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。

Disbanding Troops and Bureaucrats

第9章 遣散军队和裁减公务员

WHEN, AFTER EVERY great war, it is proposed to demobilize the armed forces, there is always a great fear that there will not be enough jobs for these forces and that in consequence they will be unemployed. It is true that, when millions of men are suddenly released, it may require time for private industry to reabsorb them—though what has been chiefly remarkable in the past has been the speed, rather than the slowness, with which this was accomplished. The fears of unemployment arise because people look at only one side of the process.

在每一次大战结束，提起军人复员问题的时候，人们总是非常担心没有足够多的工作岗位来安置这些复员军人，进而担心这些人会因此失业。确实，当数以百万计的人突然间被遣散，要使得私营工商业重新吸纳他们是需要相当一段时间的——不过历史上首要的引人吃惊的是这一过程完成之迅速，而非迟缓。人们对失业问题忧心忡忡，是因为他们只考虑到了这个进程的一个侧面。

They see soldiers being turned loose on the labor market. Where is the “purchasing power” going to come from to employ them? If we assume that the public budget is being balanced, the answer is simple. The government will cease to support the soldiers. But the taxpayers will be allowed to retain the funds that were previously taken from them in order to support the soldiers. And the taxpayers will then have additional funds to buy additional goods. Civilian demand, in other words, will be increased, and will give employment to the added labor force represented by the former soldiers.

人们看到退伍军人涌入劳动市场时，不禁要问，哪来那么多“购买力”雇用这些人呢？如果我们假设政府在战时可以在维持公共预算收支平衡的情况下来供养军队，答案则很简单。政府在战后不用再维持庞大的军队，会减少军费开支。纳税人以前被征去供应军队的钱，现在可以留着自己用，也就会有更多的钱去购买更多的东西。换句话说，民间需求将从此增加，并将为复员军人所代表的新增劳动力提供就业机会。

If the soldiers have been supported by an unbalanced budget— that is, by government borrowing and other forms of deficit financing—the case is somewhat different. But that raises a different question: we shall consider the effects of deficit financing in a later chapter. It is enough to recognize that deficit financing is irrelevant to the point that has just been made; for if we assume that there is any advantage in a budget deficit, then precisely the same budget deficit could be maintained as before by simply reducing taxes by the amount previously spent in supporting the wartime army.

如果政府在战时采用赤字财政，也就是靠政府公债和其他的赤字财政形式来供养军队，情况会有所不同。然而，那也提出了一个不同的问题：我们将在后面的章节再讨论赤字财政的影响。这里只需要知道赤字财政和我们讨论的要点无关即可。因为，要是我们认为维持这个水平的预算赤字有某种好处的话，那么只需要减税，减税幅度和以前用于支付战时军费上的资金一样多，就可以保持与原来相同的预算赤字。

But the demobilization will not leave us economically just where we were before it started. The soldiers previously supported by civilians will not become merely civilians supported by other civilians. They will become self-supporting civilians. If we assume that the men who would otherwise have been retained in the armed forces are no longer needed for defense, then their retention would have been sheer waste. They would have been unproductive. The taxpayers, in return for supporting them, would have got nothing. But now the taxpayers turn over this part of their funds to them as fellow civilians in return for equivalent goods or services. Total national production, the wealth of everybody, is higher.

但是，从经济角度来说，军人复员转业并不会让我们停留在与遣散之前的经济状态。以前靠平民养活的军人并不仅仅转变为靠其他平民供养的平民，他们现在是自食其力的平民。如果我们认为那些要被遣散的军人不再为国防所需，那么继续把他们留在军中纯粹是一种浪费。他们本身是不从事生产的，纳税人出钱供养他们是得不到相应回报的。现在，纳税人能把这一部分的钱支付给复员转业人员，换取等值的产品或服务。国民生产总值增加了，也就是每个人的财富都增加了。

2

The same reasoning applies to civilian government officials whenever they are retained in excessive numbers and do not perform services for the community reasonably equivalent to the remuneration they receive. Yet whenever any effort is made to cut down the number of unnecessary officeholders the cry is certain to be raised that this action is “deflationary.” Would you remove the “purchasing power” from these officials? Would you injure the landlords and tradesmen who depend on that purchasing power? You are simply cutting down “the national income” and helping to bring about or intensify a depression.

