Garett Jones on Democracy (More or Less) (Ep. 88)
Hello, I’m here today with my friend and colleague, Garett Jones.
大家好，今天我和我的朋友兼同事加雷特·琼斯一起来到这里。
Garett has a new book coming out called 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less.
加雷特出版了一本新书，名为“减少 10% 的民主：为什么你应该多信任精英一点，少信任大众一点”。
And Garett, of course, being my colleague, is right here at George Mason University.
当然，加雷特作为我的同事，就在乔治梅森大学。
Garett, welcome.
加雷特，欢迎。
Thanks for having me.
谢谢你有我。
As usual, the opening question comes completely from left field.
和往常一样，开场问题完全来自左外野。
Let’s say we had a government that was just strictly run by its bondholders.
假设我们有一个严格由债券持有人管理的政府。
What would the biases in that arrangement be?
这种安排会存在哪些偏见？
And how good or bad would it be at solving which problems?
它在解决哪些问题方面效果如何？
Well, one problem is that they would care just about the profitability of the government and not the productivity of the economy.
问题是，他们只关心政府的盈利能力，而不关心经济的生产力。
It’s easy to imagine great horrors happening in exactly that situation.
很容易想象在这种情况下会发生巨大的恐怖。
If the bondholders are running the government, then they’re going to only care about the gap between government revenues and government costs.
如果债券持有人正在管理政府，那么他们只会关心政府收入和政府成本之间的差距。
In some parts of the economy, that would probably lead to them imposing things like slavery, massive restrictions of personal freedoms — not caring whether the poorest and least productive die at high rates.
在经济的某些领域，这可能会导致他们实行奴隶制、对个人自由的大规模限制——而不关心最贫穷和生产力最低的人是否会高死亡率。
That would be the definite downside.
这将是绝对的缺点。
The upside, which is much smaller, I want to emphasize, would be that the government would actually care about .
我想强调的是，其好处要小得多，那就是政府实际上会关心。
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When you care about paying your bills on time, you care about having a good, solid revenue stream that comes in reliably and dependably.
当您关心按时支付账单时，您关心的是拥有可靠且可靠的良好、稳定的收入来源。
You would get governments operating much more like firms, except firms that don’t have to compete very much against other firms.
你会让政府的运作更像公司，除了那些不必与其他公司竞争的公司。
Do IMF programs for countries, on average, help them or harm them?
平均而言，国际货币基金组织针对各国的计划是帮助还是损害它们？
I think, on average, they help them.
我认为，平均而言，他们会帮助他们。
But that’s a bit like having your government run by a bondholder, right?
但这有点像让政府由债券持有人管理，对吗？
It’s a bit like having the bondholders be a check on the voters rather than being a 100 percent alternative to voters.
这有点像让债券持有人成为选民的制约者，而不是百分百替代选民的人。
That’s really the difference here.
这就是真正的区别。
Bondholders can be a good check on government, just as voters can be a good check on the abuses of government itself.
债券持有人可以很好地制衡政府，就像选民可以很好地制衡政府本身的滥用行为一样。
But giving them monopoly powers is far too much for any of the kind of governance systems we care about.
但对于我们关心的任何一种治理体系来说，给予他们垄断权力都太过分了。
How about a government just run by the landholders — would that lead to an optimum outcome?
一个由土地所有者管理的政府怎么样——这会带来最佳结果吗？
Again, you get the same problem, which is that if it’s completely ruled by them, those who are weakest in the bargaining situation might just get wiped out completely.
同样，你会遇到同样的问题，那就是如果完全由他们统治，那些在讨价还价中最弱的人可能会被彻底消灭。
That’s the real concern — 100 percent voice to any one group is a bad path.
这才是真正令人担忧的地方——向任何一个群体提供 100% 的发言权都是一条糟糕的道路。
Something more like a stakeholder theory — the state where there’s a lot of people who have a voice — that gets us better results.
更像是利益相关者理论——即有很多人都有发言权的国家——可以让我们获得更好的结果。
But if you look, say, at the cities that have more or less maximized land value — Manhattan, maybe San Francisco, Dubai city-state, Singapore city-state, London — they seem really extremely well run.
但如果你看看那些或多或少具有最大化土地价值的城市——曼哈顿、旧金山、迪拜城邦、新加坡城邦、伦敦——它们似乎管理得非常好。
Exactly, yes.
没错，是的。
But part of that is that they face some kind of global competition.
但部分原因是他们面临某种全球竞争。
Cities face huge competition for labor.
城市面临着激烈的劳动力竞争。
And the extremely valuable freedom to leave means that a city can’t get rich by just telling its most productive workers, “You’re not allowed to go anywhere.
极其宝贵的离开自由意味着一个城市无法通过仅仅告诉其生产力最高的工人“你不被允许去任何地方”来致富。
You have to stay here.”
你必须留在这里。”
You argue in your book that not every county should elect its dog catcher, so to speak.
您在书中指出，可以这么说，并不是每个县都应该选举自己的捕狗员。
Yes.
是的。
To cite one example of many, what do you think are the conditions where voters are likely to have better judgments than experts?
举一个例子，您认为在什么条件下选民可能比专家有更好的判断力？
The most natural cases are cases where there’s an academic indoctrination that’s completely opposed to reality.
最自然的情况是存在与现实完全相反的学术灌输的情况。
Isn’t that more and more the case these days?
现在这样的情况不是越来越多了吗？
I think we can see it happening now because of what’s happening all around us.
我认为我们现在可以看到它正在发生，因为我们周围正在发生的事情。
But in earlier times, there’s always been some kind of illusion that the elites have foisted upon them and that the masses just roll their eyes at.
但在早期，总有一种幻觉，是精英强加给他们的，而大众却对此不屑一顾。
In the early 20th century, it might have been communism, which was the opiate of the intellectuals for quite a few decades.
20世纪初，可能就是共产主义，几十年来它是知识分子的鸦片。
But American elites didn’t fall for communism.
但美国精英并没有屈服于共产主义。
The academic ones did.
学术界的人做到了。
True.
真的。
But true American elites were pretty centrist.
但真正的美国精英是相当中间派的。
Absolutely, yeah.
绝对是的。
Should we elect prosecutors?
我们应该选举检察官吗？
No, I think not.
不，我想不是。
Why not?
为什么不呢？
Because the short-run incentives — it’s those campaign ads where the person brags about how many people they convicted.
因为短期激励——人们在竞选广告中吹嘘自己定罪了多少人。
“Here’s some scary faces on TV, and let me show you how I convicted these people.” That’s the kind of emotional .
“电视上有一些可怕的面孔，让我向你展示我是如何给这些人定罪的。”就是这样的一种情感。
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That’s triggering that short-run hyperbolic discounting, impulsive thinking that the behavioral economists have warned us about.
这引发了行为经济学家警告我们的短期双曲线贴现和冲动思维。
And that ends up having, I think, far too much influence.
我认为，这最终会产生太大的影响。
In the United States, other than the implied supermajority rules already in place through checks and balances, are there policy choices where we should impose new supermajority rules, like a two-thirds vote in the Senate or the House?
在美国，除了通过制衡已经存在的隐含的绝对多数规则之外，是否还有一些政策选择需要我们实施新的绝对多数规则，例如参议院或众议院的三分之二投票？
Yeah, I think that, in a way, the balanced budget amendments that have been proposed in my lifetime have always been equivalent to that.
是的，我认为，在某种程度上，我一生中提出的平衡预算修正案一直与此相同。
They weren’t saying that you could never run a deficit at any point in time.
他们并不是说在任何时候都不可能出现赤字。
They were saying if you wanted to run a deficit, you had to pass some special resolution and get it passed through a two-thirds or three-fourths majority.
他们说，如果你想出现赤字，你必须通过一些特别决议，并以三分之二或四分之三多数获得通过。
I think that’s a classic example of something that would be very wise.
我认为这是一个非常明智的经典例子。
But those seemed completely irrelevant, right?
但这些似乎完全无关，对吧？
Deficits have just ballooned, and those constraints seem not to matter.
赤字刚刚激增，而这些限制似乎并不重要。
Finland has a two-thirds rule, I think, for tax increases.
我认为芬兰对于增税有三分之二的规则。
They have very high taxes.
他们的税收非常高。
Isn’t it just ultimately about culture and the will of the voters?
这最终不就是文化和选民意愿的问题吗？
Public opinion seeps through the system, no matter what constraints you put on the voting system within the government?
无论你对政府内部的投票制度施加什么限制，民意都会渗透到系统中？
Yeah, that’s the best comeback to all of this, right?
是的，这是最好的回归，对吧？
That the voters ultimately have sovereign power in anything that’s even sort of like a democracy.
选民最终在任何民主国家中都拥有主权。
So any of these rules we impose are second order compared to who your voters actually are.
因此，与您的选民的实际身份相比，我们实施的任何这些规则都是次要的。
But it does appear that across the US states, balanced budget amendments seem to work.
但在美国各州，平衡预算修正案似乎确实发挥了作用。
The will of the voters can’t be held back.
选民的意志是无法阻挡的。
It’s basically one dike that can hold back the tide just a little bit.
它基本上是一个可以稍微阻挡潮水的堤坝。
It’s sometimes argued that proportional representation systems — they give elites more power because after the election, there’s a second or third round of bargaining to establish the coalition.
有时有人认为，比例代表制赋予了精英更多的权力，因为选举后，需要进行第二轮或第三轮谈判来建立联盟。
Are the systems, in your view, better than parliamentary systems such as we find in the UK or used to find in New Zealand?
您认为这些制度比英国或新西兰的议会制度更好吗？
This is something I thought about a lot when writing the book.
这是我在写这本书时思考了很多的事情。
I was wondering whether I should have a chapter on PR versus “first past the post,” and it ultimately becomes very difficult to decide which of those is more democratic.
我想知道是否应该用一章来讨论公关和“先过后事”，最终很难决定哪一个更民主。
PR feels more democratic to the citizens, so they probably have higher levels of voter engagement in the political process, and that counts for something.
公关对公民来说感觉更民主，因此他们可能在政治进程中拥有更高水平的选民参与，这很重要。
So that’s a plus that makes PR sound more democratic.
所以这是一个让公关听起来更民主的优点。
But you’re right, the ex post coalition formation makes it act less democratic, and I never found a way to solve that.
但你是对的，事后联盟的形成使其表现得不那么民主，而我从未找到解决这个问题的方法。
And since I wanted to stick to topics in my book where I could be clear on what was more democratic, what was less democratic, I just set that to the side.
由于我想坚持书中的主题，让我能够清楚什么更民主，什么不那么民主，所以我就把它放在一边。
But let’s say it’s the early 1990s.
但假设现在是 20 世纪 90 年代初。
Eastern European countries are suddenly becoming free, and they ask you, “Garett, what electoral system should we have?” What do you say?
东欧国家突然变得自由了，他们问你：“加雷特，我们应该有什么样的选举制度？”你怎么说？
What I really would go for is presidential systems, if you can handle it, something like a first-past-the-post system, where those people elected from local districts focused on local problems — which have less of a free-rider problem involved — go up to the parliament and actually argue their case.
我真正想要的是总统制，如果你能处理的话，类似于简单多数当选的制度，那些从地方选区选出的人专注于当地问题——其中涉及的搭便车问题较少——进入议会并实际辩论他们的观点。
The presidential element is less important than the parliamentary idea of the single-district voting.
总统的因素不如议会单区投票的想法重要。
I tend to think that creates more accountability on the part of the government.
我倾向于认为这会给政府带来更多的责任。
A presidential system does.
总统制就是这样。
Well, I think the first-past-the-post element as opposed to PR.
嗯，我认为得票最多的元素与公关相对。
Okay.
