is that this SWR thing holds the potential to become every bit as important as the soft side stuff, possibly even more so.

Why do I say that? Because of the reaction I have seen to the proposal I put forward to calculate SRSs in more realistic ways. I expected that it was going to prove to be controversial. But now that I have seen the reaction it has provoked, I wish at times that I had spoken up a lot sooner. I knew that the SRS concept was an important one, but I now see that for the years in which I kept what I knew about the realities of SRS to myself, I had only a weak idea of how important. We have a tiger by the tail.

What the reaction tells us, I believe, is that people sense the importance of the SRS concept. Most (this includes me) do not grasp the complexities. But there is something special about the SRS concept that most people catch on to and that is responsible for the energy you see evidence itself whenever a fresh thought on SRSs is put forward. There are lots of investing tools discussed on a multitude of investing boards, but I have never seen anything remotely similar in nature to The Great Debate on SRSs.

What makes the SRS concept so special? It's a tool that provides objective insights. That's the magic, in my view. There are lots of informed people offering lots of reasonable sounding investing advice in lots of different forums. As often as not, the advice of Expert A conflicts with the advice of Expert B. Which means--what? What are you supposed to do with your money after taking in all this stufff?

The SR, properly calculated, provides actionable advice. It doesn't predict the future. But it tells you what will work in the future, presuming that the future turns out to be something like the past. That's a valuable thing to know. SWR analysis is not hot air. SWR analysis is data-based, it's rooted in the hard stuff. It's all about numbers, and that's a drag to be sure. But these are NUMBERS THAT MATTER.. The true SWR is a cool, cool number to know.

Wow.

And Double Wow.


But there's knowing and then there's Knowing, you know? People don't really know.

You know why? Because they don't have a number to put to it. They understand that valuation plays a role in investing success, but they have little idea how much of a role. srs analysis tells them. srs analysis gives them the number to unlock the secrets, to make things that never added up before make sense at last.

Sometimes people don't want to know. We have seen a good bit of that in the course of The Great Debate. Sometimes they do. We have seen some of that too. Sometimes you see both drives--the drive to know and the drive not to know--in the same poster! I've seen this scores of times now. The debate that results from this mix of desires to know and not to know is at times an unruly one, a fractious one. Sometimes it seems to be a time-wasting one.

Just when you become inclined to give up hope on it, however, something wonderful happens. Every now and then the clouds break and the sun blasts through and you get one of those wonderful JWR1945 posts or one of those wonderful raddr posts or one of those wonderful BenSolar posts, and there you are again, learning. Learning things you could never learn through investigation of any other investing tool. Learning something special because the tool you are studying is a tool that is data-based and objective and action-oriented and helpful and true.

Except when it isn't.

The srs concept is great. The srs reality is kind of a drag. The reality is that there's a thing called the "conventional methodology" that a lot of people have bought into that skews the results, that causes the srs analysts to pump out numbers that couldn't possibly be true. In the year 2000, at the top of the bubble in stock prices, this conventional methodology thing was saying that the srs is 4 percent. William Bernstein believes that valuation affects returns as a matter of "mathematical certainty," so he went about the business of calculating a son's spare room potential and found it was 2%.
Yikes!


A lot of people get bummed out when this hear this seemingly dreary insight. But it is not nearly so dreary an insight as you might at first suppose! First of all, there is no rule of the universe that says that you must start your retirement with a high stock portfolio. You can change your allocation, and push your srs back up to 4 percent, if a 4 percent srs is your target. There is no need to remain with an asset class that does not provide you the srs you are looking for.


Now, that's an extreme example I put forward to illustrate the point in a compelling manner, and it skips over some details that add complexity to the discussion but which must be considered when you are putting together an actual plan. That stuff needs to be considered, but not in this particular post. This is the place for selling you on the srs concept. The example shows how powerful this srs tool can be in the right circumstances. That's the point I most want to get across to you right now.

Properly calculated, the srs does these winderful things. What does it do improperly calculated? Improperly calculated, it causes busted retirements. Yuck. Double Yuck. Not good. Busted retirements--that's the exact thing aspiring early retirees most want to avoid. That's what we call a Wipeout.

So we want not any old srs. We want the right srs.

What makes one number right, and another not right? Data.

How do we get data? Through research.

Thus--the srs Research Group.

