- What you advocate is the problem Clayton's article tries to address. Your approach will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

- You emphasize the wrong thing, the return ratio, while other people prefer to measure it in the amount of money returned. That's what get the U.S. auto industry in trouble, as one executive put it clearly: "we spent all the efforts in the bottom line in cost cutting but ignored the top line revenue expansion. It got good ROI in the short term but destroyed the industry in the long term."

- You also missed his other quote, "use the return on assets ratio if cash is scarce. But if there is actually a lot of cash, ... economize on something that is abundant." Think about that for a moment in how to grow a business and why founders raise VC money in return for a lower return rate on their part.

- I am not their guys, as you implied in "you guys."

- Your fascination with State control system has no bearing in this discussion since the Chinese companies in discussion are in Taiwan. If your intent is to prove the Chinese economic system is inferior, you are barking up the wrong tree.

- Even U.S. has government managed economy - the Fed manages the economy via various monetary policies. And the Fed's mandate is not highest ROI. It's to have a robust economy that provides good employment.

- I read your example aplenty. What you don't understand is there're many ways to make money. Having the highest ROI is not the one rule to rules them all. Supermarkets have terrible ROI with razor thin margin yet they make lots of money for their owners. From your rational, everyone should become a hairdresser for its high ROI but no one would create the supermarket business.

Anyway, I've spent more than enough time on this and that's the end of my part of the discussion.