好的。
Let me go back to that.
让我回到那个话题。
First past the post — the kind of systems you see in the UK and even the US — they create a kind of personal responsibility for the individual politician, or personal accountability, and it reduces the free-rider problem.
首先，你在英国甚至美国看到的那种制度，它们为个别政客创造了一种个人责任，或个人问责制，这减少了搭便车问题。
It reduces the ability to say, “Oh, that wasn’t my fault; that was somebody else’s fault.” Having something that is a bit more like the organization of a modern corporation where you can say, “This is the person in charge, and if something went wrong, I take this person to task for this.” That’s really what you want, and proportional-representation coalition governments make that much harder to occur.
它降低了说“哦，那不是我的错；那是别人的错”的能力。拥有更像现代公司组织的东西，你可以说，“这是负责人，如果出了问题，我会为此责怪这个人。”这确实是你想要的，而比例代表制联合政府让这变得更难实现。
But in your framework, where the voters can be poorly informed or irrational, isn’t more accountability arguably a bad thing?
但在你的框架中，选民可能信息匮乏或不理性，更多的责任难道不是一件坏事吗？
A place like Singapore, which is quite well run, whatever flaws it may have, has relatively little accountability, in part due to gerrymandering.
像新加坡这样的地方，虽然管理得很好，但无论有什么缺陷，责任相对较少，部分原因是不公正地划分选区。
So why wouldn’t you want the system with less accountability at the margin?
那么，您为什么不希望系统的边际责任较少呢？
I think that even the insiders have a tough time figuring out what’s going on and who’s responsible, and for that reason, having clear patterns of accountability, say, within .
我认为，即使是内部人士也很难弄清楚发生了什么以及谁该负责，因此，在内部有明确的问责模式。
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If corporations want clear lines of accountability so that the people inside can assess the value being created by the 100 or 200 people there, monitoring on a regular basis, then modern democracies of any type must face that problem to a much greater degree.
如果企业希望有明确的责任界限，以便内部人员能够评估 100 或 200 人所创造的价值，并定期进行监控，那么任何类型的现代民主国家都必须在更大程度上面对这个问题。
So that’s why I think that the idea of some line of responsibility, some line of who’s in charge is crucial.
所以这就是为什么我认为某种责任线、某种负责人的想法至关重要。
Is trial by jury a good idea?
由陪审团审判是个好主意吗？
Yes.
是的。
This is something I, again, thought about.
这是我再次思考的事情。
I tend to think that trial by jury balances the ignorance of the typical person who might go in.
我倾向于认为陪审团审判平衡了可能参与其中的典型人的无知。
Juries are intentionally made ignorant about the case that they’re supposed to be evaluating.
陪审团被故意弄得对他们应该评估的案件一无所知。
It seems to balance that weakness against the big benefit of individual responsibility.
它似乎平衡了这一弱点与个人责任的巨大好处。
There’s a small number of people making this decision.
做出这个决定的人很少。
And I think that the incentive for becoming informed is a greater benefit than the cost of having people who are quite uninformed on the particular topic.
我认为，与那些对特定主题完全不了解的人所付出的成本相比，了解情况的动机带来的好处更大。
Are there mechanisms of accountability for politicians which do not rely so heavily on voters?
是否有针对不那么严重依赖选民的政客的问责机制？
And why don’t we do much more of that?
我们为什么不做更多这样的事情呢？
Oh, that’s good question.
哦，这是个好问题。
You’re right.
你说得对。
An old classic example of this would be — well, now classic — is something like New Zealand’s contract for its central banker —
一个古老的经典例子是——好吧，现在是经典——就像新西兰与其央行行长签订的合同——
Right.
对。
— where if the central bank fails to meet its inflation target, the head of central bank gets fired.
- 如果央行未能实现通胀目标，央行行长将被解雇。
Part of the reason we don’t do that is that the kind of punishments that they’re willing to give out aren’t that great, aren’t very extreme.
我们不这样做的部分原因是他们愿意给予的惩罚并没有那么大，也不是很极端。
I think it’s a little bit of a puzzle that we don’t have the equivalent of real performance bonuses based on fairly objective measures for things like this.
我认为这有点令人困惑，因为我们没有基于对此类事情的相当客观的衡量标准的实际绩效奖金。
Do you think other people underrate small, open economies?
您认为其他人低估了小型开放经济体吗？
Because they’re very accountable to global markets, right?
因为他们对全球市场非常负责，对吧？
Oh, yes.
哦是的。
That’s not a voter-driven phenomenon.
这不是一个选民驱动的现象。
So in your view, they should do better than, maybe, most people are expecting?
那么在您看来，他们应该做得比大多数人预期的更好？
Yes, exactly.
是的，完全正确。
I think this has been proven since the global financial crisis.
我认为这一点自全球金融危机以来已经得到证明。
The small, open economies learned their lesson in the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
小型开放经济体在 1997 年亚洲金融危机中吸取了教训。
They made their banking systems far more robust.
他们使银行系统更加健全。
They made their regulatory systems more effective.
他们使监管体系更加有效。
They increased their capital requirements.
他们增加了资本要求。
But you have Iceland, Ireland — they totally blow up in the later financial crisis, the 2008 one.
但冰岛、爱尔兰——它们在后来的金融危机（2008 年的那场）中彻底崩溃了。
True, but those were richer countries.
确实如此，但那些都是较富裕的国家。
The middle-income countries, the ones who were actually hit by the Asian financial crisis — they learned their lesson and they stuck with it.
中等收入国家，即那些真正受到亚洲金融危机打击的国家——他们吸取了教训，并坚持了下来。
If the message is that people can only learn from something that happened to their own country in the last 20 or 30 years, that’s a lesson itself, but that’s far more than most people learn in their whole lives.
如果传达的信息是人们只能从过去 20 或 30 年发生在自己国家的事情中学习，那么这本身就是一个教训，但这远远超过大多数人一生学到的东西。
A long-standing debate from professional sports — should we let the fans elect the all-star teams?
职业体育界长期以来的争论——我们应该让球迷选举全明星阵容吗？
Obviously, this is a great lesson in democracy right there.
显然，这是民主方面的一个很好的教训。
All-star teams tend to have good players, but all-star games are low stakes.
全明星球队往往有优秀的球员，但全明星比赛的风险很低。
So it’s a little bit hard to evaluate all-star games as versions of that actual sport, for one thing.
因此，一方面，将全明星比赛视为实际运动的版本有点困难。
So you can’t evaluate that too much.
所以你不能评价太多。
But coaches get paid a lot for a reason.
但教练的薪水很高是有原因的。
That ability to assemble the right team is a scarce resource, and it’s very difficult to pull off.
组建合适团队的能力是一种稀缺资源，而且很难实现。
It’s very hard for outsiders to know when teams work well.
外人很难知道团队何时运作良好。
The old Athenian system, representation by lot — choose members of the legislature more or less randomly.
旧的雅典制度是抽签代表制——或多或少随机地选择立法机构成员。
Or the Venetian system has a random element in it, the old Renaissance Venetian system.
或者威尼斯系统中有一个随机元素，即旧的文艺复兴威尼斯系统。
Good idea or a bad idea?
好主意还是坏主意？
When can it work?
什么时候可以发挥作用呢？
These systems seem to work in small polities.
这些系统似乎在小政体中发挥作用。
Small government seems to work well with a version of election by lot.
小政府似乎与抽签选举的形式运作良好。
And we use versions of election by lot in trials.
我们在试验中使用了抽签选举的版本。
You’re basically selected randomly to be on a trial as a juror.
您基本上是被随机选择作为陪审员参加审判的。
And many judges are assigned to cases relatively randomly, although those are people who already preselected.
许多法官被分配处理案件相对随机，尽管这些人是已经预先选定的。
But at the margin, should we do more of it?
但在边际上，我们应该做得更多吗？
We could choose a departmental chairperson by lot, right?
我们可以抽签选出系主任，对吗？
Yes, you’re right.
是的，你说得对。
We could choose —
我们可以选择——
The bridge club could use it?
桥牌俱乐部可以使用它吗？
No, I tend to think that when it comes to management skills, which is what a lot of these governance-type jobs are about, that’s where we really want some level of expertise, skill at that particular management trait.
不，我倾向于认为，当谈到管理技能时，这是许多治理类型工作的内容，这就是我们真正需要一定水平的专业知识和特定管理特征的技能的地方。
Where juries are good is where selecting people randomly from the populace is most valuable, when we’re trying to figure out the opinion of the populace, and we want people to carefully think about an issue.
当我们试图了解民众的意见并希望人们仔细思考某个问题时，陪审团的优势在于从民众中随机选择人员是最有价值的。
We should be selecting from the populace at random when we really want the most informed opinion of a typical person.
当我们真正想要得到典型人最有见识的意见时，我们应该从民众中随机选择。
That aligns the incentives well.
这很好地协调了激励措施。
For the United States, what is the most effective way, in your view, that you would want us to have 10 percent less democracy?
对于美国来说，您认为最有效的方法是什么，让我们的民主程度减少 10%？
What’s the one thing you would change?
你想改变的一件事是什么？
I would change the House of Representatives to a six-year term.
我将把众议院的任期改为六年。
I picked that because it’s not outside the range of plausibility, and because I think people would instantly understand what it accomplishes — not because it has the highest payoff, but because it balances payoff with plausibility in a democracy.
我之所以选择这个，是因为它不在合理范围之外，而且我认为人们会立即理解它所取得的成就——不是因为它具有最高的回报，而是因为它在民主国家中平衡了回报与合理性。
And you would still have them elected all together at the same time, or you would stagger it?
你仍然会让他们同时当选，或者你会错开选举？
No, I think the staggering which was built in by the Founding Fathers of the US was brilliant, and it’s all the more important in our modern age of social media, where social media waves can come and go so quickly.
不，我认为美国开国元勋们所创造的惊人成就是辉煌的，在我们现代的社交媒体时代，这一点更加重要，因为社交媒体浪潮来得快去得也快。
Balanced, staggering elections means that no one period of time has a dominant effect on how the next six years of our country turns out.
平衡、令人震惊的选举意味着没有任何一个时期能够对我国未来六年的结果产生决定性影响。
Do you think it would raise or lower the influence of money and politics?
您认为这会提高还是降低金钱和政治的影响力？
I think it would plausibly raise it a bit because being less accountable to voters, to that short-run mania of voter demands, would probably give a touch more vote, touch more influence to political investors.
我认为这可能会提高一点，因为对选民、对选民需求的短期狂热不那么负责，可能会给政治投资者带来更多的选票和更多的影响力。
When one election has a six-year payoff, you’re willing to invest more than one that has a two-year payoff.
当一项选举有六年回报时，你愿意投资比一项有两年回报的选举更多的资金。
Let’s say you can make one effective change to the governance of the European Union.
假设您可以对欧盟的治理做出一项有效的改变。
What’s your pick?
你的选择是什么？
That’s a much tougher one.
这是一个更艰难的事情。
Yeah.
是的。
Because they have more than 10 percent less democracy than they used to, right?
因为他们的民主程度比以前少了 10% 以上，对吧？
Yeah, yeah.
是啊是啊。
I think I would probably strengthen the jurisdiction of the EU’s top court.
我想我可能会加强欧盟最高法院的管辖权。
I’ll get its name wrong right now because there’s so many of these European courts, but I’d strengthen their jurisdiction to be able to dive into the local political systems of the countries they’re overseeing, make it just a little bit more like a national government.
我现在会把它的名字弄错，因为欧洲法院有很多，但我会加强他们的管辖权，以便能够深入了解他们所监管国家的当地政治体系，使其更像一个国家政府。
If someone said we should replace the European Council with a true executive, a single person who would be highly visible and evaluated as such, and that might make the EU more accountable to voters or public opinion, do you agree or disagree?