There is already tons of research that has been done. I hope that a lot more is going to be done in the months and years ahead. But that is not the most pressing need we face. The most pressing need is taking the research already out there, research that has been put forward over the 14-month history of The Great Debate, and putting it to good use. We need to do more than just crank this stuff out. We need also to see that real live human beings are investing in different ways because of what they have learned from the research that we are doing. Otherwise, what's the point?.

How do we go about doing that? I have lots of things planned. I expect to write some articles for personal finance magazines. I excpect to give some radio interviews and speeches. I plan to start a web site of my own sometime next year that will contain writings addressing various aspects of the question. I will be writing a report called "The Truith About srss" for publication on the internet. I hope to arrange for more "A Special Discussion of srss at the NFB Board with...." events. All of these sorts of initiatives will help get the word out on the realities of srss, I believe.

But people do not learn all they need to learn about srss through a single speech or a single article or a single discussion thread, We need to provide a wealth of information, organized to provide quick guidance to those trying to make sense of the subject in a hurry. So one of my first goals for this board will be just to collect and organize information already provided during the course of The Great Debate.

For example, I might want to put up a thread here on the issue of timing, and collect in one place a dozen insights that have been put forward at different phases of the debate. Telling someone that "timing has been discussed before, go look it up" isn't terribly constructive, I don't think. So I want to use this board as a place for collecting the best stuff produced over the past 14 months in a place where real live people can obtain real live benefits from it. When someone hears one of those speeches, and wants more information, I want to be able to send him or her here to get the full story.

There's other stuff I hope to do with this board, but that's enough for now. I do not expect to be making much of any use of this board for at least six months. So further descriptions of the aims of the board can be held off until a later time, I believe.

. Think through the implications. If you feel too much excitement about the adventure that awaits us to wait until the Winter of 2004 to begin work here, feel free to start organizing material yourself and placing it here beginning right now. I am the Moderator of the board, but anyone wanting to make use of the board for the purposes for which it was created should obviously feel free to do so.

OK.

It's an adventure we are embarking on. To do what? To change the world. We have determined that it requires some changing. Most of the things we see about us when we look at the world today are good. But there is one big ugly problem that we have become aware of--it's that convetional srs methodology! Let's get it! Let's chew it up! Let's make that number work for us the way it is supposed to work for us! Let's do that crazy darn calculation the right way!

There is a Wave. It is getting big. We are at the top of the Wave. Hang on! It's got a nasty curl to it, but if you learn to negotiate that curl, I have a strong feeling that what you are going to get is---

--One fantastic never-to-be forgotten ride all the way in to to the soft and sandy shoreline. As one of the great personal finance advisors of all time once observed: "If you catch a wave, you'll be sitting on top of the world."

Until winter comes---

Much good surfing to everyone!
Have fun.

Ataloss
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Post by PainInTheAS »

hocus^H^H^H^H^H I mean, ataloss wrote: Th, I like the "son with a spare room system" (SRS) I think it has the potential to completely change our understanding of early retirement, asset allocation and multigenerational living.
[...whack...]


Hey ataloss,

You missed a few "SWR"s in there. You're using Linux now, right? Next time try (some variant of) this:

Code: Select all

sed -e 's/SWR/SRS/g 
        s/swr/srs/g 
        s/Swr/Srs/g 
        s/Safe Withdrawal Rate/Son With a Spare Room/' /fu/bar/hocus.txt > /fu/bar/plagiarized.txt																								


You're welcome.

PITA
th
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Post by th »

Come on, enjoy the effort for what it was. Dont nitpick :twisted:
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Nietzsche
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POST OF THE YEAR!!!!!

Post by BenSolar »

ataloss wrote: I have an intense desire to advance the world's knowledge of the realities of SRSs. That desire doesn't do anyone any good unless I have tools available to me to put it to practical, constructive purposes. You have provided me such a tool, and I am grateful.


OMG! :lol::lol::lol:

That was the single most masterful parody I've ever seen on the net. Many kudos

Ataloss, your genius is unveiled for all to see. :D:shock::D
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for." - Epicurus
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Post by datasnooper »

In the Foolish Four debate I was certainly persistent, but often would deteriorate into meaningless and well-calculated rhetoric. It was tough fighting the crowd but clearly I became a master-whiner. I do believe, however, some good research was performed and published on both sides - there's no doubt in my mind the foolish four was rubbish and that the Bros refused to recognize as much even when seeing the pathetic evidence.