当政府冗员过多，这些公务员为社会提供的服务配不上他们所获得的薪酬时，上述推理是同样适用的。然而，无论什么时候，只要做出一些努力去裁减多余的 公务员，就一定会遭到极力反对，说这种举动是“通货紧缩的”。你是要裁掉这些公务员的“购买力”吗？你想要损害依赖那些购买力的房东和商家吗？你这么做，纯粹是在削减“国民所得”，促成或加剧经济衰退。

Once again the fallacy comes from looking at the effects of this action only on the dismissed officeholders themselves and on the particular tradesmen who depend upon them. Once again it is forgotten that, if these bureaucrats are not retained in office, the taxpayers will be permitted to keep the money that was formerly taken from them for the support of the bureaucrats. Once again it is forgotten that the taxpayers’ income and purchasing power go up by at least as much as the income and purchasing power of the former officeholders go down. If the particular shopkeepers who formerly got the business of these bureaucrats lose trade, other shopkeepers elsewhere gain at least as much. Washington is less prosperous, and can, perhaps, support fewer stores; but other towns can support more.

谬误又一次发生于只认识到了这一行动对遭到裁减的公务员，以及那些依赖于他们的特定商家的影响。人们又一次忘记了，如果这些公务员不再呆在政府机关，纳税人便可将原先被征去养活这些冗员的钱留作己用；人们再一次忘记了，纳税人的所得及购买力的增幅，至少跟被裁掉的冗员的所得及购买力的减幅相当。即使过去做公务员生意的商家有损失，别处的商家还会赢得起码同样多的生意。首都华盛顿不会像以前那般繁华，或许商店少了一些，可是其它城镇却能有更多的商家。

Once again, however, the matter does not end there. The country is not merely as well off without the superfluous officeholders as it would have been had it retained them. It is much better off. For the officeholders must now seek private jobs or set up private business. And the added purchasing power of the taxpayers, as we noted in the case of the soldiers, will encourage this. But the officeholders can take private jobs only by supplying equivalent services to those who provide the jobs—or, rather, to the customers of the employers who provide the jobs. Instead of being parasites, they become productive men and women.

而且，跟以前的讨论一样，事情还不止如此。冗员裁掉之后，国家并不仅仅跟保留了冗员的状态一样，而且变得更好。因为，被裁掉这部分人必须自谋职业或自己创业。就象我们在分析军人复员的情形中所指出的那样，纳税人的新增购买力将推动这一进程。不过，这些人只有为雇主，或者更确切地说是提供工作机会的雇主的顾客，提供了等值服务，才能在社会立足。他们不再是社会的寄生虫，而是有生产贡献的人。

I must insist again that in all this I am not talking of public officeholders whose services are really needed. Necessary policemen, firemen, street cleaners, health officers, judges, legislators and executives perform productive services as important as those of anyone in private industry. They make it possible for private industry to function in an atmosphere of law, order, freedom and peace. But their justification consists in the utility of their services. It does not consist in the “purchasing power” they possess by virtue of being on the public payroll.

我必须重申，以上所述，我并没有谈及其服务是社会真正需要的那些公务员。必需的警察、消防队员、环卫工人、卫生局官员、法官、议员和行政人员，这些人都履行着与私企职员同等重要的生产性职责。由于他们所从事的服务，私人企业才得以在法制、秩序、自由、和平的环境中运作。但留用他们的理由，是因为他们提供的服务有其效用，而不是因为他们靠支配纳税人的钱所拥有的“购买力”。

This “purchasing power” argument is, when one considers it seriously, fantastic. It could just as well apply to a racketeer or a thief who robs you. After he takes your money he has more purchasing power. He supports with it bars, restaurants, night clubs, tailors, perhaps automobile workers. But for every job his spending provides, your own spending must provide one less, because you have that much less to spend. Just so the taxpayers provide one less job for every job supplied by the spending of officeholders. When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists. We are lucky, indeed, if the needless bureaucrats are mere easygoing loafers. They are more likely today to be energetic reformers busily discouraging and disrupting production.

