Economics in One Lesson校译之15. How the Price System Works

How the Price System Works

第15章 价格体系如何运作?

The whole argument of this book may be summed up in the statement that in studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone. It follows that it is foolish and misleading to concentrate our attention merely on some special point—to examine, for example, merely what happens in one industry without considering what happens in all. But it is precisely from the persistent and lazy habit of thinking only of some particular industry or process in isolation that the major fallacies of economics stem. These fallacies pervade not merely the arguments of the hired spokesmen of special interests, but the arguments even of some economists who pass as profound.

本书的主旨可以概括为:在研究任何经济政策提案的影响时,不仅要考察提案带来的立即结果,也要探究长期结果;不仅要探讨其首发后果,也要探讨次级后果;不仅要看其对某些特定群体的影响,还要看其对所有人的影响。由此可以认为,把注意力只集中在特别的某一点是愚蠢的,也是误导,比如只关注某个行业发生的事情,而忽略在所有的行业发生的变化。然而,经济学中的重大谬误,正是出于人们长期养成的这种思维惯性和惰性,总是孤立地考察特定行业或特定过程而不顾其他。这些谬误,不仅仅充斥在利益集团代言人的言论中,就连一些颇具影响的经济学家也时常挂在嘴边。

It is on the fallacy of isolation, at bottom, that the “productionfor-use-and-not-for-profit” school is based, with its attack on the allegedly vicious “price system.” The problem of production, say the adherents of this school, is solved. (This resounding error, as we shall see, is also the starting point of most currency cranks and share-the-wealth charlatans.) The scientists, the efficiency experts, the engineers, the technicians, have solved it. They could turn out almost anything you cared to mention in huge and practically unlimited amounts. But, alas, the world is not ruled by the engineers, thinking only of production, but by the businessmen, thinking only of profit. The businessmen give their orders to the engineers, instead of vice versa. These businessmen will turn out any object as long as there is a profit in doing so, but the moment there is no longer a profit in making that article, the wicked businessmen will stop making it, though many people’s wants are unsatisfied, and the world is crying for more goods.

主张“生产致用而非利润至上”的经济学派,其观点从根本上说,就是以这种孤立片面性的错误为基础的。他们据此抨击所谓邪恶的“价格体系”。该学派的信徒宣称,生产问题已经解决了。(象我们后面将会看到的,这一重大的错误也正是那些认为印钱就能解决一切,认为均贫富就能解决问题的忽悠术士的出发点。)科学家、效率专家、工程师、技师,已经解决了生产问题;凡是你想要的东西,他们都能生产出来,要多少有多少。他们接着表示,可惜这个世界并非由生产致用的工程师主宰,而是由利润至上的企业家主宰,是工程师听命于企业家,而不是企业家听命于工程师。只要有利可图,这些企业家就会让工程师把任何物品生产出来,一旦赚不到钱,刻薄的企业家就会停止生产,他才不管众人的要求有没有得到满足,也不管整个世界对更多的产品的迫切需要。

There are so many fallacies in this view that they cannot all be disentangled at once. But the central error, as we have hinted, comes from looking at only one industry, or even at several industries in turn, as if each of them existed in isolation. Each of them in fact exists in relation to all the others, and every important decision made in it is affected by and affects the decisions made in all the others.

这种论调中存在好些谬误,很难一下子梳理清楚。不过,我们已经了解到,其核心错误在于只看一个产业,或挨个孤立地考察几个产业,好像各产业之间没有任何联系。其实,任何一个产业与其他所有产业都是有联系的,并且,每个产业中的决策都是与其他各产业中的决策相互影响的。

We can understand this better if we understand the basic problem that business collectively has to solve. To simplify this as much as possible, let us consider the problem that confronts a Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. His wants at first seem endless. He is soaked with rain; he shivers from cold; he suffers from hunger and thirst. He needs everything: drinking water, food, a roof over his head, protection from animals, a fire, a soft place to lie down. It is impossible for him to satisfy all these needs at once; he has not the time, energy or resources. He must attend immediately to the most pressing need. He suffers most, say, from thirst. He hollows out a place in the sand to collect rain water, or builds some crude receptacle. When he has provided for only a small water supply, however, he must turn to finding food before he tries to improve this. He can try to fish; but to do this he needs either a hook and line, or a net, and he must set to work on these. But everything he does delays or prevents him from doing something else only a little less urgent. He is faced constantly by the problem of alternative applications of his time and labor.

