第7章
机器之祸

（接前面部分）
3
 
Not all inventions and discoveries, of course, are “labor-saving” machines. Some of them, like precision instruments, like nylon, lucite, plywood and plastics of all kinds, simply improve the quality of products. Others, like the telephone or the airplane, perform operations that direct human labor could not perform at all. Still others bring into existence objects and services, such as X-ray machines, radios, TV sets, air-conditioners and computers, that would otherwise not even exist. But in the foregoing illustration we have taken precisely the kind of machine that has been the special object of modern technophobia.

不消说，并不是一切的发明与发现都是“节省劳动”的机器。有的发明创造的目的在于改良产品性能，如精密仪器、尼龙、合成树脂、胶合板、各种塑料。至于电话和飞机这样的发明创造，它们所执行的作业是直接人力无法执行的。更多的发明创造则给人类带来前所未有的产品和服务，如X射线机、收音机、电视机、空调、电脑。但在前面的论述中，我们所选取的，正是当代科技恐惧症患者尤其抵制的机器类型。

It is possible, of course, to push too far the argument that machines do not on net balance throw men out of work. It is sometimes argued, for example, that machines create more jobs than would otherwise have existed. Under certain conditions this may be true. They can certainly create enormously more jobs in particular trades. The eighteenth century figures for the textile industries are a case in point. Their modern counterparts are certainly no less striking. In 1910, 140,000 persons were employed in the United States in the newly created automobile industry. In 1920, as the product was improved and its cost reduced, the industry employed 250,000 In 1930, as this product improvement and cost reduction continued, employment in the industry was 380,000. In 1973 it had risen to 941,000. By 1973, 514,000 people were employed in making aircraft and aircraft parts, and 393,000 were engaged in making electronic components. So it has been in one newly created trade after another, as the invention was improved and the cost reduced.²

反过来，那些认为机器总体而言不会让人失业的主张也有可能说过头。例如，有时人们主张，机器能创造更多的工作机会。在某些情况下，这种说法可能符合事实。在某些特定行业中，机器绝对能创造远多于从前的工作机会。18世纪的纺织业便是一个很好的例子。现代的新兴产业与之相比有过之而无不及。1910年，在美国有14万人受雇于新兴的汽车制造业。到1920年，由于产品改进和成本降低，有25万人受雇于这个行业。到1930年，随着产品继续改良，成本继续降低，整个业界的从业人员达到了38万人。1973年，这个数字上升到94.1万。同样在1973年，有51.4万人受雇飞机及其机零部件制造业，39.3万人从事电子元件制造。因此，随着发明的不断进步和成本的降低，在一个接一个的新兴产业中，的确都出现了上述就业增长的情形。{尾注:经济学家迈克尔·考克斯（W. Michael Cox）和理查德·阿尔姆（Richard Alm）在1992年为达拉斯联邦储备银行写了一篇文章，在文中，这两位作者指出工作机会是一个不断创造的过程。经济学家熊彼特第一个提出“创造性破坏”，即科技创新能把劳动力从过时的工作中解放出来，进而创造新的就业机会。考克斯和阿尔姆考查了20世纪就业的迅猛增长的全过程。在这一过程中，1900年美国有2 900万工人，在1991年工人人数已达1.16亿。（考克斯和阿尔姆的〈流失〉（The Churn），达拉斯联邦储备委员会年报，1992年）}

There is also an absolute sense in which machines may be said to have enormously increased the number of jobs. The population of the world today is four times as great as in the middle of the eighteenth century, before the Industrial Revolution had got well under way. Machines may be said to have given birth to this increased population; for without the machines, the world would not have been able to support it. Three out of every four of us, therefore, may be said to owe not only our jobs but our very lives to machines.

机器可以大幅度地增加就业数量的观点还有一种绝对正确性。当今的全球人口是18世纪中叶工业革命形成规模前的4倍，因此也可以说，是机器使人口得以增加。如果没有近现代机器，这个世界根本无法养活那么多人。即，我们之中四分之三的人能有工作可做，能够在这个世界上存在，都要拜机器所赐。

Yet it is a misconception to think of the function or result of machines as primarily one of creating jobs. The real result of the machine is to increase production, to raise the standard of living, to increase economic welfare. It is no trick to employ everybody, even (or especially) in the most primitive economy. Full employment—very full employment; long, weary, backbreaking employment—is characteristic of precisely the nations that are most retarded industrially. Where full employment already exists, new machines, inventions and discoveries cannot—until there has been time for an increase in population — bring more employment. They are likely to bring more unemployment (but this time I am speaking of voluntaiy and not involuntary unemployment) because people can now afford to work fewer hours, while children and the overaged no longer need to work.

然而，把机器的主要功用或是成果看作是创造就业却是一种错误的观念。机器的真正成果是增加生产、提高生活水平、增加经济福利。要让人人都有活儿干，即使（或尤其是）在最原始的社会中，也易如反掌。全面就业（full employment）——真正的全面就业，起早摸黑、全年无休、累死累活的就业状态——是工业发展最落后的国家的特色。对于已经达到这种全面就业的地方，新机器、新发明和新发现并没有办法带来更多就业机会，必须要等到人口有所增长才有办法。新机器的确有可能使失业增加（但这里谈的是自愿性失业，而不是非自愿性失业），毕竟，人们如今可以不必工作那么长的时间，孩童和老人也不用再工作。

What machines do, to repeat, is to bring an increase in production and an increase in the standard of living. They may do this in either of two ways. They do it by making goods cheaper for consumers (as in our illustration of the overcoats), or they do it by increasing wages because they increase the productivity of the workers. In other words, they either increase money wages or, by reducing prices, they increase the goods and services that the same money wages will buy. Sometimes they do both. What actually happens will depend in large part upon the monetary policy pursued in a country. But in any case, machines, inventions and discoveries increase real wages.

我们需要重申，机器所带来的是增加生产和提高生活水平。这个结果可以通过两条途径来实现：机器使消费者购买的产品变得更加便宜（在前面大衣例子中已有说明），或者提高工人的生产力，从而使工人的工资能够提高。换句话说，机器能够提高货币工资，或者能够降低物价，让同样的薪水能买到更多的产品和服务。有时候两种情况会同时发生。至于到底发生哪种情况，主要根据当时国家的货币政策而定。但无论如何，机器、发明和发现都会提高实际工资水平。

4
 
A warning is necessary before we leave this subject. It was precisely the great merit of the classical economists that they looked for secondary consequences, that they were concerned with the effects of a given economic policy or development in the long run and on the whole community. But it was also their defect that, in taking the long view and the broad view, they sometimes neglected to take also the short view and the narrow view. They were too often inclined to minimize or to forget altogether the immediate effects of developments on special groups. We have seen, for example, that many of the English stocking knitters suffered real tragedies as a result of the introduction of the new stocking frames, one of the earliest inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

在我们结束这个话题之前，有必要再提醒一下读者。古典经济学家的可贵之处，在于他们寻求特定经济政策的续发后果，关心其在长期内对公众整体的影响。但是它的不足之处，在于他们过分注重长期和全局，有时反倒无视短期和局部的效应。他们往往低估经济发展对特殊群体的即时影响，甚至根本不放在心上。例如，我们已经看到，在工业革命最早期的发明之一新织袜机的应用，导致了许多英格兰手工织袜工人所遭遇的不幸。

But such facts and their modern counterparts have led some writers to the opposite extreme of looking only at the immediate effects on certain groups. Joe Smith is thrown out of a job by the introduction of some new machine. “Keep your eye on Joe Smith,” these writers insist. “Never lose track of Joe Smith.” But what they then proceed to do is to keep their eyes only on Joe Smith, and to forget Tom Jones, who has just got a new job in making the new machine, and Ted Brown, who has just got a job operating one, and Daisy Miller, who can now buy a coat for half what it used to cost her. And because they think only of Joe Smith, they end by advocating reactionary and nonsensical policies.

不过，这些事实及其现代版本，又使得某些经济文章作者走到了另一个极端，也就是只关注特定群体所遭受的即时后果。由于某种新机器投入使用，张三失去了工作，那些学者坚决要求社会“关注张三”、“绝不要忘记张三”。他们接下来所做的就是眼睛只看张三，而忘了李四刚得到制造新机器的新工作、王五刚得到操作新机器的工作，以及赵六现在只需要用过去一半的价钱就能买到大衣。正因为他们只想到张三，他们鼓吹倒行逆施的荒谬政策。

Yes, we should keep at least one eye on Joe Smith. He has been thrown out of a job by the new machine. Perhaps he can soon get another job, even a better one. But perhaps, also, he has devoted many years of his life to acquiring and improving a special skill for which the market no longer has any use. He has lost this investment in himself, in his old skill, just as his former employer, perhaps, has lost his investment in old machines or processes suddenly rendered obsolete. He was a skilled workman, and paid as a skilled workman. Now he has become overnight an unskilled workman again, and can hope, for the present, only for the wages of an unskilled workman, because the one skill he had is no longer needed. We cannot and must not forget Joe Smith. His is one of the personal tragedies that, as we shall see, are incident to nearly all industrial and economic progress.

的确，我们也至少应该给予张三一些关注。他因新机器而失去了工作。也许不久他就会找到找另一份工作，甚至比过去的工作还好。但实际的情形也可能是，他这辈子花了大半生所学习和掌握的某项特殊技能，变成了市场不再需要的技能。他对自身与旧技能的投资都白费了，正如他的老雇主在旧机器或旧工艺流程上面的投资，突然之间也变得落伍过时，血本无归一样。张三本来是技术工人，拿的是技术工人的工资。因为他的技能不再有人需要，他又沦为非技术工人，只能领到普通工人的工资。我们不能也不应该忘掉张三。像我们将要看到的，张三的经历几乎是所有工业和经济进步都必将带来的个人悲剧。

To ask precisely what course we should follow with Joe Smith —whether we should let him make his own adjustment, give him separation pay or unemployment compensation, put him on relief, or train him at government expense for a new job—would carry us beyond the point that we are here trying to illustrate. The central lesson is that we should try to see all the main consequences of any economic policy or development—the immediate effects on special groups, and the long-run effects on all groups.

我们到底应该对张三怎么办——不管他、让他自己去适应变化；发放遣散补偿金或失业补助给他，任由他依靠领取救济金度日；或者由政府出钱培训，帮助他再就业——这些话题已经超出了本章要讨论的范围。这里要总结的教训是，我们应该设法观察经济政策或经济动向的所有的主要后果——既观察其对特殊群体产生的即期影响，又观察其对所有群体产生的长期影响。

If we have devoted considerable space to this issue, it is because our conclusions regarding the effects of new machinery, inventions and discoveries on employment, production and welfare are crucial. If we are wrong about these, there are few things in economics about which we are likely to be right.

我们在这个主题上倾注了大量的时间和精力，这是因为就新机器、新发明和新发现对于就业、生产和福利的影响，我们能得出什么样的结论至关重要。要是我们得出的结论是错误的，那么我们在经济学上就很难做多少正确的事情了。

第7章
机器之祸

（接前面部分）  

2

But the opposition to labor-saving machinery, even today, is not confined to economic illiterates. As late as 1970, a book appeared by a writer so highly regarded that he has since received the Nobel Prize in economics. His book opposed the introduction of laborsaving machines in the underdeveloped countries on the ground that they “decrease the demand for labor”!* The logical conclusion from this would be that the way to maximize jobs is to make all labor as inefficient and unproductive as possible. It implies that the English Luddite rioters, who in the early nineteenth century destroyed stocking frames, steam-power looms, and shearing machines, were after all doing the right thing.

