The Art of Comparison 13: Costs
After forty years and over forty books analyzing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, I find myself interpreting it very differently today than I did twenty-years ago when I publish my Ancient Chinese Revealed translation. Today we move onto chapter two. Its first stanza is examined in this article. It has eleven lines, a total of forty-nine Chinese characters. It can be read in two ways: as an army preparing for battle, and as a broad conceptual description that can be applied to all competition. We can tell that this broad, generic view was Sun Tzu’s intention by the way he begins this stanza.
This chapter starts with a vision of a world in constant movement, with us all trying to improve our strategic positions by moving closer to our goals. But it immediately identifies the main problem we face.
A Competitive World
The first line of five characters expresses a basic reality that too many of us shy away from.
<All> <use> <war> <philosophy>
In other words, everyone has a competitive mission. Everyone has values and from those values has goals. We all have a direction in which we are headed to reach our goals. The world is busy with all of us making moves to improve our situations, our positions in life. This brings us to the second line.
<Speed> <carts> <thousand> <horse teams>
We move to advance our positions as quickly as possible. These positions are not fixed points, they are “carts” carrying our existing situations forward into the future. These carts carry our valuables. Moving them require effort, horsepower. This movement expends some of our resources. This idea it the subtle introduction to the initial topic of chapter two: comparing the costs of competition.
Mounting Costs
We must foresee that all our moves to improve a position are part of a bigger picture. We don’t make moves just once or twice. Most of us will change our positions many times in life. If we consider every incremental improvement in our circumstances, we make thousands of moves.
<Change> <carts><thousand> <multiply by>
Changes through the element of climate are built into all positions. This means that all of our positions wear-out, like carts on the road, and must be replaced. This is an ongoing process whose costs multiply over time.
<Carry> <armory> <ten> <ten thousand>
To be competitive, we must accumulate what is valuable as competitive weapons, both to defend our positions and to advance them. We establish our value in the minds of others. We must move those advantages forward with us as we make progress. Carrying these positive images forward also multiplies our costs.
Where do we get our resources? I usually say the ground that we control in our positions, but this stanza offers a more interesting perspective.
<Thousand> <miles> <give> <gift> <grain>
What is valuable comes from the ground, but it also comes from how far we have progressed. Our progress itself establishes our value in the minds of others. Of course, in military terms, this also represents an army living off the land. Military forces can requisition food from the farms through which it travels. Our value wins rewards from our supporters. Most inhabited land in the time of Sun Tzu was used for raising grain. Journeys do not deplete the resources in any one place. They find new sources of support from their progress.
Notice how these four lines have focused on the amounts involved. Each has the word “thousand” in it. Our comparisons of costs and reward is simply one of quantity, a matter of balancing the books. The amount of costs gets our attention more than the number of rewards. We fear loss of every kind, the amount of effort, the amount of change, the number of resources, and the amount of distance. This sets up the next topic.
Waste
All these valuable go into competition, but what is the problem with putting so much into something as uncertain as competitive outcomes?
<Then> <internal> <external> <of><waste>
This waste is the most obvious when we are talking about military spending by governments, but the same rules apply to all competition. The larger the number of resources involved, the more waste there must be. The waste can be internal from mismanagement. A good example is the recent production woes of Disney, making costly flop after flop. This waste can also be external. Most external competitive moves fail. The place we can see the waste most clearly in modern society is in failed marketing programs from Bud Light back to New Coke.
<Guest> <visitor> <’s> <use>
Out focus is mostly external since we improve our positions by changing the minds of others. We make many of our moves in the hopes of winning supporters, allies, and even partners. Our outreach to others also consumes our resources. There is always a cost to forming these bonds but not necessarily a reward.
Building Versus Advancing
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