Ezra Klein on the Abundance Agenda (Ep. 236)

Thank you to listener David Kemp for sponsoring this transcript.

感谢听众大卫·坎普赞助这份文字记录。

You remember back when we used to talk a lot about the Grover Norquist tax pledge in Washington, and that was a big thing about how the parties were so divided.

你还记得当时我们经常谈论华盛顿的格罗弗·诺奎斯特税收承诺，这是两党如何分歧的一个大问题。

Compared to then, I think now we have less policy polarization, and more system-level polarization.

与当时相比，我认为现在我们的政策极化少了，制度层面的极化多了。

Then the other was that I was watching, in my own view, polarization just get more dysfunctional.

另一个是，在我看来，两极分化变得更加失调。

I don’t think polarization about the system itself is a healthy form of polarization.

我不认为关于系统本身的两极分化是一种健康的两极分化形式。

To the extent these two things have a relationship, it’s a relationship to describe a different cross-cutting cleavage than what we have.

就这两件事之间的关系而言，这种关系描述的是与我们现有的不同的横切分裂。

I would like to see fights between people who believe in what I would call different forms of abundance politics, as I say in the introduction.

正如我在引言中所说，我希望看到那些相信我所说的不同形式的富足政治的人们之间的斗争。

I think you have a version of this, let’s say, state capacity libertarianism.

我认为你有一个版本，比方说，国家能力自由主义。

You can see Jim Pethokoukis on the right with his Conservative Futurist.

您可以在右侧看到吉姆·佩索库基斯 (Jim Pethokoukis) 和他的保守派未来主义者。

There are different people I feel more allied with on the right, even if we don’t have all the same views, as opposed to, I think, what we are actually having, which is over legitimacy, which I think is a pretty toxic form of division.

我觉得右翼有很多不同的人，即使我们没有完全相同的观点，但我认为与我们实际拥有的观点相反，这是过度合法性的，我认为这是一种相当有毒的分裂形式。

On the abundance agenda as an elite movement

作为精英运动的丰富议程

But then, there’s a kind that comes from drift.

但是，有一种来自漂移。

It doesn’t end up being in the book, but I wrote a Times piece about this.

它最终没有出现在书中，但我写了一篇关于此事的《泰晤士报》文章。

I don’t know if you tracked the story a while back that there was this public toilet being built in Noe Valley in a park — I used to live near this park — that was hooked up for water.

我不知道你是否看过不久前的报道，诺埃谷的一个公园里正在建一个公共厕所 ——我以前住在这个公园附近 ——那个厕所已经通了水。

The cost estimate was $1.7 million.

成本估算为 170 万美元。

They released a ribbon cutting for this.

他们为此发布了剪彩仪式。

They came out to announce that they had gotten the money from the State of California to build this $1.7 million toilet.

他们出面宣布，他们已从加利福尼亚州获得资金来建造这座价值 170 万美元的厕所。

Then my colleague, Heather Knight, back then at the San Francisco Chronicle, reported on this, and people freaked out.

然后我的同事希瑟·奈特（Heather Knight）当时在《旧金山纪事报》报道了此事，人们吓坏了。

They were not happy that the city had gotten $1.7 million for a toilet.

他们对该市花费 170 万美元购买厕所感到不满。

They thought, “Why?” I went and tracked down, how does a toilet get to $1.7 million?

他们想：“为什么？”我去查了一下，一个厕所怎么能卖到170万美元？

One of the justifications from Rec and Parks in SF was, “Look, we’ve built all these other toilets that were $1.6, $1.7 million, and nobody complained about that.”

旧金山 Rec and Parks 的理由之一是，“看，我们建造了所有其他厕所，耗资 1.6 美元、170 万美元，但没有人对此抱怨。”

It’s this baroque process where you have seven, eight, nine agencies.

这是一个巴洛克式的过程，你有七个、八个、九个机构。

You have all these public comment periods.

您有所有这些公众意见征询期。

There are all these rules on the grant proposal, and how that goes out, and what the procurement is, and how you do the bids on the contracts.

关于赠款提案、如何进行、采购是什么以及如何对合同进行投标都有所有这些规则。

Nobody asked for that.

没有人要求这样做。

That’s drift.

这就是漂移。

That is process building on top of itself.

这是建立在自身之上的流程。

That is nobody really having the power to say no or wanting to go through the difficulty of saying no.

也就是说，没有人真正有能力说不，也没有人愿意经历说不的困难。

I cut that differently from some of the — there are places where people do not want to see an affordable housing complex built down the block.

我的看法与某些地方不同，有些地方的人们不希望看到在街区附近建造经济适用房。

Then there are places where people would actually like to have an affordable public restroom next to the playground where there are kids who — I’ve been through this period of mine very recently — who are not fully potty-trained, playing.

还有一些地方，人们实际上希望在游乐场旁边有一个负担得起的公共卫生间，那里的孩子们 ——“我最近经历过这个时期”—— 他们没有完全接受如厕训练，正在玩耍。

They’re not out there hoping that we can add $1.3 million in cost by process; they just don’t really know that it has happened.

他们并不希望我们能够通过流程增加 130 万美元的成本；他们只是希望我们能增加 130 万美元的成本。他们只是不知道这件事已经发生了。

On dark abundance

关于黑暗丰富

They can go to the planning board meeting.

他们可以参加规划委员会会议。

They can sue under the California Environmental Quality Act or sometimes under the National Environmental Policy Act.

他们可以根据《加州环境质量法》或有时根据《国家环境政策法》提起诉讼。

There are just a million of these, depending on which particular process you’re looking at.

其中只有一百万个，具体取决于您正在查看的特定流程。

On the one hand, you want that to be possible.

一方面，您希望这成为可能。

You want it to be possible for people to come and say, “This project will harm me.” You don’t want the government to be capable of being completely imperious.

你希望人们能够过来说：“这个项目会伤害我。”你不希望政府能够完全专横。

But one, it’s very unrepresentative who shows up.

但其一，出现的人非常不具有代表性。

This is a classic example, but the people who show up to block an affordable housing complex are the people who live on that block now, not the people who would live on that block if the complex was built.

这是一个典型的例子，但出现在经济适用住房小区的人是现在居住在该街区的人，而不是如果该小区建成后将居住在该街区的人。

The second is that it’s just unrepresentative in other ways.

第二是它在其他方面不具有代表性。

Who has time?

谁有时间？

Who has enough information to know how the policies work?

谁有足够的信息来了解政策如何运作？

I am pretty familiar with, as I know you are, the way federal regulations go through.

正如我所知，我非常熟悉联邦法规的执行方式。

There’re all kinds of public comment periods.

有各种各样的公众意见征询期。

Those public comment periods were built for the public to comment, but the people who actually know how the public-comment periods work are lobbyists, are special interests, are people who have the organized money to participate.

这些公众意见征询期是为公众发表意见而设立的，但真正了解公众意见征询期如何运作的人是游说者，是特殊利益集团，是有组织的资金参与的人。

So, it’s tricky.

所以，这很棘手。

You don’t want to take away the opportunities for voice because it’s very easy to tip into abusiveness.

你不想剥夺表达意见的机会，因为很容易陷入辱骂。

In some ways, having this book come out at the same moment that Elon Musk and DOGE are doing things with, let’s call it, very, very little public input and very little agency input even — you can see what the dark version of this, our mutual friend, Steve Teles, calls what they’re doing, dark abundance.

在某些方面，这本书出版的同时，埃隆·马斯克和 DOGE 正在做的事情，我们称之为，非常非常少的公众投入，甚至很少的机构投入——你可以看到我们共同的朋友史蒂夫·泰勒斯所说的黑暗版本，他们正在做的事情，黑暗的丰富。

But with all these things, you’re going to have to strike a balance, and it’s hard to know how to strike the balance.

但面对所有这些事情，你必须取得平衡，而且很难知道如何取得平衡。

I have a section on the fiasco of high-speed rail in California.

我有一节是关于加州高铁惨败的。

Towards the end of that, I say, “Look, China’s built 23,000 miles of high-speed rail in the period of time that California was failing to build 500 miles.”

最后，我说：“看，中国建造了 23,000 英里的高铁，而加州却未能建造 500 英里的高铁。”

On the one hand, all these things I’m describing happening in the California high-speed rail situation do not happen in China.

一方面，我所描述的发生在加州高铁情况的所有这些事情都不会发生在中国。

If they want to move the storage facility, they just move it.