然而，即便是在今天，反对省力机械的论调仍然并不限于那些经济学盲。直到1970年还出了一本这样的书，其作者受到了高度评价，并荣获了诺贝尔经济学奖。在这本书中，该作者反对在经济欠发达国家使用省力机械，理由是机器会“减少对劳动力的需求”！[脚注:冈纳·缪尔达尔（Gunnar Myrdal）：《世界贫困的挑战》（The Challenge of World Poverty），(New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), pp. 400-401 处处可见.]按此逻辑得到的的结论就是：要想创造尽可能多的就业机会，就必须让所有劳工尽可能地从事缺乏效率和收益的工作。言下之意，19世纪初捣毁织袜机、蒸汽动力织布机和剪切机的英国卢德暴乱分子们（Luddite）的所作所为，归根到底竟然是对的。

One might pile up mountains of figures to show how wrong were the technophobes of the past. But it would do no good unless we understood clearly why they were wrong. For statistics and history are useless in economics unless accompanied by a basic deductive understanding of the facts—which means in this case an understanding of why the past consequences of the introduction of machinery and other labor-saving devices had to occur. Otherwise the technophobes will assert (as they do in fact assert when you point out to them that the prophecies of their predecessorsturned out to be absurd): “That may have been all very well in the past but today conditions are fundamentally different; and now we simply cannot afford to develop any more labor-saving machines.” Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, indeed, in a syndicated newspaper column of September19, 1945, wrote: “We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.”

我们可以用一大堆数字来说明，过去那些恐惧科技进步的人错得有多离谱，但这样做无济于事，除非我们清楚地认识到他们为什么错。因为在经济学中，统计的与历史的东西，如果不与一种对事实作出基本推理的理解相结合的话，它们就是毫无疑义的。就本章分析的情况而言，这种结合意味着要去理解为什么在采用机器和其他的省力装置之后，必然产生那样的结果。要是我们不这样做，那些科技恐惧症患者就会狡辩说：“过去的状况还能忍受，但是今天的状况已经发生了根本性的变化，如今我们根本无法承受开发更多的省力机器。”当有人指出他们的前辈所作的预言被证明是荒谬的时候，他们正是以此来辩解的。1945年9月19日，在某报业集团的专栏中，美国第32任总统夫人埃莉诺·罗斯福（Eleanor Roosevelt）写道：“发展到今天，省力装置只有在不使人失业的情况下，对我们才是有利的。”

If it were indeed true that the introduction of labor-saving machinery is a cause of constantly mounting unemployment and misery, the logical conclusions to be drawn would be revolutionary, not only in the technical field but for our whole concept of civilization. Not only should we have to regard all further technical progress as a calamity; we should have to regard all past technical progress with equal horror. Every day each of us in his own activity is engaged in trying to reduce the effort it requires to accomplish a given result. Each of us is trying to save his own labor, to economize the means required to achieve his ends. Every employer, small as well as large, seeks constantly to gain his results more economically and efficiently— that is, by saving labor. Every intelligent workman tries to cut down the effort necessary to accomplish his assigned job. The most ambitious of us try tirelessly to increase the results we can achieve in a given number of hours. The technophobes, if they were logical and consistent, would have to dismiss all this progress and ingenuity as not only useless but vicious. Why should freight be carried from Chicago to New York by railroad when we could employ enormously more men, for example, to carry it all on their backs?

如果采用省力机器确实会造成失业率不断上升、加剧不幸的话，我们将合乎逻辑地得出颠覆性的结论，不仅会颠覆技术领域的观念，而且会颠覆整个人类文明的观念。我们不仅应该把任何的新技术进步都视为一场灾难，而且更该觉得过去所有的技术进步也都同样恐怖。每一天，我们每个人在处理个人事务时，总希望省心省力，把该做的事情尽快做完。每个人都想少花力气多办事。大大小小的雇主，总在设法通过节约劳动力来提高经济效益。头脑灵活的工人，都会想办法以最少的付出去完成上面指派的工作。雄心勃勃的人，总在坚持不懈地跟时间赛跑。如果严守逻辑上的一致性，那么科技恐惧症患者们必须摒弃所有这些进步和智巧，因为技术进步不但无益，而且有害。比方说从芝加哥运货到纽约，要是我们能够大量雇用人力，我们何必还要用火车，让人扛起货物背过去得了。

Theories as false as this are never held with logical consistency, but they do great harm because they are held at all. Let us, therefore, try to see exactly what happens when technical improvements and labor-saving machinery are introduced. The details will vary in each instance, depending upon the particular conditions that prevail in a given industry or period. But we shall assume an example that involves the main possibilities.

类似这样的错误理论，在逻辑上从来都站不住脚，但一旦有人相信，就贻害无穷。因此，我们需要设法弄明白：随着技术进步和省力机械的采用，到底会发生什么事。视特定行业或特定时期而言，具体情况会有不同，但我们应当采用囊括各种主要的可能性的范例。

Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women s overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force.

假设有位制衣商了解到有种机器，可用于制造男式女式大衣，所耗人力只相当于以往的一半。于是，他购置了这种机器，并且裁掉了一半的员工。

This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, however, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of payrolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it.

初看上去，这似乎是很明显的就业损失。但是，机器本身需要人工去制造，由此带来原本不存在的工作机会，是冲抵损失的工作机会之一。应该看到，只有当这种机器可以用过去一半的人力生产出更好的大衣，或是能以更低的成本生产出同样好的大衣时，制衣商才会购置机器。假设是后一种情况，便不能假定制造机器所用的劳动量，以工资来计算的话，恰恰等于制衣商购置机器时期望能长期节省的劳动量，否则就没有经济效益可言，制衣商也不会购置那种机器。

So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to “pay for itself.”

这么算来，就业机会仍然出现净损失。但我们至少要注意这样一个极大的可能性：即省力机械采用，其带来第一波影响也很有可能是使整体就业增加。因为制衣商使用机器，通常只是期望机器能长期帮他省钱，要机器“挣回本钱”也许要等上好几年的时间。

After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment.

等到机器挣够了本钱，开始产生经济效益时，制衣商就可以获得比从前更多的利润（假设他不打算低价销售，大衣的售价和竞争对手相同）。在这种情况下，好像劳工的就业机会遭受了损失，而只有那位制衣商，也就是资本家才能从中获利。但正因为资本家有了超额利润，相应的社会收益才得以体现。这位制衣商只有三种途径用掉超额利润，并且有可能在三个方面都分配一些资金：（1）用超额利润扩大生产，购置更多的机器，生产更多的大衣；（2）将超额利润投资到其他行业；（3）将超额利润用于个人消费。无论把利润用于哪个方面，他都会增加就业机会。

In other words, the manufacturer, as a result of his economies, has profits that he did not have before. Every dollar of the amount he has saved in direct wages to former coat makers, he now has to pay out in indirect wages to the makers of the new machine, or to the workers in another capital-using industry, or to the makers of a new house or car for himself or for jewelry and furs for his wife. In any case (unless he is a pointless hoarder) he gives indirectly as many jobs as he ceased to give directly.

换句话说，这位制衣商由于经济效益而获得了以前没有的利润。他从制衣工人直接工资那里节省下来的每一块钱，现在必须以间接工资的形式支付给新机器的生产工人，或者支付给他所投资的其他行业的工人，或者支付给为他盖新房、造新车的工人，或者通过为太太添置珠宝皮裘，支付给相关行业的工人。不管支付给什么人（除非他是一毛不拔的守财奴），他所间接提供的工作机会，将和他削减的直接工作机会一样多。

But the matter does not and cannot rest at this stage. If this enterprising manufacturer effects great economies as compared with his competitors, either he will begin to expand his operations at their expense, or they will start buying the machines too. Again more work will be given to the makers of the machines. But competition and production will then also begin to force down the price of overcoats. There will no longer be as great profits for those who adopt the new machines. The rate of profit of the manufacturers using the new machine will begin to drop, while the manufacturers who have still not adopted the machine may now make no profit at all. The savings, in other words, will begin to be passed along to the buyers of overcoats—to the consumers.

此外，事情不会也不可能就此打住。如果这位事业心强的制衣商在业界拥有相当大的成本优势，他会开始扩张营运规模，宰割坐以待毙的对手，或者逼迫他们着手添置机器。这样，又促使机制制造商增加人工。同时随着竞争加剧和产品增多，也会开始压低大衣的价格。那些新添置机器的制衣商获利不可能再如以往丰厚。率先使用新机器的制衣商获利率也开始下滑。仍未使用机器的制衣商可能根本无法获利。换句话说，整个业界创造的节约开始向大衣的购买者转移，也就是回馈给消费者。

But as overcoats are now cheaper, more people will buy them. This means that, though it takes fewer people to make the same number of overcoats as before, more overcoats are now being made than before. If the demand for overcoats is what economists call “elastic”—that is, if a fall in the price of overcoats causes a larger total amount of money to be spent on overcoats than previously— then more people may be employed even in making overcoats than before the new labor-saving machine was introduced. We have already seen how this actually happened historically with stockings and other textiles.

不过，由于大衣现在便宜了，更多的人会来购买。这意味着，生产同样数量的大衣，虽然雇佣的人工比以往更少，但现在的大衣总产量却比以往更大。如果人们对大衣的需求像经济学家所说的那样具有“弹性”（elastic），也就是说，价格下跌能刺激消费，消费者总体花在购买大衣上的总金额会比以前多，那么整个制衣业所雇用的劳工人数，甚至可能多于采用机器之前。从历史来看，针织袜业和其他纺织品业所发生的情形正是如此。

But the new employment does not depend on the elasticity of demand for the particular product involved. Suppose that, though the price of overcoats was almost cut in half—from a former price, say, of $150 to a new price of $100—not a single additional coat was sold. The result would be that while consumers were as well provided with new overcoats as before, each buyer would now have $50 left over that he would not have had left over before. He will therefore spend this $50 for something else, and so provide increased employment in other lines.

然而，新的就业并不取决于对某种具体产品的需求弹性。假设说，即使大衣的价格下跌了几乎一半（比如说从原来的150美元降为100美元），且总销量跟以前相比持平。其结果将是，消费者和以前一样都有一件新大衣，而不一样的是，每位消费者节省下了50美元。因此，他将把这50美元用在其他的什么东西上，从而增加了其他行业的就业。

In brief, on net balance machines, technological improvements, automation, economies and efficiency do not throw men out of work.

总之，整体而言，机器、技术改进、自动化、降低成本和提高效率并不会使人失去工作。

（未完待续）

第17章 政府价格管制

（接前面部分）

3

Price-fixing may often appear for a short period to be successful. lt can seem to work well for a while, particularly in wartime, when it is supported by patriotism and a sense of crisis. But the longer it is in effect the more its difficulties increase. When prices are arbitrarily held down by government compulsion, demand is chronically in excess of supply. We have seen that if the government attempts to prevent a shortage of a commodity by reducing also the prices of the labor, raw materials and other factors that go into its cost of production, it creates a shortage of these in turn. But not only will the government, if it pursues this course, find it necessary to extend price control more and more downwards, or “vertically”; it will find it no less necessary to extend price control “horizontally.” If we ration one commodity, and the public cannot get enough of it, though it still has excess purchasing power, it will turn to some substitute. The rationing of each commodity as it grows scarce, in other words, must put more and more pressure on the unrationed commodities that remain. If we assume that the government is successful in its efforts to prevent black markets (or at least prevents them from developing on a sufficient scale to nullify its legal prices), continued price control must drive it to the rationing of more and more commodities. This rationing cannot stop with consumers. In World War II it did not stop with consumers. It was applied first of all, in fact, in the allocation of raw materials to producers.

