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第15章 价格体系如何运作？

（接前面部分）

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

正是上述引申让那些不了解“价格体系”的人反感，并揪住不放。他们谴责价格体系导致了匮乏。他们愤慨地责问：为什么在生产鞋子不赚钱时，企业家就要停止生产？为什么他们只受自己利润的支配？为什么他们的行动要由市场操纵？为什么他们不“利用现代的制造工艺，开足马力”来生产鞋子？这些“生产致用”的哲学家下结论说：价格体系和私人企业只不过是“匮乏经济学”的一种形式。

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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