双语对照 - 想搞垄断——让你四裤全输

想搞垄断——让你四裤全输

One of the most effective arguments against unregulated laissez faire has been that it invariably leads to monopoly.

一个最有效的反对自由放任市场的理由是：它必然带来垄断。

As George Orwell put it, "The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them." It is thus argued that government must intervene to prevent the formation of monopolies or, once formed, to control them. This is the usual justification for antitrust laws and such regulatory agencies as the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Civil Aeronautics Board.

正如George Orwell说的：“麻烦在于有人可以避免竞争。”因此有人主张政府必须防止垄断的形成，或者一旦形成，必须要控制它。这也是反托拉斯法以及美国州际贸易委员会、民用航空局等管制机构存在的理由。

The best historical refutation of this thesis is in two books by socialist historian Gabriel Kolko: The Triumph of Conservatism and Railroads and Regulation. He argues that at the end of the last century businessmen believed the future was with bigness, with conglomerates and cartels, but were wrong. The organizations they formed to control markets and reduce costs were almost invariably failures, returning lower profits than their smaller competitors, unable to fix prices, and controlling a steadily shrinking share of the market.

关于这一点，最有力的驳斥来自于社会主义历史学家Gabriel Kolko的两本书：《保守主义的胜利》和《铁路与管制》。上个世纪末的那些企业家普遍相信未来将会是企业巨头、企业联合组织的天下，而Kolko教授认为并非如此。那些试图控制市场，降低成本的组织几乎无一例外地失败了，他们的利润还不如他们的竞争对手——小企业的丰厚。他们不但操纵不了价格，市场份额也日渐萎缩。

The regulatory commissions supposedly were formed to restrain monopolistic businessmen. Actually, Kolko argues,they were formed at the request of unsuccessful monopolists to prevent the competition which had frustrated their efforts. Those interested in pursuing the historical question should read Kolko's books, which deal with the Progressive period,as well as the articles by McGee and Stigler mentioned in the Appendix. McGee discusses the history of Standard Oil,and Stigler examines the question of whether concentration has historically tended to increase. His conclusion is that the degree of concentration in the economy has been relatively stable. It always appears to be increasing, because highly concentrated industries are much more visible than more competitive ones. We are all aware that, sometime between 1920 and the present, General Motors acquired a commanding position in the automobile industry. Few of us realize that during the same period U.S. Steel lost its dominance in the steel industry. For the same reason, we tend to exaggerate the amount of concentration existing at any given time. The areas of the economy which we think of as 'important' tend to be those in which we can identify a single large firm. We rarely consider such 'industries' as the restaurant and bar business, domestic service, or the manufacture of textiles and apparel, each of which is highly competitive and each of which employs more people than iron, steel, and automobile manufacturing combined.

很多人想当然地认为监管机构是用来限制垄断企业的，Kolko教授表示，实际上，那些监管机构之所以成立，正是因为有些企业垄断不成，就试图借政府之手打击竞争者。对这些历史渊源感兴趣的，可以去看看Kolko教授关于进步主义时期（1890-1920年间）的书，以及本文附录里面提到的McGee和Stigler的文章。McGee论述了标准石油公司（后分解成埃克森和美孚公司，译者注）的历史，Stigler仔细审视了企业合并现象是否越来越严重了的疑问。他的结论是，企业合并的程度大体上是稳定的。之所以看起来企业合并的现象增加了，是因为高度集中的企业比起竞争分散的公司更容易引起人们的注意。我们都知道，1920年的某段时间以及现在，通用汽车公司在汽车制造行业占据着龙头老大的地位。但很少人认识到，与此同时，美国的钢铁公司失去了霸主地位。出于相同的理由，我们很容易夸大在某一特定时期高度集中的企业的数量。越是出现了巨无霸的企业的领域，我们越容易视之为重要的经济领域。很少有人想到比如旅馆、酒吧、国内航线，或者纺织服装业，其中的任何一个行业的雇员数量都比钢铁行业、汽车制造行业的雇员数量要多，但它们却是充分竞争和分散的。

Whatever the facts about monopoly may be, the belief that competition inevitably tends to produce monopoly is widespread. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to understanding the arguments that support this belief and why they are wrong.

不管关于垄断的实际情况如何，自由竞争必然产生垄断的观念传播甚广。这一章接下来的内容将致力于分析这个观念的理论依据以及为什么它是错的。

There are three different sorts of monopoly: natural monopoly, artificial monopoly, and state monopoly. Only the first is of any importance in a laissez-faire society.

垄断有三种：自然垄断，人为垄断以及国家垄断。只有第一种的垄断形式在一个放任自由的社会里具有重要意义。

In most economic activities, the efficiency of a firm increases with size up to some optimum size and then decreases.