价格管制往往能在短期内显现出成效。它可能会在一段时间内运作得很好，尤其在战争时期，它会因人们的爱国意识和危机感而获得支持。然而，实施的时间越长，运作的难度就越大。当价格被政府强制压低后，需求会持续地超过供给。我们已经看到，如果政府为了防止受控商品供应短缺，试图去降低其生产成本，即压低其劳工、原材料和其他生产要素的价格，随之而来的将会是这些生产要素的短缺。倘使政府采取这个方针，政府不仅会发现沿产品线“纵向”扩大价格管制不可避免，也会发现有必要对不同产品线“横向”扩大价格管制。如果我们对一种商品实行定量配给，民众得不到满足，尽管仍然存在过剩的购买力，需求将会转向某种替代品。换句话说，对任何一种日益短缺的商品实行配给，势必对仍未实行配给的商品造成越来越大的压力。如果我们假设政府有效地遏制了黑市（或者，至少阻止黑市不致壮大到足以左右法定限价市场的程度），继续执行价格管制必然会迫使政府将越来越多的商品纳入配给的范畴。并且，政府不可能只限于对消费者实施配给。在二战期间就不限于消费者，事实上，而是首先对生产者实施原材料配给。

The natural consequence of a thoroughgoing over-all price control which seeks to perpetuate a given historic price level, in brief, must ultimately be a completely regimented economy. Wages would have to be held down as rigidly as prices. Labor would have to be rationed as ruthlessly as raw materials. The end result would be that the government would not only tell each consumer precisely how much of each commodity he could have; it would tell each manufacturer precisely what quantity of each raw material he could have and what quantity of labor. Competitive bidding for workers could no more be tolerated than competitive bidding for materials. The result would be a petrified totalitarian economy, with every business firm and every worker at the mercy of the government, and with a final abandonment of all the traditional liberties we have known. For as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”

总之，旨在将某种历史价格水平永久化的全面价格管制，其自然结果终必是一种完全专制性的经济。工资必须像物价那样，被强制压低。劳工必须像原材料那样，被强制纳入配给。最后，政府为每一位消费者规定了他能得到的每一种商品的数量，为每一家制造商规定了它能得到原材料的数量、能够雇用的劳工的数量。到那时，厂商竞价购买原材料将不被容许，竞价招揽劳工同样不被容许。结果会形成僵化的极权经济，每家厂商、每个劳工都听任政府支配，而最终，我们将放弃掉曾经拥有的全部传统意义的自由。正如亚历山大·汉密尔顿两个世纪前在《联邦党人文集》（Federalist Papers）一书中所指出的：“控制一个人生计的权力，就是控制一个人意志的权力。”

4

These are the consequences of what might be described as perfect,” long-continued, and “nonpolitical” price control. As was so amply demonstrated in one country after another, particularly in Europe during and after World War II, some of the more fantastic errors of the bureaucrats were mitigated by the black market. In some countries the black market kept growing at the expense of the legally recognized fixed-price market until the former became, in effect, the market. By nominally keeping the price ceilings, however, the politicians in power tried to show that their hearts, if not their enforcement squads, were in the right place.

这就是所谓“完美的”、长效和“无关政治的”价格控制的后果。 政府管制酿成的一些大错，有一部分被黑市所化解。这个现象在一个又一个国家得到证实，在二战期间以及战后的欧洲尤其如此。在有些国家，黑市的成长壮大是以破坏法定限价市场来实现的，直至前者成为事实上的市场。然而，当权的政客们仍然力图通过维持形同虚设的法定价格来表明，即便其政策实施者们有过失，他们的立意是完全正确的。

Because the black market, however, finally supplanted the legal price-ceiling market, it must not be supposed that no harm was done. The harm was both economic and moral. During the transition period the large, long-established firms, with a heavy capital investment and a great dependence upon the retention of public good-will, are forced to restrict or discontinue production. Their place is taken by fly-by-night concerns with little capital and little accumulated experience in production. These new firms are inefficient compared with those they displace; they turn out inferior and dishonest goods at much higher production costs than the older concerns would have required for continuing to turn out their former goods. A premium is put on dishonesty. The new firms owe their very existence or growth to the fact that they are willing to violate the law; their customers conspire with them; and as a natural consequence demoralization spreads into all business practices.

不过，并不因为黑市最终取代了法定限价市场，我们就可以认为这个过程没有任何伤害。这伤害既有经济上的，也有道德上的。一些大型的老牌企业，过去靠的是雄厚的资本，并且在很大程度上依赖于他们在公众中的信誉，而在市场转型期，它们被迫限制生产或中断生产。取而代之的，是那些既无资本又无生产经验的皮包公司。这些新公司跟那些被取代的老牌企业相比效率低下，它们以远远高于先前企业用来继续生产其产品所需的生产成本，产出质量低劣、名不副实的商品。这是对不诚实的一种奖励。这些新公司之所以能够生存和发展，是靠钻法律空子，而顾客又与它们沆瀣一气。自然而然，道德败坏深入到经济生活的每一个角落。

It is seldom, moreover, that any honest effort is made by the price-fixing authorities merely to preserve the level of prices existing when their efforts began. They declare that their intention is to “hold the line.” Soon, however, under the guise of “correcting inequities” or “social in justices,” they begin a discriminatory price-fixing which gives most to those groups that are politically powerful and least to other groups.

此外，政府价格管理部门很少真正做出努力，去维持他们一开始急吼吼要维持的现行价格水平。他们声称旨在努力“保持价格不变”。然而，他们很快就会以“纠正不公平”，或者“社会公正”为借口，着手实施歧视性的价格管制政策，结果是政治力量强大的群体得到政策倾斜最多，其他的群体则得不到政策照顾。

As political power today is most commonly measured by votes, the groups that the authorities most often attempt to favor are workers and farmers. At first it is contended that wages and living costs are not connected; that wages can easily be lifted without lifting prices. When it becomes obvious that wages can be raised only at the expense of profits, the bureaucrats begin to argue that profits were already too high anyway, and that lifting wages and holding prices will still permit a “fair profit.” As there is no such thing as a uniform rate of profit, as profits differ with each concern, the result of this policy is to drive the least profitable concerns out of business altogether, and to discourage or stop the production of certain items. This means unemployment, a shrinkage in production and a decline in living standards.

由于当今政治力量大抵以选票来衡量，因此当局总是力求讨好工人和农民。起初，人们不太能把工资和生活费用关联起来，认为可以单纯地涨工资而不涨价。后来，当人们认识到涨工资势必以牺牲利润为代价时，官僚们则争辩说，反正利润本来都高，即便涨工资而价格不变，生产者仍可以获得“公平的利润”。由于并不存在一个一致的利润率，而企业的利润又各不相同，所以，对利润一刀切的做法势必将赢利能力最差的公司一举淘汰出局，进而导致若干商品的产量减少或停产。这就意味着失业、生产萎缩、生活水平下降。

5

What lies at the base of the whole effort to fix maximum prices? There is first of all a misunderstanding of what it is that has been causing prices to rise. The real cause is either a scarcity of goods or a surplus of money. Legal price ceilings cannot cure either. In fact, as we have just seen, they merely intensify the shortage of goods. What to do about the surplus of money will be discussed in a later chapter. But one of the errors that lie behind the drive for price-fixing is the chief subject of this book. Just as the endless plans for raising prices of favored commodities are the result of thinking of the interests only of the producers immediately concerned, and forgetting the interests of consumers, so the plans for holding down prices by legal edict are the result of thinking of the short-run interests of people only as consumers and forgetting their interests as producers. And the political support for such policies springs from a similar confusion in the public mind. People do not want to pay more for milk, butter, shoes, furniture, rent, theater tickets or diamonds. Whenever any of these items rises above its previous level the consumer becomes indignant, and feels that he is being rooked.

费尽折腾去规定最高价格，其根本原因是什么呢？首先，是什么致使价格上涨，人们在这一点上存在误解。真正的原因是商品匮乏或货币过剩。法定价格上限根本无法解决这两方面的问题。事实上，正如我们所见，它们仅仅加剧了商品的短缺。至于货币过剩如何应对，我们会在后面章节讨论。不过，隐藏在限价政策背后的谬误之一，倒是本书的主题。正如无数计划旨在人为抬高某些商品的价格，是政府一心顾及生产者的眼前利益而没有考虑消费者利益的结果，同样，通过法令来压低价格的那些计划，是政府一心顾及公众作为消费者的眼前利益，而没有考虑他们作为生产者的利益的结果。这类政策所得的政治支持，产生自公众思想中类似的模糊观念。人们决不愿花更多的钱去购买牛奶、黄油、鞋子、家具、戏票、钻石，去支付租金。任何时候，任何一样这些商品的价格高于先前的价位，消费者就开始忿忿，感觉遭人敲竹杠。

The only exception is the item he makes himself: here he understands and appreciates the reason for the rise. But he is always likely to regard his own business as in some way an exception. “Now my own business,” he will say, “is peculiar, and the public does not understand it. Labor costs have gone up; raw material prices have gone up; this or that raw material is no longer being imported, and must be made at a higher cost at home. Moreover, the demand for the product has increased, and the business should be allowed to charge the prices necessary to encourage its expansion to supply this demand.” And so on. Everyone as consumer buys a hundred different products; as producer he makes, usually, only one. He can see the inequity in holding down the price of that. And just as each manufacturer wants a higher price for his particular product, so each worker wants a higher wage or salary. Each can see as producer that price control is restricting production in his line. But nearly everyone refuses to generalize this observation, for it means that he will have to pay more for the products of others.

惟一的例外，是他自己生产的商品：此刻，他完全理解并赞成提价的理由。不过，他总容易把自己的行业看作是某种例外。“我干的这行”，他会这样说，“现在的情况相当特殊，一般人是不了解的。人工成本在涨；原材料价格也在涨；这种那种原材料已经不再允许进口，必须以较高的成本在国内制造。此外，市场对本行产品的需求增加了，应该允许本行产品做必要的提价，从而鼓励供给以满足需求。”等等。每个人作为消费者时，都会买很多种不同的商品；而作为生产者时，通常只生产一种产品。他看得出，压低自己的产品的价格是不公平的。正如每家制造商都希望他自己的产品卖到更高的价格，每个工人都想要更高的工资或薪金。作为生产者时，每个人都看得出价格管制限制了本行的生产。但是，几乎每个人都不愿将观察到的这个事实推己及人，因为这意味着他会付更更高的的价钱去买别人的产品。

Each one of us, in brief, has a multiple economic personality. Each one of us is producer, taxpayer, consumer. The policies he advocates depend upon the particular aspect under which he thinks of himself at the moment. For he is sometimes Dr. Jekyll and sometimes Mr. Hyde. As a producer he wants inflation (thinking chiefly of his own services or product); as a consumer he wants price ceilings (thinking chiefly of what he has to pay for the products of others). As a consumer he may advocate or acquiesce in subsidies; as a taxpayer he will resent paying them. Each person is likely to think that he can so manage the political forces that he can benefit from a rise for his own product (while his raw material costs are legally held down) and at the same time benefit as a consumer from price control. But the overwhelming majority will be deceiving themselves. For not only must there be at least as much loss as gain from this political manipulation of prices; there must be a great deal more loss than gain, because price-fixing discourages and disrupts employment and production.

简单地说，我们每个人都具备多重经济角色。每个人都是生产者、纳税人，消费者。一个人支持何种政策，取决于他当时从何种身份去为自身利益作考虑。犹如电影《化身博士》（Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde），他有时处于这种身份、有时处于那种身份。作为生产者时，他便希望通货膨胀（这时主要顾及自己提供的服务或产品）；作为消费者时，他便希望政府限价（这时主要顾及他不得不掏钱买别人的产品）。作为消费者，他可能拥护或者默许政府实施补贴；而作为纳税人，他会愤慨为此埋单。每个人都很可能认为他能应付各种政治力量，以便能从他自己产出的商品涨价中获利（同时还要他的原材料价格被合法的压低），同时他还可以以消费者的身份受惠于价格管制。但是绝大多数的人都在自欺欺人——利用政治力量操纵价格，注定得不偿失；因为管制价格不可避免地会限制和破坏就业与生产。

Government Price-Fixing

第17章 政府价格管制
 
We have seen what some of the effects are of governmental efforts to fix the prices of commodities above the levels to which free markets would otherwise have carried them. Let us now look at some of the results of government attempts to hold the prices of commodities below their natural market levels.