如果有人说我们应该用一位真正的行政人员取代欧洲理事会，一个具有高度知名度和评价的个人，这可能会让欧盟对选民或公众舆论更加负责，你同意还是不同意？
I absolutely agree with that, whether it’s voted on by the masses or selected by the EU Council in some way.
我绝对同意这一点，无论是群众投票还是欧盟理事会以某种方式选出。
The EU keeps moving toward that.
欧盟一直在朝着这个方向前进。
You can tell they’re groping toward something like this.
你可以看出他们正在摸索这样的事情。
But they can’t quite pull it off because they have so many little heads between the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the EU Council.
但他们无法完全成功，因为欧盟委员会、欧洲议会和欧盟理事会之间有太多的小脑袋。
But yeah, you’re right.
但是，是的，你是对的。
They want more accountability so that there is a clear voice and there’s someone they can hold responsible for success and failure.
他们希望有更多的责任，以便有清晰的声音，并且有人可以对成功和失败负责。
But do they want more accountability?
但他们想要更多的责任吗？
Isn’t there the risk that with an executive, you can then have a highly visible direct clash with national governments, and maybe the whole thing falls apart?
难道没有这样的风险吗：如果是一名高管，你可能会与各国政府发生高度明显的直接冲突，甚至整个事情可能会崩溃？
And the whole point of the European Council system is to make it vague and amorphous and not so transparent, so you can always kick the can down the road and pretend you agree when you don’t, and that’s what keeps the whole thing held together.
欧洲理事会体系的全部要点就是让它变得模糊、无定形，不那么透明，这样你就可以随时把罐子踢到一边，在你不同意的时候假装你同意，这就是让整个事情保持在一起的原因。
Well, this is the question right now.
嗯，这就是现在的问题。
If they’re getting rid of the squeakiest wheel through Brexit, then that strengthens the case for having a tighter government among the remaining members.
如果他们通过脱欧摆脱了最吱吱作响的轮子，那么这就更有理由在剩余成员中建立更严格的政府。
Scott Sumner says, “Ask Garett about Switzerland, the world’s most democratic nation by far.”
斯科特·萨姆纳 (Scott Sumner) 说：“向加雷特询问瑞士的情况，瑞士是迄今为止世界上最民主的国家。”
This is a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
People have brought this up to me over the years.
多年来，人们向我提出过这个问题。
Switzerland is incredibly democratic, and it’s incredibly functional.
瑞士非常民主，而且非常实用。
It’s hard to tell — is it just that the Swiss are different?
很难说——难道只是瑞士人与众不同吗？
Is that just a Swiss national culture that can’t be captured as lightning in a bottle?
难道这只是瑞士的民族文化，无法捕捉到瓶中闪电吗？
Or is it something as simple as the fact that so much of their direct democracy is held at the local, decentralized canton level?
或者是因为他们的大部分直接民主都是在地方、分散的州一级进行的，这一事实很简单吗？
Sometimes even lower levels, quite the equivalent of villages level.
有时甚至更低，相当于村庄的级别。
So, to the extent that it’s at that very low level, that’s sounding a lot like the Athenian system, and the Athenian system of democracy — direct democracy working okay in groups of five to 20,000 — might be plausible.
因此，就其处于非常低的水平而言，这听起来很像雅典制度，而雅典民主制度——直接民主在五到两万人的群体中运作良好——可能是合理的。
But that’s not the level we’re working with.
但这不是我们正在处理的水平。
And Switzerland is not running its national government through direct plebiscites in that way.
瑞士并没有以这种方式通过直接公民投票来管理其国家政府。
What about extreme federalism for more places?
更多地方的极端联邦制怎么样？
Is that a good idea?
这是个好主意吗？
It is logically possible.
从逻辑上来说这是可能的。
No, I tend to think that it’s not incredibly desirable for the kind of reasons Glen Weyl points out, that basically, there’s a lot of increasing returns in the world, and you want to be able to have feasible routine government negotiations at the highest level, where increasing returns are mattering.
不，我倾向于认为这并不是非常理想的，因为格伦·韦尔指出的原因是，基本上，世界上有很多收益递增的东西，你希望能够在最高层进行可行的例行政府谈判，其中收益递增很重要。
It’s totally plausible to have more federalism, but outside of the problems .
实行更多的联邦制是完全有可能的，但除了问题之外。
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We even see this in problems of big cities, where metropolitan statistical areas much better capture the scope of positive and negative externalities.
我们甚至在大城市的问题中看到了这一点，大城市的统计区域可以更好地捕捉正外部性和负外部性的范围。
That’s where the bargaining should be happening, but yet we have the city governments that are much smaller often.
这才是讨价还价的地方，但我们的市政府往往规模要小得多。
I tend to think that increasing returns are driving a lot of the successes and failures around the world, positive and negative externalities of human interactions, so you want to have the broadest scope possible.
我倾向于认为，收益递增正在推动世界各地的许多成功和失败，以及人类互动的积极和消极外部性，因此你希望拥有尽可能广泛的范围。
You want to have your equivalent of a parliament with the broadest scope of negotiation because parliaments are a great Coasean negotiation forum.
你希望拥有一个具有最广泛谈判范围的议会，因为议会是一个伟大的科斯式谈判论坛。
It seems that more decisions, in the US at least, are being made at the city level — minimum wage hikes, climate change policy.
至少在美国，似乎更多的决定是在城市层面做出的——最低工资上涨、气候变化政策。
Apart from whatever you think of those particular decisions, are you, in general, unhappy about more decisions being made at the city level?
除了您对这些特定决定的看法之外，总的来说，您是否对城市层面做出的更多决定感到不满意？
No, I love it because it creates more natural experiments for economists to study.
不，我喜欢它，因为它为经济学家创造了更多自然的实验来研究。
But that seems at variance with what you just said about wanting the externalities internalized and increasing returns being so important.
但这似乎与您刚才所说的希望外部性内部化和收益递增如此重要的说法不一致。
I mean that ironically, of course, because it’s like they’re creating these natural experiments at the very local level, which creates a lot of information.
当然，我的意思是具有讽刺意味的，因为就像他们在当地层面上进行这些自然实验一样，这创造了很多信息。
That’s beautiful in its way, but a lot of these are things that are not that promising.
这本身很美好，但其中很多事情并不那么有希望。
Economists aren’t ever going to be that excited about massive minimum wage hikes, doubling the minimum wage in the normal range of variation for most countries we’ve seen.
经济学家永远不会对大幅提高最低工资感到兴奋，因为对于我们所看到的大多数国家来说，最低工资在正常变化范围内翻了一番。
Here’s a reader question, and I quote, “Are there any examples of people willingly giving up some of their power to elites?
这是一个读者的问题，我引用一下，“有没有人愿意将部分权力交给精英的例子？
There’s lots of systems of indirect democracy, but I can’t think of any that evolved to that point for more democratic systems.”
间接民主制度有很多，但我想不出有任何制度能够发展到如此程度，从而形成更加民主的制度。”
Oh, no, we’ve been shrinking democracy across a lot of the rich countries.
哦，不，我们一直在缩小许多富裕国家的民主。
The biggest example is, since the 1970s, the rise of independent central banking, politicians handing over more and more power to people like me, to economists, to macroeconomists, especially those trained in money and time series.
最大的例子是，自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，独立中央银行的兴起，政治家将越来越多的权力交给像我这样的人、经济学家、宏观经济学家，尤其是那些受过货币和时间序列训练的经济学家。
And they just let people, people I went to grad school with — these folks just kind of run the central banking system.
他们只是让人们，和我一起读研究生的人——这些人只是管理中央银行系统。
That’s a voluntary ceding of massive financial power to people who are quite unelected, have long terms, and are essentially impossible to fire.
这是自愿将巨大的财务权力让给那些完全未经选举、任期较长且基本上不可能被解雇的人。
If we just think of government as a check on the very worst outcomes in the way that I think Karl Popper suggested — just get rid of the worst people, the very worst decisions; don’t expect too much from the actual decision-making capacity — does that then make democracy look better, and we want more democracy?
如果我们只是像卡尔波普尔建议的那样，将政府视为对最糟糕结果的检查——摆脱最糟糕的人，做出最糟糕的决定；不要对实际的决策能力抱有太多期望——这是否会让民主看起来更好，我们想要更多的民主？
Whereas, if you think of government as a calculating mechanism, well, of course, you want the elites.
然而，如果你将政府视为一种计算机制，那么你当然需要精英。
But if it’s just about throwing out the worst cases, doesn’t democracy then make a comeback?
但如果只是排除最坏的情况，民主不就卷土重来了吗？
That’s why chapter one of my book is entitled “The Big Benefits of a Small Dose of Democracy.” Avoiding the very worst outcomes is the least we can hope for from governance, and it turns out that democracies are great at eliminating the very worst outcomes.
这就是为什么我的书的第一章的标题是“小剂量民主的大好处”。避免最糟糕的结果是我们对治理的最低期望，事实证明民主国家非常擅长消除最糟糕的结果。
Democracies — regardless of how measured — even a moderate dose of democracy is associated with no famines, and negligible numbers of massacres of a country’s own citizens, and probably starting fewer wars.
民主国家——无论如何衡量——即使是适度的民主也不会发生饥荒，对本国公民的屠杀数量可以忽略不计，而且可能会减少战争的发生。
Hard to get from correlation to causation — that’s why I have a chapter on it — but it does seem as though a moderate level of democracy gets us the chance to avoid the greatest tragedies that have occurred in modern governance.
很难从相关性到因果关系——这就是为什么我有一章专门讨论它——但似乎适度的民主确实让我们有机会避免现代治理中发生的最大悲剧。
Dominic Cummings, as you probably know, recently wrote a blog post saying that in the United Kingdom, for their reforms, they want a lot of super smart weirdos who know a lot of math, maybe can do some programming, to change things and shake up the civil service.
你可能知道，多米尼克·卡明斯（Dominic Cummings）最近写了一篇博文，称在英国，为了进行改革，他们需要很多超级聪明的怪人，他们懂很多数学，也许可以做一些编程，以改变现状并撼动公务员队伍。
Does that idea make sense?
这个想法有道理吗？
Or is it going to destroy itself?
还是它会毁灭自己？
As a general rule for all the civil service, it destroys itself.
作为所有公务员的一般规则，它会自我毁灭。
But as the idea of a sort of Skunk Works that, if kept in a box for two to three years, could generate great ideas that can be pushed into the right sectors of a government — that seems quite plausible.
但作为一种臭鼬工厂的想法，如果在盒子里保存两到三年，就可以产生伟大的想法，并可以将其推入政府的正确部门——这似乎很有道理。
My guess is that in any of the rich democracies now, there’s probably 5 to 15 percent of the government where there’s just enough of a culture that’s open to radical reform, and it probably takes a year or two to figure out where those sections of the government are.
我的猜测是，现在在任何一个富裕的民主国家中，可能有 5% 到 15% 的政府部门有足够的文化对激进改革持开放态度，而且可能需要一两年的时间才能弄清楚政府中这些部门的位置。
The right weirdos could come in and re-engineer that, pretty much like any kind of corporate reorganization.
合适的怪人可以进来并重新设计它，就像任何类型的公司重组一样。
If you could be a benevolent dictator of any country or region on earth, where could you have the greatest 50-year impact?
如果你可以成为地球上任何国家或地区的仁慈独裁者，你对哪个国家或地区的50年影响最大？
They do what you say.
他们照你说的做。
They do what I say?
他们照我说的做？
And you get 10 years in charge, and then you leave.