如果我们能够认识到商业作为一个整体所必须解决的问题的话,我们就可以更好的理解上述论点。为了把这一基本问题尽量简化,我们先谈鲁滨逊漂流到荒岛时面对的问题。一开始,他的需求似乎是无穷无尽的。他被雨淋透、冻得发抖、饥渴交加。他需要每一样东西:饮用水、食物、房子、不被野兽咬伤、火、一个足够软可供躺下睡觉的地方。他不可能一下子满足所有这些需要,毕竟一个人的时间、精力或资源都很有限。他必须先立即解决自己最需要的。比方说,极度焦渴最为令他痛苦,于是他在沙地上挖坑收集雨水,或者做个简陋的容器蓄水。等到有了少量的水,紧接着必须去找吃的,改善水源则是以后的事。他或许想去抓鱼,为此,他需要鱼钩鱼线,或渔网,而且必须事先准备好这些工具。但是不管他在做什么事,做这个就做不了那个,他只能把不那么急迫的事挪到以后再说。他得时时考虑把时间和力气用在做哪些事情上。

A Swiss Family Robinson, perhaps, finds this problem a little easier to solve. It has more mouths to feed, but it also has more hands to work for them. It can practice division and specialization of labor. The father hunts; the mother prepares the food; the children collect firewood. But even the family cannot afford to have one member of it doing endlessly the same thing, regardless of the relative urgency of the common need he supplies and the urgency of other needs still unfilled. When the children have gathered a certain pile of firewood, they cannot be used simply to increase the pile. It is soon time for one of them to be sent, say, for more water. The family too has the constant problem of choosing among alternative applications of labor, and, if it is lucky enough to have acquired guns, fishing tackle, a boat, axes, saws and so on, of choosing among alternative applications of labor and capital. It would be considered unspeakably silly for the wood-gathering member of the family to complain that they could gather more firewood if his brother helped him all day, instead of getting the fish that were needed for the family dinner. It is recognized clearly in the case of an isolated individual or family that one occupation can expand only at the expense of all other occupations.

在电影《海角一乐园》(Swiss Family Robinson)中,身陷荒岛的那个瑞士家庭也许会发觉这个问题稍好解决一些。虽然有更多张嘴巴要吃饭,却也多了更多双手干活儿。他们可以分工作业,例如父亲打猎,母亲煮饭,孩子们拾柴火。但是,即便如此,这个家庭里也不能让某位成员去无休止地做同一件事情,而不考虑他所满足的公共需求与其他一些尚未被满足的需要相对而言的迫切程度。当孩子们已经拾了一堆柴火之后,就不应简单地让他们接着拾。比如说,可以派其中一个孩子去担水。这户人家同样不断面临应把力气用在哪里的问题。而如果他们有幸拥有猎枪、渔具、船、斧头、锯子的话,更得要考虑劳力和资本用在什么地方。要是拾柴火的小孩抱怨说,哥哥要是不去抓鱼 而去帮他拾柴火,他们会拾得更多,这就是难以言喻的蠢话。从上面孤立的个人或家庭的故事,我们能清楚地认识到,某项工作做得多,往往不过是以牺牲其他所有的工作为代价得到的。

Elementary illustrations like this are sometimes ridiculed as “Crusoe economics.” Unfortunately, they are ridiculed most by those who most need them, who fail to understand the particular principle illustrated even in this simple form, or who lose track of that principle completely when they come to examine the bewildering complications of a great modern economic society.