我们已经分析了政府试图将商品价格限定在自由市场水平之上的做法，看到了由此造成的一些影响。现在让我们来看一下，当政府努力将商品价格限定在自然水平之下时，有可能会带来一些什么样的后果。
 
The latter attempt is made in our day by nearly all governments in wartime. We shall not examine here the wisdom of wartime price-fixing. The whole economy, in total war, is necessarily dominated by the State, and the complications that would have to be considered would carry us too far beyond the main question with which this book is concerned.* But wartime price-fixing, wise or not, is in almost all countries continued for at least long periods after the war is over, when the original excuse for starting it has disappeared.

当今各国政府在战时几乎都做过这后一种努力。确实，在战争期间，国民经济全部由国家控制是必然的，我们在这里不会去探究战时管制价格的学问，要去探究就必须考虑战时的复杂状况，这会使我们远离本书所关注的主题。{footnotes: 不过，在这一点上我自己的结论是，尽管在战争期间，政府的优先要求权、分配权或定量配给可能是不可避免的，但管制价格造成的伤害尤为突出。虽然要达到实现最高限价的目的，往往需要结合配给制，但即便就暂时的情况而言，实施配给则不一定要结合最高限价。}不过，无论战时管制价格的做法明智与否，几乎所有的国家在战后很长一段时间内仍在实施价格管制，即使当初启动价格管制的理由已经不复存在。
 
It is the wartime inflation that mainly causes the pressure for price-fixing. At the time of writing, when practically every country is inflating, though most of them are at peace, price controls are always hinted at, even when they are not imposed. Though they are always economically harmful, if not destructive, they have at least a political advantage from the standpoint of the officeholders.By implication they put the blame for higher prices on the greed and rapacity of businessmen, instead of on the inflationary monetary policies of the officeholders themselves.

战时通货膨胀是产生政府启动价格管制压力的主要原因。本书撰稿时，大多数国家安享和平，但都存在着通货膨胀，各国政府总会萌发管制物价的念头，即便没有真正实施。虽说管制物价在经济上一定有害，甚至是破坏性的，不过对于政府官员至少具有一项政治上的好处——管制价格等于暗示物价上涨应归咎于企业家的贪婪，官员们往往只字不提政府实行的货币政策才是造成通货膨胀压力的主要原因。
 
Let us first see what happens when the government tries to keep the price of a single commodity, or a small group of commodities, below the price that would be set in a free competitive market.

首先，让我们分析一下，当政府试图将单一商品、或者一小部分商品的价格维持在低于自由竞争市场的价格水平时，会发生什么样的情形。
 
When the government tries to fix maximum prices for only a few items, it usually chooses certain basic necessities, on the ground that it is most essential that the poor be able to obtain these at a “reasonable” cost. Let us say that the items chosen for this purpose are bread, milk and meat.

当政府准备只管制一小部分商品的最高价格时，通常会选择那些关系到民生的必需品，官员们会说，确保穷人能够以“合理”的价格，买得起生活必需品，这比什么都重要。我们假设为此选定的商品是面包、牛奶和肉类。
 
The argument for holding down the price of these goods will run something like this: If we leave beef (let us say) to the mercies of the free market, the price will be pushed up by competitive bidding so that only the rich will get it. People will get beef not in proportion to their need, but only in proportion to their purchasing power. If we keep the price down, everyone will get his fair share.

主张压低生活必需品价格的理由是这样的：如果我们任由市场去决定牛肉的价格，那么，价格会由于被争相购买而被抬得很高，以至于只有富人才买得起。这样一来，人们得到的牛肉就不再与他们的基本需要成正比，而仅仅是与他们的购买力成正比。如果我们压低牛肉价格，每个人都能得到公平的一份。
 
The first thing to be noticed about this argument is that if it is valid the policy adopted is inconsistent and timorous. For if purchasing power rather than need determines the distribution of beef at a market price of $2.25 cents a pound, it would also determine it, though perhaps to a slightly smaller degree, at, say, a legal “ceiling” price of $1.50 cents a pound. The purchasing-power-rather-than-need argument, in fact, holds as long as we charge anything for beef whatever. It would cease to apply only if beef were given away.

关于这一论调首先要注意的是，如果它是有依据的，那么，所采取的这种政策既无法保持前后一致又无法把握其分寸。因为，假若以每磅2.25美分的市场价格决定牛肉分配的，是购买力而非基本需要，那么，即便将法定“限价”降到1.50美分，其分配将同样是由购买力决定的，只不过依赖程度可能会稍小一些。事实上，只要牛肉还需要拿钱去买，这种“由购买力而非需要决定”（purchasing-power-rather-than-need）观点总是适用的。只有在牛肉免费奉送时才不适用。
 
But schemes for maximum price-fixing usually begin as efforts to “keep the cost of living from rising.” And so their sponsors unconsciously assume that there is something peculiarly “normal” or sacrosanct about the market price at the moment from which their control starts. That starting or previous price is regarded as “reasonable,” and any price above that as “unreasonable,” regardless of changes in the conditions of production or demand since that starting price was first established.

政府出台限定最高价格的措施时，往往强调是为了“使生活费用不再上涨”。这个说法预设了有个 “正常” 的或神圣不可侵犯的特定价格存在。这个特定价格或以前的低价格，被视为“合理的”，比它高的任何价格都是“不合理的”，而不去管特定价格设定之后，生产或需求状况所发生的变化。

2

In discussing this subject, there is no point in assuming a price control that would fix prices exactly where a free market would place them in any case. That would be the same as having no price control at all. We must assume that the purchasing power in the hands of the public is greater than the supply of goods available, and that prices are being held down by the government below the levels to which a free market would put them.

在讨论这个主题时，若假设政府把价格刚好限定在自由市场价位，就没有意义了。因为，那就和根本不实行价格管制没有两样。我们必须假设市民的购买力大于商品的供给水平，并且政府限价低于自由市场价位。

Now we cannot hold the price of any commodity below its market level without in time bringing about two consequences. The first is to increase the demand for that commodity. Because the commodity is cheaper, people are both tempted to buy, and can afford to buy, more of it. The second consequence is to reduce the supply of that commodity. Because people buy more, the accumulated supply is more quickly taken from the shelves of merchants. But in addition to this, production of that commodity is discouraged. Profit margins are reduced or wiped out. The marginal producers are driven out of business. Even the most efficient producers may be called upon to turn out their product at a loss. This happened in World War II when slaughter houses were required by the Office of Price Administration to slaughter and process meat for less than the cost to them of cattle on the hoof and the labor of slaughter and processing.

现在，我们知道，当商品价格被人为限制在它的市场价位之下时，不可避免地会带来两个后果。第一是导致受控商品的需求增加。由于该商品变得便宜，图便宜的人会更多，人们也买得起更多。第二是导致受控商品供给减少。由于人们买得更多，商家的存货也销得快，而与此同时，该产品的生产却受到了阻碍。降价致使该商品收益率降低，甚至做不出利润。边际生产者被迫出局。即使最有效率的生产者也可能亏本经营。这种事情就曾在二次世界大战期间发生过，当时的屠宰场在美国物价管制局要求下，以低于购买活牛和雇用屠宰加工工人的成本的售价，持续屠宰和加工肉制品。

If we did nothing else, therefore, the consequence of fixing a maximum price for a particular commodity would be to bring about a shortage of that commodity. But this is precisely the opposite of what the government regulators originally wanted to do. For it is the very commodities selected for maximum price-fixing that the regulators most want to keep in abundant supply. But when they limit the wages and the profits of those who make these commodities, without also limiting the wages and profits of those who make luxuries or semiluxuries, they discourage the production of the price-controlled necessities while they relatively stimulate the production of less essential goods.

如果政府暂不采取其他措施，价格限制将造成受控商品出现短缺。这恰好与政府内制定法规人员的初衷背道而驰。因为那些被选定的限价商品，都是政府最希望其保持充足供应的商品。但是，当他们限定了这些产品生产者的工资和利润水平，而没有限制奢侈品或其它非必需品生产者的工资与利润时，他们就阻碍了制造商们去生产价格受控的必需品，而相应地刺激了非必需品的生产。

Some of these consequences in time become apparent to the regulators, who then adopt various other devices and controls in an attempt to avert them. Among these devices are rationing, cost-control, subsidies, and universal price-fixing. Let us look at each of these in turn.

政府内制定法规的人员迟早会认识到其中一些后果。接下来，他们就会采取其他各种办法和管制措施，来尽力避免出现类似的局面。这些措施包括配给制、成本管制、补贴和全面管制价格。我们来一一讨论这些措施。

When it becomes obvious that a shortage of some commodity is developing as a result of a price fixed below the market, rich consumers are accused of taking “more than their fair share”; or, if it is a raw material that enters into manufacture, individual firms are accused of “hoarding” it. The government then adopts a set of rules concerning who shall have priority in buying that commodity, or to whom and in what quantities it shall be allocated, or how it shall be rationed. If a rationing system is adopted, it means that each consumer can have only a certain maximum supply, no matter how much he is willing to pay for more.

到了某种商品因价格被规定在市场水平之下而出现显著的短缺之后，有钱的消费者往往遭到指责，说他们得到的必需品“超过公平份额”；要是受控商品是生产用的原材料，就有公司会被指责为“囤积居奇”。鉴于此，政府会推出一系列规定，指定谁有优先购买该商品的特权，或者由政府机关决定分配给谁，分配多少，如何分配。一旦实施配给制度，就意味每位消费者，不论他愿意以多高的价钱购买更多的某种商品，他都只能得到某一最大限额的配给。

If a rationing system is adopted, in brief, it means that the government adopts a double price system, or a dual currency system, in which each consumer must have a certain number of coupons or “points” in addition to a given amount of ordinary money. In other words, the government tries to do through rationing part of the job that a free market would have done through prices. I say only part of the job, because rationing merely limits the demand without also stimulating the supply, as a higher price would have done.

总之，一旦采取了配给制度，就意味着政府采取的是双重价格体系，或者是双重货币体系，在这个体系中，每位消费者除了持有一定数量的钱币，还必须拥有一定数量的票券或“额度”，才能买到东西。换句话说，政府限价市场试图通过配给，去起到自由市场通过价格所起到的部分作用。之所以说只是“部分作用”，是因为配给只限制需求，而不能象更高的价格那样，还能刺激供给。

The government may try to assure supply through extending its control over the costs of production of a commodity. To hold down the retail price of beef, for example, it may fix the wholesale price of beef, the slaughter-house price of beef, the price of live cattle, the price of feed, the wages of farmhands. To hold down the delivered price of milk, it may try to fix the wages of milk truck drivers, the price of containers, the farm price of milk, the price of feedstuffs. To fix the price of bread, it may fix the wages in bakeries, the price of flour, the profits of millers, the price of wheat, and so on.

为了保证受控商品实现持续供应，政府可能扩大管制受控商品的生产成本。比方说，为了使牛肉的零售价格保持在低水平，政府可能限定牛肉的批发价格、屠宰场的牛肉价格、活牛的价格、饲料的价格、农场工人的工资。为了压低牛奶的送达价格，政府可能限定牛奶送货司机的工资、奶品包装的价格、农场的牛奶价格、饲料价格。为了压低面包的价格，政府可能限定面包师的工资、面粉的价格、粮食加工企业的利润、小麦的价格等等。

But as the government extends this price-fixing backwards, it extends at the same time the consequences that originally drove it to this course. Assuming that it has the courage to fix these costs, and is able to enforce its decisions, then it merely, in turn, creates shortages of the various factors — labor, feedstuffs, wheat, or whatever—that enter into the production of the final commodities. Thus the government is driven to controls in ever-widening circles, and the final consequence will be the same as that of universal price-fixing.