这种“购买力”论调推敲起来就会显得荒诞不经。这套说辞对骗子和窃贼同样适用。窃贼窃取你的钱之后，他的购买力也会提高。他把盗窃来的钱花在酒吧、餐厅、夜总会、成衣店，甚至拿去买车。然而，其支出每提供一个工作机会，你自己的支出所能提供的就业机会就将同时减少，因为，你恰恰减少了这么多钱可供花费。同理，公务员的支出每提供一个工作机会，纳税人那边就要少提供一个工作机会。钱被盗窃，对于你而言是一种白白损失，钱被征去养活那些冗员，恰恰正是这种情形。事实上，倘若这些冗员仅仅是些游手好闲的人，还算我们走运。可惜如今，他们更可能是些忙于阻碍和破坏生产的，劲头十足的“改革者”。

When we can find no better argument for the retention of any group of officeholders than that of retaining their purchasing power it is a sign that the time has come to get rid of them.

当我们留用一批公务员只是为了保住其购买力，而找不出更有力的理由时，那就表明应该把他们从政府机关裁减出去。

第6章 政府信贷扭曲生产

（接前面部分）

2

The case becomes even clearer if we turn from farming to other forms of business. The proposal is frequently made that the government ought to assume the risks that are “too great for private industry.” This means that bureaucrats should be permitted to take risks with the taxpayers’ money that no one is willing to take with his own.

要是我们不谈农业，而是谈其他的商业形式，上述道理还会更加明显。时常有人倡议政府应该承担起”私人产业承担不起”的那些风险。这意味着应该准许政府官僚拿纳税人的钱去冒险，做那些没有人会用自己的钱去冒险的投资。

Such a policy would lead to evils of many different kinds. It would lead to favoritism: to the making of loans to friends, or in return for bribes. It would inevitably lead to scandals. It would lead to recriminations whenever the taxpayers’ money was thrown away on enterprises that failed. It would increase the demand for socialism: for, it would properly be asked, if the government is going to bear the risks, why should it not also get the profits? What justification could there possibly be, in fact, for asking the taxpayers to take the risks while permitting private capitalists to keep the profits? (This is precisely, however, as we shall later see, what we already do in the case of “nonrecourse” government loans to farmers.)

这种政策会带来诸多弊端。它会导致徇私舞弊：借钱给亲朋好友，或者贷给贿赂者；它将不可避免地导致种种丑闻；只要投资项目运作失败，令纳税人的钱有去无回，必将导致互相指责推诿。它还会增加对社会主义的要求，因为，人们会很自然地问道：既然政府承担了风险，那为什么不应该取得所有的利润呢？让纳税人承担风险而事实上只有私人资本来获利，哪里有这样的道理？（然而，后面会谈到，政府对农民提供的”限抵无追偿”贷款，正是属于这种情况。）【Nonrecourse Loans，限抵无追偿贷款，指贷款追讨局限于抵押品价值，不额外向借贷者追讨超出抵押品价值的余额——译者注】

But we shall pass over all these evils for the moment, and concentrate on just one consequence of loans of this type. This is that they will waste capital and reduce production. They will throw the available capital into bad or at best dubious projects. They will throw it into the hands of persons who are less competent or less trustworthy than those who would otherwise have got it. For the amount of real capital at any moment (as distinguished from monetary tokens run off on a printing press) is limited. What is put into the hands of B cannot be put into the hands of A.

让我们暂且略过上述弊端，只关注政府贷款的一种后果。这就是，它会浪费资本和减少生产。政府信贷会把现有资本丢进糟糕，充其量也是效益不明的项目中。相对于没有此类信贷而将获得这样的资本的人，政府信贷会把资本交给能力更差、或者更不可靠的人，因为在任何时候，实体资本的数量都是有限的（有别于印钞机吐出来的货币数量），交到乙手中的东西，就不可能再交给甲。

People want to invest their own capital. But they are cautious. They want to get it back. Most lenders, therefore, investigate any proposal carefully before they risk their own money in it. They weigh the prospect of profits against the chances of loss. They may sometimes make mistakes. But for several reasons they are likely to make fewer mistakes than government lenders. In the first place, the money is either their own or has been voluntarily entrusted to them. In the case of government-lending the money is that of other people, and it has been taken from them, regardless of their personal wish, in taxes. The private money will be invested only where repayment with interest or profit is definitely expected. This is a sign that the persons to whom the money has been lent will be expected to produce things for the market that people actually want. The government money, on the other hand, is likely to be lent for some vague general purpose like “creating employment”; and the more inefficient the work—that is, the greater the volume of employment it requires in relation to the value of the product— the more highly thought of the investment is likely to be.

