Fair, it's not explicit. I misrecalled the control strategy. But the point still stands for the example in that article: over longer timespans SPY tends to return 7 - 10% or so. It has a beta of 1 (basically by definition). Levering up SPY will give you a better return, but at the cost of exposing you more to market volatility. In comparison the given risk parity strategy has a beta of about 0.5, and a natural return of about 10% (i.e. before leverage). You can safely lever the risk parity strategy to a higher total return than the historical market return without getting your beta beyond 1.