“Stabilizing” Commodities
第16章 “稳定”物价
Attempts to lift the prices of particular commodities permanently above their natural market levels have failed so often, so disastrously and so notoriously that sophisticated pressure groups, and the bureaucrats upon whom they apply the pressure, seldom openly avow that aim. Their stated aims, particularly when they are first proposing that the government intervene, are usually more modest, and more plausible.
那些想要长期把某些商品的价格抬高到其自然的市场价格水平之上的企图，每每以失败而告终，败得很惨，败得声名狼藉，以至于那些圆熟精明的施压集团，以及承受他们压力的官员，很少公开宣称这一目的。尤其是在他们率先提议实行政府干预时，他们所陈述的目标往往更为温和、更加动听。
They have no wish, they declare, to raise the price of commodity X permanently above its natural level. That, they concede, would be unfair to consumers. But it is now obviously selling far below its natural level. The producers cannot make a living. Unless we act promptly, they will be thrown out of business. Then there will be a real scarcity, and consumers will have to pay exorbitant prices for the commodity. The apparent bargains that the consumers are now getting will cost them dear in the end. For the present “temporary” low price cannot last. But we cannot afford to wait for so-called natural market forces, or for the “blind” law of supply and demand, to correct the situation. For by that time the producers will be ruined and a great scarcity will be upon us. The government must act. All that we really want to do is to correct these violent, senseless fluctuations in price. We are not trying to boost the price; we are only trying to stabilize it.
他们宣称，他们并不是想要长期把某商品的价格提高到其自然价格水平之上，他们也承认这种干预对消费者是不公平的。但是，由于该商品目前的售价显然远低于其自然价格水平，生产者养不活自己。除非政府立即采取行动，不然的话，他们只有破产出局。如果真成了那样，必将出现真正的匮乏，而消费者也将不得不以高得离谱的价格去购买这种商品。消费者现在图“一时”便宜，但最终这将使他们付出高昂的代价，因为，现在这种“暂时 的”低价格不可能永远撑下去。但是，我们不能坐等所谓的自然市场力量，或“盲目的”供求法则，来矫正眼前的状况。等不到那一天，生产厂商已经倒闭，大家只有陷入大短缺的恐慌之中。政府必须有所行动。我们真正要做的，是熨平这些剧烈的、无益的价格波动。我们并非想要提高商品价格，我们仅仅是要使它稳定。
There are several methods by which it is commonly proposed to do this. One of the most frequent is government loans to farmers to enable them to hold their crops off the market.
人们通常提出的实现稳定物价的方案有好几种。其中最常见的就是主张政府向农民提供贷款，好让他们可以暂时囤积其收获的谷物，而不急于拿到市场上出售。
Such loans are urged in Congress for reasons that seem very plausible to most listeners. They are told that the farmers’ crops are all dumped on the market at once, at harvest time; that this is precisely the time when prices are lowest, and that speculators take advantage of this to buy the crops themselves and hold them for higher prices when food gets scarcer again. Thus it is urged that the farmers suffer, and that they, rather than the speculators, should get the advantage of the higher average price.
国会被敦促实施这种贷款，其理由让大多数听众觉得颇有道理。议员们被告之，农民的谷物都集中在收获时节上市出售，而这正好是一年中农产品价格最低的时候，投机商乘机买进囤积，等到青黄不接的时候，就高价倒卖。农民则因此蒙受损失。政府应该确保这个钱应该拿给农民赚，而不要让投机商从中渔利。
This argument is not supported by either theory or experience. The much-reviled speculators are not the enemy of the farmer; they are essential to his best welfare. The risks of fluctuating farm prices must be borne by somebody; they have in fact been borne in modern times chiefly by the professional speculators. In general, the more competently the latter act in their own interest as speculators, the more they help the farmer. For speculators serve their own interest precisely in proportion to their ability to foresee future prices. But the more accurately they foresee future prices the less violent or extreme are the fluctuations in prices.
无论是理论还是经验都无法支持这样的论点。倍受谴责的投机商，并不是农民的敌人，相反，他们对于农民的最高福利至关重要。因为，农产品价格波动的风险必须要有人来承担，而在现代社会中，这些风险其实主要是由职业投机商们承担的。一般说来，投机运作越成功，职业投机商对农民的帮助越大。因为，投机商们的赢利能力，恰好仰仗于他们预测未来价格的能力。也就是说，他们预测未来价格的越准确，价格波动就会少几分剧烈和偏激。
Even if farmers had to dump their whole crop of wheat on the market in a single month of the year, therefore, the price in that month would not necessarily be below the price at any other month (apart from an allowance for the costs of storage). For speculators, in the hope of making a profit, would do most of their buying at that time. They would keep on buying until the price rose to a point where they saw no further opportunity of future profit. They would sell whenever they thought there was a prospect of future loss. The result would be to stabilize the price of farm commodities the year round.