然而，当政府继续扩大受控商品范围的时候，无非是扩大了我们在前面所指出的价格管制的后果。假使政府有魄力有能力去限定受控商品的成本，成本控制也只会导致受控商品的各种生产要素（如劳工、饲料、小麦等等）出现短缺。这么一来，政府不得不继续扩大受控商品的范围，而其最终的结果与全面的价格管制是相同的。

The government may try to meet this difficulty through subsidies. It recognizes, for example, that when it keeps the price of milk or butter below the level of the market, or below the relative level at which it fixes other prices, a shortage may result because of lower wages or profit margins for the production of milk or butter as compared with other commodities. Therefore the government attempts to compensate for this by paying a subsidy to the milk and butter producers. Passing over the administrative difficulties involved in this, and assuming that the subsidy is just enough to assure the desired relative production of milk and butter, it is clear that, though the subsidy is paid to producers, those who are really being subsidized are the consumers. For the producers are on net balance getting no more for their milk and butter than if they had been allowed to charge the free market price in the first place; but the consumers are getting their milk and butter at a great deal below the free market price. They are being subsidized to the extent of the difference—that is, by the amount of subsidy paid ostensibly to the producers.

政府可能采取的另一种解决问题的方法，是提供补贴。例如，他们认识到，当把牛奶或黄油价格限定在市场价位之下，甚至与其他受控商品价格相比较都偏低，短缺就可能发生。因为生产牛奶或黄油的工资及收益率，还比不上生产其他商品。政府为了补救这种现象，对牛奶和黄油的生产者进行补贴。我们姑且忽略推行补贴在行政上的种种困难，并且假设补贴刚好足够确保牛奶和黄油得以持续生产，很明显，尽管补贴是提供给生产者的，但真正得到补贴的却是消费者。因为，生产者从净收益上讲并没有比允许他们以自由市场价格出售其牛奶黄油时得到的更多，而消费者却以远低于自由市场价格的水平买到了这些产品。两者的差价，正是他们获得的补贴金额——也就是政府表面上付给生产者的补贴金额。

Now unless the subsidized commodity is also rationed, it is those with the most purchasing power that can buy most of it. This means that they are being subsidized more than those with less purchasing power. Who subsidizes the consumers will depend upon the incidence of taxation. But men in their role of taxpayers will be subsidizing themselves in their role of consumers. It becomes a little difficult to trace in this maze precisely who is subsidizing whom. What is forgotten is that subsidies are paid for by someone, and that no method has been discovered by which the community gets something for nothing.

现在，除非接受补贴的商品也实施配给，否则购买力最强的人会买得最多。这意味着，他们得到的补贴会比购买力较低的人更多。到底谁补贴了消费者，取决于政府如何征税。如果既是纳税人又是消费者，便是自己补贴自己。若接受补贴的商品很多，要辨别谁补贴谁就让人晕头转向了。然而有一点应当是明确的，那就是，补贴的钱必须由某些人来买单，并不存在什么可以使公众得到某种好处而不必付出任何代价的方法。

（未完待续）

The Curse of Machinery

第7章
机器之祸

AMONG THE MOST viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever. Whenever there is long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices. The public tolerates these practices because it either believes at bottom that the unions are right, or is too confused to see just why they are wrong.

在所有的经济学谬论中，相信机器在总体上导致失业最为阴魂不散。这种谬论曾经被无数次驳倒过，但总能死灰复燃，并且和以往一样张狂。每当出现长时期失业潮的时候，机器总是被指责为造成失业的罪魁祸首。这一谬论仍然是许多工会组织开展实际运动的理论基础。而公众则普遍容忍这些做法，要么认为工会做得对，要么是稀里糊涂，搞不清工会错在哪里。

The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat.

所有那些机器导致人们失业的想法，若讲一点点逻辑上的一致性，必然都会得出荒谬的结论：不但我们今天的每一项技术进步都会带来失业，就连原始人动心起念摆脱无谓的蛮干时，就已经开始造成自己的失业了。

To go no further back, let us turn to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. The first chapter of this remarkable book is called “Of the Division of Labor,” and on the second page of this first chapter the author tells us that a workman unacquainted with the use of machinery employed in pin-making “could scarce make one pin a day, and certainly could not make twenty,” but with the use of this machinery he can make 4,800 pins a day. So already, alas, in Adam Smith’s time, machinery had thrown from 240 to 4,800 pin-makers out of work for every one it kept. In the pin-making industry there was already, if machines merely throw men out of jobs, 99.98 percent unemployment. Could things be blacker?

也不必追溯那么遥远。让我们看一下1776年出版的亚当•斯密的《国富论》。这本巨著的第一章叫做“论分工”，在这一章的第二页上，作者给我们举了个饰针制造业的例子。一个劳工，如果不知道如何使用制造饰针的机器，“也许一天也做不出1枚饰针，要做20枚，就绝无可能了”。但是使用机器，他一天能做4 800枚饰针。这样看来，很不幸，在亚当•斯密时代，每出现一个操作机器的劳工，就得有240到4 800名做饰针的劳工丢掉饭碗。如果机器只会让人失业的话，那么饰针制造业的失业率就已经有了99.98%，还有什么比这更糟的吗？

Things could be blacker, for the Industrial Revolution was just in its infancy. Let us look at some of the incidents and aspects of that revolution. Let us see, for example, what happened in the stocking industry. New stocking frames as they were introduced were destroyed by the handicraft workmen (over 1000 in a single riot), houses were burned, the inventors were threatened and obliged to flee for their lives, and order was not finally restored until the military had been called out and the leading rioters had been either transported or hanged.

的确还有更糟的，毕竟工业革命那时正处于萌芽期。让我们来看看那场革命中的一些事件的方方面面。以针织袜业为例，新织袜机刚投入使用时就遭到了手工工人的破坏（单单一次暴动，被毁掉的机器就超过1 000台），厂房被烧毁，机器发明者们受到威胁而被迫逃命。直到最后出动了军队，并把暴动领袖们流放或绞死以后，秩序才得以恢复。

Now it is important to bear in mind that insofar as the rioters were thinking of their own immediate or even longer futures their opposition to the machine was rational. For William Felkin, in his History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery Manufactures (1867), tells us (though the statement seems implausible) that the larger part of the 50,000 English stocking knitters and their families did not fully emerge from the hunger and misery entailed by the introduction of the machine for the next forty years. But insofar as the rioters believed, as most of them undoubtedly did, that the machine was permanently displacing men, they were mistaken, for before the end of the nineteenth century the stocking industry was employing at least a hundred men for every man it employed at the beginning of the century.

现在，我们应该记住，从暴动者们的角度来看，想到他们的明天乃至于更远的将来，他们抵制机器的行动是理性的。威廉•费尔金（William Felkin）在《机器针织和花边织制商历史》（History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery Manufactures；1867年）中告诉我们（尽管他的陈述听上去令人难以置信），在采用机器后的40年里，英格兰的50 000名做针织长袜的手工工人和他们的家庭，大多数最终都没能从饥寒交迫的悲惨境地中解脱出来。然而，暴动者们相信，无疑地他们中大部分持此看法，机器会不断地取代人力，他们却是错的，因为到了19世纪末，针织袜业所雇用的劳工人数，比该世纪初的时候反而增长了至少100倍。

Arkwright invented his cotton-spinning machinery in 1760. At that time it was estimated that there were in England 5,200 spinners using spinning wheels, and 2,700 weavers—in all, 7,900 persons engaged in the production of cotton textiles. The introduction of Arkwright’s invention was opposed on the ground that it threatened the livelihood of the workers, and the opposition had to be put down by force. Yet in 1787—twenty-seven years after the invention appeared—a parliamentary inquiry showed that the number of persons actually engaged in the spinning and weaving of cotton had risen from 7,900 to 320,000, an increase of 4,400 percent.

阿克赖特（Arkwright）在1760年发明了棉纺机。据估计，当时在英格兰有5 200名使用纺车的纺纱工，以及2 700名织布工——总共有7 900人从事棉纺织品的生产。阿克赖特的发明在推广应用时遭到了抵制，理由是它将威胁到棉纺工人的生计，最后，当局只好动用武力来平息抵制浪潮。然而到了1787年，也就是阿克赖特的发明问世后的第27个年头，议会的一项调查表明，实际从事棉纺织业的人数，从7 900人增加到32万人，增加了4 400%。

If the reader will consult such a book as Recent Economic Changes, by David A. Wells, published in 1889, he will find passages that, except for the dates and absolute amounts involved, might have been written by our technophobes of today. Let me quote a few:

要是读者们有机会去翻一翻1889年版戴维•韦尔斯（David A. Wells）所著的《近来的经济变革》（Recent Economic Changes），便会发现其中一些章节，只要把日期和数字改一改，就跟今天那些科技恐惧症患者所写文字如出一辙。让我们来看看其中几段：

During the ten years from 1870 to 1880, inclusive, the British mercantile marine increased its movement, in the matter of foreign entries and clearances alone, to the extent of 22,000,000 tons… yet the number of men who were employed in effecting this great movement had decreased in 1880, as compared with 1870, to the extent of about three thousand (2,990 exactly). What did it? The introduction of steam-hoisting machines and grain elevators upon the wharves and docks, the employment of steam power, etc….

从1870年到1880年这十年间，包括首尾两年，英国商船运量增加，光是进出口清关吨数就增至2 200万吨……然而，从事于这一巨大装卸工作量的人员人数，与1870年相比，1880年雇用的人数只剩下约3 000人（准确数字是2 990人）。这是怎么回事呢？原来，各个码头和船坞都安装了蒸汽吊装机和谷物提升机、采用蒸汽动力等等……

In 1873 Bessemer steel in England, where its price had not been
enhanced by protective duties, commanded $80 per ton; in 1886 it was
profitably manufactured and sold in the same country for less than $20
per ton. Within the same time the annual production capacity of a
Bessemer converter has been increased fourfold, with no increase but
rather a diminution of the involved labor.

1873年，贝塞麦转炉（Bessemer）生产的钢材在英格兰能卖到每吨80美元，这个价格并不是因保护性关税所形成的高价。而到了1886年，还是在英格兰，每吨的售价不到20美元，产销仍有利可图。同期，贝塞麦转炉的年产能翻了四番，而所用的人工比从前不增反降。

The power capacity already being exerted by the steam engines of the
world in existence and working in the year 1887 has been estimated by
the Bureau of Statistics at Berlin as equivalent to that of 200,000,000
horses, representing approximately 1,000,000,000 men; or at least three
times the working population of the earth….

根据柏林统计局估计，1887年在全世界投入使用的蒸汽机的动力总和，大约相当于2亿匹马的力量，相当于约10亿人的劳动力；至少是全球劳动人口的总和的三倍……

One would think that this last figure would have caused Mr. Wells to
pause, and wonder why there was any employment left in the world of
1889 at all; but he merely concluded, with restrained pessimism, that
“under such circumstances industrial overproduction . . . may become
chronic.”

我们可以想象，最后得出的这些数据应该会让韦尔斯先生暂时放下手中的笔，琢磨琢磨为什么到1889年这个世界上竟然还有人有工作可做。但他只以审慎地悲观态度作了这样的结论：“照此下去，工业生产过剩……可能会成为一种长期的现象。”

In the depression of 1932, the game of blaming unemployment on the machines started all over again. Within a few months the doctrines of a group calling themselves the Technocrats had spread through the country like a forest fire. I shall not weary the reader with a recital of the fantastic figures put forward by this group or with corrections to show what the real facts were. It is enough to say that the Technocrats returned to the error in all its native purity that machines permanently displace men—except that, in their ignorance, they presented this error as a new and revolutionary discovery of their own. It was simply one more illustration of Santayana’s aphorism that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

在经济大萧条期间的1932年，把失业问题归罪到机器头上的把戏再次上演。短短几个月内，一群自称技术统治论者的人提出的理论象森林大火一样席卷全美。我不打算在这里复述这些人罗列的怪诞数字，或是修正其数据而揭示实情来使读者为此疲倦发腻。读者们只需要知道技术统治论者鼓吹机器会永远取代人力是老调重弹就够了，而这些人竟然无知地以为这个论调是他们新创的革命性的真知灼见，再次印证了作家乔治•桑塔亚纳（George Santayana）那句格言——“忘记历史，就意味着重蹈覆辙”。

The Technocrats were finally laughed out of existence; but their doctrine, which preceded them, lingers on. It is reflected in hundreds of make-work rules and featherbed practices by labor unions; and these rules and practices are tolerated and even approved because of the confusion on this point in the public mind.

