财富创造机制目录

A catalog of wealth-creation mechanisms 财富创造机制目录

One of the guest lecturers aboard the ship [1] (Donald Gibbs, of Pearl-Harbor conspiracy-theory infamy) gave a very interesting talk a few days ago about some of China’s semi-recent history. He opened with a little pop-quiz, which I thought set the stage particularly well, so I’ll co-opt it here to make a different point:
船上的一位客座讲师（唐纳德·吉布斯，珍珠港阴谋论的臭名昭著）几天前做了一个非常有趣的演讲，关于中国半近代的一些历史。他以一个小测验开场，我认为这个小测验很好地搭建了舞台，所以我在这里选择它来说明一个不同的观点：

1. Why was the Panama Canal built?
   1.巴拿马运河为什么要建？

2. Why was the Lewis-and-Clark expedition funded?
   2.为什么刘易斯和克拉克探险队得到资助？

3. Why was the transcontinental railroad built?
   3.为什么要修建横贯大陆的铁路？

The popular answer to these questions, taught to schoolchildren throughout the U.S., is: to link the east and west coasts of the United States. But that answer is wrong, as can be shown by examining historical records of the time. The real reason for all three of these mammoth endeavors was to link the east coast of the United States with China. And the reason for linking the east coast of the United States with China was that a ship full of goods from China (including, for example, high quality china with a lower-case ‘c’, which at the time was produced nowhere else) could be sold in the east-coast cities of the U.S. at about a 300% profit. The wealth created by this trade ultimately financed the industrialization of the U.S., so this is no mere historical trifle. (Bonus question: what did the U.S. give to China in exchange for its china?)
这些问题的普遍答案，教给美国各地的学童，就是：连接美国东西海岸。但是，这个答案是错误的，这可以通过检查当时的历史记录来证明。这三项猛犸工程的真实的原因是为了把美国东海岸与中国连接起来。连接美国东海岸和中国的原因是，一艘满载中国货物的船只（包括，例如，带有小写字母“c”的高质量瓷器，当时其他地方都没有生产）可以在美国东海岸城市出售，利润约为300%。这种贸易创造的财富最终为美国的工业化提供了资金，所以这不是历史的小事。（附加问题：美国给予什么来换取中国？）

But the point I want to draw attention to is that at the root of all wealth creation are a very few, very simple and easy-to-understand core mechanisms. It’s easy to lose sight of this in today’s complex technological world, so I thought I’d draw up a catalog of them.
但我想提请注意的一点是，所有财富创造的根源是一个非常简单和易于理解的核心机制。在当今复杂的技术世界中，很容易忽视这一点，所以我想我应该起草一份目录。

It’s important to keep in mind that there is a distinction between wealth and money. Wealth is a measure of how much stuff people have that they actually value for its own sake. Food, housing, clothing, shelter, and artwork, are all examples of wealth. Money, by way of contrast, is merely an accounting mechanism that humans have invented in order to facilitate trade. Money and wealth often go together, but they are completely different things. You can transform money into wealth, and vice versa (which is the whole point of having money), but you can have money without wealth and vice versa. And you can make (or earn) money without creating wealth, and vice versa. But historically, the most reliable and the most socially beneficial way of making money is to create wealth. So to help encourage that, here’s a more or less comprehensive list of fundamental mechanisms of creating wealth.
重要的是要记住，财富和金钱是有区别的。财富是衡量人们拥有多少东西，他们实际上是为了自己的价值。食物、住房、衣服、住所和艺术品都是财富的例子。相比之下，货币仅仅是人类为了促进贸易而发明的一种会计机制。金钱和财富经常相伴而行，但它们是完全不同的东西。你可以把钱变成财富，反之亦然（这就是有钱的全部意义），但你可以没有财富就有钱，反之亦然。你可以不创造财富而赚钱，反之亦然。但从历史上看，最可靠、对社会最有益的赚钱方式是创造财富。所以为了鼓励这一点，这里有一个或多或少全面的清单，列出了创造财富的基本机制。

1. Move things from one place to another. Most things have value only when they are in a particular place. Food, clothing, and shelter only have value for you if they are close to where you happen to be. So you can create wealth simply by moving something from somewhere that it isn’t useful to somewhere that it is. It sounds simple, but this is the basis for the shipping industry, which is what more or less what financed the industrialization of the United States of America.
   1.把东西从一个地方搬到另一个地方。大多数东西只有在特定的地方才有价值。食物、衣服和住所只有在你碰巧在的地方附近才对你有价值。所以你可以通过简单地把一些无用的东西从某个地方移到有用的地方来创造财富。这听起来很简单，但这是航运业的基础，这或多或少是美利坚合众国工业化的资金来源。

2. Store things. Just as the values of things are often bound to their location, value is also often bound to a particular time. A winter coat, for example, is more useful in winter than summer. Keeping things in serviceable condition until they become useful is often a non-trivial exercise (consider the problem of keeping fruits and vegetables available when they are out of season). So you can create value simply by holding on to something and maintaining it in working order until it becomes useful to someone. Just as moving things around is the basis for the shipping industry, storing things is the basis for the retail industry. Stores are called stores because they used to be places where things were stored, not necessarily places where things were sold.
   2.储存东西。正如事物的价值往往与其所在的位置相联系，价值也往往与特定的时间相联系。例如，冬天的外套在冬天比夏天更有用。保持物品处于可用状态直到它们变得有用通常是一个不平凡的练习（考虑一下在水果和蔬菜过季时保持可用的问题）。因此，你可以通过简单地持有某样东西并保持它的工作状态，直到它对某人有用，来创造价值。就像运输是航运业的基础一样，存储是零售业的基础。商店之所以被称为商店，是因为它们过去是存放东西的地方，而不一定是出售东西的地方。

3. Transform things, either chemically or mechanically. This is the basis of the manufacturing industry. I don’t think I need to say any more about that. [Update: actually, it turns out I do need to say more about it. This is indeed the basis of manufacturing, but it’s also the basis of a lot of other things, including service industries like automobile repair, plumbing, cooking, hairdressing, painting and sculpture, carpentry, etc.]
   3.以化学或机械的方式改变事物。这是制造业的基础。我想我不需要再多说了。【更新：其实我还得多说，这确实是制造业的基础，但也是很多其他东西的基础，包括汽车修理、管道、烹饪、美发、绘画雕塑、木工等服务业。

4. Farm. Technically, farming could be considered a subset of #3, since you’re transforming water, carbon dioxide and fertilizer or animal feed into other, more useful things like crops and livestock. But I put this in a separate category because it relies so much on natural processes. Some day we may be able to engineer entirely artificial crops, but until then I think it’s useful to think of farming as an endeavor separate from manufacturing.
   4.农场从技术上讲，农业可以被认为是#3的一个子集，因为你正在将水，二氧化碳和肥料或动物饲料转化为其他更有用的东西，如农作物和牲畜。但我把它放在一个单独的类别中，因为它非常依赖于自然过程。也许有一天我们能够设计出完全人造的农作物，但在那之前，我认为把农业看作是与制造业分开的一项奋进是有用的。

5. Build buildings. This could also be considered a subset of #3, but I put it in a separate category because buildings are not easily moved from one place to another, so they have to be manufactured in situ. This fact makes real estate development significantly different enough from manufacturing that it deserves its own category.
   5.盖房子这也可以被认为是#3的一个子集，但我把它放在一个单独的类别中，因为建筑物不容易从一个地方移动到另一个地方，所以它们必须在原地制造。这一事实使得真实的房地产开发与制造业有着显著的不同，因此有必要将其单独归类。

6. Extract natural resources from the earth or space. This category includes things like mining, oil drilling, and fishing. It used to include hunting (the answer to the question I posed above about what the U.S. traded to China in the 19th century is “fur”) but no longer.
   6.从地球或太空中提取自然资源。这一类别包括采矿、石油钻探和渔业。它曾经包括狩猎（我上面提出的关于美国在19世纪世纪与中国进行贸易的问题的答案是“毛皮”），但现在不再包括了。

7. Cure disease, or at least ameliorate the symptoms. This is medicine.
   7.治愈疾病，或者至少减轻症状。这是药

8. Find entirely new ways of doing any of the above more efficiently or effectively. This is “research” or “invention.” (Note that this is decidedly not the same thing as “having a brilliant idea”.)
   8.找到全新的方法来更有效地完成上述任何一项工作。这是“研究”或“发明”。（请注意，这与“有一个绝妙的想法”绝对不是一回事。）