因此，即使大多数农民不得不在收获后的那个月，把全部的小麦收成送到市场销售，对那些农民来说，那个月的价格也不一定就低于其他月份（这里要扣除仓储成本，【若农民愿意自己负担仓储成本，他们也可以不必急于集中销售小麦，译者注】）。对于投机商来说，若想要趁机获利，他们就会在那个时期集中买进小麦。他们会不断地收购，直到价格升到使他们感到在将来根本无利可图的那个价位。他们会在将来他们认为有可能会有损失的时候售出这批商品。其带来的结果，必是使全年农产品的价格趋于稳定。
It is precisely because a professional class of speculators exists to take these risks that farmers and millers do not need to take them. The latter can protect themselves through the markets. Under normal conditions, therefore, when speculators are doing their job well, the profits of farmers and millers will depend chiefly on their skill and industry in farming or milling, and not on market fluctuations.
正因为有职业投机商承担了这些风险，农民和粮食加工业者才得以免除风险。生产者是可以通过市场来实现自我保护的。所以，在正常的情况下，当投机商们干得很出色时，农民和粮食加工业者他们的利润主要取决于本身的生产技能和勤劳与否，而与市场的波动无关。
Actual experience shows that on the average the price of wheat and other nonperishable crops remains the same all year round except for an allowance for storage, interest and insurance charges. In fact, some careful investigations have shown that the average monthly rise after harvest time has not been quite sufficient to pay such storage charges, so that the speculators have actually subsidized the farmers. This, of course, was not their intention: it has simply been the result of a persistent tendency to overoptimism on the part of speculators. (This tendency seems to affect entrepreneurs in most competitive pursuits: as a class they are constantly, contrary to intention, subsidizing consumers. This is particularly true wherever the prospects of big speculative gains exist. Just as the subscribers to a lottery, considered as a unit, lose money because each is unjustifiably hopeful of drawing one of the few spectacular prizes, so it has been calculated that the total value of the labor and capital dumped into prospecting for gold or oil has exceeded the total value of the gold or oil extracted.)
实际经验表明，除开仓储、利息和保险费用，小麦和其他不易腐烂的谷物的平均价格水平在一年之中是相同的。事实上，一些精细的调研表明，收获季节之后的谷物价格平均单月涨幅并不足以抵偿这些仓储费用。因此，投机商实际上还补贴了农民。不消说，这并非他们的本意，它仅仅是投机商一方所表现出来的一种顽固的过分乐观的倾向。（这种倾向似乎在最有竞争性的行为中存在于企业家们身上：作为一个阶层，企业家们经常事与愿违地补贴消费者，特别是当存在着很大的投机收益前景时，尤其如此。就象购买彩票的彩民，整体上肯定是赔钱，因为每个人都抱着赌一把的心态，想要押中那中奖率微乎其微的头彩。有资料显示，投入到黄金和石油勘探开采的劳力与资本总值，超过开采出来的黄金或石油的总值。）
The case is different, however, when the State steps in and either buys the farmers’ crops itself or lends them the money to hold the crops off the market. This is sometimes done in the name of maintaining what is plausibly called an “ever-normal granary. But the history of prices and annual carryovers of crops shows that this function, as we have seen, is already being well performed by the privately organized free markets. When the government steps in, the ever-normal granary becomes in fact an ever-political granary. The farmer is encouraged, with the taxpayers’ money, to withhold his crops excessively. Because they wish to make sure of retaining the farmer’s vote, the politicians who initiate the policy, or the bureaucrats who carry it out, always place the so-called fair price for the farmer’s product above the price that supply and demand conditions at the time justify. This leads to a falling off in buyers. The ever-normal granary therefore tends to become an ever-abnormal granary. Excessive stocks are held off the market. The effect of this is to secure a higher price temporarily than would otherwise exist, but to do so only by bringing about later on a much lower price than would otherwise have existed. For the artificial shortage built up this year by withholding part of a crop from the market means an artificial surplus the next year.