像这类浅显易晓的论述,有时被嘲讽为“克鲁索经济学”。不幸的是,嘲讽得最厉害的,是那些最需要这种经济学的人,是那些无法理解简单故事背后的基本原理的人,是那些在探讨错综复杂的现代经济社会时,却又把这些基本原理忘到了一边的人。

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Let us now turn to such a society. How is the problem of alternative applications of labor and capital, to meet thousands of different needs and wants of different urgencies, solved in such a society? It is solved precisely through the price system. It is solved through the constantly changing interrelationships of costs of production, prices and profits.

我们回过头来谈现代社会。在这样一个错综复杂的社会中,人们的需要和要求及其轻重缓急千差万别,如何解决劳力和资本用在哪里的问题?解决之道正是通过价格体系,也就是通过生产成本、价格和利润三者间不断变动的相互关系来调节的。

Prices are fixed through the relationship of supply and demand and in turn affect supply and demand. When people want more of an article, they offer more for it. The price goes up. This increases the profits of those who make the article. Because it is now more profitable to make that article than others, the people already in the business expand their production of it, and more people are attracted to the business. This increased supply then reduces the price and reduces the profit margin, until the profit margin on that article once more falls to the general level of profits (relative risks considered) in other industries. Or the demand for that article may fall; or the supply of it may be increased to such a point that its price drops to a level where there is less profit in making it than in making other articles; or perhaps there is an actual loss in making it. In this case the “marginal” producers, that is, the producers who are least efficient, or whose costs of production are highest, will be driven out of business altogether. The product will now be made only by the more efficient producers who operate on lower costs. The supply of that commodity will also drop, or will at least cease to expand.

价格是由供需关系决定的,反过来又会影响供给和需求。当人们对于某项物品需要越多,他们就会出更多的钱去购买,于是其价格上升,其生产商的利润也由此增加了。由于现在生产该物品会比做其他更赚钱,那些已经在此行业中的人就会扩大生产,同时更多人被吸引进入那一行。随后,供应增多又会导致价格下降、边 际利润下滑,直至其边际利润跌回到其他行业的平均利润水平(相对于其风险)。或者,人们对那种物品的需求减少,其供给可能会增加到这样的一点,使得其价格降至生产它的利润小于生产其他产品,甚至不赚反赔。这种情况下, “边际”生产者,也就是效率最低或成本最高的生产者,会被淘汰出局。只剩下成本较低,效率较高的制造商仍在生产。那种商品的供应也会减少,或至少不再增加。

This process is the origin of the belief that prices are determined by costs of production. The doctrine, stated in this form, is not true. Prices are determined by supply and demand, and demand is determined by how intensely people want a commodity and what they have to offer in exchange for it. It is true that supply is in part determined by costs of production. What a commodity has cost to produce in the past cannot determine its value. That will depend on the present relationship of supply and demand. But the expectations of businessmen concerning what a commodity will cost to produce in the future, and what its future price will be, will determine how much of it will be made. This will affect future supply. There is therefore a constant tendency for the price of a commodity and its marginal cost of production to equal each other, but not because that marginal cost of production directly determines the price.

认为生产成本决定了价格的这种想法也是由上述过程产生的。不过,这个学说,若以这样的形式来说明,却是不正确的。价格取决于供给和需求,而需求取决 于人们想要拥有某种商品渴求程度,以及他们愿意支付多少来换取。认为供给部分地取决于生产成本,这一点是对的。但一种商品已经发生的生产成本却不能决定商品的价值。商品价值取决于现在发生的供需关系。然而,制造商们对于一种商品未来生产成本和市场价位的预期,将会决定那种商品未来的生产数量,这种预期就会影响未来的供给。因此,一种商品的价格与其边际生产成本之间存在着一种彼此不断接近一致的趋势。不过,这并不是由于边际生产成本直接决定价格。

The private enterprise system, then, might be compared to thousands of machines, each regulated by its own quasi-automatic governor, yet with these machines and their governors all interconnected and influencing each other, so that they act in effect like one great machine. Most of us must have noticed the automatic governor” on a steam engine. It usually consists of two balls or weights which work by centrifugal force. As the speed of the engine increases, these balls fly away from the rod to which they are attached and so automatically narrow or close off a throttle valvewhich regulates the intake of steam and thus slows down the engine. If the engine goes too slowly, on the other hand, the balls drop, widen the throttle valve, and increase the engine’s speed. Thus every departure from the desired speed itself sets in motion the forces that tend to correct that departure.