如果他们想移动存储设施，他们就移动它。

They don’t go through years and years of lawsuits about moving it a couple of feet back.

他们不会因为将其向后移动几英尺而经历多年的诉讼。

That allows for a very imperious and even abusive government of individual rights.

这使得政府可以非常专横甚至滥用个人权利。

It also allows you to build trains.

它还允许您建造火车。

There are a lot of things here that are uncomfortably about striking a balance, as opposed to saying, “We are all wrong the way we do it now.

这里有很多事情对于取得平衡来说是令人不安的，而不是说“我们现在的做法都错了。

We would be all right if we did it this other way.”

如果我们这样做的话，那就没问题了。”

If you go and you look in high-fertility immigrant communities — I used to live in San Francisco — you go down further into Daly City, things like that.

如果你去看看高生育率的移民社区 —— 我以前住在旧金山 —— 你可以进一步深入戴利城，诸如此类。

People talk about this as very overcrowded.

人们谈论这里非常拥挤。

On some level, certainly it is, compared to the way I live, but in most places, people just live with less space.

在某种程度上，与我的生活方式相比，确实如此，但在大多数地方，人们只是生活空间较小。

So, I do think there’s a cultural norm thing here.

所以，我确实认为这里存在文化规范。

Density, plus the norm that the kids all have their own room, is going to be very, very bad for fertility.

人口密度，加上孩子们都有自己的房间的规范，对于生育能力来说将非常非常不利。

But that’s going to be another consequence of, I think, the almost feedback loop of low-fertility societies.

但我认为，这将是低生育率社会几乎反馈循环的另一个后果。

You begin to have expectations that cut against high-fertility families.

你开始对高生育率家庭产生不利的期望。

The chapter on housing — which I’d be very curious for your thoughts about — the chapter on housing, I try to make this argument that the cities are the frontier of the modern economy, that the frontier is not the edge of the landmass, but the places where ideas happen.

关于住房的章节——我很好奇你对此的想法——关于住房的章节，我试图提出这样的论点：城市是现代经济的前沿，前沿不是陆地的边缘，而是思想发生的地方。

Cities are broadly the places where ideas happen, and around those ideas are a lot of engines of mobility, and we’ve thrown that process into reverse.

城市基本上是创意产生的地方，围绕这些创意有很多流动性的引擎，而我们已经把这个过程颠倒了。

I have this great research in there from Peter Ganong and Shoag, who show that over decades, it used to be that we had income convergence across states.

我在那里得到了彼得·加农（Peter Ganong）和肖格（Shoag）的一项伟大研究，他们表明，几十年来，我们曾经在各州之间实现了收入趋同。

That was driven by people moving from poor areas to richer areas.

这是由人们从贫困地区迁移到富裕地区推动的。

But now that is actually thrown into reverse as people leave richer areas for poorer areas because the cost of living is so high.

但现在情况实际上发生了逆转，因为生活成本如此之高，人们离开较富裕的地区前往较贫困的地区。

We used to have this driver of mobility, which is, people moved to the high-productivity, high-income area, even if they themselves were poor.

我们曾经有这样的流动性驱动因素，即人们搬到高生产力、高收入地区，即使他们本身很穷。

Now it’s so hard to build a house there or buy a house there that they can’t do that.

现在在那里盖房子或买房子太难了，他们做不到。

The reason I bring that up is that I think you should have very different intuitions about places that are highly economically important compared to places that aren’t.

我提出这个问题的原因是，我认为你应该对经济上非常重要的地方和经济上不重要的地方有非常不同的直觉。

My view is not that every patch of land on earth needs a high rise.

我的观点并不是地球上的每一块土地都需要一座高层建筑。

My view is that there are a number of high-density cities that play huge roles in idea generation, and in economic mobility, and you should need to have an extremely good reason to make it very hard to build in them.

我的观点是，有许多高密度城市在创意产生和经济流动方面发挥着巨大作用，你应该有一个非常充分的理由来让在这些城市建设变得非常困难。

I’m not as familiar with Paris as you are, I’m a little bit familiar with Paris —

我对巴黎不像你那么熟悉，我对巴黎有一点熟悉 ——

Different people have thought about that.

不同的人对此有过思考。

Maybe you have only a certain number of designations, and it’s functionally a cap and trade for historic importance.

也许你只有一定数量的称号，这在功能上是对历史重要性的限制和交易。

I think you need something like that to protect against the creep of those designations covering, in effect, a quarter of these entire cities or half of these entire cities.

我认为你需要类似的东西来防止这些名称的蔓延，实际上覆盖了整个城市的四分之一或一半。

I think it is remarkable that New York does not have one significant AI company.

我认为纽约没有一家重要的人工智能公司是很了不起的。

Just remarkable.

太棒了。

It doesn’t even really have one significant tech company.

它甚至没有一家真正重要的科技公司。

The power of these agglomerations is so overwhelming and so sticky that I think you want to be very skeptical of the idea that if you begin to gate one of them, you will have constructive and productive spillover to some other nearby secondary city.

这些城市群的力量是如此压倒性和粘性，以至于我认为你会对这样的想法持怀疑态度：如果你开始封闭其中一个城市，你就会对附近的其他一些二级城市产生建设性和富有成效的溢出效应。

I love the secondary cities, but I don’t think that’s how you improve them.

我喜欢二线城市，但我不认为这就是改善它们的方式。

Whereas with a lot of what we’re seeing in the cities, what happens is that people live in far-flung ways further out from the city.

尽管我们在城市看到了很多东西，但实际情况是人们生活在远离城市的偏远地区。

You spend an hour and a half in traffic every day.

你每天要花一个半小时在交通上。

It’s not that having applied to have your job in San Francisco and been rejected, your second best is Reno.

这并不是说你申请了旧金山的工作但被拒绝了，你的第二好的选择是里诺。

You might live an hour and a half out, and that might be a pretty hard life for you.

你可能要活一个半小时，这对你来说可能是一个相当艰难的生活。

I think this is something that a lot of measures of affordability miss.

我认为这是许多衡量负担能力的指标所忽略的。

Annie has written great pieces about this for The Atlantic.

安妮为《大西洋月刊》撰写了有关这方面的精彩文章。

She calls it “The Wrong-Apartment Problem.” That you can run a measure of housing affordability and find people who do not actually look that rent burdened, but in practice, they’re living 97 minutes away from the place they would like to live in order to be able to afford the home.

她称之为“错误的公寓问题”。你可以对住房负担能力进行衡量，找到那些看起来实际上没有租金负担的人，但实际上，他们住的地方距离他们想要居住的地方有 97 分钟的路程，以便能够买得起房子。

I think we should see that as a pretty big public policy failure.

我认为我们应该将其视为一个相当大的公共政策失败。

On an abundance view of health care

丰富的医疗保健观

I think you want to take the amount of innovation you’re getting very, very, very seriously.

我认为你想要非常非常非常认真地对待你所获得的创新量。

I’ve written pieces about this, that I think if you’re going to do Medicare drug pricing at any kind of significant level, you want to be pairing that with a pretty significant agenda to make drug discovery much easier, to make testing much easier.

我写过一些关于这个的文章，我认为如果你要在任何重要水平上进行医疗保险药物定价，你需要将其与一个相当重要的议程相结合，以使药物发现更加容易，使测试更加容易。

A huge number of the choke points that make it hard to discover new pharmaceuticals — it’s not that if you could do it, you can’t make money off of it.

大量的瓶颈使得新药物的发现变得困难 ——并不是说如果你能做到，你就不能从中赚钱。

It’s that it is very, very, very, very cumbersome to take flyers on these drugs.

就是拿这些药物的传单非常非常非常麻烦。

We could have had the GLP-1s decades ago, but there are a lot of reasons within the system that it would have been costly to try that out.

我们本可以在几十年前就拥有 GLP-1，但系统内部有很多原因表明尝试它的成本很高。

Heidi Williams, who we both know, has some very, I think, good ideas for doing this.

我认为我们都认识的海蒂·威廉姆斯对此有一些非常好的想法。

I think a huge failure of the way we talk about what we call healthcare reform, is, it’s always health insurance reform.

我认为我们谈论医疗改革的方式的一个巨大失败是，它总是医疗保险改革。

We are extremely focused on the question, can somebody go in and afford the hospital bill — which is good, I want them to be able to afford the hospital bill — and not what is that hospital actually providing to them and what is it that we can put in place in the system at every level to make sure the pace of drug discovery and drug advancements is going really well.

我们非常关注这样一个问题：有人能负担得起医院账单吗？——这很好，我希望他们能够负担得起医院账单——而不是医院实际向他们提供什么，以及我们可以在各个层面的系统中落实什么，以确保药物发现和药物进步的步伐进展顺利。

We spend some time in one of the chapters Derek wrote on the story of Operation Warp Speed.

我们花了一些时间在德里克写的关于曲速行动故事的一章中。

I always find two things really remarkable about that story.

我总觉得这个故事有两点非常了不起。

One is that they really did quite a bit under Donald Trump.

一是他们在唐纳德·特朗普的领导下确实做了很多事情。

It’s very unfortunate, I think, that both policy and structure of policy got disowned afterwards, but they did quite a bit to speed the ability to not just bring these things to research and to market, but the government was very active in there trying to figure out how to make sure supply constraints and secondary items like vials — because the vials need to be refrigerated and so on — that it wouldn’t retard the rollout.

我认为，非常不幸的是，政策和政策结构后来都被否认了，但他们做了相当大的努力，不仅加快了将这些东西推向研究和市场的能力，而且政府非常积极地试图弄清楚如何确保供应限制和像小瓶这样的次要物品 ——因为小瓶需要冷藏等等—— 它不会阻碍推出。

The government was acting in many ways in what Derek called a bottleneck detective.

政府在德里克所谓的瓶颈侦探中以多种方式采取行动。

Months later, I was talking to some of the people who were working on trying to create pan-coronavirus vaccines.

几个月后，我与一些致力于研制泛冠状病毒疫苗的人进行了交谈。

This doesn’t seem to have panned out, and I don’t know if it didn’t pan out exactly because they weren’t able to figure it out or because of what I’m about to say.

这似乎并没有成功，我不知道它没有成功到底是因为他们无法弄清楚还是因为我要说的话。

This was still when COVID was very, very live in people’s minds.

当时新冠病毒还非常非常活跃在人们的脑海中。

Here are these people working on a vaccine that could have genuinely ended the threat.

这些人正在研究一种可以真正消除威胁的疫苗。

They described spending so much of their time, among other things, sourcing monkeys because they just could not find the monkeys they needed to test the vaccines on.

他们描述说，除了其他事情外，他们花了很多时间来采购猴子，因为他们就是找不到测试疫苗所需的猴子。

That was one side of it.

这是事情的一方面。

I thought the government was doing a good job on that with Operation Warp Speed.

我认为政府在曲速行动中做得很好。

Then when it came out, because the government had done a lot for it, there was a very strong equity component in it.

然后它出来的时候，因为政府为它做了很多，所以里面有非常强的股权成分。

When that came out, it was not that the richest people were the only ones who could get COVID vaccines.

当这一消息公布​​时，并不是只有最富有的人才能接种新冠疫苗。

If you were wealthy and connected, it was a bit easier for you, but the cost of that vaccine at the beginning was zero.

如果你很富有并且有联系，这对你来说会更容易一些，但一开始这种疫苗的成本是零。

It was zero for everybody in America.

对于美国的每个人来说都是零。

People could go, and they could get it in CVS.

人们可以去，他们可以在 CVS 中获取它。

We really did pair an aggressive supply-side policy with an aggressive demand-side policy.

我们确实将积极的供给侧政策与积极的需求侧政策结合起来。

I don’t think we do that enough.

我认为我们做得还不够。

In my critique at least of my side of this, I think liberalism doesn’t do this enough.

至少在我对此的批评中，我认为自由主义在这方面做得还不够。

It will often ask, “How can we make it so people can afford something?” but not “How can we make sure there is enough of the thing?

它经常会问：“我们怎样才能让人们买得起东西？”而不是“我们怎样才能确保有足够的东西？

Also, “How can we make sure there is value in the thing that right now there isn’t because we haven’t done sufficient innovations?” The question of single payer and the system — it’s like, did you radically increase the number of medical residency slots?

另外，“我们如何才能确保目前由于我们没有进行足够的创新而没有价值的事物具有价值？”单一付款人和系统的问题——就像，你是否从根本上增加了医疗住院医师名额的数量？

What kinds of things are you doing inside the innovation system and inside the way we bring devices and drugs to market?

您在创新系统内部以及我们将设备和药物推向市场的方式中做了哪些事情？

Then the point I think that you’re making, or that your reader is making, if you drive the price of things too far down, you are going to create shortages of them, and you are going to reduce the incentives to innovate in the future.

然后我认为你或你的读者正在表达的观点是，如果你将商品的价格压得太低，就会造成它们的短缺，并且会减少未来创新的动力。

You have to be very thoughtful and careful about that.

你必须对此深思熟虑和小心。

I much prefer the kind of system you see in a place like France, where what you have is a significant healthcare, a basic provision floor.

我更喜欢在法国这样的地方看到的那种系统，在那里你拥有重要的医疗保健和基本的供给底线。

A huge amount of the value of healthcare comes out of basic healthcare.

医疗保健的巨大价值来自于基本医疗保健。

Then you have supplementary insurance which you can buy on the open market — and people do — or if you can’t afford it, there are subsidized versions of it.

然后你就有了补充保险，你可以在公开市场上购买——人们也这么做——或者如果你买不起，也有补贴版本。

So, you have what I used to describe as a floor without a ceiling.

所以，你的情况就是我以前所说的“没有天花板的地板”。

I prefer multi-payer systems.

我更喜欢多支付系统。

I do want things provided universally at a basic level, and then I do think, for some people who can’t afford above that, there should be public provision of it.

我确实希望在基本层面上普遍提供一些东西，然后我确实认为，对于一些负担不起的人来说，应该有公共供应。

I think you want to be very, very careful about not having any exit from either the government pricing regime or the structure of government insurance because there are things that come into the system that it’s hard to know how to ration them.

我认为你要非常非常小心，不要退出政府定价制度或政府保险结构，因为有些东西进入系统后很难知道如何配给它们。

It’s hard to know how to provide them, and you do want to make sure there is sufficient incentive to develop them.

很难知道如何提供它们，并且您确实想确保有足够的动力来开发它们。

One of the huge roles in addition — beyond the roles it directly plays in treating people with disease and treating people who need pharmaceuticals and so on — is that the amount of anxiety, fear, et cetera people have when they are sick, is tremendous.

此外，除了它在治疗疾病患者和治疗需要药物的人等方面直接发挥的作用之外，其中一个巨大的作用是，人们在生病时会产生巨大的焦虑、恐惧等情绪。

One thing we see in a lot of different studies, in a lot of different research around health is that one of the main ways healthcare affects wellbeing is it reduces anxiety and depression, particularly around when people get sick.

我们在许多不同的研究中看到的一件事，在许多关于健康的不同研究中，医疗保健影响健康的主要方式之一是它减少焦虑和抑郁，特别是当人们生病时。

Think of anybody in your life, how they begin to act when they get sick.

想想你生活中的任何人，当他们生病时他们会如何行动。

Throwing people to the wolves on that and saying, “Don’t worry, we’re investing a lot in basic R&D,” is not compassionate and humane.

就此将人们扔进狼群并说：“别担心，我们在基础研发上投入了大量资金”，这既不富有同情心也不人道。

I’m not —

我不是 ——

I could come up with versions of this that I think would, in some ways, be a tougher philosophical test.

我可以想出这个版本，我认为在某些方面，这是一个更艰难的哲学测试。

What you just said, what if you begin to cut out half of defense spending, and you move it into public health subsidies for the poor worldwide?

你刚才说，如果你开始削减一半的国防开支，并将其转入对全世界穷人的公共卫生补贴，会怎么样？

Or for that matter, you could do that with Medicare and Medicaid and all of a sudden PEPFAR is covering everything for everybody under the poverty line in the entire world.

或者就此而言，您可以通过医疗保险和医疗补助来做到这一点，突然之间，PEPFAR 就覆盖了全世界贫困线以下每个人的一切。

There’s a certain nationalism in this.

这里面有一定的民族主义色彩。

I do believe you have to take care of your people, but I think that once you have accepted the basic view, as I have, that health insurance is a way that is valuable to take care of people, both in terms of their life outcomes and in terms of the quality of life they lead, then I think you are in a place where zeroing it out for poor and elderly people is a bad idea on the merits and also, obviously, a horrific idea politically.

