各界频现巨头扼首垄断才是民主的敌人

2014-09-04 15:39:11来源：可可英语

　　Of course, not all large businesses have monopoly power. Tesco, the monarch of British foodretailing, has found discount competitors chopping up its throne to use as kindling. Apple andGoogle are supplanting Microsoft. And even where market power is real, Prof Harberger’s pointwas that it may matter less than we think. But his influential analysis focused on monopolypricing. We now know there are many other ways in which dominant businesses can harm us.

　　当然，并非所有的大公司都具备垄断的实力。英国食品零售之王乐购(Tesco)发现，许多靠打折竞争的对手正将它的王座劈成柴烧。苹果和谷歌(Google)正在取代微软。此外，即使是在确实存在市场支配力的领域，哈伯格教授也认为其影响可能要比我们想象的小。但是，他颇具影响力的分析聚焦于垄断价格。我们如今知道，垄断企业还有很多其他方式能损害我们的利益。

　　In 1989 the Beer Orders shook up a British pub industry controlled by six brewers. The hopewas that more competition would lead to more and cheaper beer. It did not. The price of beerrose. Yet so did the quality of pubs. Where once every pub had offered rubbery sandwichesand stinking urinals, suddenly there were sports bars, candlelit gastropubs and other options.There is more to competition than lower prices.

　　1989年，“啤酒令”(Beer Orders)促使由六家啤酒酿造商把持的英国酒吧业重新洗牌。这项法令的本意是希望引入更多竞争能提升啤酒的供应量、压低其价格。但结果并非如此。啤酒的价格不降反升。不过，酒吧的质量也提升了。之前，每个酒吧供应的三明治都味同嚼蜡，小便池散发阵阵臭气。“啤酒令”颁布后，突然间冒出了运动酒吧、烛光美食酒吧和其他选项。竞争的意义不仅仅是压低价格。

　　Monopolists can sometimes use their scale and cash flow to produce real innovations – theglory years of Bell Labs come to mind. But the ferocious cut and thrust of smaller competitorsseems a more reliable way to produce many of the everyday innovations that matter.

　　垄断者有时能够利用它们的规模和现金流造就真正的创新——回想一下贝尔实验室(Bell Labs)的辉煌年代。但就造就许多重要的日常创新而言，中小竞争者构成的激烈竞争似乎是一种更可靠的方式。

　　That cut and thrust is no longer so cutting or thrusting as once it was. “The business sector ofthe US economy is ageing,” says a Brookings research paper. It is a trend found across regionsand industries, as incumbent players enjoy entrenched advantages. “The rate of businessstart-ups and the pace of employment dynamism in the US economy has fallen over recentdecades . . . This downward trend accelerated after 2000,” adds a survey in the Journal ofEconomic Perspectives.

　　现在，这种竞争不再像原来那样激烈了。“美国经济的商业部门正在老化，”布鲁金斯学会(Brookings)的一份研究报告称。这种趋势见于各个地区和行业，既有的市场参与者享有根深蒂固的优势。《经济展望期刊》(Journal of Economic Perspectives)的一份调查补充道：“近几十年来，美国经济中的创业比率和就业活力的变化速度都下滑了……这一下滑趋势在2000年后有所加速。”

　　That means higher prices and less innovation, but perhaps the game is broader still. Thecontinuing debate in the US over “net neutrality” is really an argument about the leastdamaging way to regulate the conduct of cable companies that hold local monopolies. Ifcustomers had real choice over their internet service provider, net neutrality rules would beneeded only as a backstop.

　　这意味着价格上涨、创新减少，但博弈牵扯的范围可能还更大了。美国国内围绕“网络中立”(net neutrality)持续展开的辩论，实际上是在争论如何用损失最小的方式监管在地方享有垄断地位的有线电视公司的行为。如果消费者真的有条件选择互联网服务提供商，那么网络中立规则就只需作为一道最后的保障存在。

　　As the debate reminds us, large companies enjoy power as lobbyists. When they aremonopolists, the incentive to lobby increases because the gains from convenient new rulesand laws accrue solely to them. Monopolies are no friend of a healthy democracy.

　　正如这场辩论提醒我们的，大公司享有作为游说者的影响力。当大公司是垄断者时，它们游说的动力就更大了，因为它们能独占便利的新法规带来的利益。垄断者不是健康的民主制度的朋友。

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