With $1m you could very easily hedge your bets, I don't think OC is saying put it _all_ in an ETF that's pretty foolish.
To OP: Get a financial advisor ASAP, $1m is enough to justify it. You also have a lot of tax implications that you probably haven't thought of, a lot of work goes into avoiding taxes at those stakes.
There are plenty of great ETFs. If you had a 20 year time frame, putting it all in a SP500 ETF is certainly not a bad option (though I would personally diversify to maybe 2-4 ETFs to get international and fixed-income exposure).
Not a comment about ETFs, but in general, the word "foolish" applies to someone entering the scheme, not someone running the scheme. And as is the way of humans, there are always enough people willing to be misled into bad decisions. In that sense, these schemes are very smart.
To repeat, this is NOT a comment about ETFs; it's only about where the word "foolish" goes.
A vast majority of advisors (90%) aren't going to beat an index fund. You are just giving money away money by hiring an advisors.
Unless you want to pull offshore tax shelters or Real estate depreciation schemes its not super complicated to do taxes. Invest long-term and you are getting capital gains tax.
Specifically, if you get an advisor, a "fee-only" advisor (charging a flat fee or hourly rate). Many (most?) financial advisors will be more than happy to charge you 1%/year or more for the rest of your life, which is going to be a major expense and drag on returns for someone with $1M+.
