the roundabout is in practice a counterintuitive path—of acquiring later stage advantage through an earlier stage disadvantage—nearly impossible to follow. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
Laozi says, “The bright path seems dim/Going forward seems like retreat/ The easy way seems hard/The highest Virtue seems empty . . . Great talents ripen late.” - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
To the Laozi, the best path to anything lay through its opposite: One gains by losing and loses by gaining; victory comes not from waging the one decisive battle, but from the roundabout approach of waiting and preparing now in order to gain a greater advantage later. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
It appears as a lesson in humility and tolerance, but, as we wait, we willingly sacrifice the first step for a greater later step. In its highest form, the whole point of waiting is to gain an advantage. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
conifers may be among the most indirect in all of nature when they forego direct material advantage by growing on the rocks, so that, following an intergenerational strategy, they might survive the competition and predators (especially fire) and thus enable their offspring to one day take advantage of better growing conditions (postwildfire). - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
the patient and persistent conifer teaches us that it is far better to avoid direct, head-on competition for scarce resources and, instead, to pursue the roundabout path toward an intermediate step that leads to its eventual position of advantage. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
the whole point of my approach to investing is that we must be willing to adopt the indirect route to achieve our goals. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
Exploiting others’ immediacy was the logic of the roundabout approach, the fundamental edge—the ultimate edge of trading and investing. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
Sunzi states, “To win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy’s army without fighting at all.”
Clausewitz used the framework of Ziel, Mittel, und Zweck—a strategically circuitous path from the intermediate aim (Ziel) of subordinate commanders as the means (Mittel) for the strategists to obtain the ultimate end (Zweck). Sun Wu employed the same intertemporal approach—indirect now in order to be direct later—summed up in a single word: shi, by which the wise general gained a strategic advantage over his enemy, “intervening upstream before the conflict unfolds and thus without having to join serious battle subsequently,”2 as a means of ending and even avoiding battle. - Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul