从可口可乐到华盛顿共识 Coca Cola's success reflects the best and worst of free markets

I cannot say I am a regular drinker of Coca-Cola. But, on a hot summer afternoon, even for me, there is sometimes nothing like cold Coke — especially if I can have it with ice, as I find the drink a little too sweet on its own: “Delicious! Refreshing! Exhilarating! Invigorating!” as one of its earliest advertising slogans from the 1880s went.

我不能说我是个常喝可口可乐(Coca-Cola)的人。但是，在炎热的夏季午后，即使是我有时也会觉得什么都比不上冰可乐——尤其是我能配着冰块一起喝的时候，因为我觉得这种饮料本身有点太甜了：“美味！提神！振奋！畅爽！”19世纪80年代可口可乐最早的广告口号之一是这么说的。

Coca-Cola is arguably the best-known American export. For some, such as the youth of the Soviet Union, it was the symbol of freedom. For others, such as the left in India, it symbolised what is wrong with America — consumerism and, worse, commercial manipulation of consumer taste. In 1977, in a highly symbolic move, the Indian government cancelled the licence for a Coca-Cola factory when it refused to go into a joint venture with a local company (equally symbolically, Coca-Cola came back to India in 1993, soon after the country’s economic liberalisation).

可以说，可口可乐是最有名的美国出口产品。对一些人来说，比如当年苏联的年轻人，可口可乐是自由的象征。对其他人来说，比如印度的左翼人士，可口可乐象征着美国的问题——消费主义，以及更糟糕的，对消费者口味的商业操纵。1977年，印度政府采取了一个极具象征意义的举措——撤销一家可口可乐工厂的许可证，因为其拒绝和一家本土企业合资（同样富有象征意义的是，1993年可口可乐在印度经济自由化后很快重返该国）。

Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine; the name is said to derive from the sources of the two key ingredients — the coca leaf (which gave cocaine) and the kola nut (which gave caffeine). This is not surprising, given that cocaine was not an illegal substance in the 19th century — Queen Victoria and Thomas Edison are known to have been consumers of Vin Mariani, wine infused with coca leaves.

过去可口可乐含有可卡因；据说可口可乐的名字就源于两种关键成分——古柯叶（coca leaf，含有可卡因）和可乐果（kola nut，含有咖啡因）。考虑到19世纪时可卡因并不是非法物品——据悉维多利亚女王和托马斯ㄠ迪生(Thomas Edison)都喝加入了古柯叶的马里亚尼酒(Vin Mariani)——可口可乐曾经含有可卡因并不让人惊讶。

Coca leaves have been chewed by Andean peasants for ages, to relieve pains while working in an oxygen-poor atmosphere. Cocaine also reduces appetite, so it helps them subsist without food. Thus coca consumption is a normal part of their lives and many of them grow coca.

古往今来，安第斯山的农民都依靠咀嚼古柯叶来缓解在氧气稀薄的环境下劳作的痛苦。可卡因还能降低食欲，因此能帮助农民在没有食物的情况下坚持一阵。因此，摄入古柯叶是他们日常生活的一部分，该地区的许多农民都种植古柯。

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president and the second indigenous president of a Latin American country (after Benito Juárez, the Mexican president of the 19th century), was a coca farmer himself. He came to political prominence through his campaign against the forceful eradication of coca farming, which the Bolivian government was pursuing in the late 1990s and the early 2000s with strong support from the US, as part of its war on drugs.

拉美第二个本土出身的总统（第一个是19世纪的墨西哥总统贝尼托胡亚雷斯(Benito Juárez)）、玻利维亚总统埃沃莫拉莱斯(Evo Morales)过去也是种植古柯的农民。20世纪90年代末到21世纪初，作为其反毒品斗争的一部分，美国强力支持玻利维亚政府推行强制取缔古柯种植的政策，莫拉莱斯因开展反对该政策的活动而在政坛上声名鹊起。

In 2005, Morales became president on the wave of protest against the so-called Washington Consensus policies of fiscal retrenchment, trade liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation that had ill served his country in the preceding two decades. The Washington Consensus policies are so named because they are advocated by the three most powerful economic organisations in Washington DC: the US Treasury, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

2005年，莫拉莱斯在抗议所谓的“华盛顿共识”(Washington Consensus)政策——财政紧缩、贸易自由化、去监管化和私有化——的浪潮中当上总统。此前的20年里，这些政策在他的国家产生了不好的效果。之所以被称为华盛顿共识政策，是因为它们得到华盛顿三个最强大经济机构的倡导：美国财政部(US Treasury)、国际货币基金组织(IMF)和世界银行(World Bank)。

Upon becoming president, Morales nationalised the natural gas industry, the country’s main export industry. He went on to nationalise electricity, water, mining and the railways, while increasing welfare spending. The initial prediction was of dire economic disaster but Bolivia’s performance defied such predictions. After Morales came to power, its per capita income growth accelerated — from 1.5 per cent a year during the 1990s to 3.3 per cent between 2005 and 2013. The country has also seen a dramatic fall in income inequality.

一当上总统，莫拉莱斯就将该国主要的出口产业天然气行业国有化。之后他又将电力、水、矿业和铁路行业国有化，同时提高了福利支出。外界最初的预测是玻利维亚将陷入严重的经济灾难，但玻利维亚的表现打破了这些预测。在莫拉莱斯执政后，玻利维亚的人均收入增长加速——从上世纪90年代每年增长1.5%加速至2005年到2013年间每年增长3.3%。该国的收入不平等程度也大幅下降。

Bolivia isn’t the only country in Latin America that has defied the Washington Consensus and improved its economic performance. Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela have all ditched Washington Consensus policies and have seen both accelerated economic growth and reduced income inequality.

玻利维亚不是唯一在抵制华盛顿共识的情况下改善了经济表现的拉美国家。阿根廷、厄瓜多尔、乌拉圭和委内瑞拉都抛弃了华盛顿共识政策，这些国家都在加快经济增长的同时，减轻了收入不平等。

I am not saying everything is peachy in those Latin American countries. In particular, Venezuela has serious macroeconomic imbalances, although they have improved recently, while Argentina is haunted by its past debt crisis. More worryingly, much of their economic growth has been due to the commodity price boom — fuelled by China’s super-growth, which is coming to an end — rather than industrial development. So there is a serious question about the sustainability of their growth.

我并不是说这些拉美国家的一切都很美好。尤其是委内瑞拉存在严重的宏观经济失衡（尽管最近有所改善），而阿根廷受到过去的债务危机的困扰。更让人感到忧虑的是，这些国家的经济增长大部分是因为大宗商品热潮——靠中国的超快增长拉动，而这种增长正失去势头——而不是工业发展。因此其增长可持续性存在严重问题。

However, these countries’ experiences show how the Washington Consensus policies have failed developing countries. That most of the fastest-growing developing countries outside Latin America, such as China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan, haven’t even adopted Washington Consensus policies in the first place corroborates this observation.

然而，这些国家的经验表明了华盛顿共识政策未能在发展中国家奏效。拉美之外的大多数增长最快的国家，比如中国、越南、缅甸、埃塞俄比亚和乌兹别克斯坦，从未采纳华盛顿共识政策，这个事实支持上述说法。

The continued success of Coca-Cola shows that a successful product requires happy customers. Unable to make its customers happy, the Washington Consensus policy package, once so dominant, looks set to disappear into the shadow of history.

可口可乐的持续成功表明，一种产品的成功有赖于顾客的快乐。一度占如此支配地位、但最终无法让顾客满意的华盛顿共识政策，看起来必将消失在历史的阴影之中。