然而，当政府介入这一过程，无论是政府收购农民的谷物，还是贷款给农民让他们囤积谷物，暂不上市销售，情况就完全不同了。有时，这是以维护所谓的“常平仓贮”（ever-normal granary）的名义来实施的。但是正如前面说过的，这个功能已经由私人组织的自由市场执行得很好，谷物价格和每年的谷物存货结转纪录已经证明了这一点。当政府介入之后，常平仓贮其实成了政治仓贮。政府用纳税人的钱，鼓励农民囤积了过多的谷物。政治人物瞄准的是农民的选票，为此，提出这种政策的政客，或实施这种政策的官僚，总是给农产品定一个所谓的公平价格，使之高于当时的供需状况所允许的价位。这必然导致买家减少，常平仓贮因此往往成为常不平仓贮。过多的谷物被囤积在市场之外，其结果是暂时保证了一个高于正常情况的价格。然而，这样做只会带来此后比正常情况更低的价格。因为，该年通过囤积一部分粮食，使之不能被投放到市场上去，这造成人为的短缺，这将意味着来年人为造成的过剩。
It would carry us too far afield to describe in detail what actually happened* when this program was applied, for example, to Amencan cotton. We piled up an entire year’s crop in storage. We destroyed the foreign market for our cotton. We stimulated enormously the growth of cotton in other countries. Though these results had been predicted by opponents of the restriction and loan policy, when they actually happened the bureaucrats responsible for the result merely replied that they would have happened anyway.
我们若去详述在这种政策下实际将会发生的情况，我们恐怕会离题太远，比如说，对美国棉花种植业的影响。{脚注: 不过，棉花生产和销售的计划方案是一个特别有启发的例子。截止1956年8月1日，美国棉花储备量达到了破纪录的数字1452.9万包，这比整整一年正常的产量或消费量还要多。为了解决这个问题，政府改变它的计划，决定从生产者那里购买大部分收成，再立即折价转售。为了夺回美国棉花的国际市场，政府对棉花采取出口补贴，一开始每磅补贴6美分，到1961年，提高到8.5美分。这一政策在减少原棉储备上确实取得了成功。但是，除了它强加给纳税人的损失外，它还是的美国的纺织品与外国的纺织品相比，无论在国内市场还是在国际市场上，都处于严重的竞争劣势。因为这样做等于补贴了外国纺织业，被牺牲掉的是美国纺织业。这是典型的政府定价方案。为了避免出现一个人们不希望产生的后果，整个经济陷入了另一种并且是更糟糕的境地。}{书后注:黑兹利特加入脚注之后，情况并没有好转。据《投资者财经日报》（Investor’s Business Daily ，1995年9月29日），“从1986年至1993年，政府的棉花计划耗资120亿美元，平均每年要花15亿美元。跟许多农产品计划一样，政府将大量的钱抱给为数不多的生产者。在1993年，政府补贴支付给了大约9.6万户棉农。”强加在消费者头上的额外成本也相当高。美国审计总署（GAO）在1995年7月20日发布的一项研究结果显示，过去8年，棉花计划耗费的社会成本平均每年为7.38亿美元。这份GAO报告的结论认为，“政府的棉花计划，已经陷入代价高昂的，由国内国际价格组成的迷阵之中，棉农从中获益而政府和社会为此牺牲很大。”美国第104届国会改革此棉花计划的努力以失败告终。}我们囤积了整整一年的棉花收成，不拿去出口，从而刺激其他国家棉产量增长，致使本国棉花的海外市场被破坏。尽管反对这种限制和贷款政策的人们早已预计到了这样的结果，但等到事情真的发生了，那些对此后果负有责任的官僚们却只是轻描淡写地说：这本来就是无论如何都要发生的事情。
For the loan policy is usually accompanied by, or inevitably leads to, a policy of restricting production — i.e., a policy of scarcity. In nearly every effort to “stabilize” the price of a commodity, the interests of the producers have been put first. The real object is an immediate boost of prices. To make this possible, a proportional restriction of output is usually placed on each producer subject to the control. This has several immediately bad effects. Assuming that the control can be imposed on an international scale, it means that total world production is cut. The world’s consumers are able to enjoy less of that product than they would have enjoyed without restriction. The world is just that much poorer. Because consumers are forced to pay higher prices than otherwise for that product, they have just that much less to spend on other products.
