Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low (Ep. 104)
Hello, everyone.
大家好。
Today, I’m here with Matt Yglesias.
今天，我和马特·伊格莱西亚斯在一起。
Matt needs no introduction, but I should tell you all he has a new and excellent book out, called One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger.
马特不需要介绍，但我应该告诉你们，他出版了一本出色的新书，名为《十亿美国人：思考更大的案例》。
Matt, welcome.
马特，欢迎。
Good to be here.
很高兴来到这里。
How’s it going?
怎么样了？
Good.
好的。
Now I take it as a common theme in your work that you believe in increasing returns to scale, namely, that the gains from interacting with other people typically outweigh the congestion costs of having them around, and that’s certainly consistent with your earlier book, The Rent Is Too Damn High, right?
现在，我将其视为您工作中的一个共同主题，即您相信规模报酬递增，即与其他人互动的收益通常超过与他们在一起所造成的拥堵成本，这当然与您之前的书《租金太高了》一致，对吧？
Yes, absolutely.
是的，绝对是。
Now, what views do you have that are inconsistent with a strong belief in increasing returns to scale?
现在，您有哪些观点与规模报酬递增的坚定信念不一致？
It’s a little bit a tension with my personal preferences.
这与我的个人喜好有点紧张。
People will sometimes say to me, “Well, it’s easy for you to say this stuff.
人们有时会对我说：“好吧，你说这些话很容易。
You live in this big city.” Blah, blah, blah.
你住在这个大城市。”巴拉，巴拉，巴拉。
But I happened to have grown up in Manhattan, the densest place in the United States by far.
但我碰巧在曼哈顿长大，那里是美国迄今为止人口最稠密的地方。
I don’t like it there that much.
我不太喜欢那里。
I’ve moved to a smaller-scale place.
我搬到了一个规模较小的地方。
I like it better.
我更喜欢它。
Anytime I visit a small town, I think, “Eh, I like this.” I’m not personally that into big crowds and huge things like that.
每当我访问一个小镇时，我都会想，“呃，我喜欢这个。”我个人不太喜欢拥挤的人群和类似的大型活动。
I remember I went to Hong Kong one time and I felt like the universe was having revenge on me for having done all these pro-density takes, as I felt incredibly overwhelmed by these huge buildings everywhere.
我记得有一次我去了香港，我感觉宇宙正在向我报复，因为我做了所有这些支持密度的拍摄，因为我对到处都是的巨大建筑感到难以置信的不知所措。
I genuinely do sympathize with the view that there’s something nice about calm and quiet and things like that.
我真的很同情这样一种观点，即平静和安静之类的事情是有好处的。
Obviously, everybody knows that, but I do think, on an analytical level, that you see tremendous rewards, just big scale things.
显然，每个人都知道这一点，但我确实认为，在分析层面上，你会看到巨大的回报，只是大规模的事情。
I was working on this book at an early time, and I was in Midtown Manhattan where even New Yorkers don’t go because it’s so terrible, and it’s full of people — I think full of people who would tell you nobody likes going to Midtown Manhattan, and there must be some reason for that.
我很早就在写这本书，当时我在曼哈顿中城，那里连纽约人都不会去，因为那里太可怕了，而且那里挤满了人 —— 我想很多人会告诉你没有人喜欢去曼哈顿中城，这一定是有原因的。
Now obviously, we’re all doing everything on Zoom right now, and those kinds of effects have gone away.
现在显然，我们现在都在 Zoom 上做所有事情，而这些效果已经消失了。
But it’s not like we didn’t have telephones 18 months ago or no ability to do these kinds of things remotely.
但这并不是说我们 18 个月前没有电话，也不是没有能力远程做这些事情。
People were drawn to each other, for whatever reason.
无论出于何种原因，人们都被彼此吸引。
Let me put the question another way.
让我换个方式提出这个问题。
In the book, you stress that American growth rates have been declining.
您在书中强调美国的增长率一直在下降。
You and I agree about that.
你和我都同意这一点。
But if there are increasing returns to scale at the national level, as the US does have more people and more GDP, shouldn’t growth rates be going up?
但如果国家层面的规模报酬递增，就像美国确实有更多的人口和更多的GDP一样，那么增长率不应该上升吗？
Now, you might think, “Well, there’s increasing returns within a city but not within a country.”
现在，您可能会想：“好吧，在城市内回报递增，但在国家内却不然。”
But your argument is at the country level, and you even see a lot of cities dissolving or becoming smaller.
但你的论点是在国家层面，你甚至看到很多城市正在解散或变得更小。
You mentioned that also.
你也提到了这一点。
St. Louis and Detroit are the more obvious examples.
圣路易斯和底特律是更明显的例子。
But the US as a whole — the population has become more dispersed.
但美国作为一个整体——人口变得更加分散。
Yes.
是的。
So doesn’t that mean, actually, there aren’t increasing returns to scale?