在绝大多数经济活动中，企业的效率随着规模的上升而上升，直到一个最佳规模，再扩张，则效率降低。

The increasing efficiency reflects the advantages of mass production. These advantages generally occur only up to some definite level of size; for example, one steel mill is far more efficient than a backyard blast furnace, but making an existing steel mill still larger brings no added advantage—that is why steel mills are the size they are— and two steel mills are no more efficient than one. Increasing size also brings increased cost of administrative bureaucracy. The men at the top get further and further removed from what is actually going on at the bottom and are therefore more likely to make costly mistakes. So efficiency tends to decrease with increasing size once firms have passed the point where they can take full advantage of mass production. For this reason some very large firms, General Motors, for example, break themselves down into semi-autonomous units in order to approximate as nearly as possible the more efficient administrative arrangements of smaller firms.

效率一直呈上升的趋势反应了规模生产的优势。这些优势只发生在有限度的大规模生产中。举个例子，一个钢铁厂比小铁匠铺有效率，但是让一个现有的钢铁厂继续扩张，不会带来什么额外的优势——这就是为什么那些钢铁厂就是那种规模——同理，把它拆分成两个钢铁厂，也并不会就比一个更有效率。规模扩张也会带来管理成本的增加。下发指示的最高层和执行命令的最底层层级越多，越容易出现大的疏漏。所以当一个企业越过了它能获得的规模效应的最高点后，它的规模和效率则呈反比。出于这个考虑，一些非常大的公司，通用汽车把自己拆分成多个半自治的企业单元，以尽可能达到与小企业类似的管理效率。

A natural monopoly exists when the optimum size for a firm in some area of production is so large that there is room for only one such firm on the market. A smaller competitor is less efficient than the monopoly firm and hence unable to compete with it. Except where the market is very small (a small town grocery store, for example), this is a rather uncommon situation. In the steel industry, which is generally regarded as highly concentrated, there are between two hundred and three hundred steel mills, and between one hundred and two hundred firms. The largest four firms (which are by no means the most profitable) produce only half the total output, and the next four produce only 16 percent of total output.

当一些特定领域的生产使得只能有一个企业达到它的最佳规模时，自然垄断就产生了。小的竞争对手无法比垄断企业更高效，因此也就无力与它竞争。除了市场非常小的地方，（比如小地方的杂货店），这种情形并不常见。在人们通常认为是高度密集化的钢铁行业，大约有两百到三百家钢铁厂，一百到两百家钢铁公司。最大的四家公司（没有任何理由认为它们是利润最高的）的产量之后也只占到了总产量的一半，接下来的四家只占总产量的16%。

Even a natural monopoly is limited in its ability to raise prices. If it raises them high enough, smaller, less efficient firms find that they can compete profitably. Here Orwell's implicit analogy of economic competition to a contest breaks down. The natural monopoly 'wins' in the sense of producing goods for less, thus making a larger profit on each item sold. It can make money selling goods at a price at which other firms lose money and thus retain the whole market. But it retains the market only so long as its price stays low enough that other firms cannot make a profit. This is what is called potential competition.

即使是处于自然垄断的公司也无法肆意提高产品价格。如果它提价过高，小的，低效的企业就有机可乘。在这里，我们对于Orwell关于竞争性企业的推论展开分析。自然垄断企业之所以胜出是因为它的产品成本更低，因此可以在每单位产品上获得更多利润。它能够以一种其它公司如果照搬其价格，就会亏本的低价出售产品，籍此它能够垄断整个市场。但是它只能在保持售价足够低，低到其他公司没有利润可图的情况下垄断市场。这可称之为潜在的竞争。

A famous example is Alcoa Aluminum. One of the charges brought against Alcoa during the anti-trust hearings that resulted in its breakup was that it had kept competitors out of the aluminum business by keeping its prices low and by taking advantage of every possible technological advance to lower them still further.

有一个著名的例子是Alcoa铝业公司。在导致它最终被拆分的听证会上的其中一项指控就是它利用低价策略，并采取一切可能的技术优势进一步降低产品价格的手段把其他竞争对手赶出市场。

The power of a natural monopoly is also limited by indirect competition. Even if steel production were a natural monopoly, and even if the monopoly firm were enormously more efficient than potential competitors, its prices would be limited by the existence of substitutes for steel. As it drove prices higher and higher, people would use more aluminum, plastic, and wood for construction. Similarly a railroad, even if it is a monopoly, faces competition from canal barges, trucks, and airplanes.For all of these reasons natural monopolies, although they occasionally exist under institutions of laissez faire, do not seriously interfere with the workings of the market. The methods government uses to control such monopolies do far more damage than the monopolies themselves, as I show in the next chapter.