这样来说,私人企业体系好比成千上万部机器,每部机器由各自的半自动化调节器来管理。机器之间,连同它们的调节器之间,彼此连接,相互影响,整个运作起来好比一部有生命的大机器。我们大多数人一定见过蒸汽机上的自动调速器。它通常是由两颗小球或重锤组成,以重力和离心力发生作用。当引擎速度加大时,这些小球会绕着它们所附着的活塞杆飞起,形成离心力,以此自动收紧或关闭调整蒸汽送入量的节流阀,从而减慢引擎的转速。反之,如果引擎的速度太慢,小球就飞不起来,从而扩大节流阀,加快引擎转速。因此,速度一偏离理想的水平,这种偏离就会自动启动一种力量去对偏离进行自动矫正。

It is precisely in this way that the relative supply of thousands of different commodities is regulated under the system of competitive private enterprise. When people want more of a commodity, their competitive bidding raises its price. This increases the profits of the producers who make that product. This stimulates them to increase their production. It leads others to stop making some of the products they previously made, and turn to making the product that offers them the better return. But this increases the supply of that commodity at the same time that it reduces the supply of some other commodities. The price of that product therefore falls in relation to the price of other products, and the stimulus to the relative increase in its production disappears.

正是通过类似的调节方式,成千上万种不同商品的相对供应量,在自由竞争的私人企业体系中得到调节。当人们对于某种商品的需求增加时,其竞争性的出价便抬高了产品的价格,生产者会因为有利可图而扩大生产。生产其他商品的制造商也会转向,加入到这种回报率较高的产品生产中。但增加这种商品的供应的同时会减少其他一些商品的供给。如此一来,这种商品的价格因此相对于其他商品的价格开始下跌,先前激励其产量相对增加的价差因素便不复存在。

In the same way, if the demand falls off for some product, its price and the profit in making it go lower, and its production declines.

同样是用这种方式,如果某种产品的需求减少,该产品的价格和利润会下降,产量当然也会随之减少。

It is this last development that scandalizes those who do not understand the “price system” they denounce. They accuse it of creating scarcity. Why, they ask indignantly, should manufacturers cut off the production of shoes at the point where it becomes unprofitable to produce any more? Why should they be guided merely by their own profits? Why should they be guided by the market? Why do they not produce shoes to the “full capacity of modern technical processes”? The price system and private enterprise, conclude the “production-for-use” philosophers, are merely a form of “scarcity economics.”

正是最后一个环节让那些不理解“价格体系”的人大为反感。他们谴责价格体系导致了匮乏。他们愤慨地责问:为什么在生产鞋子不赚钱时,企业家就要停止生产?为什么他们只受自己利润的支配?为什么他们的行动要由市场操纵?为什么他们不“开足马力充分利用现代的制造工艺”来生产鞋子?这些“生产致用”的哲学家下结论说:价格体系和私人企业只不过是“匮乏经济学”的一种形式。

These questions and conclusions stem from the fallacy of looking at one industry in isolation, of looking at the tree and ignoring the forest. Up to a certain point it is necessary to produce shoes. But it is also necessary to produce coats, shirts, trousers, homes, plows, shovels, factories, bridges, milk and bread. It would be idiotic to go on piling up mountains of surplus shoes, simply because we could do it, while hundreds of more urgent needs went unfilled.