我确实相信你必须照顾你的人民，但我认为，一旦你像我一样接受了基本观点，即健康保险是一种对照顾人们很有价值的方式，无论是在他们的生活结果还是他们的生活质量方面，那么我认为，从优点上看，将穷人和老年人的医疗保险归零是一个坏主意，而且显然在政治上也是一个可怕的想法。

But abundance is not just a relentless expansion of supply.

但丰富并不仅仅是供应的不断扩张。

I do want to say that because you can push anything.

我确实想说这一点，因为你可以推动任何事情。

One of the critiques I’m getting on the left is, funnily, the opposite of the thought experiment you’re offering, which is, “Oh, here come Ezra and Derek saying all that matters is how many solar panels we build, and how many drugs we invent, and how many trains we build.

有趣的是，我在左边收到的批评之一与你提供的思想实验相反，即“哦，以斯拉和德里克来了，他们说最重要的是我们建造了多少太阳能电池板，我们发明了多少药物，以及我们建造了多少火车。

What about the child tax credit?

儿童税收抵免怎么样？

What about childcare for everyone?”

每个人的托儿服务怎么样？”

The theory here is not meant to replace every other argument in American — or for that matter, global — politics.

这里的理论并不意味着取代美国政治或全球政治中的所有其他论点。

It doesn’t say you don’t need to think about child tax credits, which I intensely support.

这并不是说你不需要考虑我强烈支持的儿童税收抵免。

It doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about the provision of health insurance.

这并不意味着您不必考虑提供健康保险。

It doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about the provision of public education.

这并不意味着您不必考虑提供公共教育。

There are a certain set of problems that have become very binding on policy things that people who believe what I believe about the world should care about.

有一些问题对政策问题变得非常具有约束力，那些相信我对世界的看法的人应该关心这些问题。

I’m a Californian.

我是加州人。

I lived in California for much of the writing of this book.

本书写作期间我大部分时间都住在加利福尼亚州。

California is a place deranged by supply constraints.

加利福尼亚州是一个因供应限制而陷入混乱的地方。

The fact that it’s deranged by supply constraints, by the inability to build high-speed rail, by the inability to build homes, by the inability to build clean energy at anything like the pace needed to reach the goals California itself has set for itself should be seen as a real problem.

事实上，它因供应限制、无法建造高铁、无法建造房屋、无法以达到加州为自己设定的目标所需的速度建设清洁能源而陷入混乱，这应该被视为一个真正的问题。

It doesn’t mean it replaces the problem or completely moves it out of anything on the demand side or the subsidy side of the system, but it is a thing that, if you are a liberal, I think, who wants to be honest about the problems of liberal governance, you have to confront.

这并不意味着它取代了问题或完全将其从系统的需求方或补贴方的任何方面移出，但我认为，如果你是一个自由主义者，想要诚实地对待自由主义治理的问题，你就必须面对这个问题。

On abundant births

关于多产

I both think we are going to have severe political problems as societies shrink, and in my own moral framework, I think the continuation of human experience is a beautiful and important thing in the way it has just been absorbed into a liberal expressive individualism.

我都认为，随着社会的萎缩，我们将面临严重的政治问题，在我自己的道德框架中，我认为人类经验的延续是一件美丽而重要的事情，因为它刚刚被吸收到自由表达的个人主义中。

I hear people talk about it as if it’s a good that is akin to whether or not they should take an international trip, like what are the cost benefits?

我听到人们谈论它，就好像这是一件好事，就像他们是否应该进行国际旅行一样，比如成本效益是多少？

I think that’s mistaken.

我认为这是错误的。

I’m pro trying to think about fertility.

我赞成尝试考虑生育问题。

I just have not seen any policies that work.

我只是没有看到任何有效的政策。

Now, it’s obviously not my view, but I think it gets to what I don’t think is going to work in the view you’re describing here, which is, when society and technology have changed so much, when you have things like the pill, when you have the opportunities we now have for people to live lives of real expressionism, of building their identity around work, which we train people to do from a very early age, I don’t know that there is a way to insert an ethic, a cultural application of shaming or re-moralization around this that will substantially change behavior.

现在，这显然不是我的观点，但我认为这达到了我认为在你在这里描述的观点中行不通的观点，即当社会和技术发生了如此之大的变化时，当你有了像药丸这样的东西时，当你有机会让人们过上真正表现主义的生活，围绕工作建立他们的身份时，我们从小就训练人们这样做，我不知道有什么方法可以插入一种道德，一种羞辱或羞辱的文化应用围绕这一点的重新道德化将大大改变行为。

If there was, I think some society already would’ve done it effectively.

如果有的话，我认为有些社会已经有效地做到了这一点。

Now, Ross, and the societies I think we would talk about here — that’s coming from religion.

现在，罗斯，以及我想我们会在这里谈论的社会——这些社会来自宗教。

It’s not coming from just cultural conservatism; it’s coming from religion.

这不仅仅来自文化保守主义；它还来自文化保守主义。它来自宗教。

Religion is very, very, very powerful, but I don’t know how we re-religionize people.

宗教非常非常非常强大，但我不知道我们如何重新宗教化人们。

Getting people to actually believe is different than telling them, in an abstract way, that birth outcomes are better and society is more cohesive in Utah, where the influence of the Church of Latter-day Saints is still very strong.

让人们真正相信，与以抽象的方式告诉他们，犹他州的出生结果更好，社会更有凝聚力是不同的，那里的后期圣徒教会的影响力仍然非常强大。

I actually think this idea, that we should just move back to a more shaming cultural conservatism, has functionally all the same problems of the idea, which is we should just have more pronatal policy.

事实上，我认为我们应该回到更可耻的文化保守主义这一想法在功能上与我们应该制定更多生育政策的想法具有相同的问题。

It just doesn’t appear to work.

它似乎不起作用。

Lots of places try it and it doesn’t work.

很多地方都尝试过，但都行不通。

Hungary is not a huge birth success story right now, nor is Russia.

匈牙利目前并不是一个巨大的生育成功案例，俄罗斯也不是。

There are places that still have more of this view or have tried to reinsert it, and it didn’t work.

有些地方仍然有更多这样的视图，或者尝试重新插入它，但没有成功。

Israel is a little bit of a more interesting case from this perspective, but when you are there .

从这个角度来看，以色列是一个更有趣的例子，但当你身临其境时。

.

。

.

。

People do, to some degree, what they see around them, and the influence of the Haredi families, of the ultra-orthodox families, which are huge, is everywhere.

在某种程度上，人们做他们周围看到的事情，而正统派家族、极端正统派家族的影响力是巨大的，无处不在。

I was just in Israel, not just now, but back in June, and there was obviously a lot happening that you could notice, but you really could feel the difference of being in a high-fertility society there.

我刚刚在以色列，不仅仅是现在，而是六月份，显然发生了很多你可以注意到的事情，但你真的可以感受到那里的高生育率社会的不同。

I’d had this interaction with somebody at Prospect Park before I had gone to Israel, and he had four kids with him.

在我去以色列之前，我曾在展望公园与某人进行过这样的互动，他带着四个孩子。

We had just been chatting, and I must’ve said something that made him think a little bit like I was asking, “What are you doing here with four kids?” I’d asked if they were all his because they looked different.

我们刚刚在聊天，我一定说了一些让他觉得有点像我在问：“你带着四个孩子在这里做什么？”我问它们是否都是他的，因为它们看起来不同。

I thought it might be a group of kids.

我想这可能是一群孩子。

He’s like,” Oh, yes, but .

他就像是，“哦，是的，但是。”

.

。

.” He was explaining it away.

”。他正在解释它。

He was like, “We’d only meant to have three and then we had twins.”

他说，“我们本来只想生三个，结果生了双胞胎。”

In Israel, nobody’s explaining away why they have four kids.

在以色列，没有人解释为什么他们有四个孩子。

Tons of people have four kids, tons of people have six kids, tons of people have eight kids.

很多人有四个孩子，很多人有六个孩子，很多人有八个孩子。

You have a society there that there is an anchor weight of just what is normal being placed by the fact that there is still a huge conservative religious community.

那里的社会有一个正常的锚定权重，因为仍然有一个庞大的保守宗教社区。

But just doing the thing I think JD Vance was trying to do when he was scolding childless cat ladies — that doesn’t appear to work.

但我认为 JD 万斯在责骂没有孩子的猫女士时所做的事情似乎行不通。

The difference here is really about whether or not you get married.

这里的区别实际上在于你是否结婚。

The piece of leverage is on marriage.