自然垄断企业的力量也受间接的竞争所限。即使钢铁产品是自然垄断的，即使垄断企业的效率远高于它的潜在竞争对手，它的价格也要受限于钢铁产品的替代品。当它的价格一高再高，人们会用更多的铝、塑料以及木头来做建筑用料。对于铁路，也是如此，即使它是垄断的，也要面对来自海运、汽运和空运的竞争。

结合前述种种理由，自然垄断现象即使会在自由放任的市场上存在，也不会严重妨碍市场的正常运行。政府用来控制这种垄断企业对社会所造成的伤害，要远大于垄断企业本身，在下一章节，我会详细论述。

An artificial monopoly is a large firm, formed for the purpose of controlling the market, raising prices, and thus reaping monopoly profits in an area where the conditions for natural monopoly do not exist. When the same effect is produced by an agreement among several firms, the group of firms is called a cartel. Since a cartel has most of the problems of a monopoly in addition to problems of its own, I shall discuss monopolies first.

Suppose a monopoly is formed, as was U.S. Steel, by financiers who succeed in buying up many of the existing firms.

人为的垄断组织由大公司组成，目的是为了控制市场，提高产品价格，在没有出现自然垄断的经济领域攫取垄断利润。由多个公司组成的协议联盟，被称之为“卡特尔”的组织也会带来同样的效应。由于“卡特尔”组织除了自身的问题之外，也同样有垄断带来的问题，所以我还是先谈谈垄断带来的问题。

假设一个垄断企业形成了，比如说美国钢铁公司，它通过连续收购多个其他钢铁企业而成。

Assume further that there is no question of a natural monopoly; a firm much smaller than the new monster can produce as efficiently, perhaps even more efficiently. It is commonly argued that the large firm will nonetheless be able to achieve and maintain complete control of the industry. This argument, like many others, depends on the false analogy of market competition to a battle in which the strongest must win.

进一步假设这里有一个自然垄断现象下所不存在的问题——一个比这个新起的庞然大物小得多的企业也可以同样高效的生产，甚至效率更高（如果小企业的效率没有那个垄断企业效率高，则属于前述的自然垄断现象，不在此讨论之列，译者注）。然而，很多人依然会认为大企业会获胜，并完全控制这个行业。这些观点，就像很多其他的观点一样，基于一个对市场竞争一定是“强”者胜出的错误分析上。

Suppose the monopoly starts with 99 percent of the market and that the remaining 1 percent is held by a single competitor. To make things more dramatic, let me play the role of the competitor. It is argued that the monopoly, being bigger and more powerful, can easily drive me out.

In order to do so, the monopoly must cut its price to a level at which I am losing money. But since the monopoly is no more efficient than I am, it is losing just as much money per unit sold. Its resources may be 99 times as great as mine,

but it is also losing money ninety-nine times as fast as I am.

假设这垄断巨头一开始已占据99%的市场份额，剩余1%为一个竞争对手所有。为了让事情更有戏剧性，且让我扮演竞争者的角色。如果说大而强的垄断巨头，可以轻易击败我。那么要做到这一点，它必须降价销售产品，我如果采取跟它一样的价格的话，就会血本无归。但是因为这个垄断巨头并不比我生产效率更高，它每一份产品所损失的钱和我一样多。它的资本可能是我的99倍，但是它损失钱的速度也将会是我的99倍之多。

It is doing worse than that. In order to force me to keep my prices down, the monopoly must be willing to sell to everyone who wants to buy; otherwise unsupplied customers will buy from me at the old price. Since at the new low price customers will want to buy more than before, the monopolist must expand production, thus losing even more money. If the good we produce can be easily stored, the anticipation of future price rises, once our battle is over, will increase present demand still further.

而且情况还会更糟。为了迫使我保持低价，这个垄断巨头必须要把产品销售给每个想买的人。否则没买到的顾客将会从我这里用原价购买。由于价格降低后，顾客的需求会上升，垄断巨头必须扩大生产，因此将会损失更大。如果我们生产的产品是容易储存的，预测到我们的价格战一旦结束，产品价格会回升，需求还会进一步上升。

Meanwhile, I have more attractive options. I can, if I wish, continue to produce at full capacity and sell at a loss,losing one dollar for every hundred or more lost by the monopoly. Or I may save money by laying off some of my workers, closing down part of my plant, and decreasing production until the monopoly gets tired of wasting its money.

与此同时，我还有更多的招数可以用。如果我愿意，我可以继续开足马力亏本销售，我每损失一美元，垄断巨头将要损失一百美元或者更多。或者，我也可以暂时裁员节流，关闭一些厂房，降低生产，直到垄断巨头不再想烧钱为止。

[希望这篇文章能给你对垄断和市场带来新的认识，如果你觉得有所收获，希望与更多人分享这篇文章的话，可以点一下文章左下角的“顶”，支持一下译者，谢谢！]

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