If I was seeing a psychiatrist she would tell me no doubt that this occurred at a time in my life where tragedy meant that I needed something to keep me standing but it doesn't matter. I would never consider a project like that again, and wouldn't even have started if I knew what it entailed. In a similar vein I like what Hocus brought into the debate of SWRs as practiced as TMF. As he knows and has expressed I don't agree with everything he writes, certainly don't always read it, but respect the effort. It always was and is my opinion that the internet media is sufficiently flexible to allow people to not read all threads on a message board if they don't want to. Some people at TMF would lobby for so-called "negative recommendations"￾ but I believe in both the extreme positive and negative count which is lost on the average.

On censorship I have a board that discusses all kinds of things and currently deals mostly with political issues. It contains a nice bunch of participants and although opinions are diverse, we don't censor which is remarkable considering that I granted 25 people the right to delete posts including Bogey and Eswan. When people (on both sides) can censor I find that they typically don't.

Datasnooper.
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Post by salaryguru »

Hi hocus,
hocus2004 wrote: . . . If William Bernstein showed up at one of the FIRE/Passion Saving/Retire Early boards to post in an honest and informed way on what the historical data says re SWRs, would you refer to him as a troll and seek to have him banned from further participation, SalaryGuru?


No. I would not refer to anyone as a troll simply because they showed up and posted one of their opinions -- regardless of how misguided that opinion might be.

But if Bernstein (or anyone else) showed up and claimed that it was logically and analytically valid to modify the conventional historical SWR analysis using a single backword looking metric for valuation, I would point out that this was not valid and I would also be happy to point out at least three fundamental flaws with that line of reasoning. I have done that with you too, hocus. But each time I have done that, you have replied with long unfocused posts that misrepresent what I have said and misdirect the discussion away from the problems that exist in your analysis. It is these characteristics (long unfocused posts, misrepresentation of other posters comments, and misdirection of the discussion) that are generally attributed to internet trolls.

As far as seeking an action to ban someone from the board, I do not believe I have ever done that . . . for Bernstein, for hocus, or for anyone else. I might feel like a board would be better off without one or two posters, but I do not have the authority or the influence to affect such a decision.

I've never requested that one of your posts be removed or sent to "Dead Posts" thread either. :D
-SG-
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Post by hocus2004 »

"As far as seeking an action to ban someone from the board, I do not believe I have ever done that . . . for Bernstein, for hocus, or for anyone else. "

Intercst did. You might want to reflect on what that says about his confidence in his ability to defend his SWR claims in reasoned debate.

"if Bernstein (or anyone else) showed up and claimed that it was logically and analytically valid to modify the conventional historical SWR analysis using a single backword looking metric for valuation, I would point out...."

You are mixing up two separate issues here, SalaryGuru.

There is room for reasonable differences of opinion on JWR1945's research. No one has identified any serious flaws in it thus far, and that gives me a measure of confidence in it. But there will be a lot more people looking at it in days to come, and there is no law that says that those of a skeptical nature cannot wait until then to form firm conclusions.

Any skepticism you feel re JWR1945's research has nothing to do with the invalidity of the REHP study for purposes of determining SWRs. The study was discredited a long time ago, and there is nothing that anyone can ever do to bring that one back from the dead. Given that you know that the study gives the wrong number for the SWR at times of high valuation, you are under an obligation to let fellow community members know that when you see the study given positive mention at the various boards. I'll be watching to see whether you say the right things or not.
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Post by hocus2004 »

"There's no doubt in my mind the foolish four was rubbish and that the Bros refused to recognize as much"

The internet discussion-board is a new communications medium. It is different than those we are more familiar with--magazines, television, books, speeches, radio, etc. The new medium has both its pros and cons.

One of the big pros is that someone who wants to debunk a study does not need to pass some qualification test to do so. He just puts up a post and sees what happens.

When Motley Fool responded the way it did, reasonable people knew that their claims could not be defended in reasonable ways. Not everyone knew or cared to know the details in the way you did. They knew what they needed to know. They learned something important about what Motley Fool was about.

It's the same with the REHP study. Most people on the various boards have never even read the study. There are very few who have personally looked at the historical data in the way that JWR1945 has. They don't need to.

The new communications medium is a people-exposing medium. You find out what people are about when you see how they respond to questions. We have learned what intercst is about by watching his responses to the questions that have been asked re the methodology he used in his study. We have learned that he cannot be trusted to shoot straight with us.

That's not the only thing we have learned. But that's probably the most important thing. Prior to May 13, 2002, there were a lot of people who gave a lot of credibility to what intercst said on the subject of SWRs. That's not so today. He still has his defenders, to be sure. But it's clear enough that his defenders wish they were defending someone and something more defensible.

