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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。由此我们可以认识到，把注意力只集中在特别的某一点的做法不过是自欺欺人，例如先前讨论的那些只关注某个行业发生的事情，对所有的行业发生的变化却不加考虑的做法。然而，经济学中的重大谬误，恰恰是植根于人们长期养成的这种思维惯性和惰性，即，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、躲雨的地方、防野兽的武器、火、睡觉的窝。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，极度焦渴最难耐，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，这种话一定会被家人戏虐为蠢话。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“鲁滨逊经济学”。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。

（未完待续）

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