技术统治论者最终在人们的嘲笑声中销声匿迹；但是在他们之前早已存在的信条却阴魂不散。它反应在成百上千的工会所设计创造的制造工作机会的规定及闲职就业的实践中，此类规定与实践之所以得到容忍乃至于赞同，是因为公众还没有弄清楚这个问题。

Testifying on behalf of the United States Department of Justice before the Temporary National Economic Committee (better known as the TNEC) in March 1941, Corwin Edwards cited innumerable examples of such practices. The electrical union in New York City was charged with refusal to install electrical equipment made outside of New York State unless the equipment was disassembled and reassembled at the job site. In Houston, Texas, master plumbers and the plumbing union agreed that piping prefabricated for installation would be installed by the union only if the thread were cut off one end of the pipe and new thread were cut at the job site. Various locals of the painters’ union imposed restrictions on the use of sprayguns, restrictions in many cases designed merely to make work by requiring the slower process of applying paint with a brush. A local of the teamsters’ union required that every truck entering the New York metropolitan area have a local driver in addition to the driver already employed. In various cities the electrical union required that if any temporary light or power was to be used on a construction job there must be a full-time maintenance electrician, who should not be permitted to do any electrical construction work. This rule, according to Mr. Edwards, “often involves the hiring of a man who spends his day reading or playing solitaire and does nothing except throw a switch at the beginning and end of the day.”

1941年3月，科温•爱德华（Corwin Edwards）代表美国司法部在美国临时经济委员会（TNEC）作证时，围绕这类实践列举了大量实例。例如，纽约市的电气工会被指控拒绝安装纽约州以外的企业生产的电气设备，除非那些设备在安装现场拆解后重新组装才行。在得克萨斯州的休斯敦，管工工会要求，在施工现场，预制管道一端的螺纹必须锯掉，重新切削螺纹，才准安装。各地油漆工会的分会则纷纷限制使用油漆喷枪，只准用效率低下的油漆刷，主要是为了“制造工作机会”。美国卡车司机工会的一个分会，要求进入纽约市区的每一辆卡车，除了原来开车的司机，还必须多雇用一名当地的司机。许多城市的电气工会要求，建筑工地如果要使用临时照明或临时用电，必须雇用一名全职的维修电工，但不准安排这个电工参与电气施工工作。爱德华先生说，根据这个规定，建筑工地“往往雇用一名终日无所事事的人，整天翻报纸、玩纸牌，全部的工作只是在上下班时拨一下电源开关”。

One could go on to cite such make-work practices in many other fields. In the railroad industry, the unions insist that firemen be employed on types of locomotives that do not need them. In the theaters unions insist on the use of scene shifters even in plays in which no scenery is used. The musicians’ union required so-called stand-in musicians or even whole orchestras to be employed in many cases where only phonograph records were needed.

在其他许多领域，也都存在这种凭空“制造工作机会”的做法。在铁路行业，工会坚持在那些不需要司炉的火车机车上雇用司炉。在戏剧业，工会坚决要求说，即使在用不上布景的剧目中，也必须雇用布景装拆工人。音乐家联合会要求在可以放唱片的场合雇用所谓的占位音乐家，或甚至整团的占位管弦乐队。

By 1961 there was no sign that the fallacy had died. Not only union leaders but government officials talked solemnly of “automation” as a major cause of unemployment. Automation was discussed as if it were something entirely new in the world. It was in fact merely a new name for continued technological advance and further progress in labor-saving equipment.

到了1961年，仍然没有迹象表明这种谬误已经消亡。不但工会领袖，连政府官员也郑重地把“自动化”当作失业问题的一个主要原因。人们谈到自动化，就好像那是一个全新的事物。其实，它不过是持续的科技进步和省力设备不断改进后的新名称而已。

（未完待续）

The Blessings of Destruction
第3章  战祸之福

So we have finished with the broken window. An elementary fallacy. Anybody, one would think, would be able to avoid it after a few moments’ thought. Yet the broken-window fallacy, under a hundred disguises, is the most persistent in the history of economics. It is more rampant now than at any time in the past. It is solemnly reaffirmed every day by great captains of industry, by chambers of commerce, by labor union leaders, by editorial writers and newspaper columnists and radio and television commentators, by learned statisticians using the most refined techniques, by professors of economics in our best universities. In their various ways they all dilate upon the advantages of destruction.

讲完粗浅的“破窗谬论”，有人会说，任何人只要动脑筋想一想，一定不会犯这样的错误。事实上，穿着各种伪装的破窗谬论，在经济学历史上却最为顽固不化，而且此种谬论在过去任何时候都没有现在这么盛行。如今，每天都有许多人在一本正经地重复着同样的错误。这些人包括工业巨头、商会和工会领袖、社论主笔、报纸专栏作家、电台与电视台的评论员、技巧高深的统计专家、一流大学的经济学教授。他们正在用各自的方式宣扬破坏行为所带来的好处。

Though some of them would disdain to say that there are net benefits in small acts of destruction, they see almost endless benefits in enormous acts of destruction. They tell us how much better off economically we all are in war than in peace. They see “miracles of production” which it requires a war to achieve. And they see a world made prosperous by an enormous “accumulated” or “backed-up” demand. In Europe, after World War II, they joyously counted the houses, the whole cities that had been leveled to the ground and that “had to be replaced.” In America they counted the houses that could not be built during the war, the nylon stockings that could not be supplied, the worn-out automobiles and tires, the obsolescent radios and refrigerators. They brought together formidable totals.

尽管他们中有些人不屑于承认小小的破坏行为中也存在着净利益，但他们都确信，巨大的破坏行为能让人们受益无穷。他们吹嘘战争对经济是如何如何的有利，非和平时期能比，并向我们展示通过战争才能实现的“生产奇迹”。他们认为，战争时期庞大的需求“累积”或“堵塞”，会给战后的世界带来繁荣。第二次世界大战结束后，他们兴致勃勃地清点那些在欧洲被战火夷为平地、必须重建的房子和城市。在美国，他们清点出战争期间无力兴建的房子、短缺的尼龙袜、破旧的汽车和轮胎、过时的收音机和电冰箱。他们得出了一个令人生畏的经济总量。

It was merely our old friend, the broken-window fallacy, in new clothing, and grown fat beyond recognition. This time it was supported by a whole bundle of related fallacies. It confused need with demand. The more war destroys, the more it impoverishes, the greater is the postwar need. Indubitably. But need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power. The needs of India today are incomparably greater than the needs of America. But its purchasing power, and therefore the “new business” that it can stimulate, are incomparably smaller.

这种“需求堵塞”谬论只不过是我们所熟悉的老朋友——破窗谬论——换上一件臃肿的马甲之后的形象而已。不过这一次，有更多相关的谬误绞缠在一起，需要我们逐一驳斥。首先，它把需要（need）和需求（demand）混为一谈。战火摧毁的东西越多，它所造成的贫困越严重，战后的需要量就越大。这是毫无疑问的。但是，需要并不等于需求。有效的经济需求，光有需要还不算，还必须要有相当的购买力才行。当今印度对产品的实际需要相对于美国的需要来讲简直大得不可比，但是它的购买力，以及由此可以刺激起来的“新的生意”相对于美国来讲却是微不足道的。

But if we get past this point, there is a chance for another fallacy, and the broken-windowites usually grab it. They think of “purchasing power” merely in terms of money. Now money can be run off by the printing press. As this is being written, in fact, printing money is the world’s biggest industry—if the product is measured in monetary terms. But the more money is turned out in this way, the more the value of any given unit of money falls. This falling value can be measured in rising prices of commodities. But as most people are so firmly in the habit of thinking of their wealth and income in terms of money, they consider themselves better off as these monetary totals rise, in spite of the fact that in terms of things they may have less and buy less. Most of the “good” economic results which people at the time attributed to World War II were really owing to wartime inflation. They could have been, and were, produced just as well by an equivalent peacetime inflation. We shall come back to this money illusion later.

不过，就算绕过了上一个谬误，接下来还有可能陷入另一种谬误。持破窗谬论的人常犯只从货币的角度去思考“购买力”的错误。其实，只要让印钞机开足马力，不愁没有钞票。要是以货币来衡量“产品”价值的话，那么以钞票为产品的印钞业，无疑是当今世上规模最大的产业。但是用这种方式去解决购买力问题，所印制的钞票数量越多，单位货币的价值就越贬值，货币贬值的程度可以用物价上涨的幅度来衡量。然而，大多数人只习惯于用金钱来衡量自己的财富和收入，所以只要手头多了几张钞票，便以为自己过得更好，尽管拿这些钱能买到的东西比从前少，自己实际拥有的东西可能不如从前。现在，很多人把一些“好的”经济成果归功于第二次世界大战，其实，其中绝大部分是战时通货膨胀造成的。哪怕在和平年代，同等规模的通货膨胀也能带来这样的结果，并且的确产生过这些结果。后面我们还会回过头来谈这种货币幻觉。

Now there is a half-truth in the “backed-up” demand fallacy, just as there was in the broken-window fallacy. The broken window did make more business for the glazier. The destruction of war did make more business for the producers of certain things. The destruction of houses and cities did make more business for the building and construction industries. The inability to produce automobiles, radios, and refrigerators during the war did bring about a cumulative postwar demand for those particular products.

“需求堵塞”谬论只讲出了一半的真相，这点跟破窗谬论一样。被砸破的橱窗的确会给玻璃店带来生意，战争造成的破坏也的确给某些产品的制造商带来了大量的商机。房子和城市的毁于战火，为建筑业赢得了更多业务，而战争期间没办法生产的汽车、收音机和电冰箱，确实为那些特定的产品带来累积性的战后需求。

To most people this seemed like an increase in total demand, as it partly was in terms of dollars of lower purchasing power. But what mainly took place was a diversion of demand to these particular products from others. The people of Europe built more new houses than otherwise because they had to. But when they built more houses they had just that much less manpower and productive capacity left over for everything else. When they bought houses they had just that much less purchasing power for something else. Wherever business was increased in one direction, it was (except insofar as productive energies were stimulated by a sense of want and urgency) correspondingly reduced in another.

这一半的真相在大部分人看来，就像是总需求增加了。从单位货币的购买力降低的角度来说，一部分增长是的确如此【通胀导致需求增加是一个宏观经济学的结论——译者注】。不过更主要的原因还是需求从其他地方转向了这些特定的产品。欧洲人盖出了空前数量的新房子，因为他们必须先解决安居问题。可是，在他们兴建更多房屋时，可用于生产其他产品的人力和生产能力的减少程度与之相当。人们买了房子之后，可用于购买其他产品的支付能力的减少程度与之相当。人总是顾得了一头，就顾不了另一头（当然，要除开额外增加的被饥寒交迫的紧张感所激发出来的更大的生产能量）。

The war, in short, changed the postwar direction of effort; it changed the balance of industries; it changed the structure of industry.

简单地说，战争改变了人们在战后的努力方向；战争打破了各行各业原有的平衡；战争重塑了工业的结构。

Since World War II ended in Europe, there has been rapid and even spectacular “economic growth” both in countries that were ravaged by war and those that were not. Some of the countries in which there was greatest destruction, such as Germany, have advanced more rapidly than others, such as France, in which there was much less. In part this was because West Germany followed sounder economic policies. In part it was because the desperate need to get back to normal housing and other living conditions stimulated increased efforts. But this does not mean that property destruction is an advantage to the person whose property has been destroyed. No man burns down his own house on the theory that the need to rebuild it will stimulate his energies.