人们希望把自己资本用于投资增值，但投资一定要谨慎，放出去的贷款一定是想收回来。因此，大部分放贷者把钱投下去之前，都会预先仔细审查投资计划，仔细衡量获利的预期和亏损的几率。他们有时也会犯错误，但基于诸多原因，他们犯错的可能性小于政府放贷者。理由如下：首先，借出去的钱是他们自己的，或是别人自愿托付给他们的。而政府借出去的钱却是从纳税人那里强制征收来的，不需要顾及纳税人的个人意愿。私人放贷，只会放给明确地期望在将来能偿还本金与利息或红利的借方。这标志着他们期望借款人能生产市场上有需求的东西。反观政府投钱，则围绕着诸如”创造就业”之类的模糊目的，并且，项目效益越低越好——也就是说，相对于产出所雇用的人数越多，越有可能获得较高评价。

The private lenders, moreover, are selected by a cruel market test. If they make bad mistakes they lose their money and have no more money to lend. It is only if they have been successful in the past that they have more money to lend in the future. Thus private lenders (except the relatively small proportion that have got their funds through inheritance) are rigidly selected by a process of survival of the fittest. The government lenders, on the other hand, are either those who have passed civil service examinations, and know how to answer hypothetical questions hypothetically, or they are those who can give the most plausible reasons for making loans and the most plausible explanations of why it wasn’t their fault that the loans failed. But the net result remains: private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it.

其次，私人放贷者是经过严酷的市场筛选胜出的。经营不善就会赔钱，再也拿不出钱借给别人。他们只有经营得很成功，才可能有更多的钱借出去。因此，私人放贷者（除去通过继承遗产获得资金的一小部分人）经过了优胜劣汰的考验。反观政府贷款业务人员，不少只通过公务员考试，只知道如何用假设的方式回答假设性的问题，或者只是善于找来最动听的理由把钱贷出去，以及在贷款出问题时，找来最合适的借口以推脱责任。不过最终结果却不会因此改变：私人贷款比政府贷款更能充分运用现有的资源和资本，政府贷款与私人贷款相比会浪费更多的资本和资源。简单说，与私人贷款比较来看，政府贷款会减少生产，而不是增进生产。

The proposal for government loans to private individuals or projects, in brief sees B and forgets A. It sees the people into whose hands the capital is put; it forgets those who would otherwise have had it. It sees the project to which capital is granted; it forgets the projects from which capital is thereby withheld. It sees the immediate benefit to one group; it overlooks the losses to other groups, and the net loss to the community as a whole.

总之，主张由政府向私人个体或是项目提供贷款的提案，只看到了乙而忘记了甲。它只关注从中获得资本的人，而忘记了那些本来应该得到而没有得到此项资本的人。它只看得到有政府贷款注入的项目，而遗忘了无法获得资本的其他项目。它只关心某个群体的眼前利益，而不管其他群体的损失，以及整个社会的净损失。

The case against government-guaranteed loans and mortgages to private businesses and persons is almost as strong as, though less obvious than, the case against direct government loans and mortgages. The advocates of government-guaranteed mortgages also forget that what is being lent is ultimately real capital, which is limited in supply, and that they are helping identified B at the expense of some unidentified A. Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to “buy” houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion. In brief in the long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment.