杠杆是婚姻。

People are much more unlikely, correctly, to have children outside the context of a highly committed, stable relationship.

正确的是，人们在没有高度忠诚、稳定的关系的情况下生孩子的可能性要大得多。

It’s very, very hard to have children as a single parent.

作为单亲父母，养育孩子是非常非常困难的。

People do it, obviously, but that’s going to be one of the main ingredients of fertility falling, because it’s just an incredibly, incredibly difficult thing to do.

显然，人们会这样做，但这将成为生育率下降的主要因素之一，因为这是一件非常非常困难的事情。

So, there’s that.

所以，就是这样。

It seems to me that you should be able to, practically, if you begin to reorient the cultural and policy machine of society, to bring up the birth rate by 0.4.

在我看来，如果你开始重新调整社会的文化和政策机器，你实际上应该能够将出生率提高 0.4。

That can’t be that hard.

那没那么难。

Then you ask yourself, “Why doesn’t anybody seem able to do it?”

然后你问自己：“为什么似乎没有人能够做到这一点？”

To the extent I’m pessimistic about both the ability to control use policy here and pessimistic about the ability of culture to act in an organized fashion — people have chosen to change the culture and the culture had a downstream change — is because I think that some of the societies in Asia and other places that have entered into a very rapid shrinkage and have treated it as a problem, one of them would have figured something out by now.

在某种程度上，我对控制这里的使用政策的能力和文化以有组织的方式行动的能力感到悲观——“人们选择改变文化，而文化发生了下游变化”——是因为我认为亚洲和其他地方的一些社会已经进入了非常迅速的萎缩并将其视为一个问题，其中一个现在应该已经想出了一些办法。

Now, maybe it just hasn’t been long enough and South Korea is going to execute an amazing turnaround on this, but what I’m observing in South Korea, and frankly what I feel like I’m observing even a little bit in America, is that gender relations worsen as this happens, right?

现在，也许时间还不够长，韩国将在这方面实现惊人的转变，但我在韩国观察到的情况，坦率地说，我觉得我在美国也观察到了一点点，随着这种情况的发生，性别关系是否会恶化，对吗？

It seems like it should be possible, but, look, you look at this as much or more than I do.

看起来这应该是可能的，但是，看，你对这个问题的看法和我一样多，甚至更多。

I feel like you’re sounding more optimistic than I suspect you really are.

我觉得你听起来比我想象的更乐观。

Or if you are not, then what is your answer for why no one has done it successfully yet?

或者如果你没有，那么你对为什么还没人成功做到这一点的答案是什么？

You obviously had Ross on, and I thought that was a fantastic conversation, but as belief itself weakens, we have not replaced that with any other technology — cultural or otherwise — that is able to create cooperation, particularly long-term cooperation, cooperation that requires sacrificing now for gains later, or not even in this life with anything of even nearly matched power.

显然，罗斯在场，我认为那是一次精彩的对话，但随着信仰本身的削弱，我们并没有用任何其他能够创造合作的技术（文化或其他技术）取代它，特别是长期合作，这种合作需要现在牺牲以换取以后的收益，甚至在今生也没有任何具有几乎匹配力量的东西。

Worse than that, we’ve probably then added in a bunch of discohesive technologies, like social media, that make it harder to cooperate, make people more short-term oriented, make people’s attention spans even weaker.

更糟糕的是，我们可能添加了一堆分散的技术，例如社交媒体，这使得合作变得更加困难，使人们更加短期导向，使人们的注意力更弱。

So, the underlying text of this, I think, is quite rough.

因此，我认为，其底层文本相当粗糙。

I don’t really buy cultural conservatism.

我并不真正认同文化保守主义。

I think it probably needs to be something like religion, but I don’t think you can do religion instrumentally.

我认为它可能需要像宗教一样的东西，但我不认为你可以通过工具来实现宗教。

I don’t think the efforts to do that really work at mass scale.

我认为这方面的努力在大规模上并不真正有效。

People have to believe.

人们必须相信。

On state capacity

关于国家能力

The reason I’m not sure I think this is true is that I think that the question of whether or not people will fight and die for their country operates very differently under actual threat than under abstract discussion.

我不确定我是否认为这是真的，因为我认为人们是否会为自己的国家而战和牺牲的问题在实际威胁下与在抽象讨论下的运作方式有很大不同。

How much would you have said Ukrainians were excited to fight and die for their country six years ago, eight years ago, fifteen years ago?

六年前、八年前、十五年前，乌克兰人会多么兴奋地为自己的国家而战并牺牲？

It turns out they’re extraordinarily heroically, courageously willing to fight and die for their country under the actual conditions of threat and invasion.

事实证明，他们在面临威胁和入侵的实际情况下，表现得异常英勇、勇敢，愿意为国家战斗和牺牲。

Then, I think you get into an interesting question about what kind of state capacity in this fight-and-die measure you are really looking for.

然后，我认为你会遇到一个有趣的问题，即你真正在寻找这种战斗和死亡措施中什么样的国家能力。

Are you asking the question of how willing are Americans to fight and die for their country if their country tells them that the defense of Taiwan is in the national interest?

你是在问这样的问题：如果美国人告诉他们保卫台湾符合国家利益，他们有多愿意为自己的国家而战和牺牲？

I’m not sure how willing Americans are going to be to do that.

我不确定美国人是否愿意这样做。

How willing would they be to fight and die for their country if China was sending armed divisions, landing on the shores of America?

如果中国派遣武装师登陆美国海岸，他们会多么愿意为自己的国家战斗和牺牲？

Probably much more so.

可能更是如此。

I think some of what we’re talking there about state capacity reflects actually the success of peaceful institutions over a long period of time.

我认为我们在这里谈论的一些关于国家能力的内容实际上反映了和平机构在很长一段时间内的成功。

The way in which it will turn around is under conditions that we should not want to see coming.

事情的逆转是在我们不希望看到的情况下发生的。

You’re, of course, right about the extraordinary success the American military has integrating immigrants, integrating first-generation Americans.

当然，关于美国军队在融合移民、融合第一代美国人方面取得的非凡成功，你是对的。

It’s again a reason why I think that part of JD Vance’s speech was, let’s call it unkind as a very low level, because plenty of people fight and die for this country who do not have seven generations buried in the same Kentucky graveyard,

这又是为什么我认为 JD 万斯演讲的一部分是，让我们称其为非常低水平的不友善，因为很多人为这个国家而战并牺牲，他们没有七代人埋在同一个肯塔基州的墓地里，

But at the same time, I think that there is something missing about it.

但同时，我又觉得其中还缺少一些东西。

Something that’s jogged for me is, you’ve read the book, Where Is My Flying Car?

让我兴奋的是，你读过《我的飞行汽车在哪里？》这本书。

What is the name of the author?

作者叫什么名字？

I’m just blanking on it at the moment.

我现在只是对此茫然。

I just think if that were true, among other things America would not be as dynamic a society as it is because we are much less exposed to invasion.

我只是认为，如果这是真的，美国社会就不会像现在这样充满活力，因为我们受到入侵的风险要小得多。

Whereas a lot of societies that existed under that kind of martial threat and for that reason, have ended up with very martial cultures, at least for long periods of time, don’t seem to have that dynamism.

尽管许多社会在这种军事威胁下存在，并因此而最终形成了非常军事化的文化，至少在很长一段时间内，似乎没有那种活力。

I don’t think we would look at a bunch of the countries in Africa that have been fighting wars for some decades now on and off and say, “Wow, that’s amazing state capacity there.”

我不认为我们会看着那些断断续续地打了几十年战争的非洲国家，然后说：“哇，那里的国家能力真是太惊人了。”

I think there’s something wrong with this theory because I don’t think it predicts enough about what societies are doing well, and what societies are doing poorly, and in what ways.

我认为这个理论有问题，因为我认为它没有足够地预测社会在哪些方面做得好，哪些方面做得不好，以及以何种方式做得不好。

On prepping the federal government for AGI

关于让联邦政府为 AGI 做好准备

Alignment, which we have primarily talked about in terms of whether or not the AI, the superintelligence makes us all into paperclips, is a constant question of just near-term systems as well.

我们主要讨论的是人工智能、超级智能是否会让我们所有人变成回形针，这也是近期系统的一个持续存在的问题。

I think the question of how should we prepare for AGI or for AI in the federal government first has to do with deciding what we would like the AI or the AGI to do.