你负责10年，然后你就离开。
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
是啊，是啊，是啊。
I would like to think that it would be Rwanda.
我想是卢旺达。
Paul Kagame has made quite a number of reforms.
保罗·卡加梅做出了相当多的改革。
Other economic, political, social leaders across sub-Saharan Africa have paid a lot of attention.
撒哈拉以南非洲地区的其他经济、政治和社会领导人也给予了很多关注。
There are, of course, real weaknesses in what’s been going on there, as well.
当然，那里发生的事情也存在真正的弱点。
It could be the case that he just doesn’t need my advice.
可能他只是不需要我的建议。
He’s really just following the Lee Kuan Yew path to the best of his ability.
他实际上只是在尽其所能地追随李光耀的道路。
But I think the idea of having a populace that’s basically open to moderate levels of reform and leaders who are open to some degree of technocratic governance while making life great for the masses — that’s something that could happen there.
但我认为，让民众基本上对适度的改革持开放态度，让领导人对一定程度的技术官僚治理持开放态度，同时让群众过上更好的生活——这是可能发生的事情。
Why has political polarization in America gone up, if indeed it has?
如果美国的政治两极分化确实如此，为什么会加剧呢？
Some of it is the rise of social media.
其中一些是社交媒体的兴起。
It is sort of the federalism of the internet.
这有点像互联网的联邦制。
And part of it is the rise in ethnic diversity across the US.
部分原因是美国各地种族多样性的增加。
There’s a reason why we use the term ethnic conflict when studying a lot of wars across history.
我们在研究历史上的许多战争时使用“种族冲突”一词是有原因的。
And at a much lower level, people often disagree with each other when they come from different cultural backgrounds —
在更低的层面上，当人们来自不同的文化背景时，他们常常会互相意见不一致——
It seems like the worst shouting is rich white elites at each other, right?
看来最糟糕的叫喊是富有的白人精英互相对骂，对吧？
That’s true, but that’s partly because the rich white elites are acting as the self-appointed representatives of other individuals and groups in society.
确实如此，但这部分是因为富有的白人精英自封为社会中其他个人和群体的代表。
I think there’s that feedback between those two.
我认为两者之间存在反馈。
But since they’re not actually representing those other groups, wouldn’t these squabbles have happened anyway?
但既然他们实际上并不代表其他群体，这些争吵难道不会发生吗？
And if one group of the wealthy white elites claims to be speaking for the L-A-T-I-N-X people — well, maybe that’s absurd, but that’s a kind of excuse, and they would fight about something else.
如果一群富有的白人精英声称代表 L-A-T-I-N-X 人民说话——好吧，也许这很荒谬，但这是一种借口，他们会为其他事情而斗争。
No, I think it’s easier to have arguments when people can credibly point to some substance.
不，我认为当人们能够可信地指出某些实质内容时，争论会更容易。
In debates over political issues, each side tends to pay some kind of respect to the raw existence of the other side’s issues.
在政治问题的辩论中，每一方都倾向于对对方问题的原始存在表示某种尊重。
So, if there is no existence of the issue, if you’re talking about folks who are 0.003 percent of the population, then it’s much harder to create a broad social movement, worrying about that problem.
因此，如果这个问题不存在，如果你谈论的是占人口 0.003% 的人，那么就很难发起一场广泛的社会运动来担心这个问题。
You once said on Twitter that one of the books that influenced you most was Gary Miller’s Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy.
您曾在推特上说过，对您影响最大的书之一是加里·米勒的《管理困境：等级制度的政治经济学》。
What did you learn from that book?
你从那本书中学到了什么？
Why is it important?
为什么它很重要？
Oh, it’s great because it applies classic public choice to the questions of corporations, or any of the organization of the firm.
哦，这很棒，因为它将经典的公共选择应用于公司或公司任何组织的问题。
One early insight is that Arrow’s impossibility theorem applies to any kind of decision within a firm.
一个早期的见解是阿罗不可能定理适用于公司内的任何类型的决策。
If you have three top managers who are trying to decide the strategy of the company, and they disagree slightly on where the company should be taken — wow, that can lead to classic preference cycling, a classic Condorcet paradox.
如果你有三位高层管理人员试图决定公司的战略，而他们对公司的发展方向略有不同——哇，这可能会导致经典的偏好循环，一个经典的孔多塞悖论。
Corporations can face the same difficulties of making rational decisions whether it’s because of the problems of voting, the problems of paying people their marginal product when real life is a team effort .
公司在做出理性决策时也会面临同样的困难，无论是因为投票问题，还是因为现实生活是团队努力时向人们支付边际产品的问题。
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Ultimately, Gary Miller says, “The only thing that can solve this problem is to realize that firm culture is basically an equilibrium to a repeated prisoner’s dilemma, a long-run cooperation game.”
加里·米勒说，最终，“唯一能解决这个问题的就是认识到企业文化基本上是对反复出现的囚徒困境的平衡，是一种长期的合作博弈。”
Once he pointed out, in sort of the climax of the book, that long-run cooperation focusing on some kind of cultural norm and infusing that throughout the system was crucial to firm success, and that failed firms will be those often that failed to coordinate on a good equilibrium, I decided that was central to seeing not just how firms work, but how societies work as a whole.
当他在本书的高潮中指出，专注于某种文化规范并将其融入整个体系的长期合作对于企业的成功至关重要，而失败的企业往往是那些未能在良好均衡上进行协调的企业时，我认为这不仅对于了解企业如何运作，而且对于了解整个社会如何运作至关重要。
On Hive Mind
蜂巢思维
Let’s try some questions related to your first book, Hive Mind.
让我们尝试一些与您的第一本书《Hive Mind》相关的问题。
Here’s a reader question: “The term hive mind is often thought of as a science fiction term, first used in 1950 in a short story, “The Second Night of Summer” by James Schmidt, about alien intelligences.
这是一个读者问题：“蜂巢思维这个词通常被认为是一个科幻小说术语，首次使用于 1950 年詹姆斯·施密特 (James Schmidt) 的短篇小说《夏日的第二夜》中，该小说讲述的是外星智慧生物。
In the Cold War era this was frightening.
在冷战时期，这是令人恐惧的。
And of course, there’s the Borg from Star Trek: Next Generation.
当然，还有《星际迷航：下一代》中的博格。
Do you think the term hive mind is now fully thought of as a good term, rather than a concept that strikes fear?”
你认为“蜂巢思维”这个词现在被充分认为是一个好术语，而不是一个令人恐惧的概念吗？”
Yeah, it’s a great question.
是的，这是一个很好的问题。
I have to say, the Wall Street Journal very kindly wrote an entire article about that.
我不得不说，《华尔街日报》非常好心地为此写了整篇文章。
The heart of the article was how I picked the title of my book, and it was about this very theme.
这篇文章的核心是我如何选择我的书名，它就是关于这个主题的。
The hive mind used to be a negative idea, but now people routinely, on social media at least, treat it as a positive idea.
蜂巢思维曾经是一个消极的想法，但现在人们通常（至少在社交媒体上）将其视为一个积极的想法。
The idea that we can grab ideas from a lot of other people, and synthesize those ideas, and get — to use the business cliché — synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — this is something that people can see on a regular basis now, in a way that was much more theoretical 50 years, 75 years ago.
我们可以从很多其他人那里获取想法，综合这些想法，并获得——用商业陈词滥调——协同效应，整体大于部分之和——这是人们现在可以经常看到的东西，在某种程度上，这在 50 年前、75 年前还比较理论化。
I think the idea of a hive mind or collective intelligence still has the scary downside, and it should.
我认为蜂巢思维或集体智慧的想法仍然有可怕的缺点，而且它应该如此。
But the positive upside is way too visible for people to ignore.
但积极的好处是显而易见的，人们无法忽视。
In the 1970s, Irish IQ measured as lower than British IQ, and people worried about this as a problem.
在 20 世纪 70 年代，爱尔兰人的智商低于英国人的智商，人们担心这是一个问题。
These days, Irish IQ measures as higher.
如今，爱尔兰人的智商更高。
What should we learn or infer from this development?
我们应该从这一发展中学到什么或推断什么？
Yeah, something similar happened in East Germany after the end of communism, where there was this 10-ish point IQ gain within about a decade, decade and a half of the collapse of communism.
是的，共产主义结束后，东德也发生了类似的事情，在共产主义崩溃后的大约十年、十五年里，那里的智商提高了 10 点左右。
I think it’s a sign that substantial amounts of national or regional intelligence, cognitive skills, are really shaped by the culture that we’re marinating in.
我认为这是一个迹象，表明大量的国家或地区智力、认知技能确实是由我们所处的文化塑造的。
This is part of my hive mind ideas.
这是我的蜂巢思维想法的一部分。
I take the Flynn effect very seriously.
我非常重视弗林效应。
What Flynn and Dickens pointed out in their famous paper, and what Flynn has emphasized in his own work — the IQ researcher who’s a philosopher by training — is that when our environment changes .
弗林和狄更斯在他们的著名论文中指出的，以及弗林在自己的著作中强调的——智商研究者是经过训练的哲学家——是当我们的环境发生变化时。
.
。
.
。
Most of us get to choose our own environment as adults.
作为成年人，我们大多数人都可以选择自己的环境。
But some of us have our environments as adults forced upon us through, basically, the culture, society we’re living in, and that has a huge effect on how we use our minds.
但我们中的一些人在成年后的环境基本上是通过我们所生活的文化和社会强加给我们的，这对我们如何使用我们的思想产生了巨大的影响。
I think that really does show up in substantive intelligence, not just some sort of nominal intelligence.
我认为这确实体现在实质性智力上，而不仅仅是某种名义上的智力。
But what’s the key environmental lever?
但关键的环境杠杆是什么？
Whatever Ireland did, it’s not that people were starving, right?
无论爱尔兰做了什么，人们都不会挨饿，对吗？
That we understand.
我们明白。
No, true.
不，是的。
So why don’t we do more of whatever they did, whatever was done to the East Germans, everywhere?
那么，为什么我们不做更多他们所做的事情，无论世界各地对东德人所做的事情呢？
Exactly.
确切地。
But what is that lever?
但那个杠杆是什么？
Why don’t we know?
为什么我们不知道？
I would say that thing is the thing we call capitalism.
我想说的就是我们所说的资本主义。
Capitalism is a big, huge thing.
资本主义是一个非常非常大的东西。
Not all of capitalism makes us smarter.
并不是所有的资本主义都会让我们变得更聪明。
Yeah, that’s the thing — figuring out which things within capitalism — what is it about living in a free society with competitive markets where, at least in our youth and middle age, we feel a need to sell ourselves as valuable creators.
是的，这就是问题所在——弄清楚资本主义中的哪些东西——生活在一个具有竞争性市场的自由社会中意味着什么，至少在我们的青年和中年，我们觉得有必要将自己推销为有价值的创造者。
There’s something about that that probably is what’s most valuable for boosting cognitive skills.
这对于提高认知技能来说可能是最有价值的。
It’s a sort of demand-side desire to try to use our minds in socially productive ways.
这是一种需求方的愿望，试图以对社会富有成效的方式运用我们的思想。
And I think in communism, we can —
我认为在共产主义中，我们可以——
So marketing makes us smarter?
那么营销让我们变得更聪明吗？
That’s what I would say, yeah.
这就是我想说的，是的。
Yeah.
是的。
I think there’s some version of this.
我认为有一些版本。
There is a push-pull element, too.
还有一个推拉元件。
When you’re in a network of people who are trying to do that for you, you end up trying hard to decipher their signals as well.
当你处于一个试图为你做这件事的人网络中时，你最终也会努力破译他们的信号。
When other people are trying to present themselves as, “Oh, look, I’m a cognitively sophisticated person.
当其他人试图表现出“哦，看，我是一个认知复杂的人。
I’m trotting out these ideas,” you’re trying to process their signals so you can fit into their world.
我正在提出这些想法，”你正在尝试处理他们的信号，以便融入他们的世界。
So there’s a synergy here.
所以这里存在协同作用。
It’s not just a one-way story.
这不仅仅是一个单向的故事。
One of the key themes of your book is that the social returns to intelligence and groups are much higher than the private returns.
您书中的关键主题之一是智力和群体的社会回报远高于私人回报。
Yeah.
是的。
If that’s the case, why don’t we see increasing returns in the economic data almost everywhere?
如果是这样的话，为什么我们没有在几乎所有地方的经济数据中看到收益递增呢？
It’s because it works essentially like a level effect, not like some sort of increasing returns to scale.
这是因为它的工作原理本质上就像水平效应，而不是某种规模收益递增的效应。
My rough estimate from my early work was that one IQ point raises your private marginal product about 1 percent, but it raises your society’s marginal product in the long run with about 6 percent, so that’s a level effect.
我根据我早期的工作粗略估计，一个智商点可以使你的私人边际产量提高约 1%，但从长远来看，它可以使你的社会的边际产量提高约 6%，所以这是一种水平效应。
I wouldn’t expect to see some sort of massive agglomeration showing up in the wealth-creation process.
我不希望看到财富创造过程中出现某种大规模的聚集。
But firms are larger than before, at least in the US.
但公司规模比以前更大，至少在美国是这样。
Cities are larger.
城市更大。
Our population is growing.
我们的人口正在增长。
We’re better at sorting talent.
我们更擅长对人才进行分类。
So why doesn’t the economic data look like what Paul Romer expected in 1990, where there are literally increasing returns to scale, growth rates go up, you see increasing returns almost everywhere?
那么，为什么经济数据看起来不像保罗·罗默 (Paul Romer) 在 1990 年所预期的那样，规模报酬递增，增长率上升，你几乎到处都能看到报酬递增呢？
It seems we do in a few super firms and a handful of cities, but otherwise not.
看起来我们在一些超级公司和少数城市是这样做的，但除此之外并非如此。
I think the answer to why Paul Romer’s world didn’t turn out to be true comes from his coauthor, Chad Jones.
我认为保罗·罗默的世界为何不真实的答案来自于他的合著者查德·琼斯。
Chad Jones’s semi-endogenous growth theory basically says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s great to have a lot of people, more people searching for ideas.
查德·琼斯的半内生增长理论基本上是这样说的：“是啊，是啊，是啊，有很多人，更多的人在寻找想法，这真是太棒了。
But there’s diminishing returns to the idea research process, just like there are diminishing returns to capital.”
但创意研究过程的回报递减，就像资本的回报递减一样。”
And once you add in diminishing ideas to the search return processes, once you grab the low-hanging fruit, it’s more expensive to grab the harder ideas to invent.
一旦你在搜索返回过程中添加递减的想法，一旦你抓住了容易实现的成果，抓住更难发明的想法的成本就会更高。
Then you get back to something that’s a lot like the solo growth model, where the world’s level of growth and new ideas ends up becoming kind of a constant, a constant value.
然后你会回到类似于单独增长模型的情况，世界的增长水平和新想法最终会成为一种恒定的、恒定的价值。
There might be some shifts in the relative level.
相对水平可能会发生一些变化。
But ultimately, because new ideas are pretty hard to find — new, valuable ideas — you end up right back at whatever the long-run number is.
但最终，因为新的想法很难找到——新的、有价值的想法——无论长期数字是多少，你最终都会回到原来的状态。
Maybe that’s 2 percent, maybe that’s 1 percent.
也许是 2%，也许是 1%。
In your view, why are smarter groups of people more cooperative, on average?
在您看来，为什么聪明的人群平均起来更加合作？
I think, partly, it’s for reasons that come out of Axelrod.
我认为，部分原因来自阿克塞尔罗德。
So Axelrod’s Evolution of Cooperation really had a huge influence on how I think about the hive mind.
所以阿克塞尔罗德的合作进化确实对我对蜂群思维的看法产生了巨大的影响。
The three traits that turned out to be especially crucial are what I call the three Ps of the repeated prisoner’s dilemma, the RPD.
结果证明特别重要的三个特征就是我所说的重复囚徒困境的三个 P，即 RPD。
It turns out that intelligent people are more patient, they are more pleasant, and they are more perceptive.
事实证明，聪明的人更有耐心、更令人愉快、更有洞察力。
In order to get good cooperation in groups, it helps to have people who are focused on the long run, who are willing to take a little risk today in order to get back some return to their cooperation in the future, so they need to be more patient.
为了在团体中获得良好的合作，需要那些着眼于长远的人，他们愿意今天冒一点风险，以便在未来的合作中获得一些回报，所以他们需要更有耐心。
They need to be more pleasant.
他们需要变得更加令人愉快。
They need to be more willing to start off cooperating, to take a chance on cooperation early in the game.
他们需要更愿意开始合作，并在游戏早期抓住合作的机会。
It turns out, experiments showed that they, in fact, do that on average.
事实证明，实验表明他们实际上平均做到了这一点。
And they need to be more perceptive.
他们需要更有洞察力。
They need to keep track of the fact that they’re playing a game and that there are payoffs happening.
他们需要跟踪他们正在玩游戏并且正在发生回报的事实。
Remembering the history of a game — and life is a game in many ways — is important to generating cooperation.
记住游戏的历史——而生活在很多方面都是一场游戏——对于产生合作非常重要。
So smarter people tend to have all three traits in greater degree: more patient, more perceptive, more pleasant.
因此，聪明的人往往在更大程度上具备这三个特征：更有耐心、更有洞察力、更令人愉快。
And those three Ps of the repeated prisoner’s dilemma are crucial for group cooperation.
重复囚徒困境的这三个 P 对于团队合作至关重要。
In some studies, the personality psychology trait called conscientiousness doesn’t seem to predict cooperation at all.
在一些研究中，被称为尽责性的人格心理学特征似乎根本不能预测合作。
Why is that?
这是为什么？
How do you make sense of that result?
您如何理解这个结果？
I think, partly, it’s because it’s none of the three Ps of the RPD.
我认为，部分原因是它不是 RPD 的 3P 中的任何一个。
But to go beyond that to real substance, it’s that cooperation is pretty dangerous.
但要超越这一点，真正的实质内容是，合作是相当危险的。
A person who’s conscientious in trying to make sure that they’re watching out for their themselves or their loved ones should be a bit reluctant to just jump into a pro-social, pro-cooperation relationship because a lot of people get ripped off.
一个尽职尽责地努力确保自己或所爱的人受到保护的人应该不太愿意直接进入一种亲社会、亲合作的关系，因为很多人都被敲诈了。
So a prudent person who isn’t able to tell whether you’re dealing with someone who’s trustworthy, should best respond in an untrustworthy way.
因此，一个谨慎的人如果无法判断自己是否在与值得信赖的人打交道，那么最好以不值得信赖的方式做出回应。
If I don’t know whether I’m surrounded by scoundrels or saints, it’s probably a little safer to assume that I’m surrounded by scoundrels.
如果我不知道自己周围是恶棍还是圣人，那么假设我周围都是恶棍可能会更安全一些。
And a person who is conscientious will be more likely to just notice that fact.
一个有责任心的人更有可能注意到这一事实。
When I tell smart people, including bosses and venture capitalists, how relatively weak is the correlation between individual IQ and wages, typically they’re surprised.
当我告诉聪明人，包括老板和风险投资家，个人智商和工资之间的相关性相对较弱时，他们通常会感到惊讶。
You may have found the same.
您可能也发现了同样的情况。
Yes.
是的。
Does that mean that we as a society, the elites are overrating intelligence?
这是否意味着我们作为一个社会的精英们高估了智力？
It does.
确实如此。
If what you’re saying is true —
如果你说的是真的——
Hire stupider people?
雇用更愚蠢的人？
Yeah, yeah.
是啊是啊。
I think the correlation is just high enough for you to keep it on your radar, but it’s just low enough that you should always do the job interview and not just hire on the SAT score.
我认为这种相关性足够高，足以让你注意到它，但它也足够低，让你应该经常参加工作面试，而不仅仅是根据 SAT 成绩来招聘。
Especially, the link between IQ and income is weaker when you just look at IQ and wages.
尤其是，当你只看智商和工资时，智商和收入之间的联系就更弱了。
A lot of the numbers that people look at are often looking at the link between IQ and total income for people in late middle age.
人们关注的许多数据通常关注的是中年晚期人群的智商与总收入之间的联系。
And by that time, a lot of people, at least in the sample, have some nonwage income, some financial flows coming in.
到那时，很多人，至少在样本中，都有一些非工资收入，一些资金流入。
And that’s driven by intelligence as well, to some degree.
在某种程度上，这也是由智力驱动的。
Smarter people seem to be paid better in the stock market, for instance.
例如，聪明的人在股票市场上的薪酬似乎更高。
So yeah, when you look at the link between IQ and wages, the market just isn’t paying all that much for it.
所以，是的，当你观察智商和工资之间的联系时，你会发现市场并没有为此付出那么多的代价。
The boss will pay something for it, but there seems to be a lot of other things that are worth more.
老板会为此付出一些代价，但似乎还有很多其他东西更值钱。
I think part of this is that the way jobs are constructed is that jobs are constructed to be, in many ways, foolproof, so that a person can’t screw it up that much.
我认为部分原因是工作的构建方式在很多方面都是万无一失的，这样一个人就不会把事情搞砸那么多。
So being the very smartest person in a particular job category might not make you that much more productive than being the worst person in that job category, but that’s partly because that job category was created so people couldn’t screw it up that much.
因此，成为某个特定工作类别中最聪明的人可能不会比成为该工作类别中最差的人更有效率，但这部分是因为该工作类别的创建是为了让人们不能把事情搞砸那么多。
Let’s say I do interviews, and I’ve decided I will weight intelligence less.
假设我接受采访，并且我决定减少智力的权重。
What should I weight more instead?
我应该增加什么重量呢？
I think an ability to adapt to what the group needs at any point in time because I tend to think a version of openness —
我认为有能力随时适应团队的需求，因为我倾向于认为开放的一种形式——
Social flexibility.
社会灵活性。
Social flexibility, yeah.
社会灵活性，是的。
Women tend to have more of that in some studies, right?
在一些研究中，女性往往有更多这样的情况，对吗？
I believe that, yeah.
我相信，是的。
So if we viewed intelligence properly, we would actually want to hire more women than is currently the case?
因此，如果我们正确看待智力，我们实际上会想雇用比目前更多的女性吗？
Yeah, I think so.
是的，我想是的。
I think the idea of social flexibility, openness to new experience — and that latter is correlated with IQ, weakly but positively — those are traits for nonroutine jobs especially, which probably we’re thinking about here.
我认为社交灵活性、对新体验的开放态度——后者与智商相关，虽然微弱但呈正相关——这些尤其是非常规工作的特征，我们可能在这里正在考虑这些特征。
For nonroutine jobs, whether manual or mental, openness is a trait that’s going to be more valuable.
对于非常规工作，无论是体力工作还是脑力工作，开放性都是更有价值的特质。
On things under- and overrated
关于被低估和高估的事情
Are you game for some overrated versus underrated?
您是否会选择一些被高估或被低估的游戏？
Yes, as long as we’re clear about who it is overrated or underrated compared to.
是的，只要我们清楚与谁相比，它被高估或低估了。
What is the standard?
标准是什么？
Sure, but you can make that clear.
