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2016年6月27日星期一

起点在哪里

正好跟朋友讨论到这个问题,她说有钱人太有钱,没钱的人太没钱不公平,有钱人应该把财产分一部分给没钱的人。

这样做的国家不是没有,北欧几个国家多少都像是社会主义了。丹麦各种税款算下来基本有工资六七成。

问题是,在金钱为流通货币的前提下,社会运行的基础就是资源稀缺。为了保证高价,毁掉多余的钻石也在所不惜。一个钻石独一无二可以卖上百万,十颗钻石不稀罕只能卖单价一万,为什么不销毁多余的钻石?当获取更多交换媒介被设定为系统鼓励的唯一目标,为此破坏点生产成果算什么。所谓倒掉牛奶也不分给穷人。而富余被禁止,就意味着还必须有人工作生产。可既然工作与否拿到的钱都差不多,为什么还要工作?既然做什么都有国家安全网垫底,欠点债有什么,大家一起还呗。在这样的心态下,借钱者消费起奢侈品来毫不含糊。

丹麦债款:

It is a paradox that, while the Danes claim that they gladly give their cash to the government with one hand, the other is either online applying to borrow more to pay for their nice German cars, Bang & Olufsen TVs and occasional holidays to Phuket, or slipping a bulging brown envelope to a Polish builder.

Today, Danish households have the highest ratio of debt-to-income of any country in the Western world: the Danes owe, on average, 310 per cent of their annual income, more than double that of the Portuguese or Spanish, and quadruple that of the Italians. An astonishing figure, yet something rarely discussed in the Danish media or at Danish dining tables.

冰岛债款:

First, a quick ‘recent Icelandic economic history’ primer. Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes.

The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in... those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.

在这样惩罚生产者、奖励等闲人的系统下,真正认真工作产生价值的人,就不愿意待下去了。

贫富差距大不是好事。不说其他,社会犯罪率跟贫富差距程度是正相关的。但是,就因为有的人货币更多,就把属于他们的财产分给别人,感觉也不大对。

我不相信『性本善所以不用担心』,也不相信用威胁与道德制高劝说谁会有什么效果。羞耻、愧疚和罪恶感是最可怕的行善动机,迟早会反弹。

我相信的是系统。

就好像想要出门跑步就提前跟朋友约好时间,希望收纳不要小偷小摸就弄个收银机而不是拿抽屉放钱,想要在权者不要胡作非为就不要给哪一个职位绝对权力……世界上聪明人那么多,总有奖励勤奋善意好奇探索者、同时也保证每个人基本权益的系统。

这样的系统,一定不能建立在交换媒介的基础上,这样才有可能避免货币系统的稀缺导向。

即使货币系统在抑制富余,随着科技与自动化的发展,失业率会越来越高。之前有讨论过,这是向富余发展的兆头,拉远了看是好事,只是落到哪个活生生的人头上,看起来就残酷了点。但仅是为了与发展势头抗衡,工会就威胁工厂禁用机器并保留不做事的『荣誉职位』,拉低生产力只为让工人不必失业,于整个社会也是悲剧一场。

随着失业率逐日上升,为了保证每个人的基本权益,生产力上这样的系统必须已经达到富余。否则,只要社会还依赖不小数量的人的生产,就必然会有Atlas Shrug里John带领真正的生产力离开,就像现实版本中丹麦年轻生产力不愿再留下喂养坐吃的『大多数』。

在社会能够支持富余之前,就试图过度共产化,对社会发展及生产力是会造成损害的。

起始点,必须是以科技达到富余,然后社会不再依赖人的生产。

Abundance through technology as starting point.

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