我认为我们应该如何为联邦政府中的通用人工智能或人工智能做准备的问题首先与决定我们希望人工智能或通用人工智能做什么有关。

That could be different things to different areas.

对于不同的地区来说，这可能是不同的事情。

My sense — talking to a bunch of people in the companies has helped me conceptualize this better — is that the first thing I would do is begin to ask, what do I think the opportunities of AI are, scientifically and in terms of different kinds of discoveries.

我的感觉是——“与公司里的一群人交谈帮助我更好地理解了这一点”——我要做的第一件事就是开始问，从科学角度和不同类型的发现来看，我认为人工智能的机会是什么。

Let’s take drug development.

让我们以药物开发为例。

I am pretty convinced that within the next five to ten years that the set of tools we are developing using AI — not all of that AGI; some of it are narrow systems, like the AlphaFold system — should get us to the place where the systems are developing molecules with a much higher probability of actually making it through trial and doing something beneficial in the human body.

我非常确信，在未来五到十年内，我们正在使用 AI 开发的工具集——并不是所有的 AGI；而是所有的 AGI。其中一些是狭窄的系统，比如 AlphaFold 系统——应该让我们的系统能够以更高的概率开发分子，真正通过试验并做一些对人体有益的事情。

I think we are getting better models of different parts of the human body.

我认为我们正在获得更好的人体不同部位的模型。

ARC is trying to create a cell model right now, and I think this is going to work.

ARC 现在正在尝试创建一个细胞模型，我认为这会起作用。

Then I think you need to actually ask, how do you prepare other parts of the system to absorb what in theory will be a rapid increase in valuable candidates.

然后我认为你实际上需要问，你如何准备系统的其他部分来吸收理论上会快速增加的有价值的候选人。

If what you’re basically doing with AI in terms of thinking about opportunities is .

如果你在思考机会方面使用人工智能所做的基本上是。

.

。

.

。

Well, the AI’s about to proffer a much higher hit rate of good things we should do.

好吧，人工智能将会为我们应该做的好事提供更高的命中率。

Then probably, at least for some period of time, you need a higher rate of ways to do them.

那么，至少在一段时间内，您可能需要更高频率的方法来完成这些任务。

Now that doesn’t mean we should have —

但这并不意味着我们应该 ——

It actually is the case — say what you will about whether or not you think what they’re doing is a good idea — it is the case that it used to be much more in the president’s power to reorganize, create, fold agencies, subagencies, et cetera.

事实上，情况就是如此——无论你是否认为他们正在做的事情是一个好主意，你都可以畅所欲言——过去的情况是，总统在重组、创建、关闭机构、子机构等方面的权力更大。

We have, I think, made it too hard by a lot to restructure and manage the administrative state.

我认为，我们使重组和管理行政国家变得非常困难。

The thing that I would like to do is create much more flexibility and much more power with the people we call bureaucrats.

我想做的事情是为我们称之为官僚的人们创造更多的灵活性和更多的权力。

I would like people to have much more agency, much more ability to actually hire and fire.

我希望人们有更多的代理权，更有能力来实际雇用和解雇。

I would not want to do it indiscriminately.

我不想不加区别地这样做。

The idea that just everybody in the federal workforce is probably bad, and on the margin, getting rid of any of them for any reason is probably good — it’s just not an idea I share.

认为联邦劳动力中的每个人都可能是坏的，而从某种程度上来说，以任何理由摆脱他们中的任何一个人可能是好的——只是我不同意这个想法。

The thing where they fired all the probationary employees — that was disproportionately young people and people who had just had promotions.

他们解雇了所有试用期员工——其中年轻人和刚刚升职的员工比例不成比例。

The federal workforce —

联邦劳动力 —

On the one hand, that it took so long to get them in is a problem I want to solve.

一方面，花了这么长时间才让他们进来是我想解决的一个问题。

On the other hand, indiscriminately now knocking them out is not something I would like to see.

另一方面，现在不分青红皂白地把他们击倒也不是我愿意看到的。

I think the question of how to ready the government for AI is a real one.

我认为政府如何为人工智能做好准备是一个真正的问题。

I would like to see a little bit of what this AI looks like before I start doing mass firings to support it.

在我开始大规模解雇来支持它之前，我想先看看这个人工智能是什么样子。

I would like to decide, actually describe aims for this AI.

我想决定，实际描述这个人工智能的目标。

You said this a couple of times: What should the aims of the AI be?

您已经说过好几次了：人工智能的目标应该是什么？

You’re not a person who just thinks the category of AI is undifferentiated.

你不是一个仅仅认为人工智能的类别没有区别的人。

You need to tell it what you want it to do, or at least tell it what you want it to figure out to do.

您需要告诉它您希望它做什么，或者至少告诉它您希望它做什么。

What is it doing here?

它在这里做什么？

It seems to me, there really ought to be significant parts of the government — by no means all — where you could have a much smaller number of people directing the AIs.

在我看来，政府确实应该有相当大的一部分——绝不是全部——可以让更少的人来指导人工智能。

It would be the same people at the top giving the orders as today, more or less, and just a lot fewer staff.

或多或少还是和今天一样的高层发号施令，只是员工数量少了很多。

I don’t see how that can’t be the case.

我不明白为什么不可能是这样。

I worry that a lot of things I’m seeing them break, like people who I know who worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on financial scams, I don’t think knocking them out of government is going to create a macro problem in the US economy, but I do know these people were getting money back for consumers who had gotten scammed.

我担心我看到他们破坏了很多东西，就像我认识的在消费者金融保护局处理金融诈骗的人一样，我不认为将他们从政府中剔除会给美国经济带来宏观问题，但我确实知道这些人正在为被骗的消费者拿回钱。

Frankly, I think the capacity to scam people on AI is about to go much higher.

坦率地说，我认为人工智能欺骗人们的能力将会大大提高。

I think that a good thing that was happening is going to happen less well right now.

我认为正在发生的一件好事现在会发生得不太好。

My gut is that AI, as it emerges into the kind of view and flexibility where we could integrate it into core systems — which it’s not at yet in most cases — is going to create places where you need to expand and places where you need to contract.

我的直觉是，人工智能，当它出现在我们可以将其集成到核心系统中的视图和灵活性中时（在大多数情况下尚未实现），它将创造出需要扩展的地方和需要收缩的地方。

That’s why I was trying to ground this in an actual example, like drug development.

这就是为什么我试图将其融入到一个实际的例子中，比如药物开发。

If it is throwing off way, way, way more good candidates for drug development, yes, there are parts of the system that can contract, parts of it they’re going to need to expand.

如果它抛弃了更多的优秀药物开发候选者，是的，系统的某些部分可以收缩，部分系统需要扩展。

Energy, again, if you read any of these projects or any of these slightly more utopic visions of AI, which I certainly hope we’re going to live in, the idea is that it’s going to throw off a bunch of realizations and discoveries about how we can make much more energy-dense materials, and so lay down everything from solar panels to get better at doing advanced geothermal.

再说一遍，能源，如果你读过任何这些项目或任何这些稍微乌托邦的人工智能愿景（我当然希望我们能够生活在其中），其想法是，它将抛弃一系列关于我们如何制造能量密度更高的材料的认识和发现，从而放下太阳能电池板的一切，以更好地开发先进的地热能。

That would mean some parts of DOE maybe become less important.

这意味着能源部的某些部分可能变得不那么重要。

It would also mean our ability to permit and do other things becomes more important.

这也意味着我们允许和做其他事情的能力变得更加重要。

I am not sure, particularly at the beginning, what you need is less so much as the ability to reallocate.

我不确定，特别是在一开始，您需要的不是重新分配的能力。

Now look, your view that you do mass firings and then you hire back what you need — I guess I understand where you’re coming from on that, but I want to see the thing we are doing the firings for working first, not fire people and hope that Sam Altman’s view of billion-dollar companies with three people is actually going to work at the Social Security Administration in the year of our Lord 2027.

现在看，你认为你会大规模解雇员工，然后再重新雇用你需要的人 ——我想我明白你的想法，但我想看看我们在解雇员工时首先是为了工作，而不是解雇员工，并希望山姆·奥尔特曼关于拥有三个人的十亿美元公司的观点实际上能在我们的主 2027 年在社会保障管理局工作。

Like the New Deal agencies — they weren’t so great to begin with.

就像新政机构一样，它们一开始就不是那么好。

They didn’t have experience or data or staffing, but over time, pieces fell into place.