贷款政策通常伴随着、有时则不可避免地引出限产政策——也就是人为制造出短缺。几乎在每次努力“稳定 ”物价的时候，总是把生产者的利益放在第一位的。实际的目标则是使价格立即上涨。为了使涨价成为可能，政府通常会对受管制的每一位生产者采取一定比例的限产措施。这种限制会立即产生几个坏影响。假设可以在国际范围内实施这种控制的话，那么，它将意味着世界总产出的削减。因此，全球消费者能够享用那种产品的数量，比不受限制的时候更少。世界也就贫穷了那么多。由于消费者为此被迫支付高价，以高于应有水平的价格购买那种产品，他们也就因此损失了这么多钱来购买其他产品。
2
The restrictionists usually reply that this drop in output is what happens anyway under a market economy. But there is a fundamental difference, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. In a competitive market economy it is the high-cost producers, the inefficient producers, that are driven out by a fall in price. In the case of an agricultural commodity it is the least competent farmers, or those with the poorest equipment, or those working the poorest land, that are driven out. The most capable farmers on the best land do not have to restrict their production. On the contrary, if the fall in price has been symptomatic of a lower average cost of production, reflected through an increased supply, then the driving out of the marginal farmers on the marginal land enables the good farmers on the good land to expand their production. So there may be, in the long run, no reduction whatever in the output of that commodity. And the product is then produced and sold at a permanently lower price.
主张实施限产政策的人通常的解释是，在市场经济条件下也会发生产量下降的事情。但是就象我们在上一章中所看到的那样，这二者之间存在着巨大的区别。在自由竞争的市场经济中，由于价格下跌而被逐出市场的，是那些高成本、低效率的生产者。拿农产品来说，被淘汰出局的农民的是那些能力最差、或设备最差、或耕地最贫瘠的生产者。对那些耕种最好的土地的最有能力的农民，是没有必要限制其生产的。相反，如果价格下跌是平均生产成本降低的一个标志，而通过增长了的供给表现出来的话，那么，在边际土地上耕种的边际农民被淘汰出局，反倒有助于在好土地上耕种的能干农民扩大其生产。因此，在长期中可能并不存在该产品产量的任何下降。而且这一产品将在一个永远比较低的价格水平上生产和出售。
If that is the outcome, then the consumers of that commodity will be as well supplied with it as they were before. But, as a result of the lower price, they will have money left over, which they did not have before, to spend on other things. The consumers, therefore, will obviously be better off. But their increased spending in other directions will give increased employment in other lines, which will then absorb the former marginal farmers in occupations in which their efforts will be more lucrative and more efficient.
若真的出现这种好现象，那么该商品的消费者将会获得的和以前一样充裕供给。同时由于商品价格更加便宜，他们得以节省下更多的钱，转而用于购买其他东西，而在以前他们是不会有这笔钱的。因此，消费者显然会过得比以前更好。同样，他们在其他方面开销增加之后，其他行业的就业又随之增加，并吸收那些原来处于边际地位的农民。新职业能让他们的努力会更有收益，也更有效率。
A uniform proportional restriction (to return to our government intervention scheme) means, on the one hand, that the efficient low-cost producers are not permitted to turn out all the output they can at a low price. It means, on the other hand, that the inefficient high-cost producers are artificially kept in business. This increases the average cost of producing the product. It is being produced less efficiently than otherwise. The inefficient marginal producer thus artificially kept in that line of production continues to tie up land, labor and capital that could much more profitably and efficiently be devoted to other uses.
回头再看政府干预的情形。一视同仁按比例限产的结果，一方面意味着不允许那些效率高、成本低的生产者去生产所有他们能够以低价格制造的产品；另一方面，这又意味着人为地使那些效率低、成本高的生产者继续留在这一行业中。这种政策增加了该产品的平均生产成本，生产的效率也降低了。同时，这样被人为保留在某一行业中的缺乏效率的边际生产者，也将因此继续占用着该行业生产中的土地、人力和资本，使这些资源不能被投入到其他收益更大、效率更高的地方。
There is no point in arguing that as a result of the restriction scheme at least the price of farm products has been raised and “the farmers have more purchasing power.” They have got it only by taking just that much purchasing power away from the city buyer. (We have been over all this ground before in our analysis of parity prices.) To give farmers money for restricting production, or to give them the same amount of money for an artificially restricted production, is no different from forcing consumers or taxpayers to pay people for doing nothing at all. In each case the beneficiaries of such policies get “purchasing power.” But in each case someone else loses an exactly equivalent amount. The net loss to the community is the loss of production, because people are supported for not producing. Because there is less for everybody, because there is less to go around, real wages and real incomes must decline either through a fall in their monetary amount or through higher living costs.
