各界頻現巨頭扼首 壟斷纔是民主的敵人

“It takes a heap of Harberger triangles to fill an Okun gap,” wrote James Tobin in 1977, four years before winning the Nobel Prize in economics. He meant that the big issue in economics was not battling against monopolists but preventing recessions and promoting recovery.

詹姆斯•託賓(James Tobin)在1977年、也就是他獲得諾貝爾經濟學獎的四年前寫道：“需要一堆哈伯格三角(Harberger triangle)才能填滿一個奧肯缺口(Okun gap)。”他的意思是，經濟學的重大課題不在於反壟斷，而在於防止衰退和促進復甦。

After the misery of recent years, nobody can doubt that preventing recessions and promoting recovery would have been a very good idea. But economists should be able to think about more than one thing at once. What if monopoly matters, too?

經歷過近些年的苦難後，所有人都認定防止衰退和促進復甦會是個很好的主意。但是經濟學家應當有能力同時思考不止一件事。如果壟斷也有重要影響，那又當如何？

The Harberger triangle is the loss to society as monopolists raise their prices, and it is named after Arnold Harberger, who 60 years ago discovered that the costs of monopoly were about 0.1 per cent of US gross domestic product – a few billion dollars these days, much less than expected and much less than a recession.

哈伯格三角代表壟斷企業提價給社會造成的損失，它以阿諾德•哈伯格(Arnold Harberger)的名字命名。60年前，哈伯格發現，壟斷給美國造成的損失相當於美國國內生產總值(GDP)的0.1%左右——按最近的GDP數據來算大約是數十億美元——遠遠低於預期，也遠小於一場衰退造成的損失。

Professor Harberger’s discovery helped build a consensus that competition authorities could relax about the power of big business. But have we relaxed too much?

哈伯格教授的發現促成了一個共識：反壟斷機構可以放鬆對商業巨頭力量的管制。但是，我們是不是放鬆得過頭了？

Large companies are all around us. We buy our mid-morning coffee from global brands such as Starbucks, use petrol from Exxon or Shell, listen to music purchased from a conglomerate such as Sony (via Apple’s iTunes), boot up a computer that runs Microsoft on an Intel processor. Crucial utilities – water, power, heating, internet and telephone – are supplied by a few dominant groups, with baffling contracts damping any competition.

我們身邊到處都是大公司。我們在星巴克(Starbucks)等國際品牌那裏購買上午喝的咖啡，使用埃克森(Exxon)或殼牌(Shell)的汽油，（通過蘋果(Apple)的iTunes）從索尼(Sony)等企業集團那裏購買樂曲來欣賞，使用搭載英特爾(Intel)處理器、運行微軟(Microsoft)軟件的電腦。水、電、供暖、互聯網、電話等關鍵公共服務都由少數在市場上占主導地位的集團來供應，它們手裏擁有令人困惑的、抑制一切競爭的合同。

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

當然，並非所有的大公司都具備壟斷的實力。英國食品零售之王樂購(Tesco)發現，許多靠打折競爭的對手正將它的王座劈成柴燒。蘋果和谷歌(Google)正在取代微軟。此外，即使是在確實存在市場支配力的領域，哈伯格教授也認爲其影響可能要比我們想象的小。但是，他頗具影響力的分析聚焦於壟斷價格。我們如今知道，壟斷企業還有很多其他方式能損害我們的利益。

In 1989 the Beer Orders shook up a British pub industry controlled by six brewers. The hope was that more competition would lead to more and cheaper beer. It did not. The price of beer rose. Yet so did the quality of pubs. Where once every pub had offered rubbery sandwiches and 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)促使由六家啤酒釀造商把持的英國酒吧業重新洗牌。這項法令的本意是希望引入更多競爭能提升啤酒的供應量、壓低其價格。但結果並非如此。啤酒的價格不降反升。不過，酒吧的質量也提升了。之前，每個酒吧供應的三明治都味同嚼蠟，小便池散發陣陣臭氣。“啤酒令”頒佈後，突然間冒出了運動酒吧、燭光美食酒吧和其他選項。競爭的意義不僅僅是壓低價格。

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

壟斷者有時能夠利用它們的規模和現金流造就真正的創新——回想一下貝爾實驗室(Bell Labs)的輝煌年代。但就造就許多重要的日常創新而言，中小競爭者構成的激烈競爭似乎是一種更可靠的方式。