那么，这是否意味着实际上不存在规模报酬递增？
Oh, I see.
我懂了。
I do think on some level, some of the deep structures of economic growth do have to do with our basic ability to exploit natural resources.
我确实认为，在某种程度上，经济增长的某些深层结构确实与我们开发自然资源的基本能力有关。
I say in the book, it’s like we’re not all farmers here who need to worry about running out of wheat fields.
我在书中说，就像我们这里并不都是需要担心麦田耗尽的农民一样。
But when you look at the big long-term trends — Industrial Revolution takeoff and slowdown in postwar years — that has to have something to do with the technology of energy exploitation on a pretty fundamental level.
但是，当你观察长期的大趋势时——“工业革命在战后的腾飞和放缓”——这在相当基本的层面上与能源开发技术有关。
That is an area where I don’t think you’ve seen, necessarily, those same clear returns to scale.
我认为在这个领域你不一定会看到同样明显的规模回报。
We’ve had some big advances in fracking, some promising advances in solar power, some other kinds of things like that.
我们在水力压裂方面取得了一些重大进展，在太阳能方面取得了一些有希望的进展，以及其他类似的事情。
But the fundamentals of how we produce and use energy have driven a lot in the macro picture, and I think the news from the latter quarter, whatever it is, of the 20th century — on that front was just very disappointing, notwithstanding other things that might power growth forward.
但我们如何生产和使用能源的基本原理在宏观方面发挥了很大作用，我认为 20 世纪后一个季度的消息，无论是什么，在这方面都非常令人失望，尽管还有其他可能推动增长的因素。
Would your recommendations be much more potent if paired with a better energy policy?
如果与更好的能源政策相结合，您的建议会更有效吗？
I don’t here mean a greener policy, though that’s justified in its own right.
我在这里并不是指更环保的政策，尽管这本身就是合理的。
But just command over much more energy, something like nuclear power that, say, Peter Thiel has proposed.
但只需控制更多的能源，比如彼得·泰尔提出的核能。
Would that make the increasing returns from a billion Americans much stronger?
这会让十亿美国人的收益递增变得更加强劲吗？
If we had a burst of good luck on the nuclear front.
如果我们在核战线上有一阵好运就好了。
Or maybe it’s purely policy — I’m not that well versed in the nuclear universe and the arguments that people have there.
或者也许这纯粹是政策 —— 我不太熟悉核宇宙和人们在那里的争论。
But I think it’s definitely true that if we had a breakthrough there, that could get us the kind of clean, abundant power that was hoped for in the original postwar nuclear years, and that the micro reactor people are very enthusiastic about.
但我认为，如果我们在这方面取得突破，我们就能获得战后最初核时代所希望的清洁、充足的电力，这也是微型反应堆人们非常热衷的。
That would put us even more clearly in an increasing returns-to-scale world.
这将使我们更加清楚地认识到规模回报递增的世界。
Do you think that a belief in significant increasing returns to scale means that massive income inequality is simply inevitable?
您认为规模报酬递增的信念是否意味着大规模的收入不平等是不可避免的？
That even with high rates of taxation, the rates of growth of the increasing returns at some point just overcome that, and the wealthy people are just extremely wealthy and possibly politically very powerful, and you live in a Silicon Valley kind of world whether you like it or not?
即使税率很高，递增回报的增长率在某些时候也会克服这一点，而富人只是非常富有，而且可能在政治上非常强大，而无论你喜欢与否，你都生活在硅谷式的世界中？
I don’t know exactly where the lines curve on that.
我不知道线条到底在哪里弯曲。
I’m impressed, as I think a lot of people who are not hardcore anti-inequality folks, that Sweden has a high number of billionaires per capita despite a lot of social democratic policies.
令我印象深刻的是，尽管瑞典实行了很多社会民主政策，但瑞典的人均亿万富翁数量却很高，正如我认为很多人不是铁杆反不平等人士一样。
The reason for that, fundamentally, is that they’re a successful company that were founded by Swedish people, and that that’s good, right?
从根本上来说，原因是他们是一家由瑞典人创立的成功公司，这很好，对吧？
If you’re on the other side of it, and you’re trying to make the case for Sweden — you’re trying to say universal healthcare is good, it’s great that they have all these trains in Stockholm, you’d say, “Look, this is a successful country.” It’s high GDP per capita.
如果你站在另一边，你试图为瑞典辩护——你想说全民医疗保健很好，他们在斯德哥尔摩拥有所有这些火车真是太好了，你会说，“看，这是一个成功的国家。”人均GDP很高。
They’ve got Ikea.
他们有宜家。
They’ve got Spotify.
他们有 Spotify。
But that’s also why they have some of that very high-end inequality.
但这也是他们存在一些非常严重的不平等的原因。
Can you balance that out in some Gini coefficient way?
你能用某种基尼系数的方式来平衡它吗？
Maybe yes, maybe no.
也许是，也许不是。
But I think even if you did, you wouldn’t eliminate all of the political inequality that worries people.
