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第16章 “稳定”物价
 
（接前面部分）
 
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。（在平准价格那一章，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。

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