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

現在，這種競爭不再像原來那樣激烈了。“美國經濟的商業部門正在老化，”布魯金斯學會(Brookings)的一份研究報告稱。這種趨勢見於各個地區和行業，既有的市場參與者享有根深蒂固的優勢。《經濟展望期刊》(Journal of Economic Perspectives)的一份調查補充道：“近幾十年來，美國經濟中的創業比率和就業活力的變化速度都下滑了……這一下滑趨勢在2000年後有所加速。”

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

這意味着價格上漲、創新減少，但博弈牽扯的範圍可能還更大了。美國國內圍繞“網絡中立”(net neutrality)持續展開的辯論，實際上是在爭論如何用損失最小的方式監管在地方享有壟斷地位的有線電視公司的行爲。如果消費者真的有條件選擇互聯網服務提供商，那麼網絡中立規則就只需作爲一道最後的保障存在。

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

正如這場辯論提醒我們的，大公司享有作爲遊說者的影響力。當大公司是壟斷者時，它們遊說的動力就更大了，因爲它們能獨佔便利的新法規帶來的利益。壟斷者不是健康的民主制度的朋友。

They are, alas, often the friend of government bureaucracies. This is not just a case of corruption but also about what is convenient and comprehensible to a politician or civil servant. If they want something done about climate change, they have a chat with the oil companies. Obesity is a problem to be discussed with the likes of McDonald’s. If anything on the internet makes a politician feel sad, from alleged copyright infringement to “the right to be forgotten”, there is now a one-stop shop to sort it all out: Google.

遺憾的是，壟斷者往往是政府官僚的朋友。這裏涉及的不僅僅是腐敗問題，還牽扯對政治人士或公職人員來說什麼是方便的和易於理解的。如果他們想就氣候變化問題做成一點事情，他們就和石油企業談一談。想解決國民的肥胖問題，就和麥當勞(McDonald's)之類的企業討論一下。如果網上存在任何讓政治人士感到不悅的東西，從涉嫌侵犯版權的東西到“被遺忘權”等等，現在有一站式的解決方法：找谷歌談一談。

Politicians feel this is a sensible, almost convivial, way to do business – but neither the problems in question nor the goal of vigorous competition are resolved as a result.

政治人士覺得這是一種合理的、近乎愉快的解決問題的方式——但這麼做既不能解決他們所討論的問題，也不能實現激烈競爭所能達成的目標。

One has only to consider the way the financial crisis has played out. The emergency response involved propping up big institutions and ramming through mergers; hardly a long-term solution to the problem of “too big to fail”. Even if smaller banks do not guarantee a more stable financial system, entrepreneurs and consumers would profit from more pluralistic competition for their business.

我們只需要想一想本次金融危機的過程。應急對策包括支撐大機構和強力推動合併；卻幾乎不包含什麼長期對策來解決“大到不能倒”(too big to fail)的問題。儘管規模較小的銀行不能保證讓金融體系變得更加穩定，但銀行業的多元競爭將使企業家和消費者受益。

No policy can guarantee innovation, financial stability, sharper focus on social problems, healthier democracies, higher quality and lower prices. But assertive competition policy would improve our odds, whether through helping consumers to make empowered choices, splitting up large corporations or blocking megamergers. Such structural approaches are more effective than looking over the shoulders of giant corporations and nagging them; they should be a trusted tool of government rather than a last resort.

沒有任何政策能夠保證帶來創新、金融穩定、對社會問題的更多關注、更健康的民主制度、更高的品質和更低的價格。但是，堅定的反壟斷政策可以提高我們的勝算，不論是通過幫助消費者做出更有掌控力的選擇，還是通過對大公司進行拆分、或阻止巨型併購案。這類結構性對策比小心提防大公司並對它們嘮嘮叨叨有效，它們應當成爲政府的一項可靠工具，而非萬不得已的手段。

As human freedoms go, the freedom to take your custom elsewhere is not a grand or noble one – but neither is it one that we should abandon without a fight.

說到人類的自由，上別處買東西的自由算不上什麼重大或崇高的自由——但它也不是一項我們應該不經抗爭就放棄的自由。