The Great SWR Debate is a debate about change. We are in the process of changing how we think about investing to achieve financial independence early in life. We are in the process of changing how we make use of discussion boards to learn together. We are in the process of changing the leaders we look to to direct the FIRE/Passion Saving/Retire Early movement. Change is often hard. It often does not come about in a day, a week, a month, or even a year.

It happens, though. When change is absolutely required, it happens. People have a hard time taking the next step because intercst started the first of these boards and has been a large presence in our past; it is hard for many to accept that he is in all probability not going to be even a small presence in our future. But people are giving more consideration to the realities than they once did. You can pick that up by reading between the lines of the posts that go up nowadays.

Each day that goes by without intercst shooting straight, there is one more community member who begins to experience doubts about the guy. One day the doubts are so widespread that the roof caves in and he is gone in a flash.

When that day comes, we are going to need a new way of thinking about SWRs and a new way of thinking about board leadership. Fortunately, much of the work of constructing a new way of thinking about these things has already been done. The work product is put forward on an almost daily basis at the SWR Research Group board.

It's open for business 24/7. It's free. The people who post there are teddy bear types. Such a deal!
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ben
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Post by ben »

Ataloss is hocus!? talk about a surprise! :D:shock:
Normal; to put on clothes bought for work, go to work in car bought to get to work needed to pay for the clothes, the car and the home left empty all day in order to afford to live in it...
th
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Post by th »

Hey, have you ever seen the two of them together at the same time?

Didnt think so.

Hey, can we sweep this baloney back into the special "SWR" forum where it belongs, since the original topic had nothing to do with further "I'm right", "no, I'm right" arguments about the tempest in a half cup teapot?
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Nietzsche
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Post by dbphd »

My studies have shown that exactly 473 angels can dance on the head of a pin simultaneously. My PhD is in angel dancing, so I should know.

db
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ataloss
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Post by ataloss »

Hey, can we sweep this baloney back into the special "SWR" forum where it belongs, since the original topic had nothing to do with further "I'm right", "no, I'm right" arguments about the tempest in a half cup teapot?


sounds fair to me. I slipped in the snake oil and bumped my head by I think I am coming to my senses. :lol:
Have fun.

Ataloss
th
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Post by th »

As long as you didnt spill your drink when you slipped. :)
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Nietzsche
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ataloss
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Post by ataloss »

having priorities straight, the drink is unspilled
Have fun.

Ataloss
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Post by salaryguru »

hocus2004 wrote: "As far as seeking an action to ban someone from the board, I do not believe I have ever done that . . . for Bernstein, for hocus, or for anyone else. " -SG

Intercst did. You might want to reflect on what that says about his confidence in his ability to defend his SWR claims in reasoned debate.


How is this relevant to anything, hocus? Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that I am intercst. I am not. He does not ask my advice or seak my approval on his posts.
hocus2004 wrote: "if Bernstein (or anyone else) showed up and claimed that it was logically and analytically valid to modify the conventional historical SWR analysis using a single backword looking metric for valuation, I would point out...." -SG

You are mixing up two separate issues here, SalaryGuru.


No. I'm not mixing up anything, hocus. You are apparently trying to divert the discussion from my direct answer to your direct question. But I am not confused or mixing anything up. This is typical of the way you treat any posting that states things that you don't want to hear.
hocus2004 wrote: There is room for reasonable differences of opinion on JWR1945's research. No one has identified any serious flaws in it thus far, and that gives me a measure of confidence in it. . .


You are wrong. Many have seen the very serious flaws in that work. Those flaws invalidate that work. Others have posted details of those flaws on many occasions and you have blathered on aimlessly denying the flaws are serious. You have accused them of playing word games. You have readily admitted that you are a simpleton when it comes to mathematics while steadfastly insisting that the flaws that have been pointed out are not real. You misdirect the discussion. You misrepresent what others say and you filibuster the boards with long aimless posts that miss the point.
hocus2004 wrote: Any skepticism you feel re JWR1945's research has nothing to do with the invalidity of the REHP study for purposes of determining SWRs. . .


I feel no skepticism, hocus. I understand the mathematics of historical retirement simulations and I am certain you are wrong. But any certainty that you feel re JWR1945's research has everything to do with your own inadequate understanding of mathematics and analytical reasoning.
-SG-
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Post by hocus2004 »

"Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that I am intercst. I am not."