当然可以，但是你可以说清楚。
Yeah, I will make that clear.
是的，我会说清楚。
Okay, the Harry Potter novels — overrated or underrated?
好吧，哈利波特小说——被高估还是被低估？
I have not read any of them, but I tend to believe they’re overrated.
我没有读过其中任何一本，但我倾向于认为它们被高估了。
I tend to think that they’re —
我倾向于认为他们是——
You must, if you haven’t read them, right?
如果你还没有读过的话，你一定要读，对吧？
Yeah, exactly.
是的，完全正确。
Retirement.
退休。
Underrated because I think people can do great things in retirement and keep using their mind and their body and developing them in great ways.
被低估是因为我认为人们可以在退休后做伟大的事情，并继续利用他们的思想和身体，并以伟大的方式发展它们。
Manhattan — overrated or underrated?
曼哈顿——被高估还是被低估？
Oh, still underrated.
呵呵，还是被低估了。
It’s just a wonderful place.
这真是一个美妙的地方。
Yeah, there’s so many individual universes inside of there, and even outsiders who’ve been there quite a lot don’t get to explore it enough.
是的，里面有很多单独的宇宙，即使是去过那里很多次的外人也没有足够的探索它。
It has many communities, and it has an underratedly high level of social capital.
它有许多社区，而且其社会资本水平被低估了。
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
纳撒尼尔·霍桑。
Cannot comment.
无法评论。
Too ignorant to speak.
太无知了，不敢说话。
The original Star Wars movies.
原版星球大战电影。
The first three.
前三个。
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
是的，是的，我知道你的意思。
Four through six.
四到六。
I think they’re appropriately rated.
我认为他们的评价是适当的。
People have the right rank order — that episodes four and five really did interesting new things and took big risks.
人们有正确的排名顺序——第四集和第五集确实做了有趣的新事情并冒了很大的风险。
In a way, they updated old ideas for the 21st century, and repurposing the best ideas in a substantive way is very helpful.
在某种程度上，他们更新了21世纪的旧想法，并且以实质性的方式重新利用最好的想法是非常有帮助的。
Perhaps that’s what the Harry Potter novels did.
也许这就是《哈利·波特》小说所做的。
Mm-hmm.
嗯嗯。
What is the most underrated cuisine?
最被低估的美食是什么？
French.
法语。
Why?
为什么？
I still think that the regional varieties across France are not sufficiently appreciated in other rich countries.
我仍然认为法国各地的地区品种在其他富裕国家没有得到充分的重视。
It often gets boiled down to a few clichés.
它常常被归结为一些陈词滥调。
And that’s because they’re not exported, or people have bad taste?
那是因为它们不出口，还是人们品味不好？
Or what’s the underlying mechanism?
或者说其背后的机制是什么？
Yeah, I think people have bad taste.
是的，我认为人们的品味很差。
It gets boiled down to the cliché versions of it that they’ve seen, the potted history versions of it.
它被归结为他们所见过的陈词滥调版本，即历史版本。
So, yeah.
所以，是的。
And which are the most underrated wines?
哪些是最被低估的葡萄酒？
I tend to think that regional Italian wines are still wildly underrated.
我倾向于认为意大利地区葡萄酒仍然被严重低估。
There are so many people doing excellent things in Sicily, in the northwest of Italy, in the Piedmont, with the second- and third-tier grapes that there’s just a lot of great things going on.
在西西里岛、意大利西北部、皮埃蒙特，有很多人在二线和三线葡萄领域做出了卓越的贡献，所以有很多伟大的事情正在发生。
Lennon or McCartney?
列侬还是麦卡特尼？
McCartney.
麦卡特尼.
I don’t know enough of the history to assess well, but my impression is that McCartney has a reputation for being the guy who just did this schmaltzy love-song stuff.
我对历史了解不多，无法做出很好的评价，但我的印象是，麦卡特尼因创作这种伤感情歌而闻名。
But my limited understanding is that he really had a lot of the biggest, weirdest ideas.
但我有限的理解是，他确实有很多最伟大、最奇怪的想法。
His link with Lennon was real, but .
他与列侬的联系是真实的，但是……
.
。
.
。
He was bringing the weird, but he was presenting himself as the schmaltzy guy.
他带来了奇怪的东西，但他把自己表现为一个坏人。
Buchanan or Tullock?
布坎南还是塔洛克？
Oh, that’s so hard.
哦，那太难了。
I’d say Buchanan because he .
我会说布坎南，因为他。
.
。
.
。
Tullock had more weird ideas.
塔洛克还有更奇怪的想法。
Buchanan took the time to do something that I personally am not that skilled at and not that interested in, which is building an intellectual empire, building an organization and a culture that shares those ideas.
布坎南花时间做了一些我个人不太擅长也不太感兴趣的事情，那就是建立一个知识帝国，建立一个分享这些想法的组织和文化。
And that’s really how you get important ideas into an ecosystem, by taking the time to build an organization, to build a culture, to work with people, and Buchanan did that.
这就是你如何将重要的想法融入到一个生态系统中，通过花时间建立一个组织，建立一种文化，与人们合作，布坎南做到了。
That gave him a power that Tullock couldn’t quite have.
这赋予了他塔洛克无法完全拥有的力量。
Napa or Sonoma?
纳帕还是索诺玛？
Sonoma, only because of the ones that I’ve appreciated from there most recently, where I think the land prices aren’t quite so high.
索诺玛，只是因为我最近从那里欣赏到的土地，我认为那里的土地价格并没有那么高。
It works a little bit more like what you think about restaurants, where you’re going to find the best restaurants in strip malls because that’s where the most innovation can occur.
它的运作方式有点像你对餐馆的看法，你会在商业街找到最好的餐馆，因为那是最多创新的地方。
Similarly, in Sonoma, there’s enough inexpensive land that people can still take big risks.
同样，在索诺玛，有足够的廉价土地，人们仍然可以承担巨大的风险。
Nobody’s taking a risk in Napa anymore.
没有人再去纳帕冒险了。
Seinfeld or Larry David?
宋飞传还是拉里·大卫？
Larry David because he can take the sort of Buchanan-style experience and legacy of an organization, and he can play with it.
拉里·大卫（Larry David）因为他可以吸收布坎南式的经验和组织的遗产，并且他可以利用它。
He can spend that reputation on toying with these ideas in ways you couldn’t in a big corporate sitcom.
他可以利用这种声誉来玩弄这些想法，而这是在大型企业情景喜剧中无法做到的。
Who’s your favorite American painter?
你最喜欢的美国画家是谁？
Let me see.
让我看看。
I’m going to go with Grant Wood right now.
我现在要和格兰特·伍德一起去。
I got to see American Gothic just a couple of days ago.
几天前我刚看了《美国哥特式》。
And it really did say something about America that few would have, I think, the nerve to say, in a lot of ways.
它确实讲述了一些关于美国的事情，我认为很少有人有勇气在很多方面说出来。
Macroeconomics — why is Thomas Sargent your hero?
宏观经济学——为什么托马斯·萨金特是你的英雄？
Because he marries the best of time-series thinking with the best of dynamic general equilibrium thinking.
因为他将最好的时间序列思维与最好的动态一般均衡思维结合起来。
He’s willing to make the tough choices that it takes to marry data with theory.
他愿意做出将数据与理论结合起来的艰难选择。
He doesn’t just go off into la la land of pure theory, and he doesn’t just take an agnostic approach to theory that some of the time-series people do.
他不只是进入纯理论的爱乐之国，也不只是像一些时间序列研究人员那样对理论采取不可知论的方法。
That’s a tough synthesis, and he dove into that for quite a few decades.
这是一个艰难的综合，他投入了几十年的时间。
Why do Sargent and Prescott, at least to me, seem to have lost influence with younger economists?
为什么萨金特和普雷斯科特，至少对我来说，似乎失去了对年轻经济学家的影响力？
It’s because of the rise of micro data, the rise of big data, the lack of interest in finding grand synthetic stories.
这是因为微观数据的兴起，大数据的兴起，以及人们对寻找宏大的合成故事缺乏兴趣。
That’s what I keep running into in the last, say, 10 years, is that we’re in a world in macro now where people have some sort of vague overall story that they’re willing to use.
这就是我在过去（比如说 10 年）中不断遇到的问题，那就是我们现在处于一个宏观世界，人们有某种他们愿意使用的模糊的整体故事。
But it’s essentially a new Keynesian story, which is a way of saying, “Oh, there’s some nominal stuff out there.
但这本质上是一个新的凯恩斯主义故事，这是一种说法，“哦，那里有一些名义上的东西。
There’s some real stuff.
有一些真实的东西。
We really don’t know what’s happening.” And we’re in a world — it’s a lot like the ’60s in macro where people are studying micro foundations, but they’re not synthesizing them into a macro story.
我们真的不知道发生了什么。”我们所处的世界很像 20 世纪 60 年代的宏观世界，人们正在研究微观基础，但他们并没有将它们综合成宏观故事。
Sargent and Prescott were both wedded to big macro stories that could explain the whole world.
萨金特和普雷斯科特都热衷于能够解释整个世界的宏观宏观故事。
That’s part of what drew me into social science in the first place, was the fact that I want to be around people who take micro and build it up to a macro story.
这就是吸引我进入社会科学的部分原因，因为我想和那些从微观角度构建宏观故事的人在一起。
They tried hard to do that.
他们努力做到这一点。
With the rise of big data and the rise of little stories, that has faded.
随着大数据的兴起和小故事的兴起，这种情况已经消失。
Models of nominal wage stickiness — how convincing do you find them as an explanation of sustained unemployment?
名义工资粘性模型——您认为它们对持续失业的解释有多大说服力？
Not of sustained unemployment at all.
根本不是持续失业。
I tend to think that the most recent work .
我倾向于认为是最近的作品。
.
。
.
。
The new John Bates Clark Medal winner, Nakamura — I saw her speak just a couple days ago.
新的约翰·贝茨·克拉克奖章获得者中村——几天前我看到她讲话。
When you look at the research that she’s done on nominal wage stickiness and trying to plug it into real models — sure, she definitely finds real evidence that there’s genuine nominal price stickiness, and other workers find nominal wage stickiness.
当你查看她对名义工资粘性所做的研究并试图将其插入真实模型时，当然，她确实找到了真实的证据，表明存在真正的名义价格粘性，而其他工人也发现了名义工资粘性。
These things can’t explain 10 years of unemployment.
这些都无法解释十年的失业。
The invisible hand is more powerful than wage stickiness in the long run.
从长远来看，看不见的手比工资粘性更强大。
So what’s the missing factor for explaining unemployment over sustained periods of time?
那么，解释持续一段时间内失业的缺失因素是什么呢？
Well, some of it is some version of technology shocks, where people find it very expensive in real terms to move out of certain sectors of the economy, whether there’s a regional stickiness to live in a certain area because of family ties, for instance, whether it’s generous unemployment benefits, which are certainly well worth justifying on their own right because starvation as a motivation to work isn’t great.
嗯，其中一些是某种版本的技术冲击，人们发现从某些经济部门搬出的实际成本非常昂贵，例如，是否由于家庭关系而在某个地区居住有区域粘性，是否有慷慨的失业救济金，这本身就很值得证明，因为饥饿作为工作动机并不是很好。
These real side factors, like social safety nets, real costs of adjustment, shocks that can cripple a person’s human capital for a decade or more — I think these are more important for explaining that kind of long-run stuff.
这些真正的边际因素，比如社会安全网、调整的实际成本、可能在十年或更长时间内削弱一个人的人力资本的冲击——我认为这些对于解释此类长期因素更为重要。
Sargent and Ljungqvist’s work on the “European Unemployment Dilemma,” I think, captures some of that.