至于有人争辩说，实施限产的结果，至少让农产品的价格提高了，且“农民拥有了更多的购买力”，这样的论调实在是没有意义的。农民们所获得的，正是从城市消费者那里拿走的同样大小的购买能力。（在等位价格那一章，我们已经做过充分说明。）为了限制生产而向农民提供贷款，为了人为地控制产量而给予农民相应的补贴，这些做法都无异于强迫消费者或纳税人向无所事事的人支付报酬。在每一种情况下，这种政策的受益者肯定都得到了“购买力”，但每一种情况下，总有其他人也恰恰损失了相同数量的资财。社会所受的净损失便是生产的损失。因为，政策支持人们可以不去生产。由于每个人的资财变少，经济中可以流通的东西减少，实际工资和实际收入必然会下降，这种下降表现为货币收入减少或生活费用升高。
But if an attempt is made to keep up the price of an agricultural commodity and no artificial restriction of output is imposed, unsold surpluses of the overpriced commodity continue to pile up until the market for that product finally collapses to a far greater extent than if the control program had never been put into effect. Or producers outside the restriction program, stimulated by the artificial rise in price, expand their own production enormously. This is what happened in the British rubber-restriction and the American cotton-restriction programs. In either case the collapse of prices finally goes to catastrophic lengths that would never have been reached without the restriction scheme. The plan that started out so bravely to “stabilize” prices and conditions brings incomparably greater instability than the free forces of the market could possibly have brought.
但是，假使试图将农产品保持在一种较高的水平，同时并不实施人为的限产政策，那么价格过高的农产品不仅卖不出去，并且随着产出而越积越多，直到该商品的市场价格最终跌到一种比倘若从未实施过这种方案时的价格水平低得多的程度。或者，其他不受限产方案管制的生产者，在人为高价的刺激下，会争相大幅增加其产量。在英国的橡胶生产限制方案和美国的棉花生产限制方案中，都发生过上述这种事情。在这两个例子中，价格的下降都达到了灾难性的地步，不实施类似方案无论如何也不会出现这样的后果。一开始急吼吼制定“稳定”物价和稳定局面的计划，结果反而造成不稳定，相反，市场的自由力量根本不可能造成那么极不稳定的后果。
Yet new international commodity controls are constantly being proposed. This time, we are told, they are going to avoid all the old errors. This time prices are going to be fixed that are “fair” not only for producers but for consumers. Producing and consuming nations are going to agree on just what these fair prices are, because no one will be unreasonable. Fixed prices will necessarily involve “just” allotments and allocations for production and consumption as among nations, but only cynics will anticipate any unseemly international disputes regarding these. Finally, by the greatest miracle of all, this world of superinternational controls and coercions is also going to be a world of “free” international trade!
尽管如此，人们仍然不断地提出各种各样新的控制商品价格的国际性方案。他们宣称，这一次，我们会避免一切过去犯过的错误。这一次，设定的价格不仅仅对生产者“公平”，对消费者同样“公平”。这一次，生产国和消费国将会在一种非常公平的价格上达成一致，因为每一种价格都会是很合理的。设定价格将同样必然带来生产与消费在各国之间的“合理的”划拨和配置。那时，只有那些专好冷嘲热讽的人才会预言各国关于此事将有纠纷发生。最后，一定会出现伟大的奇迹：这个实施超级国际管制和强制计划的世界，也将成为一个在国际贸易上“自由的”世界！
Just what the government planners mean by free trade in this connection I am not sure, but we can be sure of some of the things they do not mean. They do not mean the freedom of ordinary people to buy and sell, lend and borrow, at whatever prices or rates they like and wherever they find it most profitable to do so. They do not mean the freedom of the plain citizen to raise as much of a given crop as he wishes, to come and go at will, to settle where he pleases, to take his capital and other belongings with him. They mean, I suspect, the freedom of bureaucrats to settle these matters for him. And they tell him that if he docilely obeys the bureaucrats he will be rewarded by a rise in his living standards. But if the planners succeed in tying up the idea of international cooperation with the idea of increased State domination and control over economic life, the international controls of the future seem only too likely to follow the pattern of the past, in which case the plain man’s living standards will decline with his liberties.
政府中的规划官员在这里所说的自由贸易概念是什么含义，我无从揣知。但是，他们的言下之意不包含哪些事情，我们倒是相当确定。他们的意思绝对不是说，平民百姓拥有以任何他们愿意出的价格从事买卖和借贷的自由，拥有在任何他们觉得最有利可图的地方从事买卖和借贷的自由。他们的意思绝对不是说，平民百姓可以去种植任何他们想种的谷物并达到他们期望的产量、可以自由移民、可以自由支配自己的资本和财物。我猜测，他们所说的自由，是官僚们代表平民百姓决定这些事情的自由。而且，他们还将告诉平民百姓说，假使他服从于官僚们的指示的话，驯服的奖赏将是生活水平的提高。但是如果规划官员将国家主宰、控制全民经济生活的观念，绑定到国际合作的观念之中，那么未来的国际控制很有可能会像国家控制的情形：平民百姓的生活水平，随着他们的自由的缩减而每况愈下。