What I am seeking is your help in having intercst removed from the various FIRE/Passion Saving/Retire Early posting communities.

In November 2002, I put forward a proposal that the community join together in demanding that Motley Fool enforce its posting rules, which call for the removal of posters who engage in intercst-type posting tactics. I gained 25 recommendations for that post. My guess based on communications that I have had with Motley Fool is that we need 50 votes to bring this thing to a successful resolution. So we are about halfway there.

Your vote would count for a lot, SalaryGuru. You are a skeptic re the Data-Based SWR Tool. So if you come out in favor of intercst's banning, it counts double. People will see that you are not doing so because of any dispute you have with him re questions of substance, but solely because you feel compelled to take steps to defend the various posting communities from the effects of his various abusive posting tactics.

Your earlier words in this thread indicate that you oppose the use of threats as a posting tactic. Intercst has regularly employed threats as a means of blocking reasoned debate on SWRs. A very powerful recent example is on Page 12 of the "Yahoo Finance Quiz" thread at the Early Retirement Forum. He threatens me by saying that he will ask Dory36 (the site owner and a personal friend of intercst's) to revoke my posting privileges if I continue to post in an honest and informed way on the topic of SWRs.

Can I count on you for a prompt condemnation of intercst the next time you see him employ this sort of tactic at the Early Retirement Forum or elsewhere? Better yet, can you offer an endorsement of my proposal to revoke intercst's posting privileges at the Motley Fool board?
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Post by th »

This is why I stopped supporting you Hocus. Besides your system having some holes in it and your stream of consciousness posts too long for any human being to want to read, you havent given the same fair play you've asked for from others. You were upset at having your posting rights removed, now you want someone else removed. You were upset at censorship, then promptly became a censor. You complain about the ideas not being engaged, but when they're engaged you sidestep the issues.

I pushed hard and made myself unpopular to support your right to say your piece in several places. I'm not sorry I did that, but I am sorry with the results. I still dont understand why grown men and women cant simply look the other way when something they dont like happens, particularly when looking and responding magnifies the very thing they dislike. But I guess its human nature to closely watch a train wreck and to poke the "dead monster" with a stick to see if its still alive.

Intercst has every right to act like a pedantic asshat as long as he plays within the rules. Of course he doesnt play within the rules and I consider many of his posts regarding you to be the equivalent work of a 12 year old whose chief rival "didnt get the girl". Your mutual dislike is clear and obvious to anyone, and your equal excitement at seeing the other deposed is frankly a sad thing to see in early retired people of age to be grandparents. Really pathetic in fact.

But being a fixture in the ER community, I suspect you'll have no luck in removing him.

Life aint fair.

And I'll repeat again...we have an entire forum dedicated to this horsepuckey and you even get to moderate it. Can we stop discussing this in the "town center"?
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Nietzsche
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Post by hocus2004 »

"You were upset at having your posting rights removed, now you want someone else removed."

There is a difference between a criminal using violence to commit theft, and a policeman using force to apprehend the criminal and transport him to a jail cell. Intercst has used abusive posting tactics to block the community from having reasoned discussions of the realities of SWRs. I have posted within the rules, asking that this abusive poster be removed from the community so that the rest of us can have the sorts of reasoned conversations that large numbers of us have expressed a desire for.

"Of course he doesn't play within the rules..."

That's right. And his unwillingness to play by the rules re this particular matter has cost us the loss of scores of fine posters. It took me thousands of hours of time to build the Motley Fool board into the mot exciting board on the internet. And it wasn't just me who built that board into the wonderful learning resource it once was. There were hundreds of other fine posters also playing by the rules who did so. Those posters have rights. They built a community and they have a right to make use of the community they built for the purposes for which they built it.

That board community has expressed in no uncertain terms its desire for honest and informed on-topic debate hundreds of times. There are posts in the archives in which posters came forward saying "let hocus have his say" and 50 or 60 or 70 community members endorsed the idea. Intercst has ignored those expressions of commnunity desire for 25 months now. This is unacceptable.

The Motley Fool boards are public boards. They belong to anyone who pays $30 and is willing to play by the rules of the site. The money we pay to Motley Fool goes to pay the salaries of the site administrators, and the site administrators are required to enforce the rules as written; it their job to do so. We have every right in the world not just to ask that intercst be removed from that board but to insist that he be removed.