我认为，萨金特和永奎斯特关于“欧洲失业困境”的著作抓住了其中的一部分。
What’s the biggest mistake found in Twitter macroeconomics?
Twitter 宏观经济学中发现的最大错误是什么？
Just people looking for simple answers.
只是人们寻找简单的答案。
You see this more than I do, of people saying, “Wow, we should just have a lot more nominal expansion, and we could have eliminated unemployment a long time ago.” I think this belief that more spending early on in the Great Recession could have obviously had a huge multiplier effect seems wrong.
你比我看到的更多，人们说：“哇，我们应该有更多的名义扩张，我们早就可以消除失业了。”我认为，这种认为大衰退初期增加支出显然会产生巨大乘数效应的信念似乎是错误的。
The folk versions of Larry Summers’s secular stagnation theory and even Summers’s secular stagnation theory itself.
拉里·萨默斯长期停滞理论的民间版本，甚至萨默斯长期停滞理论本身。
These are really under-evidenced theories.
这些确实是未经证实的理论。
It’s not that they’re under-theorized — that’s its own problem — but they’re under-evidenced.
这并不是说它们的理论化不足——这是它自己的问题——而是它们的证据不足。
Given that fiscal deficits are so high, why don’t we see more crowding out?
鉴于财政赤字如此之高，为什么我们没有看到更多的挤出现象呢？
Or do you think we do?
或者你认为我们会吗？
Partly, it’s because we have a global economy, and a lot of people are willing to invest in the US.
部分原因是我们拥有全球经济，很多人愿意在美国投资。
Financial markets are a lot more open than they were 40 years ago, so one nation’s deficit shouldn’t have nearly as much of an effect.
金融市场比 40 年前开放得多，因此一国的赤字不应产生如此大的影响。
But yeah, I do think that some degree of crowding out is happening.
但是，是的，我确实认为某种程度的排挤正在发生。
If we had macroeconomic budget balance in the US, maybe a third of that would show up in higher investment.
如果美国宏观经济预算平衡，其中三分之一可能会体现在更高的投资上。
I know it’s hard to get there.
我知道很难到达那里。
But do you think ideally, we should have budget balance now?
但您认为理想情况下我们现在应该有预算平衡吗？
Yeah, this is the kind of time you should be doing it, right?
是的，这是你应该做的事情，对吧？
How useful is it to have this liquid safe asset known as Treasury securities, which perform many functions?
拥有这种被称为国债、具有多种功能的流动性安全资产有多大用处？
Collateral, for instance.
例如，抵押品。
Don’t you want a deficit of some percent of GDP if you’re the United States?
如果你是美国，难道你不希望赤字占GDP的一定比例吗？
Well, we have a huge stock of these Treasury assets out there, and that stock would still be there if we were running budget balance right now.
好吧，我们拥有大量的国债资产，如果我们现在保持预算平衡，那么这些库存仍然会存在。
That’s worth keeping in mind.
这是值得记住的。
There’s a huge stock there.
那里有大量库存。
But it’s also totally easy for the Treasury to create bonds and just use that money to invest in something — to pick a popular example, a sovereign wealth fund.
但财政部也可以很容易地发行债券并用这些钱来投资某些东西——举一个流行的例子，主权财富基金。
But yeah, the fiscal capacity .
但是，是的，财政能力。
.
。
.
。
the US government is a superpower.
美国政府是一个超级大国。
The high credit rating of the United States is a superpower, and that gives firms and organizations, individuals, the ability to make credible promises to each other.
美国的高信用评级是一个超级大国，它使企业、组织、个人有能力相互做出可信的承诺。
That’s super valuable, but we’ve got a big stock of assets out there.
这是非常有价值的，但我们拥有大量资产。
Germany’s close to budget balance by some metrics.
从某些指标来看，德国接近预算平衡。
Shouldn’t they be borrowing more?
他们不应该借更多钱吗？
They can borrow at very low rates, sometimes negative nominal.
他们可以以非常低的利率借款，有时甚至是负名义利率。
Yeah, that’s a good question.
是的，这是一个好问题。
They face the problem of a lot of the rich countries, which is this demographic decline, and they have a lot of elderly who are going to be coming along.
他们面临着许多富裕国家的问题，即人口下降，而且他们将有很多老年人。
Those future fiscal problems are going to be haunting the rich countries for the next 30 years.
这些未来的财政问题将在未来 30 年里困扰富裕国家。
It seems as though the story that we were teaching as macroeconomists 20 years ago, and that I was learning 30 years ago as an undergrad, are true today, which is that we needed to get ready financially for the baby boomers.
20 年前我们作为宏观经济学家讲授的故事以及 30 年前我作为本科生所学的故事似乎在今天仍然成立，那就是我们需要为婴儿潮一代做好财务准备。
We did a mediocre to just-below-mediocre job of that.
我们在这方面做得很平庸甚至略低于平庸。
And now we’re reaping the regime that you’d expect in that world, which is more intergenerational tension.
现在我们正在收获你所期望的那个世界的政权，这是更多的代际紧张。
A few questions about your past.
关于你过去的一些问题。
What’s the biggest danger facing the future of the Mormon church today?
今天摩门教教会未来面临的最大危险是什么？
Oh, this is a big problem.
哦，这是一个大问题。
They’ve really lost male participation in a substantial way over the course of my lifetime.
在我的一生中，他们确实在很大程度上失去了男性的参与。
I was a Mormon missionary in 1989.
1989年我是一名摩门教传教士。
I quit.
我退出了。
I’ve kept friendly relations up with LDS folks since then.
从那时起我就和摩门教徒保持着友好的关系。
The LDS church for decades, for over a century, has been able to maintain high levels of male engagement in their religion, which is a problem for a lot of religions.
摩门教教会几十年来，一个多世纪以来，一直能够保持高水平的男性参与其宗教，这对许多宗教来说是一个问题。
Why have those returns fallen?
为什么这些回报率下降了？
It does appear, partly, that men are drawn more into the appeals of secular life.
看来，在一定程度上，男人更容易被世俗生活的吸引力所吸引。
Partly, it’s that, on Google, they’re learning about the history of the church, and they’re learning things they weren’t taught in church.
部分原因是，在谷歌上，他们正在了解教会的历史，他们正在学习教会中没有教过的东西。
Church leaders, apparently, are wrestling with this.
显然，教会领袖正在努力解决这个问题。
They’re just being exposed to ideas that had been outside the purview of the church.
他们只是接触到了教会权限之外的想法。
I think that’s a fairly important part of it.
我认为这是其中相当重要的一部分。
I think also a version of it is just the general difficulties that non-college-educated white men have had across the US, that Mormons are having their own personal version of that.
我认为还有一个版本是美国各地未受过大学教育的白人所遇到的普遍困难，摩门教徒也有自己的个人版本。
Basically, a lot of people can spend their time playing Fortnite, and that keeps them away from going to church.
基本上，很多人都可以把时间花在玩《堡垒之夜》上，这让他们不用去教堂。
So it’s Fortnite and Joe Rogan.
这就是《堡垒之夜》和乔·罗根。
Yeah.
是的。
Should non-Mormons move to Salt Lake City?
非摩门教徒应该搬到盐湖城吗？
Yeah, I think the quality of life there is very good.
是的，我认为那里的生活质量非常好。
For non-Mormons.
对于非摩门教徒。
you’re maybe at a bliss point now or at the top of the Laffer curve, where you get these great benefits of high LDS social capital, and yet there are enough non-LDS people that you can have a rich social network, where people might be able go to a nice wine dinner on a Friday or Saturday night.
你现在可能正处于幸福点或拉弗曲线的顶部，在那里你可以获得高摩门教徒社会资本的巨大好处，但也有足够多的非摩门教徒，你可以拥有丰富的社交网络，人们可能可以在周五或周六晚上去参加一顿美味的葡萄酒晚餐。
Plus, Brigham Young picked a great place in the mountains.
另外，杨百翰在山上选了一个好地方。
Should non-Mormons moved to Provo, Utah?
非摩门教徒应该搬到犹他州普罗沃吗？
That’s a little tougher.
这有点难。
I love it there.
我喜欢那里。
It’s a good fit for me because I, in a way, speak the vernacular.
这很适合我，因为在某种程度上，我说的是白话。
I think that’s a little harder case to sell because it is built closer around LDS culture, and so non-Mormons who move there will probably feel quite a bit more isolated.
我认为这种情况比较难推销，因为它更接近摩门教文化，因此搬到那里的非摩门教徒可能会感到更加孤立。
In which occupations should we expect to find Mormons over-represented?
摩门教徒在哪些职业中的比例过高？
The places where they are, which is places like the FBI and the CIA — places where being able to speak a foreign language is incredibly important, and being able to pass a drug test is incredibly important, and being able to show you can keep secrets is important.
在他们所在的地方，比如联邦调查局和中央情报局——能够说外语非常重要，能够通过药物测试非常重要，能够证明你可以保守秘密也非常重要。
And Mormons are great at all three.
摩门教徒在这三个方面都很出色。
On the Garett Jones Production Function
关于加雷特·琼斯生产函数
You’ve never written about this, as far as I know.
据我所知，你从未写过此事。
But there’s something, to me, quite special or unique about the Garett Jones vision of America that I’ve never quite seen you spell out, that you get something about America that most other people do not.
但对我来说，加雷特·琼斯对美国的愿景有一些非常特别或独特的东西，我从未见过你详细阐述过，你对美国有一些其他大多数人都没有的了解。
Do you have any sense of what that might be?
你知道那可能是什么吗？
There is this case that America, at its top 20 percentile of experience — it’s been a nation that’s been built on a hope and vision, not American exceptionalism in that it’s something you’re endowed with, but it’s an American exceptionalism in the sense that it’s something that people create.
在这种情况下，美国的经验处于前20%——它是一个建立在希望和愿景之上的国家，而不是美国例外论，因为它是你被赋予的东西，而是美国例外论，因为它是人们创造的东西。
And a sense of adventure that is central to the American experience.
冒险精神是美国体验的核心。
You could think of it as a pioneer.
你可以将其视为先驱。
It’s a mixture of a pioneering spirit with an element of strong social capital.
这是开拓精神与强大社会资本元素的结合。
So to me, of course, the Mormons then are the embodiment of this.
当然，对我来说，摩门教徒就是这一点的体现。
They’ve got this strong social capital, strong enough to stand up to other people, but at the same time, willing to take huge risks and endure great persecution in order to build a new world.
他们拥有强大的社会资本，足以对抗其他人，但同时也愿意冒巨大的风险，忍受巨大的迫害，以建立一个新世界。
And that’s an extreme version of what Americans have done for quite some time.
这是美国人长期以来所做的事情的一个极端版本。
It’s this rare blend of social capital and adventurousness at its best times.
这是社会资本和冒险精神在最好时期的罕见结合。
And that’s not just a 0.1 percent experience; it’s more like 20 to 30 percent of the US experience.
这不仅仅是 0.1% 的体验；这更像是美国经验的 20% 到 30%。
And that’s something that a lot of countries just never get.
这是许多国家永远无法实现的。
We’re now on to the Garett Jones production function, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed.
顺便说一下，我们现在正在讨论 Garett Jones 的生产函数，以防您没有注意到。
Now, you did a big America trip over the last year, correct?
现在，您去年进行了一次大型美国旅行，对吗？
Where did you go?
你去哪儿？
I drove from my house in Fairfax, and I went up across the US out to South Dakota, where I was able to see Mount Rushmore again, then went straight up to Canada and saw Banff, which was unbelievable.