反对为私人企业或个人提供政府担保的贷款和政府担保的抵押贷款的理由差不多同政府直接贷款和提供抵押贷款一样强烈，尽管此类干预更加不明显。主张政府担保抵押贷款的人，同样忘记了实际借出的终究是有限的实体资本，如果扶助了看得到的乙，必然会牺牲看不到的甲。政府担保的住房抵押贷款（尤其是免首付款或首付款很少的住房抵押贷款）不可避免会发生更多的坏账。政府强迫全体纳税人去承担恶性风险与补偿损失。鼓励人们去“购买”自己其实负担不起的房子，最终造成住房供给相对于其它物品过剩。暂时过度刺激楼市，会使得每个人（包括以政府担保抵押贷款购买房子的人）负担的房价升高，甚至可能最终误导建筑业高成本地过度扩张。总的来说，从长期来看，政府信贷并没有提高国家整体的生产，却鼓励了不当的投资。

3

We remarked at the beginning of this chapter that government “aid” to business is sometimes as much to be feared as government hostility. This applies as much to government subsidies as to government loans. The government never lends or gives anything to business that it does not take away from business. One often hears New Dealers and other statists boast about the way government “bailed business out” with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Home Owners Loan Corporation and other government agencies in 1932 and later. But the government can give no financial help to business that it does not first or finally take from business. The government’s funds all come from taxes. Even the much vaunted “government credit” rests on the assumption that its loans will ultimately be repaid out of the proceeds of taxes. When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business. Under certain emergency circumstances there may be a plausible argument for this, the merits of which we need not examine here. But in the long run it does not sound like a paying proposition from the standpoint of the country as a whole. And experience has shown that it isn’t.

本章开篇处提到，政府拿钱“扶持”企业，有时跟政府征敛民财一样可怕。这个说法，除了适用于政府贷款，也同样适用于政府补贴。政府从来不会贷给或是赠予企业任何不是从企业拿走的东西。人们时常听得到，罗斯福新政的执行者和主张政府干涉经济体制的人吹嘘，在1932年及其后一段时间，政府通过复兴金融公司、住房业主贷款公司及其他政府机构，如何”帮助经济走出困境”。然而，倘若政府不是在事先或事后征敛民财的话，它没有钱给企业资金上的帮助。政府的全部资金都来自税收。即便是倍受吹捧的”政府信用贷款”，也是基于最终要由赋税支付其贷款这样一个前提。当政府向企业提供贷款或补贴的时候，它所做的就是向成功的私人企业征税，然后拿钱去扶持不成功的私人企业。在某些紧急状况下，或许有理由实行这样的政策，我们不准备在这里去考察其合理性。但是，长期这么下去，从国家整体的角度考虑，这似乎不是一个合算的机制，而且经验已经表明，这种做法的确得不偿失。

Credit Diverts Production

第6章 政府信贷扭曲生产

Government “encouragement” to business is sometimes as much to be feared as government hostility. This supposed encouragement often takes the form of a direct grant of government credit or a guarantee of private loans.

政府拿钱出来”扶持”企业，有时和政府征敛民财一样可怕。扶持的形式通常是政府直接贷款，以及对私人贷款提供政府担保。

The question of government credit can often be complicated, because it involves the possibility of inflation. We shall defer analysis of the effects of inflation of various kinds until a later chapter. Here, for the sake of simplicity, we shall assume that the credit we are discussing is noninflationary. Inflation, as we shall later see, while it complicates the analysis, does not at bottom change the consequences of the policies discussed.

政府信贷的问题往往是很复杂的，因为它涉及到通货膨胀的可能性。对于通货膨胀造成的各种影响，我们留待后面的章节再去分析。在这里，为了简单起见，我们假设所讨论的政府信贷不引起通货膨胀。我们以后会进一步讨论，通货膨胀虽然会使问题的分析过程复杂化，但不会从根本上改变这里讨论的政府信贷政策的后果。

A frequent proposal of this sort in Congress is for more credit to farmers. In the eyes of most congressmen the farmers simply cannot get enough credit. The credit supplied by private mortgage companies, insurance companies or country banks is never “adequate.” Congress is always finding new gaps that are not filled by the existing lending institutions, no matter how many of these it has itself already brought into existence. The farmers may have enough long-term credit or enough short-term credit but, it turns out, they have not enough “intermediate” credit; or the interest rate is too high; or the complaint is that private loans are made only to rich and well-established farmers. So new lending institutions and new types of farm loans are piled on top of each other by the legislature.