And finally, the granddaddy of them all for the 21st century:
最后，21世纪最伟大的发明：

9. Provide people with useful information.
   9.为人们提供有用的信息。

This one can be broken up into a number of major sub-areas:
这一领域可分为若干主要的次级领域：

9a. Help match supply and demand. The world is so complex and diverse that you can create wealth simply by identifying sources of supply and demand and matching them up. This is the basis of modern markets. I say “modern” to distinguish them from “old-fashioned” markets where merchants display their wares directly. In this case, the information about what is available is tightly bound to the physical goods themselves. Of course, “old-fashioned” markets of this sort are still common. All brick-and-mortar stores are “old-fashioned” markets. But modern commerce decouples information about goods from the physical goods themselves. It is not uncommon nowadays to buy something without ever laying eyes on it. Amazon, EBay, ECNs and Google are all examples of “modern” markets.
9a.帮助供需匹配。世界是如此复杂和多样化，你可以创造财富，只要确定供应和需求的来源，并将它们匹配起来。这是现代市场的基础。我说“现代”是为了区别于商人直接展示商品的“老式”市场。在这种情况下，关于什么是可用的信息与实物商品本身紧密相连。当然，这种“老式”市场仍然很常见。所有的实体店都是“老式”市场。但现代商业将商品的信息从实物商品本身中分离出来。如今，买东西时根本不看一眼并不罕见，亚马逊、易趣、ECN和谷歌都是“现代”市场的例子。

A sub-category of 9a is entrepreneurialism. A company is nothing more than a bunch of people providing goods and services for each other with the matching of supply and demand being coordinated by a central planner (management) rather than by a market.
9a的一个子类别是物质主义。一个公司只不过是一群人相互提供商品和服务，供应和需求的匹配由中央计划者（管理层）而不是市场来协调。

9b. Help people figure out the rules. Modern economies operate by an often byzantine set of laws, regulations, customs and conventions. Lawyers and management consultants fall into this category.
9b.帮助人们理解规则。现代经济的运作往往是由一套拜占庭式的法律、法规、习俗和惯例。律师和管理顾问属于这一类。

9c. Provide information that is useful in and of itself. This includes journalism and creative writing. Most blogs are an example of 9c.
9c.提供本身有用的信息。这包括新闻和创意写作。大多数博客都是9c的一个例子。

This last category is of particular note because so many people seem to focus on it. Every scholar, blogger, reporter, novelist, screenwriter, composer and choreographer is working on 9c. A lot of wealth gets created this way, but of all the ways to make money it is arguably the least effective. It is very hard to transform information directly into money. Once upon a time, information was strongly bound to physical objects like books or vinyl records, and you could make money by producing these things because they were instances of #3. But with modern computer technology you can reproduce information essentially for free without doing any physical transformation. The result has been an unprecedented, almost overwhelming creation of wealth, but very little of it gets translated into money because the marginal cost of production is so close to zero. There’s a reason Google doesn’t charge for its search services. Google makes money via 9a, not 9c.
最后一类特别值得注意，因为似乎有太多人关注它，每个学者、博客作者、记者、小说家、编剧、作曲家和编舞家都在为9c而努力。很多财富都是通过这种方式创造的，但在所有赚钱的方式中，它可以说是最不有效的。很难将信息直接转化为金钱。曾几何时，信息与书籍或黑胶唱片等实物紧密相连，你可以通过生产这些东西来赚钱，因为它们是第三条的实例。但是有了现代计算机技术，你可以免费复制信息，而不需要做任何物理转换。其结果是前所未有的，几乎压倒性的财富创造，但很少转化为货币，因为生产的边际成本非常接近于零。谷歌不对搜索服务收费是有原因的。谷歌通过9a赚钱，而不是9c。

There is one sub-category of 9c where it is possible to make money, and that is providing information that is difficult to obtain and useful to a narrow vertical market segment. The Y-Combinator company Octopart is an example of this.
9 c中有一个子类别是可以赚钱的，那就是提供难以获得的信息，并且对狭窄的垂直细分市场有用。Y-Combinator公司的ESPART就是一个例子。

I’m pretty sure this is a comprehensive list. Can anyone think of anything I’ve left out?
我敢肯定这是一个完整的列表。有谁能想到我遗漏了什么吗？