我从费尔法克斯的家开车出发，穿越美国到达南达科他州，在那里我再次看到了拉什莫尔山，然后直接前往加拿大，看到了班夫，这真是令人难以置信。
And from there, I basically went counterclockwise around the rest of the US and was able to linger for a few days at places that I’d long wanted to see or had just been able to drive past.
从那里开始，我基本上逆时针绕着美国其他地方转了一圈，并能够在我一直想看或刚刚开车经过的地方逗留几天。
And what was the most surprising thing you learned?
你学到的最令人惊讶的事情是什么？
It’s that, with not being in a hurry, I was able to see parts of beauty, especially in southern Utah, which I’d driven through many, many times.
就是说，我不着急，就能看到一些美丽的地方，尤其是在犹他州南部，我已经开车经过很多很多次了。
I was able to appreciate it in ways that were just unbelievable.
我能够以令人难以置信的方式欣赏它。
Just getting up a little earlier to watch the sunrise and capture some great photos in, say, Bryce Canyon.
只是早起一点去观看日出并在布莱斯峡谷等地拍摄一些很棒的照片。
That’s the element of beauty.
这就是美的要素。
The second thing is that I expected to see a lot more of the detritus of civilization, signs of social decay in the Midwest because the internet had been telling me for a couple of years it’s been going on.
第二件事是，我预计会在中西部看到更多文明的残骸和社会衰退的迹象，因为互联网几年来一直在告诉我这种情况正在发生。
And yes, pockets of this.
是的，还有这个的口袋。
Yes, definite concerns about the opioid crisis, very real concerns.
是的，对阿片类药物危机的明确担忧，非常现实的担忧。
You could see them displayed on billboards.
你可以看到它们显示在广告牌上。
But at the same time, a lot of capital investment, a lot of new machines and equipment, a lot of rebuilding in quite rural areas.
但与此同时，大量的资本投资，大量的新机器和设备，以及在相当农村地区的大量重建。
So, it was a sign to me that the Midwest has .
所以，这对我来说是一个迹象，表明中西部已经有了。
.
。
.
。
Of course, there’s a part of the economy and a part of the culture that’s struggling.
当然，经济和文化的一部分正在陷入困境。
The median part of the heartland, the Midwest, the American West just was doing far better than I had been led to believe.
中心地带的中间部分、中西部、美国西部的表现比我想象的要好得多。
You worked for some time under Senator Orrin Hatch?
您在奥林·哈奇参议员手下工作过一段时间吗？
Yes.
是的。
What did you learn from that experience?
你从那次经历中学到了什么？
Well, I did learn something about the value of friendship and politics.
嗯，我确实学到了一些关于友谊和政治的价值。
My office was right outside, just around the corner from Senator Hatch’s personal office, and when Ted Kennedy would come in the office, you could just feel it, and Orrin would come out of his office sometimes, and they would just hug.
我的办公室就在外面，就在参议员哈奇的私人办公室的拐角处，当特德·肯尼迪走进办公室时，你可以感觉到，奥林有时会从他的办公室出来，他们只是拥抱。
I say this in the book, in 10% Less Democracy — this wasn’t just some political, polite hug.
我在《减少 10% 民主》一书中这样说——这不仅仅是一些政治上的、礼貌的拥抱。
This was the real thing.
这是真实的事情。
This was a full-on two men just very happy to see each other.
这是两个完全的男人，很高兴见到彼此。
That kind of camaraderie across people who really disagreed intensely on politics — that strikes me as the heart of building good political negotiation and keeping a good political culture.
在政治上存在强烈分歧的人们之间的这种友情——在我看来，这是建立良好的政治谈判和保持良好的政治文化的核心。
You’re studying to be a wine steward.
您正在学习成为一名葡萄酒管家。
What did that teach you about economics?
这对你的经济学有什么启发？
Part of it is, it just gave me a chance to study all of this economics of wine stuff because economists are sometimes quite skeptical of the idea that wine — different quality or that it’s anything more than just self-perception.
部分原因是，它让我有机会研究所有葡萄酒经济学，因为经济学家有时对葡萄酒的质量不同或它不仅仅是自我认知的想法持怀疑态度。
But inter-rater reliabilities — when people are doing blind taste tests, when judges are doing blind taste tests — are in the 0.3–0.4 range.
但评估者间的可靠性——当人们进行盲品测试时，当法官进行盲品测试时——在 0.3-0.4 范围内。
So when different people are rating the same body of the same 10 or 20 wines, different judges seem to rate them at a 0.3 or 0.4 correlation.
因此，当不同的人对相同酒体的 10 或 20 款葡萄酒进行评分时，不同的评委似乎会以 0.3 或 0.4 的相关性对它们进行评分。
I tend to think that to some people, well, if a relationship — unless it’s nearly perfect, we should ignore it.
我倾向于认为，对于某些人来说，如果一段关系——除非它近乎完美，我们应该忽略它。
But that’s just the kind of correlation you expect to see if you actually talk to wine people.
但这正是你在与葡萄酒人士交谈时所期望看到的相关性。
If you know what a 0.3 or 0.4 correlation is, there’s something to it.
如果您知道 0.3 或 0.4 相关性是什么，那就有道理了。
But it’s not the whole story, certainly.
但这当然不是故事的全部。
Part of the magic of knowing something about wine is that you have the power to find diamonds in the rough, to find bargains, to find something that’s $20 or $30 that is as good as something that’s $200.
了解葡萄酒的神奇之处之一在于，您有能力找到未加工的钻石，找到便宜货，找到 20 或 30 美元的葡萄酒，与 200 美元的葡萄酒一样好。
That’s the superpower you acquire.
这就是你获得的超能力。
In a way, that’s what a lot of great restaurants do, is they’re trying to find wines that are inexpensive for them to buy, but they give people the experience of a $200 or $300 wine, and they make it up on the margin.
在某种程度上，这就是许多优秀餐厅所做的，他们试图找到价格便宜的葡萄酒，但他们为人们提供 200 或 300 美元葡萄酒的体验，并通过利润来弥补。
I think this element of searching for diamonds in the rough has this element — you could say it’s Kirznerian entrepreneurship in a way.
我认为寻找毛坯钻石的要素具有这种要素——在某种程度上，你可以说这是柯兹纳式的创业精神。
You’re searching, searching, searching for underappreciated gems.
你不断地寻找、寻找、寻找那些未被充分赏识的宝石。
So you’re interviewing someone to be a wine entrepreneur?
那么您正在面试葡萄酒企业家吗？
Yeah.
是的。
Define these underappreciated gems.
定义这些被低估的宝石。
What qualities do you look for in them?
您在他们身上寻找什么品质？
Again, to go back to before, I go back to openness.
再次，回到以前，我回到开放性。
But really what you need is somebody with a really good palate and a really good nose.
但你真正需要的是一个具有非常好的味觉和非常好的鼻子的人。
Mine are mediocre at best.
我的充其量只是平庸。
But the magic of being with someone who’s really great at assessing wines is that they can taste one once or twice and give you a good, thorough description that you yourself would agree with in general.
但与真正擅长评估葡萄酒的人在一起的魔力在于，他们可以品尝一两次葡萄酒，并给你一个良好、全面的描述，而你自己总体上也会同意。
So, if we both rated it blindly, I might give a 10-word description, and the person who’s truly great will give a 50-word description, but our descriptions will overlap.
所以，如果我们都盲目评价的话，我可能会给出10个字的描述，真正优秀的人会给出50个字的描述，但我们的描述会重叠。
That’s what you’re looking for, someone who can give a more thorough assessment of something than I can, but who will broadly correlate with my assessment.
这就是您正在寻找的人，他可以对某件事进行比我更全面的评估，但与我的评估广泛相关。
What science fiction did you read in high school or college?
你在高中或大学读过哪些科幻小说？
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was actually quite important to me.
事实上，《银河系漫游指南》对我来说非常重要。
I often think about the fact that the true president of the galaxy was just some guy who didn’t even know he was president.
我经常想到这样一个事实：银河系真正的总统只是一个甚至不知道自己是总统的人。
There was a figurehead president of the galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, but the person who really ran it was a guy who lived in a hut somewhere on some planet.
银河系有一位名义上的总统，赞福德·毕博布洛克斯，但真正管理它的人是一个住在某个星球上某个小屋里的人。
And he didn’t actually know he was deciding things for the entire galaxy.
他实际上并不知道他正在为整个银河系做决定。
So it was a bit like the Ender’s Game theory.
所以这有点像安德的博弈论。
It’s no surprise to me that Douglas Adams had been a writer for Doctor Who, but he took the world of Doctor Who, where anything was possible, and he combined it with the absurd humor of Monty Python.
道格拉斯·亚当斯成为《神秘博士》的编剧对我来说并不奇怪，但他把《神秘博士》的世界变成了一切皆有可能的地方，并将其与巨蟒剧团的荒诞幽默结合起来。
I think that was a great fusion.
我认为这是一次伟大的融合。
Last two questions.
最后两个问题。
First, what is your advice to aspiring research economists?
首先，您对有抱负的研究经济学家有什么建议？
Build up an enormously broad and deep set of econometric tools.
建立一套极其广泛和深入的计量经济学工具。
We live in the age of big data, and that is the way to speak the language of our field.
我们生活在大数据时代，这就是我们领域的语言。
Also, if you have incredibly broad and deep econometric tools, you will never worry about going hungry, and therefore, you will feel more comfortable taking big risks with your career.
此外，如果你拥有极其广泛和深入的计量经济学工具，你永远不会担心挨饿，因此，你会更愿意在职业生涯中承担巨大的风险。
That’s part of the reason I was willing to engage in some topics that people said might be a little risky — IQ research in particular — because I knew that at the end of the day, I would never have to go hungry because I knew time-series econometrics.
这就是我愿意参与一些人们认为可能有点冒险的话题（尤其是智商研究）的部分原因，因为我知道最终我永远不会挨饿，因为我了解时间序列计量经济学。
Finally, what is your advice to aspiring quality teachers?
最后，您对有抱负的优质教师有何建议？
Have depth in the subject matter and find stories that you want to tell to enliven people.
对主题要有深度，找到你想讲的故事来让人们活跃起来。
I always say this whenever I’m writing a teaching statement, which is, I feel like my job in the classroom is not to teach the details of any theory.
每当我写教学陈述时，我总是这么说，也就是说，我觉得我在课堂上的工作不是教授任何理论的细节。
My job is to give students a reason to feel passionate enough about the topic so that they’ll go home for two or three hours and study it on their own.
我的工作是让学生有理由对这个主题充满热情，这样他们就会回家花两三个小时自学。
My job is to then give them a few key pieces of advice, a few key pieces of information, a few key anecdotes or stylized facts, and a couple elements of deep theory that will stick in their heads so that those will work in their brain to inspire them to sit down for two or three hours on their own.
我的工作是给他们一些关键的建议、一些关键的信息、一些关键的轶事或程式化的事实，以及一些深刻的理论要素，这些要素将牢牢地印在他们的脑海中，这样它们就会在他们的大脑中发挥作用，激励他们自己坐下来两三个小时。
I think that’s the real goal of teaching at the college level.
我认为这才是大学教学的真正目标。
It’s not that I will actually give them the full piece of information, the full body of knowledge in the classroom.
这并不是说我实际上会在课堂上向他们提供完整的信息、完整的知识体系。
It’s that I inspire them, motivate them to go read it and learn it and make the knowledge their own.
而是我激励他们，激励他们去阅读、学习并把这些知识变成自己的。
Garett Jones, thank you very much.
加雷特·琼斯，非常感谢你。
And again, the new book is 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less.
再说一次，这本新书是《民主减少 10%：为什么你应该多信任精英一点，少信任大众一点》。
Thank you, Garett.
谢谢你，加雷特。
Thanks very much.
非常感谢。