国会中最常见的政府信贷提案是增加对农民的贷款。在大多数国会议员的眼中，农民根本得不到足够的贷款，私人抵押贷款公司、保险公司或乡村银行提供的贷款从来谈不上“充足”。不管有多少的贷款机构就是国会刺激建立起来的，国会总是能不断挖掘出现有的贷款机构还没有满足的新缺口。农民可能获得的长期贷款和短期贷款已经够多了，而议员们又发现，”中期”贷款还不够多，或者利率太高，或者抱怨私人贷款只贷给了家道殷实及有可靠经验的农民。于是，这个立法机关中关于设立面向农民的新贷款机构和新贷款类别的提案层出不穷。
 
The faith in all these policies, it will be found, springs from two acts of shortsightedness. One is to look at the matter only from the standpoint of the farmers that borrow. The other is to think only of the first half of the transaction.

不难发现，有两类短视行为导致人们对这些政策充满信任。一类是只从借钱的农民的立场来考虑问题，另一类则是只关心交易的前半部分。

Now all loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually be repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first.

要知道，在诚信的借款人眼里，所有的贷款最终都是要偿还的，所有的信贷都是债务。国会提高信贷额度的提案不过是加重债务负担的提案的代称。要是我们习惯使用第二个名称，而不用第一个名称，那些提案就不会再那么受欢迎。

We need not discuss here the normal loans that are made to farmers through private sources. They consist of mortgages, of installment credits for the purchase of automobiles, refrigerators, TV sets, tractors and other farm machinery, and of bank loans made to carry the farmer along until he is able to harvest and market his crop and get paid for it. Here we need concern ourselves only with loans to farmers either made directly by some government bureau or guaranteed by it.

我们不必在这里讨论私营机构提供给农民的常规贷款，其中包括抵押贷款，让农民用于购买汽车、电冰箱、电视机、拖拉机和其他农用机械的分期付款贷款，以及供农民在收获和销售谷物前用于资金周转的银行贷款。我们这里要讨论的只是政府机构提供给农民的直接贷款，以及由政府担保的贷款。

These loans are of two main types. One is a loan to enable the farmer to hold his crop off the market. This is an especially harmful type, but it will be more convenient to consider it later when we come to the question of government commodity controls. The other is a loan to provide capital—often to set the farmer up in business by enabling him to buy the farm itself or a mule or tractor, or all three.

这些政府贷款往往有两类用途。一类用以帮助农民把谷物囤积下来，暂不上市销售。这是一类特别有害的贷款，让我们留待后面讨论政府实施商品管制问题时再做具体分析。另一类贷款是为农民立业提供资金——让他们买得起农场本身、或者一部小拖拉机、或者一辆大牵引车、或者所有这些东西。

At first glance the case for this type of loan may seem a strong one. Here is a poor family, it will be said, with no means of livelihood. It is cruel and wasteful to put them on relief. Buy a farm for them; set them up in business; make productive and self-respecting citizens of them; let them add to the total national product and pay the loan off out of what they produce. Or here is a farmer struggling along with primitive methods of production because he has not the capital to buy himself a tractor. Lend him the money for one; let him increase productivity; he can repay the loan out of the proceeds of his increased crops. In that way you not only enrich him and put him on his feet; you enrich the whole community by that much added output. And the loan, concludes the argument, costs the government and the taxpayers less than nothing, because it is “self-liquidating.”

乍一看，这类政府贷款似乎很有必要。有人会站出来说，这里有个贫困家庭，缺乏谋生手段。让他们靠领取救济金生活是一种冷酷和浪费的解决办法。给他们买座农场、使其自力更生、让他们成为有自尊与自食其力的公民，让他们为国家的GDP尽一分力，并用自己的产出来偿还贷款。要不这里有位农民 生活艰难，买不起拖拉机，还在使用原始落后的方式耕种土地。借钱给他买部拖拉机吧，让他提高生产力，他能够靠增产所赚来的钱还本付息。这样一来，既能让他靠劳动致富，又能增加产出，使整个社会更加富有。况且，这类贷款是“自偿性”的贷款，根本不需要政府和纳税人来负担成本。

Now as a matter of fact that is what happens every day under the institution of private credit. If a man wishes to buy a farm, and has, let us say, only half or a third as much money as the farm costs, a neighbor or a savings bank will lend him the rest in the form of a mortgage on the farm. If he wishes to buy a tractor, the tractor company itself or a finance company, will allow him to buy it for one-third of the purchase price with the rest to be paid off in installments out of earnings that the tractor itself will help to provide.