他们没有经验、数据或人员，但随着时间的推移，事情就各就各位了。

Maybe the options are just more and more Steven Teles’s kludgeocracy or we take some chances today and do some things that actually hurt.

也许选择只是越来越多的史蒂文·泰勒斯的财阀统治，或者我们今天抓住一些机会，做一些真正有害的事情。

Then over an 8- to 12-year period sort it out with AI and most of all, with future administrations, I don’t really see what the alternative is.

然后在 8 到 12 年的时间内用人工智能来解决这个问题，最重要的是，对于未来的政府来说，我真的不知道还有什么选择。

My critique of Democrats is, they became culturally process- and bureaucracy-obsessed.

我对民主党的批评是，他们变得对文化过程和官僚主义着迷。

They saw the state and inside their own agencies, inside things they, in theory, run, they were anything a lawyer said you had to take as holy writ.

他们看到了国家和他们自己的机构内部，理论上他们所管理的事物，他们是律师所说的你必须视为圣旨的任何东西。

No matter how off the wall or stringent the interpretation of what was clearly a looser original statute was, it was careful.

无论对显然较宽松的原始法规的解释多么离奇或严格，它都是谨慎的。

Every process had to be followed to a T.

每个流程都必须严格执行。

Democrats, in theory, the party of government, cannot run government effectively because of some of the reasons you just described and some of the reasons I just described.

理论上，民主党，即政府政党，由于你刚才描述的一些原因和我刚才描述的一些原因，无法有效地管理政府。

Then in comes Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and if they have proven anything, it is that a lot of the things that previous administrations — by the way, Democratic and Republican — treated as inviolable were just not.

然后唐纳德·特朗普和埃隆·马斯克上台了，如果他们证明了什么的话，那就是前几届政府——顺便说一句，民主党和共和党——视为不可侵犯的许多东西实际上并非如此。

They weren’t real.

它们不是真的。

They were norms, not rules, norms not laws.

它们是规范，不是规则，规范不是法律。

It is clear that some of the firings were illegal.

显然，其中一些解雇是非法的。

Clearly not all of them.

显然不是全部。

It is clear that some of the withholding of money is illegal.

显然，某些扣留资金是非法的。

My gut is, having seen the five-four decision the other day at the Supreme Court which went against the Trump administration — but it was a five-four decision — it’s not going to be all of it.

我的直觉是，前几天在最高法院看到了反对特朗普政府的五比四的决定——但这是一个五比四的决定——它不会是全部。

There is a lesson that is being taught here by Musk, which I think liberals have to look at very uncomfortably, which is that things that they treated as facts of the system that could not be in any way altered and then used as excuses for low-performing government services for genuinely .

马斯克在这里教给我们一个教训，我认为自由主义者必须非常不舒服地看待这一教训，那就是他们将那些视为系统事实的东西无法以任何方式改变，然后用作真正表现不佳的政府服务的借口。

.

。

.

。

Probably what Elon Musk is calling waste and what I would call waste are not the same thing, but there is what I would think of as a lot of waste.

也许埃隆·马斯克所说的浪费和我所说的浪费不是一回事，但我认为有很多浪费。

They allowed a civil service system to emerge and evolve that everybody knows is crazy.

他们让一个众所周知的疯狂的公务员制度得以出现和发展。

Everybody knows it’s crazy.

每个人都知道这很疯狂。

Here comes Musk and Trump — antithesis.

马斯克和特朗普来了——对立面。

I don’t think they’re trying to make things work.

我认为他们并没有试图让事情顺利进行。

I don’t think it’s zero-based budgeting.

我不认为这是零基预算。

I don’t think they’re holding things to a standard.

我不认为他们把事情保持在标准上。

I think they’ve cut off huge amounts of lifesaving work.

我认为他们已经切断了大量的救生工作。

I think they are creating a lot of risk in parts of the system that could really blow up.

我认为他们在系统的某些部分制造了很多风险，这些风险可能真的会崩溃。

I think what they want is control, not a working government.

我认为他们想要的是控制，而不是一个运转良好的政府。

I’ve thought a lot about the payment systems and the Treasury privacy data.

我对支付系统和财政部隐私数据思考了很多。

How many social insurance programs work poorly because they couldn’t get any access to that data?

有多少社会保险计划因为无法访问这些数据而运作不佳？

I’ve heard about this a lot in the design of systems beforehand, and this turned out to not be the case.

我之前在系统设计中就多次听说过这一点，但事实证明并非如此。

You could get access to the data if you really wanted it.

如果您确实想要的话，您可以访问这些数据。

There’s no reason we needed to have the software procurement systems that led to healthcare.gov.

我们没有理由需要拥有导致healthcare.gov 的软件采购系统。

We just didn’t.

我们只是没有。

And it is true that then over time, this has been adapted somewhat in that area.

确实，随着时间的推移，这在该领域已经有所调整。

USDS, US Digital Service, and 18F were significant there, and they’ve destroyed them.

USDS、美国数字服务和 18F 在那里很重要，但他们已经摧毁了它们。

There was a lot you could do.

你可以做很多事情。

That, I think, is the good version, where what we’ve had is a fire, and it’ll do things that I am very unhappy about, but it will also open the way to something that is not as relentlessly and illogically bureaucratized as the way government was run under, say, the Biden administration, and is not as destructive and corrupted as what we’re seeing under Trump and Musk.

我认为，这是一个很好的版本，我们所经历的是一场火灾，它会做一些我非常不满意的事情，但它也将为我们开辟道路，不像拜登政府统治下的政府运作方式那样无情和不合逻辑的官僚化，也不会像我们在特朗普和马斯克统治下看到的那样具有破坏性和腐败性。

I think the bad version of “there’s no choice, but we have to come in and do something like this” is that they actually don’t know what they’re doing.

我认为“别无选择，但我们必须进来做这样的事情”的糟糕版本是他们实际上不知道自己在做什么。

This isn’t zero-based budgeting.

这不是零基预算。

They don’t know who they’re firing.

他们不知道他们在解雇谁。

They don’t really know what the people do.

他们并不真正了解人们在做什么。

They’ve not evaluated things on a cost-benefit scale.

他们没有从成本效益的角度来评估事情。

They’re trying to use loopholes.

他们试图利用漏洞。

And it does turn out that the system manages a lot of risk.

事实证明，该系统确实管理了大量风险。

Most of the risk it manages in any given year — it’s going to be fine if you don’t have anybody there managing it.

它在任何一年中管理的大部分风险 ——如果没有人管理它，那就没问题。

But when things do go wrong, when you do roll snake eyes — and you always do, eventually — it’s going to turn out we really needed some of this.

但当事情确实出了问题时，当你转动蛇眼时 ——而且你总是这样做，最终 ——结果会证明我们确实需要一些这样的东西。

You see them freaking out about this on the daily, basically.

基本上，你每天都会看到他们对此感到抓狂。

They go fire all these people who are on nuclear safety and don’t even realize they’ve done it, and then are desperately trying to get back in touch with them to come back so we don’t have huge problems in the nuclear system.

他们解雇了所有从事核安全工作的人，甚至没有意识到他们已经这么做了，然后拼命地试图与他们取得联系，以便他们回来，这样我们的核系统就不会出现巨大的问题。

Or Musk saying that he didn’t mean to turn off all the payments on the Ebola work, but it turns out they did, and then saying that he turned it back on.

或者马斯克说他并不是有意关闭埃博拉工作的所有付款，但事实证明他们确实这样做了，然后又说他重新打开了它。

In fact, you talk to people on the ground there, and he didn’t.

事实上，你和当地的人交谈，但他没有。

So, I’m worried about risk exploding, which is why I wouldn’t have wanted to see it done this way.

所以，我担心风险爆炸，这就是为什么我不希望看到这样的事情发生。

I think that people who are in my position — and I think people care about effective government — really need to look with some anger and shame about the way in which the people who believe in government basically gave up on government reform and left that to this kind of process.

我认为处于我立场的人——而且我认为人们关心有效的政府——确实需要以愤怒和羞愧的态度看待那些相信政府的人们基本上放弃了政府改革并将其留给这样的过程。

Could you imagine supporting a future vision for USAID with 350 employees plus AGI?

您能想象通过 350 名员工加上 AGI 来支持 USAID 的未来愿景吗？

Way, way less with the US-based contractors, get rid of that part of the law — that’s just domestic wealth, corporate cronyism welfare — and give away more money and have way fewer people.

