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第17章 政府价格管制

（接前面部分）

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Price-fixing may often appear for a short period to be successful. lt can seem to work well for a while, particularly in wartime, when it is supported by patriotism and a sense of crisis. But the longer it is in effect the more its difficulties increase. When prices are arbitrarily held down by government compulsion, demand is chronically in excess of supply. We have seen that if the government attempts to prevent a shortage of a commodity by reducing also the prices of the labor, raw materials and other factors that go into its cost of production, it creates a shortage of these in turn. But not only will the government, if it pursues this course, find it necessary to extend price control more and more downwards, or “vertically”; it will find it no less necessary to extend price control “horizontally.” If we ration one commodity, and the public cannot get enough of it, though it still has excess purchasing power, it will turn to some substitute. The rationing of each commodity as it grows scarce, in other words, must put more and more pressure on the unrationed commodities that remain. If we assume that the government is successful in its efforts to prevent black markets (or at least prevents them from developing on a sufficient scale to nullify its legal prices), continued price control must drive it to the rationing of more and more commodities. This rationing cannot stop with consumers. In World War II it did not stop with consumers. It was applied first of all, in fact, in the allocation of raw materials to producers.

价格管制往往能在短期内显现出成效。它可能会在一段时间内运作得很好，尤其在战争时期，它会因人们的爱国意识和危机感而获得支持。然而，实施的时间越长，运作的难度就越大。当价格被政府强制压低后，需求会持续地超过供给。我们已经看到，如果政府为了防止受控商品供应短缺，试图去降低其生产成本，即压低其劳工、原材料和其他生产要素的价格，随之而来的将会是这些生产要素的短缺。倘使政府采取这个方针，政府不仅会发现沿产品线“纵向”扩大价格管制不可避免，也会发现有必要对不同产品线“横向”扩大价格管制。如果我们对一种商品实行定量配给，民众得不到满足，尽管仍然存在过剩的购买力，需求将会转向某种替代品。换句话说，对任何一种日益短缺的商品实行配给，势必对仍未实行配给的商品造成越来越大的压力。如果我们假设政府有效地遏制了黑市（或者，至少阻止黑市不致壮大到足以左右法定限价市场的程度），继续执行价格管制必然会迫使政府将越来越多的商品纳入配给的范畴。并且，政府不可能只限于对消费者实施配给。在二战期间就不限于消费者，事实上，而是首先对生产者实施原材料配给。

The natural consequence of a thoroughgoing over-all price control which seeks to perpetuate a given historic price level, in brief, must ultimately be a completely regimented economy. Wages would have to be held down as rigidly as prices. Labor would have to be rationed as ruthlessly as raw materials. The end result would be that the government would not only tell each consumer precisely how much of each commodity he could have; it would tell each manufacturer precisely what quantity of each raw material he could have and what quantity of labor. Competitive bidding for workers could no more be tolerated than competitive bidding for materials. The result would be a petrified totalitarian economy, with every business firm and every worker at the mercy of the government, and with a final abandonment of all the traditional liberties we have known. For as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”

总之，旨在将某种历史价格水平永久化的全面价格管制，其自然结果终必是一种完全专制性的经济。工资必须像物价那样，被强制压低。劳工必须像原材料那样，被强制纳入配给。最后，政府为每一位消费者规定了他能得到的每一种商品的数量，为每一家制造商规定了它能得到原材料的数量、能够雇用的劳工的数量。到那时，厂商竞价购买原材料将不被容许，竞价招揽劳工同样不被容许。结果会形成僵化的极权经济，每家厂商、每个劳工都听任政府支配，而最终，我们将放弃掉曾经拥有的全部传统意义的自由。正如亚历山大·汉密尔顿两个世纪前在《联邦党人文集》（Federalist Papers）一书中所指出的：“控制一个人生计的权力，就是控制一个人意志的权力。”

（未完待续）

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