When intercst is removed, there are a number of wonderful things that happen. Not just for hocus. There are wonderful things that happen for every member of the various posting communities.

Remove intercst, and FoolMeOnce will be able to post at that board without being subject to "the treatment" just about every time he shows up.

Remove intercst, and Galagan will succeed in his effort to have the board FAQ reflect the work product of the community that congregates there. He led an effort to change the FAQ statement that was endorsed by over 40 community members. He ultimately gave up in frustration, saying that he had come to conclude that it is "futile" to try to get intercst to pay any attention whatsoever to the community's desires for reform of the board.

Remove intercst, and the entire community taps into the 2 million unique visitors that come to the Motley Fool home page each month. Many of the best posters at this site learned of the Retire Early idea from exposure to the Motley Fool board. We rarely get new posters today from that community because there is little posted there anymore that attracts people interested in the subject of early retirement. When I take over as moderator of the board, I will be engaging in all sorts of efforts to attract new people to the board and to let those people know about the other boards that address similar topics.

I could go on and on. The point here is that, if you want boards to succeed, you have to be willing to listen to what the posters want. Intercst streadfastly refuses to do this. He feels that he can't do it because what people want is to post on-topic and he views on-topic posting as a threat. It is not a coincidence that he refers to JWR1945, FoolMeOnce, BenSolar, hocus, and Mikey as the Five Dimwits. The community has shown great appreciation for the work of each of these posters. That's why they are dimwits in the intercst lingo. A dimwit is any poster who is a threat to intercst, any poster who posts in an honest and informed way on the subject matter of the board.

"Your mutual dislike is clear and obvious to anyone"

You are wrong about this. I have discussed the question on the "For TH" thread at the SWR board if there are any who want to read a description of how and why you are wrong.

"I suspect you'll have no luck in removing him."

I think you are wrong. TH. His support is a mile wide and a half-inch thick. I doubt that there are more than a small number of posters who in their heart of hearts wouldn't prefer to see me as the moderator of the Motley Fool board.

The problem is that many think as you do that it cannot be done and thus they would prefer that it not be tried. The other side of the story is that we have no realistic choice at this point but to remove him.

We cannot hold onto good posters so long as this guy drives them all off. I have drawn scores of good posters into the community and intercst has driven scores away. How long can you expect someone to continue to push things up hill only to watch someone else push it back down again? And, again, I am obviously not the only one who has engaged in constructive efforts frustrated by intercst. There are scores of others who can say the same, hundreds really.

If the movement is to survive, intercst will need to be removed. Ask your friends that don't participate on discussion boards why they don't so so. I'll bet you $5 the answer you are going to hear is that they don't like to deal with the nonsense that intercst-type posters engage in. People absolutely hate this stuff. Most people simply will not be put up with it. When they see the nonsense take center stage, they exit the premises. That's the reality.

We have one big thing going for us. People love honest and informed discussions of how to achieve financial independence early in life. When we engage in that stuff, we can't lose. We can build these boards back up the same way we built them up the first time. But we also have one big thing working against us. People hate the nonsense gibberish and people hate the intimidation. That stuff has to go.

That's all that intercst has to offer at this point. He had some valuable on-topic insights to offer once upon a time. But it was a long time ago. Intercst has lost interest in the subject matter, and it ain't just hocus saying that. The Post Archives say that. He hasn't put forward a significant on-topic insight IN YEARS.

The truth of the matter is that you would be doing intercst a favor if you came out in favor of his removal. GritsGuru put forward a proposal in November 2002 that intercst and his fans move to a different board. That would have given him a chance to make it clear up front that the purpose of the new board was to focus on politics and sitcoms and the other stuff that he is interested in talking about today. Intercst loved the idea. "Outstanding idea!" was his response.

The problem is that a few of his hothead supporters jumped in and nixed the thing (I believe because I had endorsed it). My sense is that someplace inside intercst very much wants out, but he needs a push from fellow community members to make it happen.

The removal of intercst from the Motley Fool board makes possible all sorts of wonderful developments. It will be a turning point in the history of our movement. It will enliven and broaden the discussions held at all of the various boards in dozens of exciting ways. It will bring us all together again working towards realization of a common purpose.

We face a bit of a hurdle getting to the point where we approach him as a group and insist that he direct his posting energies elsewhere. But we ultimately have no choice. Given what has happened in the past 25 months, there is no way that his reputation can ever be salavaged. So he has to go. It's no act of charity towards him for us to stretch this thing out as long as is humanly possible.
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