这些问题和结论主要源于孤立地观察一个产业、只见树木不见森林的错误看法。在达到某一平衡点之前,继续生产鞋子是必要的。但是我们也有必要生产外套、衬衫、长裤、耕犁、铁锹、牛奶和面包,建造住宅、工厂、桥梁。若这些迫切的生活需要都没有得到满足,却一味地生产出堆积如山的鞋子,而理由仅仅是我们有能力做鞋子,这种做法可说是要多蠢有多蠢。

Now, in an economy in equilibrium, a given industry can expand only at the expense of other industries. For at any moment the factors of production are limited. One industry can be expanded only by diverting to it labor, land and capital that would otherwise be employed in other industries. And when a given industry shrinks, or stops expanding its output, it does not necessarily mean that there has been any net decline in aggregate production. The shrinkage at that point may have merely released labor and capital to permit the expansion of other industries. It is erroneous to conclude, therefore, that a shrinkage of production in one line necessarily means a shrinkage in total production.

经济处于均衡状态时,某个产业只有以其他行业牺牲为代价,才有可能得到扩展。因为,在任何时候,生产要素都是有限的。只有当原来用于其他产业劳工、土地和资本,转移到了某个产业,那个产业才能够扩张。而且,当某一产业萎缩或者停止增产,并不必然意味着总体生产出现减少。因为该产业一定程度上的萎缩,可能仅仅是释放出了一些劳工和资本,以允许其他产业的扩张。因此,仅仅因为某个产业的生产减少,就下结论说生产缩减,是错误的。

Everything, in short, is produced at the expense of forgoing something else. Costs of production themselves, in fact, might be defined as the things that are given up (the leisure and pleasures, the raw materials with alternative potential uses) in order to create the thing that is made.

总之,每一种东西的生产,都得以牺牲放弃某些其他东西为代价。事实上,生产成本本身可以定义为:为了生产某样东西而放弃的其他事物(休闲和娱乐,或可以用于其他地方的原材料等)。

It follows that it is just as essential for the health of a dynamic economy that dying industries should be allowed to die as that growing industries should be allowed to grow. For the dying industries absorb labor and capital that should be released for the growing industries. It is only the much vilified price system that solves the enormously complicated problem of deciding precisely how much of tens of thousands of different commodities and services should be produced in relation to each other. These otherwise bewildering equations are solved quasi-automatically by the system of prices, profits and costs. They are solved by this system incomparably better than any group of bureaucrats could solve them. For they are solved by a system under which each consumer makes his own demand and casts a fresh vote, or a dozen fresh votes, every day; whereas bureaucrats would try to solve it by having made for the consumers, not what the consumers themselves wanted, but what the bureaucrats decided was good for them. Yet though the bureaucrats do not understand the quasi-automatic system of the market, they are always disturbed by it. They are always trying to improve it or correct it, usually in the interests of some wailing pressure group. What some of the results of their intervention are, we shall examine in succeeding chapters.

由此可见,为了一个有活力的经济的健康发展,我们应当放手让衰败中的产业消亡,允许成长中的产业扩张。因为,那些衰败的产业吸收着本应被解放并投入于成长产业中的劳力和资本。正是倍受妄责的价格体系解决了那个极为错综复杂的问题,即准确地决定无数商品和服务彼此相对应该生产多少。靠价格、利润和成本体系的半自动化运作,让本来复杂难解的方程式迎刃而解,这种解决能力远非任何一群官僚能比。因为这套系统的解决方式,是由每一位消费者根据本身的需求,每天由自己去投下新的一票或十几票来调节的。而官僚的解决办法,是要代表消费者去决定各自的需求;这样决定的结果并不是消费者自己的愿望,而是官僚们认为对消费者会有好处的需求。

然而,尽管官僚们并不理解市场的这种半自动化体系,他们却常常为之心态失常。他们总是从向他们施压的集团的利益出发,努力去改进或矫正这种体系。至于他们这样的干预会产生什么的后果,我们将在接下来的几章进行考察。

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