Just to clear any misunderstanding and/or rancor here, since I am the one who use the “dogmatic” word.
In that other thread, OP got a lot of criticism for, among other things, choosing one active fund and Berkshire (and BRK can almost be assimilated to an active fund).
As i already said, passive investment really works well, no doubt about that.
My point is that even if there are not many active institutional investors with a superior track records, they exist. As Hedgehog mentioned, the problem is often that they are hidden among charlatans, so the burden of proof is clearly on them, and any investor has to put a lot of time to do his due diligence about the manager and his strategy.
Of course, many people don’t want to put too much time (and often for good reasons) into the selection of their holdings, so for them the absolute best solution is a low fees broad world index ETF, end of the story; it’s hard to find a better reward/effort ratio.
Having said that, if a retail investor has spent time and due diligence and did find a good manager, i am totally OK with that as well (and in the case of BRK, i don’t see why there is even a debate about superior performance in the 5 or 10 years to come; BRK owns now so many business that it could be seen as an index of the best businesses in the US). There are at least two of three well known companies, like Markel, Fairfax or Berkshire, who employed the same strategies and compounded at 11%+ over the last 20 years. So if someone did the work to check the background of these companies, is convinced by the rationale, has been holding for many years and is very happy with the results, yes i was surprised by the criticism he received for that.