事实上，这正是私人信贷机构每天都在做的事情。倘若某人想买农场，手头的积蓄只够农场售价的一半或三分之一，储蓄银行或邻居们会以抵押贷款的方式借钱给他凑够买价。倘若某人想买拖拉机，农机公司或金融机构可以允许他首付三分之一的货款，其余的欠款靠产出的增加分期偿还即可。

But there is a decisive difference between the loans supplied by private lenders and the loans supplied by a government agency. Each private lender risks his own funds. (A banker, it is true, risks the funds of others that have been entrusted to him; but if money is lost he must either make good out of his own funds or be forced out of business.) When people risk their own funds they are usually careful in their investigations to determine the adequacy of the assets pledged and the business acumen and honesty of the borrower.

然而，在私人提供贷款与政府提供贷款之间存在着一个根本性的区别。每个私人放贷者都是在用自己的资金承担风险。（确实，银行家是利用别人委托给他的钱去冒险，但一旦有损失，也必须拿自己的钱去赔付，否则只有破产出局。）当人们拿自己的钱去冒险时，通常会严格审查借款人是否有足够的资产做抵押，审查其经营能力和诚信如何。

If the government operated by the same strict standards, there would be no good argument for its entering the field at all. Why do precisely what private agencies already do? But the government almost invariably operates by different standards. The whole argument for its entering the lending business, in fact, is that it will make loans to people who could not get them from private lenders. This is only another way of saying that the government lenders will take risks with other people’s money (the taxpayers’) that private lenders will not take with their own money. Sometimes, in fact, apologists will freely acknowledge that the percentage of losses will be higher on these government loans than on private loans. But they contend that this will be more than offset by the added production brought into existence by the borrowers who pay back, and even by most of the borrowers who do not pay back.

倘若政府依照同样严格的标准来经营贷款业务，那政府根本没有必要涉足这一行。为什么要去做私人机构已经在做的事呢？不过，政府一向是以不同的标准来从事经营的。政府之所以涉足贷款业，就是要向那些从私人机构借不到钱的人提供资金。这其实是说，私人放贷者不肯拿自己的钱去冒的风险，政府放贷者却愿意拿别人（纳税人）的钱去冒险。事实上有时这种措施的辩护者也明确地承认政府放贷的坏账率高于民间放贷，但他们坚持认为，此种损失由增加的产出可以弥补，且有盈余，增加的产出来自那些有借有还的人，甚至大部分借了不还的人。

This argument will seem plausible only as long as we concentrate our attention on the particular borrowers whom the government supplies with funds, and overlook the people whom its plan deprives of funds. For what is really being lent is not money, which is merely the medium of exchange, but capital. (I have already put the reader on notice that we shall postpone to a later point the complications introduced by an inflationary expansion of credit.) What is really being lent, say, is the farm or the tractor itself. Now the number of farms in existence is limited, and so is the production of tractors (assuming, especially, that an economic surplus of tractors is not produced simply at the expense of other things). The farm or tractor that is lent to A cannot be lent to B. The real question is, therefore, whether A or B shall get the farm.

我们若只注意那些拿到政府贷款的生产者，而忽略掉那些由于政府贷款计划而丧失了获得生产资本的人的时候，上述辩护才会显得有些道理。因为，政府真正借出去的并不是钱，而是资本，钱不过是交易的媒介。（前面已经提醒过，我们稍候再谈通货膨胀性信贷扩张而引发的复杂性问题）。政府真正借出去的是农场或拖拉机本身。农场的数目有限，拖拉机的产量也有限（只要不是牺牲其他产品去生产过剩的拖拉机），那么政府把农场或拖拉机借给某乙，就没办法再借给某甲。因此，真正的问题在于：到底是甲，还是乙，应该得到农场？

This brings us to the respective merits ofA and B, and what each contributes, or is capable of contributing, to production. A, let us say, is the man who would get the farm if the government did not intervene. The local banker or his neighbors know him and know his record. They want to find employment for their funds. They know that he is a good farmer and an honest man who keeps his word. They consider him a good risk. He has already, perhaps, through industry, frugality and foresight, accumulated enough cash to pay a fourth of the price of the farm. They lend him the other three-fourths; and he gets the farm.

