好汉不吃亏

好汉不吃眼前亏的原意好像是识时务的意思。这里要说的和原来那句话其实未必有关系。不爱吃亏是人之常情，无可厚非。记得以前经常会有人提起“双赢”的说法，但有多少人真的想过到底什么才是“双赢”呢？当人们提起“双赢”时，可能本能会想只要不吃亏就行。后来发现，要想不吃亏的话，往往需要赚点便宜才能做到--…

Source: http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1269981201311923955410/

A wise man doesn't take a loss

> By Duan Yongping · his NetEase blog (nteswjq.blog.163.com, now closed; read from web archives) · 2013-02-19 · [Original link](http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1269981201311923955410/) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20130225154340/http://nteswjq.blog.163.com:80/blog/static/1269981201311923955410/))

The original meaning of "a wise man doesn't take a loss before his eyes" seems to be knowing how to read the times.

What I want to say here may actually have nothing to do with that saying.

Not liking to take a loss is human nature; there's nothing wrong with it.

I remember people used to talk about "win-win" a lot, but how many have really thought about what "win-win" actually is?

When people talk about "win-win," they may instinctively think it's enough not to take a loss. Later I found that, to avoid taking a loss, you often need to take a little advantage of others, so our company came to have a culture of "don't take advantage of others." I personally think that only with a mindset of "not taking advantage of others" can you possibly achieve "win-win," and so "not taking advantage of others" became part of "benfen."

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Let me tell a little story while I'm at it:

I remember that long, long ago (around 1989), when we had just started selling game consoles, we mainly assembled them from imported SKD kits.

Once we brought in a batch of goods from a Taiwanese businessman (I think it was 2,000 units). The contract price included 2% spare parts, meaning that for the price of 2,000 sets they gave us 2,040 sets of kits in total.

After production there were about 50 bad units, so when we settled the account we paid him for 50 units less. (At the time I really don't think we understood what spare parts meant.)

We never dealt with this Taiwanese businessman again.

This has made me feel guilty to this day. It seems taking advantage of others actually doesn't come cheap.