方式，对美国承包商来说，少得多，摆脱法律的这一部分——“这只是国内财富，企业任人唯亲福利”——并捐出更多的钱，并拥有更少的人。

Why isn’t that a good vision?

为什么这不是一个好的愿景？

USAID is functionally gutted now, so you’re going to be down at that low level of staffing.

美国国际开发署现在的职能已经被削弱，所以你的人员配置水平将会下降。

Then in 2028, we have something we’re willing to call AGI.

然后到 2028 年，我们愿意称之为 AGI。

You’re basically getting AGI to do the work that GiveWell was doing at a more AGI-like level and evaluate, what is the highest benefit per dollar that we can spend through USAID, and it’s doing a better job of that.

你基本上是让 AGI 在一个更像 AGI 的水平上完成 GiveWell 正在做的工作，并评估我们可以通过美国国际开发署支出的每一美元的最高收益是多少，并且它在这方面做得更好。

Then, of course, that is going to have to be spent out in the real world.

当然，这些钱必须花在现实世界中。

Vaccines have to go into people’s arms.

疫苗必须走进人们的怀抱。

HIV, AIDS, retrovirus drugs have to be handed to people.

艾滋病毒、艾滋病、逆转录病毒药物必须交给人们。

The AGI is not going to do that.

AGI 不会这么做。

Then you have this question of, in this world, are you expanding staffing somewhere?

那么你就会有这样的问题：在这个世界上，你是否正在某个地方扩大人员配置？

I’m fine with that world.

我对那个世界很满意。

My disagreement with what is happening right now is that I really think it is important to be clear that the disagreement is about whether or not we should be doing aid, not over what aid is effective.

我对现在发生的事情的不同意见是，我真的认为重要的是要明确，分歧在于我们是否应该提供援助，而不是关于什么援助是有效的。

They could have gone in and restructured USAID and what it spends money on.

他们本可以介入并重组美国国际开发署及其资金用途。

They have not articulated any desire to save lives of people in other countries at all.

他们根本没有表达任何拯救其他国家人民生命的愿望。

This is where I think this conversation can get a little hiding the ball.

这就是我认为这次谈话可以有点隐藏的地方。

I think efficiency is always towards what.

我觉得效率永远是朝着什么方向。

What are you trying to make more efficient?

您想提高哪些效率？

There are always values in that, and the language of efficiency is often a way of trying to hide the values.

其中总有价值观，而效率语言往往是试图隐藏价值观的一种方式。

But yes, the question, hypothetically, could you imagine a world where aggressive reform of USAID led to a USAID that was much more laser-focused on public health provision, and maybe some forms of functionally cash-transfer programs, and probably support for certain kinds of government functions in other countries, and administering that required much less administrative staff in Washington and in the US?

但是，是的，假设的问题是，你能想象一个世界，美国国际开发署的积极改革导致美国国际开发署更加专注于公共卫生服务，也许还有某种形式的功能性现金转移计划，可能还支持其他国家的某些类型的政府职能，并且在华盛顿和美国管理这些职能需要更少的行政人员？

Absolutely.

绝对地。

But that’s a goal you can define and work towards right now.

但这是你现在就可以定义并努力实现的目标。

AGI is not even really doing anything in that hypothetical.

在这个假设中，AGI 甚至没有真正做任何事情。

What is doing something in the hypothetical is having a coherent vision of foreign aid and then a willingness to upend the bureaucracy to achieve it, which on the one hand, I don’t think you’ve seen necessarily from a lot of the nonprofit industrial complexes, as it gets called.

假设中要做的事情是对对外援助有一个连贯的愿景，然后愿意推翻官僚机构来实现这一目标，一方面，我认为你不一定从许多非营利性工业联合体中看到这一点，正如它所称的那样。

But on the other hand, on the values level, you certainly have not seen from this crew.

但另一方面，在价值观层面上，你肯定没有从这个剧组中看到。

On three places to travel

三个值得旅行的地方

Start with Rio, but try to travel out of Rio.

从里约开始，但尝试离开里约。

Go to some of the spots where Brazilians vacation in the summer.

去一些巴西人夏季度假的地方。

There’s a place that I went with my father to a conference when I was young called Barra Do Sahy.

我年轻时和父亲一起去参加一个会议的地方叫Barra Do Sahy。

It’s an island.

这是一座岛屿。

You can see your feet in the water.

你可以看到你的脚在水中。

I was young, so I’m not sure how accurate my impressions of it are.

我还年轻，所以我不确定我的印象有多准确。

It sits in my head like a Shangri-la.

它就像香格里拉一样留在我的脑海里。

I love it.

我喜欢它。

I’ve had a lot of experiences in Brazil like that.

我在巴西有过很多这样的经历。

That’s one.

这是一个。

I love Berlin as a city.

我爱柏林这个城市。

Now, partially this is because I’m into electronic music, and it’s a city that takes electronic music incredibly seriously.

现在，部分原因是我喜欢电子音乐，而且这是一个非常重视电子音乐的城市。

You have just this remarkable mixture of nightlife that I find really, really exciting, and really vibrant.

我发现这里的夜生活非常非常令人兴奋且充满活力。

It’s just a fun city to walk around.

这是一个值得漫步的有趣城市。

It has great museums.

它有很棒的博物馆。

It has great food.

它有很棒的食物。

People are friendly.

人们很友好。

There are a lot of immigrants.

有很多移民。

There’s a lot to see, and there’s a thing to experience there that I just like.

那里有很多值得看的东西，也有我喜欢体验的东西。

I’m not sure it’d be exactly true for everybody, although I think probably even people with radically different tastes in mind would find a lot to love in Berlin, but if you have my specific tastes, Berlin is just an extraordinary place to go.

我不确定这对每个人来说都是正确的，尽管我认为即使是那些有着完全不同品味的人也会在柏林找到很多值得喜爱的地方，但如果你有我的特定品味，柏林就是一个非凡的地方。

I spent a week there last year, and if I could, I think I would spend a couple weeks there every year.

去年我在那里呆了一个星期，如果可以的话，我想每年我都会在那里呆几周。

It’s one of the places — Mexico City being the other — where I’ve landed and spent some time and just immediately had the view, “I could live here.

这是其中一个地方 —— 另一个是墨西哥城 —— 我在那里着陆并呆了一段时间，立刻就看到了这样的景色：“我可以住在这里。

I could just do this.

我只能这样做。

It would be wonderful.”

那就太好了。”

I am just a huge fan of American second cities, and I travel a lot around music.

我是美国第二大城市的忠实粉丝，我经常围绕音乐旅行。

I go to a lot of music festivals in small places, not all electronic.

我参加了很多小地方的音乐节，但不都是电子音乐节。

One of my favorites is one called Big Ears in Knoxville, and it’s a lot of folk music.

我最喜欢的一首是诺克斯维尔的《Big Ears》，里面有很多民间音乐。

It’s a lot of experimental music.

这是很多实验音乐。

Knoxville is just a great place and a great city.

诺克斯维尔是一个很棒的地方，也是一座很棒的城市。

Again, the food is great.

再说一次，食物很棒。

I think in general, at this point, the food in places like Knoxville — all smaller cities — are just better than in the really big cities because so many people have been costed out.

我认为总的来说，在这一点上，像诺克斯维尔这样的地方——所有较小的城市——的食物只是比真正的大城市好，因为很多人都被浪费了。

San Francisco’s food just isn’t good anymore.

旧金山的食物已经不再好吃了。

It’s not a good food city, hasn’t been for some time.

这不是一个美食城市，已经有一段时间了。

It was one of the most disappointing things to me about living there.

这是住在那里最令我失望的事情之一。

California cuisine used to be so vibrant, but I think now it isn’t, and it’s just because we’ve pushed out the people who could make it.

加州美食曾经如此充满活力，但我认为现在不再如此，这只是因为我们排挤了那些能做它的人。

The labor costs are too high, et cetera.

劳动力成本太高等等。

I think, actually, just traveling around America itself is, as you would say, underrated.

我认为，实际上，正如你所说，仅仅环游美国本身就被低估了。

As somebody who tends to like urban travel, that’s part of it.

作为一个喜欢城市旅行的人，这就是其中的一部分。

I guess I did three there, so I shouldn’t keep going.

我想我在那里做了三个，所以我不应该继续下去。

Photo Credit: (c) Lucas Foglia

图片来源：(c) 卢卡斯·福利亚