I.H.190.Warren Buffett.Water the flowers and skip over the weeds.
好坏对错中在已经错误的事情中投入资源可能没有净效益甚至是负的，“Water the flowers and skip over the weeds.”是目前看到的最好的方式，表达方式的好坏有时候比道理本身更重要。
1、《2012-02-25 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》
On September 16th we acquired Lubrizol, a worldwide producer of additives and other specialty chemicals. The company has had an outstanding record since James Hambrick became CEO in 2004, with pre-tax profits increasing from $147 million to $1,085 million. Lubrizol will have many opportunities for “bolt-on” acquisitions in the specialty chemical field. Indeed, we’ve already agreed to three, costing $493 million. James is a disciplined buyer and a superb operator. Charlie and I are eager to expand his managerial domain.
9月16日，我们收购了Lubrizol，这是一家全球性的添加剂及其他特种化学品生产商。自2004年James Hambrick出任CEO以来，公司业绩斐然，税前利润由1.47亿美元增长至10.85亿美元。Lubrizol在特化领域拥有大量“bolt-on”收购机会。事实上，我们已同意了三笔，总计4.93亿美元。James既是有纪律的买家，也是卓越的经营者。Charlie和我希望扩大他的管理版图。
2、《2013-03-01 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》
Despite such past miscues, our first priority with available funds will always be to examine whether they can be intelligently deployed in our various businesses. Our record $12.1 billion of fixed-asset investments and bolton acquisitions in 2012 demonstrate that this is a fertile field for capital allocation at Berkshire. And here we have an advantage: Because we operate in so many areas of the economy, we enjoy a range of choices far wider than that open to most corporations. In deciding what to do, we can water the flowers and skip over the weeds.
尽管过去有这些失误，我们对可用资金的首要任务始终是审视其能否被明智地投放到我们各项业务中。我们在 2012 年创纪录的 121 亿美元固定资产投资与“bolt-on”收购，证明了这对 Berkshire 而言是资本配置的一片沃土。而我们在此拥有优势：因为我们涉足经济的诸多领域，所能选择的范围远比大多数公司广。在决定该做什么时，我们可以“浇灌鲜花，跳过野草”。
11.You should be fully aware of one attitude Charlie and I share that hurts our financial performance: Regardless of price, we have no interest at all in selling any good businesses that Berkshire owns. We are also very reluctant to sell sub-par businesses as long as we expect them to generate at least some cash and as long as we feel good about their managers and labor relations. We hope not to repeat the capital-allocation mistakes that led us into such sub-par businesses. And we react with great caution to suggestions that our poor businesses can be restored to satisfactory profitability by major capital expenditures. (The projections will be dazzling and the advocates sincere, but, in the end, major additional investment in a terrible industry usually is about as rewarding as struggling in quicksand.) Nevertheless, gin rummy managerial behavior (discard your least promising business at each turn) is not our style. We would rather have our overall results penalized a bit than engage in that kind of behavior.
11.你们应该充分了解我和查理所共同持有的一种态度，这种态度确实会影响我们的财务表现：无论价格如何，我们对出售伯克希尔所拥有的任何优质企业都毫无兴趣。只要我们预期一些表现不佳的企业能够至少产生一定的现金流，并且我们对其管理团队和劳资关系感到满意，我们也非常不愿出售这些企业。我们希望不再重蹈导致我们进入这些表现不佳企业的资本配置错误。在面临有人建议我们通过大规模资本支出使这些欠佳业务恢复盈利能力时，我们会持极其谨慎的态度。（尽管预测会十分吸引人，提出者也会真诚以对，但归根结底，在一个糟糕的行业里投入大量额外资金通常和在流沙中挣扎一样得不偿失。）然而，纸牌游戏式的管理方式（每次都丢掉最没有前景的业务）并不是我们的作风。我们宁愿整体业绩受到一些影响，也不愿采用这种做法。
海南三亚专门搞了一个宣传短片：《海南放心游，了解一下？》。
We continue to avoid gin rummy behavior. True, we closed our textile business in the mid-1980’s after 20 years of struggling with it, but only because we felt it was doomed to run never-ending operating losses. We have not, however, given thought to selling operations that would command very fancy prices nor have we dumped our laggards, though we focus hard on curing the problems that cause them to lag. To clean up some confusion voiced in 2016, we emphasize that the comments here refer to businesses we control, not to marketable securities.
我们继续避免采用纸牌游戏式的管理方式。的确，我们在20年挣扎之后，于上世纪80年代中期关闭了纺织业务，但那是因为我们觉得它注定会陷入无休止的经营亏损当中。然而，对于那些能够卖出高价的业务，我们并没有考虑将其出售；对于那些跟不上步伐的业务，我们也没有一股脑地抛弃，而是集中精力解决它们滞后的根本原因。为了澄清2016年出现的一些误解，我们要强调的是，这里提到的内容是针对我们所控股的业务，而非可在市场上交易的证券。
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