二战后的欧洲各国都出现了高速甚至奇迹般的“经济增长”，那些惨遭战火蹂躏的国家是如此，那些未受劫掠的国家也是如此。遭受的破坏最为严重的德国等国，其经济增长速度比破坏不那么严重的法国等国要快。部分原因是因为西德实行了较为稳健的经济政策，部分原因是想尽快过上正常生活的念头使人们工作更加努力。但它并不表示财物毁损对失去财物的人有利。没有人会因为需要激发出斗志而刻意烧毁自家的房屋。

After a war there is normally a stimulation of energies for a time. At the beginning of the famous third chapter of his History of England, Macaulay pointed out that:

No ordinary misfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation wretched as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a nation prosperous. It has often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restriction, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.

战争结束后，迎来和平的人们通常会在一段时间内激发出旺盛的精力。托马斯·麦考利（Thomas Macaulay）在《英格兰史》（History of England）的第三章开门见山这么写道：
不幸的事件、政府的失误，可能将一个国家置于悲惨的境地，但与之相比，科技的持续进步、人们改善自身生活的恒久努力，却能在更大程度上促进国家的繁荣。我们经常发现，肆意挥霍、苛捐杂税、荒谬的商业管制、贪渎腐化的司法体系、伤亡惨重的战争、叛乱、迫害、烈火、洪水，它们都在摧毁财富，但人民通过努力创造财富的速度却更快。

No man would want to have his own property destroyed either in war or in peace. What is harmful or disastrous to an individual must be equally harmful or disastrous to the collection of individuals that make up a nation.

没有人愿意让自己的财物毁于战争或和平年代。对个人来说是伤害、是灾难的东西，对由个人组成的国家来说也一定是伤害和灾难。

Many of the most frequent fallacies in economic reasoning come from the propensity, especially marked today, to think in terms of an abstraction—the collectivity, the “nation”—and to forget or ignore the individuals who make it up and give it meaning. No one could think that the destruction of war was an economic advantage who began by thinking first of all of the people whose property was destroyed.

经济推理中最常见的许多谬论，源于人们倾向于将国家与集体当成抽象的名词去思考，而忘记或忽视了组成它、并赋予它意义的个人。这种倾向在今天尤为明显。如果一开始就从惨遭横祸的个人角度去思考，那就不会有人认为战争造成的破坏对经济有利。

Those who think that the destruction of war increases total “demand” forget that demand and supply are merely two sides of the same coin. They are the same thing looked at from different directions. Supply creates demand because at bottom it is demand. The supply of the thing they make is all that people have, in fact, to offer in exchange for the things they want. In this sense the farmers’ supply of wheat constitutes their demand for automobiles and other goods. All this is inherent in the modern division of labor and in an exchange economy.

那些认为战争造成的破坏能增加总“需求”的人，还遗漏了一个基本事实：需求和供给就像硬币的两面，其实是从不同角度观察到的同一样东西。供给会创造需求，因为归根结底供给就是需求。人们的供给，就是他们为了换取自己需要的产品而必须贡献出来的东西。农民为城市供应小麦，即构成了他们对于汽车或其他商品的需求。所有这些，是现代劳动分工和交换经济中固有的特点。

This fundamental fact, it is true, is obscured for most people (including some reputedly brilliant economists) through such complications as wage payments and the indirect form in which virtually all modern exchanges are made through the medium of money. John Stuart Mill and other classical writers, though they sometimes failed to take sufficient account of the complex consequences resulting from the use of money, at least saw through “the monetary veil” to the underlying realities. To that extent they were in advance of many of their present-day critics, who are befuddled by money rather than instructed by it. Mere inflation—that is, the mere issuance of more money, with the consequence of higher wages and prices may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not.

毋庸置疑，这个基本事实对于大部分人（包括一些被誉为杰出的经济学家的人）来讲，由于工资支付与以及几乎所有的现代交易都以货币为媒介的间接形式等形成的复杂机制，他们认识不清。约翰·穆勒（John Stuart Mill）等一批古典经济学家，虽然有时未能对那些由于货币的使用而产生的复杂后果给予充分的重视，但他们至少透过“货币的面纱”认识到了基本的现实。就这一点来说，他们比当今那些批评他们的人更胜一筹。那些批评者非但没能从中得到启示，反而被金钱的表象搞糊涂了。单纯的通货膨胀——也就是发行更多的货币，造成工资和物价上扬——看起来也许像创造了更多的需求。但从实际物品的产量和交易量来看，则完全不是这么回事。

It should be obvious that real buying power is wiped out to the same extent as productive power is wiped out. We should not let ourselves be deceived or confused on this point by the effects of monetary inflation in raising prices or “national income” in monetary terms.

显然，生产力被摧毁多少，实际购买力就会被摧毁多少。尽管由于通货膨胀的影响，以金钱表示的产品价格或“国民收入”会上升，我们却不应该被此表象迷惑，甚至自欺欺人。

It is sometimes said that the Germans or the Japanese had a postwar advantage over the Americans because their old plants, having been destroyed completely by bombs during the war, they could replace them with the most modern plants and equipment and thus produce more efficiently and at lower costs than the Americans with their older and half-obsolete plants and equipment. But if this were really a clear net advantage, Americans could easily offset it by immediately wrecking their old plants, junking all the old equipment. In fact, all manufacturers in all countries could scrap all their old plants and equipment every year and erect new plants and install new equipment.

有人争辩说，德国人和日本人比美国人拥有“战后优势”，因为他们的老旧工厂在战时被完全摧毁，得以更换最现代化的厂房和设备，生产效率得以提高，成本得以降低，非美国那些老旧、过时的厂房与设备可比。如果真是这样，那美国人完全可以立即拆除老旧设施，从而一举抵消日本和德国的领先优势。实际上，只要能满足利润最大化，所有国家的所有制造商，都可以每年弃旧换新。

The simple truth is that there is an optimum rate of replacement, a best time for replacement. It would be an advantage for a manufacturer to have his factory and equipment destroyed by bombs only if the time had arrived when, through deterioration and obsolescence, his plant and equipment had already acquired a null or a negative value and the bombs fell just when he should have called in a wrecking crew or ordered new equipment anyway.

道理很简单，厂房、设备都有最适当的折旧率，也就是最佳的更新年限。只有在制造商的厂房、设备因为老化过时，净值接近于残值，正要找人来拆除，并且已经订购了新的设备之际，炸弹刚好在这一刻落下，帮忙拆毁了现有设施，才真的对当事人有利。

It is true that previous depreciation and obsolescence, if not adequately reflected in his books, may make the destruction of his property less of a disaster, on net balance, than it seems. It is also true that the existence of new plants and equipment speeds up the obsolescence of older plants and equipment. If the owners of the older plant and equipment try to keep using it longer than the period for which it would maximize their profit, then the manufacturers whose plants and equipment were destroyed (if we assume that they had both the will and capital to replace them with new plants and equipment) will reap a comparative advantage or, to speak more accurately, will reduce their comparative loss.

当然，如果厂房、设备以前的折旧和过时程度没有适当反映在会计帐簿上，实际损失就不会有账面损失那么更严重。新厂房、新设备的出现，也的确会加快老旧设施的淘汰速度。也就是说使用新装备能创造更大的利润，继续使用旧装备比较而言就是损失。如果那些拥有老厂房、老设备的制造商想继续使用过时装备，已经超过了利润最大化的正常期间（假定他们有预算来添置新厂房和新设备），那么厂房、设备此时被摧毁，将带来比较优势，或者讲得确切一点，可以减低他们的比较损失。

We are brought, in brief, to the conclusion that it is never an advantage to have one’s plants destroyed by shells or bombs unless those plants have already become valueless or acquired a negative value by depreciation and obsolescence.

我们从中得出一个初步结论：即用炮弹或炸弹来摧毁厂房绝对不会有什么好处，除非那些厂房破旧过时，残值收入远不足以抵补拆除费用。

In all this discussion, moreover, we have so far omitted a central consideration. Plants and equipment cannot be replaced by an individual (or a socialist government) unless he or it has acquired or can acquire the savings, the capital accumulation, to make the replacement. But war destroys accumulated capital.

此外，上述讨论还略去了一个关键问题。即，无论是个人还是社会主义政府，必须拥有或者能够获得相应资金储备、即资本积累，才能实现厂房和设备的更新换代。然而，战争却会摧毁累积下来的资本。

There may be, it is true, offsetting factors. Technological discoveries and advances during a war may, for example, increase individual or national productivity at this point or that, and there may eventually be a net increase in overall productivity. Postwar demand will never reproduce the precise pattern of prewar demand. But such complications should not divert us from recognizing the basic truth that the wanton destruction of anything of real value is always a net loss, a misfortune, or a disaster, and whatever the offsetting considerations in a particular instance, can never be, on net balance, a boon or a blessing.

显然，战争也许会带来一些补偿性的因素。比方说，战争期间技术上的发明与进步，可以增加个人或国家在某一方面的生产力，最终甚至可能存在总体生产能力的净增长。另外，战后的社会需求形态绝对不会和战前完全相同。但是，我们不能因为这些错综复杂的情形而忽视最基本的事实：大肆破坏具有价值的任何东西，都会造成净损失、不幸和灾难。个别特殊情况下或许有这样那样的补偿性利益，但从总体上看，战争的破坏对社会绝不是恩赐或福音。

Saving the X Industry

第14章 救救某产业

THE LOBBIES OF Congress are crowded with representatives of the X industry. The X industry is sick. The X industry is dying. It must be saved. It can be saved only by a tariff, by higher prices, or by a subsidy. If it is allowed to die, workers will be thrown on the streets. Their landlords, grocers, butchers, clothing stores and local motion pictures will lose business, and depression will spread in ever-widening circles. But if the X industry, by prompt action of Congress, is saved—ah then! It will buy equipment from other industries; more men will be employed; they will give more business to the butchers, bakers and neon-light makers, and then it is prosperity that will spread in ever-widening circles.

国会大厦的侯休室挤满了某产业的代表。某产业不行了。某产业快完了，我们必须拯救它。只有征收新关税、提高价格，或者提供补贴，它才有救。要是国会坐视不管，某产业一垮，产业工人就只有流落街头。他们的房东、杂货店、肉铺、服饰店、戏院，就会失去生意，经济萧条会因此蔓延到其它行业。但如果国会马上采取挽救措施的话——那么，啊哈！某产业会向其他行业购买设备；更多的人将能得到工作；他们将为当地的肉铺、面包店，以及霓虹灯制造商带来生意。这样的话，就是经济繁荣扩展到其它行业。

It is obvious that this is merely a generalized form of the case we have just been considering. There the X industry was agriculture. But there is an endless number of X industries. Two of the most notable examples have been the coal and silver industries. To “save silver” Congress did immense harm. One of the arguments for the rescue plan was that it would help “the East.” One of its actual results was to cause deflation in China, which had been on a silver basis, and to force China off that basis. The United States Treasury was compelled to acquire, at ridiculous prices far above the market level, hoards of unnecessary silver, and to store it in vaults. The essential political aims of the “silver senators” could have been as well achieved, at a fraction of the harm and cost, by the payment of a frank subsidy to the mine owners or to their workers; but Congress and the country would never have approved a naked steal of this sort unaccompanied by the ideological flim-flam regarding “silver’s essential role in the national currency.