这就要靠比较甲与乙各自的价值，各自对生产的贡献，或者有能力做什么贡献。假设政府不干预，甲会得到农场。当地的银行家和邻 居都了解他，对他知根知底。他们希望自己手上的资金得到合理有效的利用。他们知道甲是诚实守信的人，值得在他身上冒险。也许因为勤劳、节俭、有远见，他已经积攒了购买农场所需资金的四分之一，他们借给了他其余的四分之三，这样他就得到这个农场。

There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing. He feels assured of repayment. He is merely exchanging a more liquid form of asset or credit for a less liquid form. Sometimes he makes a mistake, and then it is not only the banker who suffers, but the whole community; for values which were supposed to be produced by the lender are not produced and resources are wasted.

有一个奇怪的说法很流行，是所有造钱学派学者的主张【译者注：monetary cranks，指迷信通货膨胀的经济学者】，说信用是银行赋予某个人的。事实恰恰相反，信用是人已经拥有的东西。一个人有信用，或许是因为他拥有资产折合成现金来计算，其价值大于他想取得的贷款。或许是因为个人品行与信用记录让他获得了信用。他带着本身具备的信用到银行去，银行家才愿意借钱给他。银行家绝不会随随便便地借钱给别人，他需要得到偿还的保证。银行只是把借款人的资产或信用从流动性较低的形式转换成流动性较高的形式而已。有时银行也难免失误，这样一来，不但银行家自己受损失，整个社会也会受损失，因为借款人没能创造出预期的价值，资源被浪费了。

Now it is to A, let us say, who has credit that the banker would make his loan. But the government goes into the lending business in a charitable frame of mind because, as we say, it is worried about B. B cannot get a mortgage or other loans from private lenders because he does not have credit with them. He has no savings; he has no impressive record as a good farmer; he is perhaps at the moment on relief. Why not, say the advocates of government credit, make him a useful and productive member of society by lending him enough for a farm and a mule or tractor and setting him up in business?

可以看出，具备信用的甲是银行愿意借钱的对象。但抱着施舍心态的政府更关怀乙的处境。缺乏信用的乙没办法从私人放贷者那里取得抵押贷款和其他贷款，他没有储蓄，没有信用记录支持他可以作为一个成功的农民，当时他还可能是靠领救济金生活。提倡扩大政府信用的人争辩说，为什么不借给他足够的钱，让他购买农场、小拖拉机、大牵引车，助其立业，使他成为有价值也有生产效益的社会成员呢？

Perhaps in an individual case it may work out all right. But it is obvious that in general the people selected by these government standards will be poorer risks than the people selected by private standards. More money will be lost by loans to them. There will be a much higher percentage of failures among them. They will be less efficient. More resources will be wasted by them. Yet the recipients of government credit will get their farms and tractors at the expense of those who otherwise would have been the recipients of private credit. Because B has a farm, A will be deprived of a farm. A may be squeezed out either because interest rates have gone up as a result of the government operations, or because farm prices have been forced up as a result of them, or because there is no other farm to be had in his neighborhood. In any case, the net result of government credit has not been to increase the amount of wealth produced by the community but to reduce it, because the available real capital (consisting of actual farms, tractors, etc.) has been placed in the hands of the less efficient borrowers rather than in the hands of the more efficient and trustworthy.

也许就个别的案例来说，这种愿望能够很好地得到实现。但整体而言，按政府的标准选定的信贷对象，风险显然高于按私人放贷标准选定的信贷对象。投给乙们的贷款越多，损失越大，他们中间失败的比例会高出很多。乙们的效率会比较低，更多的资源会被他们浪费掉。可是，获得政府贷款的人将买到农场和拖拉机，本来可望获得私人贷款的人就反而得不到。乙有了农场，甲就被剥夺了拥有这个农场的机会。甲被排挤出去，可能是因为政府信贷导致的利率提高，或因为农场的价格因之上涨，或因为邻近地区也没有剩余的农场可买了。这样一来，政府信贷所造成的净效果是减少而不是增加了当地所能创造财富，因为可用的实体资本（由实际的农场、拖拉机等构成）没有交给效率更高的、值得信赖的人，而是落到了低效率的借款人手里。