很显然，这不过是我们刚刚讨论过的情况的一般形式。在前一章，某产业是指农业。不过，某产业多不胜举，其中最著名的两个例子是煤炭产业和白银产业。美国国会为了“拯救白银”，曾造成巨大的危害。支持这种挽救计划的一个论点，是认为它将有助于“东方”，其实际结果之一，便是造成了银本位制下的中国发生通货紧缩，进而逼迫中国放弃银本位制。美国财政部不得不以离谱的高价大量收购不必需的白银，任其积压在金库里。“银参议员们”完全可以用直接补贴矿业业主或矿工的方式来达到其政治目的，其危害与代价也不至于如此惨重。但这样做无异于赤裸裸的抢劫，若不包装上“白银在国家货币上扮演不可或缺的角色”等意识形态上的东西，以此来遮羞的话，美国国会和这个国家是绝不会赞同的。

To save the coal industry Congress passed the Guffey Act, under which the owners of coal mines were not only permitted, but compelled, to conspire together not to sell below certain minimum prices fixed by the government. Though Congress had started out to fix “the” price of coal, the government soon found itself (because of different sizes, thousands of mines, and shipments to thousands of different destinations by rail, truck, ship and barge) fixing 350,000 separate prices for coal!* One effect of this attempt to keep coal prices above the competitive market level was to accelerate the tendency toward the substitution by consumers of other sources of power or heat—such as oil, natural gas and hydroelectric energy. Today we find the government trying to force conversion from oil consumption back to coal.

为了拯救煤炭产业，国会通过了古费法案（Guffey Act）。该法案不仅允许而且强制煤矿业主联合起来，只能以高于政府规定的最低价格出售煤炭。尽管有国会立法定价，但政府很快就发现，它总共制定了35万种不同的煤价！这是因为有数以千计的规模不等的煤矿场，并且有铁路、公路、海运、江运等不同运输方式，以及成千上万个不同的目的地{footnotes:1937年《烟煤法案》（Bituminous Coal Act）适用范围的听证会上，烟煤部门负责人惠勒（Dan H. Wheeler）的证词。}。强制维持煤碳价高于市场竞价水平的一个后果，是消费者加速寻找煤炭的替代物，如石油、天然气、水力发电，来获取动力和取暖。如今，我们发现，政府正在努力迫使公众从石油的消费重新转移到煤炭的消费上去。

2

Our aim here is not to trace all the results that followed historically from efforts to save particular industries, but to trace a few of the chief results that must necessarily follow from efforts to save an industry.

本章的目的，不是探寻过去为拯救特定产业曾经造成的所有结果，而是探讨拯救一个产业，必然带来的主要结果。

It may be argued that a given industry must be created or preserved for military reasons. It may be argued that a given industry is being ruined by taxes or wage rates disproportionate to those of other industries; or that, if a public utility, it is being forced to operate at rates or charges to the public that do not permit an adequate profit margin. Such arguments may or may not be justified in a particular case. We are not concerned with them here. We are concerned only with a single argument for saving the X industry—that if it is allowed to shrink in size or perish through the forces of free competition (always called by spokesmen for the industry in such cases laissez-faire, anarchic, cutthroat, dog-eatdog, law-of-the-jungle competition) it will pull down the general economy with it, and that if it is artificially kept alive it will help everybody else.

可以说，为了军事目的，不得不创建或保全某些产业；也可以说，某个产业税负或工资率相对于其他产业不成比例，因而难以为继；还可以说公用事业公司因为面向公众的费率偏低，无法赚取合理的利润。这些说法有没有道理，要视特定的情况而定。我们暂不讨论这些，本章只谈拯救某产业的一种论调——如果放任其在自由竞争（也就是某产业的代言人所声讨的，自由放任的、无政府主义的、残酷无情的、同类相残的、弱肉强食的竞争）中萎缩或消亡，它会拖垮整个经济；而如果用人为的力量维持它的生存，它会让其他所有人获益。

What we are talking about here is nothing else but a generalized case of the argument put forward for parity prices for farm products or for tariff protection for any number of X industries. The argument against artificially higher prices applies, of course, not only to farm products but to any product, just as the reasons we have found for opposing tariff protection for one industry apply to any other.

本章要谈的，无非是将主张实施农产品等位价格或对某些产业实施关税保护的论调加以扩展讨论。不消说，反对通过人为干预提高产品价格的观点，不仅适用于农产品，它同样适用于其他任何产品，正如我们用以反对为某个产业实施关税保护的理由，同样适用于其他任何产业。

But there are always any number of schemes for saving X industries. There are two main types of such proposals in addition to those we have already considered, and we shall take a brief glance at them. One is to contend that the X industry is already “overcrowded,” and to try to prevent other firms or workers from getting into it. The other is to argue that the X industry needs to be supported by a direct subsidy from the government.

拯救某产业的办法不胜枚举。除了我们前面提到的，相关提案通常还有两大类，我们会简短地讨论它们。其中一类强调，某产业已经“过热”，应该设法阻止其他公司或劳工再进入。另一类则呼吁，政府应该以直接补贴的方式对某产业给予扶持。

Now if the X industry is really overcrowded as compared with other industries it will not need any coercive legislation to keep out new capital or new workers. New capital does not rush into industries that are obviously dying. Investors do not eagerly seek the industries that present the highest risks of loss combined with the lowest returns. Nor do workers, when they have any better alternative, go into industries where the wages are lowest and the prospects for steady employment least promising.

如果某产业与其他产业相比确实过度拥挤，那根本不需要任何强制立法，去排斥新资本或新劳工进入。新资本不会抢着挤进显然要垮掉的行业。投资人不会冒然踏进风险最大、回报率最低的行业。劳工如果能更好的选择，同样不会进入工资最低、工作最不稳定的行业。

If new capital and new labor are forcibly kept out of the X industry, however, either by monopolies, cartels, union policy or legislation, it deprives this capital and labor of liberty of choice. It forces investors to place their money where the returns seem less promising to them than in the X industry. It forces workers into industries with even lower wages and prospects than they could find in the allegedly sick X industry. It means, in short, that both capital and labor are less efficiently employed than they would be if they were permitted to make their own free choices. It means, therefore, a lowering of production which must reflect itself in a lower average living standard.

如果新资本和新劳工是被强制排斥在某产业之外，例如垄断、同业联盟、工会的政策或者法律等强制手段剥夺了资本和劳动力自由选择的权力。它逼迫投资人将钱投向回报率还不如某产业的其他地方。它逼迫劳工只好投身工资更低、就业前景更为暗淡的行业，而那些行业还不如所谓有毛病的某产业。总之，这意味着资本和劳工的运用效率都不如允许它们自由选择时的水准。因此，这也就意味着生产的下降，而它又必将反映为一种更低的生活水平。

That lower living standard will be brought about either by lower average money wages than would otherwise prevail or by higher average living costs, or by a combination of both. (The exact result would depend upon the accompanying monetary policy.) By these restrictive policies wages and capital returns might indeed be kept higher than otherwise within the X industry itself; but wages and capital returns in other industries would be forced down lower than otherwise. The X industry would benefit only at the expense of the A, B and C industries.

生活水平下降，可能表现为人均所领的工资低于本来应有的水准，也可能表现为更高的人均生活费用，或者两种表现都有（具体表现取决于当时的货币政策）。实施限制性政策的结果是，某产业内部的工资和资本回报率可能会更高；但是其他产业的工资和资本回报率，将被迫下降，低于本来应有的水准。某产业得到好处，只可能是以甲、乙、丙产业的损失为代价的。

3

Similar results would follow any attempt to save the X industry by a direct subsidy out of the public till. This would be nothing more than a transfer of wealth or income to the X industry. The taxpayers would lose precisely as much as the people in the X industry gained. The great advantage of a subsidy, indeed, from the standpoint of the public, is that it makes this fact so clear. There is far less opportunity for the intellectual obfuscation that accompanies arguments for tariffs, minimum-price fixing or monopolistic exclusion.

从国库直接拿钱来补贴某产业，其后果也差不多。这只不过是将财富或收益转移到某产业。某产业中的人获得多少，纳税人就损失多少。确实，从公众的立场上看，补贴这种方式的好处在于，它使这个事实更为清楚明了。相比之下，关税、最低价格限制、垄断限制进入行为的相关论调，往往让人看不清这个事实。

It is obvious in the case of a subsidy that the taxpayers must lose precisely as much as the X industry gains. It should be equally clear that, as a consequence, other industries must lose what the X industry gains. They must pay part of the taxes that are used to support the X industry. And customers, because they are taxed to support the X industry, will have that much less income left with which to buy other things. The result must be that other industries on the average must be smaller than otherwise in order that the X industry may be larger.

采用补贴方式，有一点是显而易见的，某产业之所得，正是纳税人之所失。同样明显的是，某产业之所得，必然是其他产业之所失，因为用于支持某产业的税款，有一部分是它们缴纳的。同时，为了支持某产业，负担一部分税款的消费者，也就不能把那一部分钱拿去买别的东西。为了让某产业能有起色，结果一定是其他产业的平均规模小于原来应有的水准。

But the result of this subsidy is not merely that there has been a transfer of wealth or income, or that other industries have shrunk in the aggregate as much as the X industry has expanded. The result is also (and this is where the net loss comes in to the nation considered as a unit) that capital and labor are driven out of industries in which they are more efficiently employed to be diverted to an industry in which they are less efficiently employed. Less wealth is created. The average standard of living is lowered compared with what it would have been.

但是，补贴的结果不仅仅是财富或收益的转移，也不仅仅意味其他产业的总体萎缩程度和某产业的扩张程度相当。其后果同样是（并且是在把国家视为一个整体时所受的净损失加以考虑时），资本和劳工被迫从运用效率较高的产业流失，而流向运用效率较差的产业。如此一来，创造出来的财富减少了，人均生活水平低于应有的水准。

4

These results are virtually inherent, in fact, in the very arguments put forward to subsidize the X industry. The X industry is shrinking or dying by the contention of its friends. Why, it may be asked, should it be kept alive by artificial respiration? The idea that an expanding economy implies that all industries must be simultaneously expanding is a profound error. In order that new industries may grow fast enough it is usually necessary that some old industries should be allowed to shrink or die. In doing this they help to release the necessary capital and labor for the new industries. If we had tried to keep the horse-and-buggy trade artificially alive we should have slowed down the growth of the automobile industry and all the trades dependent on it. We should have lowered the production of wealth and retarded economic and scientific progress.

事实上，这样的结果正是那些补贴某产业的主张在逻辑上的必然发展。某产业其实是竞争不过其他产业而萎缩或衰亡的。我们可以追问，究竟是什么原因要给落败的产业做人工呼吸，供它们吊命？而那些认为经济扩张意味着所有产业必须同时扩张的说法大错特错。为了使各种新产业迅速成长，通常必然要放手让一些旧的产业萎缩或衰亡。只有这样，必要的资本和劳工才能从旧产业释放出来，供新产业使用。要是我们人为地去维持马车业及其相关行业继续存在，我们只会减缓汽车业及其相关行业的成长步伐，我们只会减低财富创造，阻碍经济发展和科技进步。

We do the same thing, however, when we try to prevent any industry from dying in order to protect the labor already trained or the capital already invested in it. Paradoxical as it may seem to some, it is just as necessary to the health of a dynamic economy that dying industries be allowed to die as that growing industries be allowed to grow. The first process is essential to the second. It is as foolish to try to preserve obsolescent industries as to try to preserve obsolescent methods of production: this is often, in fact, merely two ways of describing the same thing. Improved methods of production must constantly supplant obsolete methods, if both old needs and new wants are to be filled by better commodities and better means.

然而，当我们为了保护一些已经掌握了熟练技术的劳工，为了保护已经投下去的资本，而企图使任何产业免于衰亡的时候，我们便犯了与上述情形相同的错误。尽管这对于某些人来讲可能有些自相矛盾，放手让夕阳产业消失，跟允许朝阳产业成长一样，这是一个有活力的经济能够健康发展所必需的；前者是后者的必要条件。企图保护落伍过时的产业，就跟保护落伍过时的生产方式一样愚蠢：事实上，二者往往不过是说明同一事情的两种不同方式而已。如果要想有更好的产品和更好的手段能满足新老需求，改进的生产方式必须不断取代陈旧的生产方式。