但我认为即使你这样做了，你也无法消除所有令人担忧的政治不平等。
This thing in California, where they’re trying to regulate Uber and Lyft more strictly, and so now the companies are saying, “Well, we’re going to shut down there.” And left-wing people are now mad at them.
在加利福尼亚州，他们试图更严格地监管 Uber 和 Lyft，所以现在这些公司说，“好吧，我们要关闭那里。”左翼人士现在对他们感到愤怒。
But if you run a significant business enterprise, you’re going to be a powerful person in society, whatever your personal income is because it matters what these big businesses do.
但如果你经营一家重要的商业企业，无论你的个人收入是多少，你都将成为社会上有影响力的人，因为这对这些大企业的行为很重要。
I don’t think that there’s ever been a country that doesn’t have that feature.
我认为没有一个国家不具备这一特征。
As long as you have big successful businesses, the people who run them are going to be more politically powerful than — I don’t know — the man on the street, and that’s just life.
只要你拥有成功的大企业，经营这些企业的人就会比“——我不知道”——街上的人更有政治权力，这就是生活。
But it seems there is a difference between, say, Denmark and Sweden.
但丹麦和瑞典之间似乎存在差异。
Especially if you take away Maersk, Denmark doesn’t have that many global companies.
尤其是如果除去马士基的话，丹麦并没有那么多跨国公司。
It’s very socially democratic.
这是非常社会民主的。
Stockholm has a huge and pretty successful startup scene.
斯德哥尔摩拥有庞大且相当成功的创业场景。
They’re probably going to grow more billionaires or at least multi-multimillionaires in the pretty near future.
在不久的将来，他们可能会培养出更多的亿万富翁，或者至少是千万富翁。
Would you, in this regard, rather be Sweden or rather be Denmark?
在这方面，您愿意做瑞典还是丹麦？
I would rather be Sweden.
我宁愿是瑞典。
I’d rather be Sweden, too.
我也宁愿是瑞典。
I think it’s fine if Denmark is Denmark.
我认为丹麦就是丹麦就好了。
One of the themes of this book — it’s about America.
这本书的主题之一是——关于美国。
This is not a book about all countries everywhere and what everyone should do.
这不是一本关于世界各地所有国家以及每个人应该做什么的书。
Anti-Semites troll me on my email all the time by saying, “Where’s your support for diversity for Israel?” I don’t know.
反犹太主义者总是在我的电子邮件中对我说：“你对以色列多元化的支持在哪里？”我不知道。
I get that too.
我也明白了。
Yeah.
是的。
I’m not a super Zionist person, but I’m Jewish secular.
我不是一个超级犹太复国主义者，但我是犹太世俗人士。
I have some critiques of Israeli policy, but fundamentally, to me, the idea of there being a Jewish state is not crazy, just like there’s a Danish state and there’s a Finnish state.
我对以色列的政策有一些批评，但从根本上来说，对我来说，存在一个犹太国家的想法并不疯狂，就像有一个丹麦国家和有一个芬兰国家一样。
You got to do things there, and it wouldn’t be that if you had a flood of immigration.
你必须在那里做事，如果有大量移民，情况就不会这样了。
Similarly, economically, Denmark’s nice.
同样，在经济上，丹麦也不错。
It’s a nice place.
这是一个不错的地方。
If Danish people like it that way, I think that’s fine.
如果丹麦人喜欢这样，我想那很好。
Good for them.
对他们有好处。
America is a big diverse country whose strength, I think, has always had a lot to do with scale.
我认为，美国是一个多元化的大国，其实力始终与规模有很大关系。
It makes a lot of sense for us to see some positive lessons learned from Sweden in terms of ways you can be more humane and still be dynamic.
对于我们来说，从瑞典学到的一些积极的经验教训非常有意义，这些教训让我们变得更加人性化，同时仍然充满活力。
We have big startups, things like that here.
我们有大型初创公司，这里就是这样。
I think the idea of trying to turn the United States into a giant Denmark, where people are reasonably affluent, but there’s no really big-deal things happening here, like some guy who makes windmills.
我认为尝试将美国变成一个巨大的丹麦，那里的人们相当富裕，但这里并没有发生什么真正大的事情，就像一些制造风车的人一样。
To me, that doesn’t make sense.
对我来说，这没有意义。
The United States is a big place.
美国是一个很大的地方。
It’s been a big place for a long time.
很长一段时间以来，这里都是一个很大的地方。
It’s a diverse place.
这是一个多元化的地方。
It’s a place that cares about its power on the national scale.
这是一个关心其在全国范围内的权力的地方。
To your inequality point, that means it’s going to be a relatively unequal place compared to some other kinds of countries.
就你的不平等问题而言，这意味着与其他一些国家相比，这将是一个相对不平等的地方。
In your book, you only cover the United States, but a lot of your arguments are pretty general, and I mean that in a good way.
在你的书中，你只讨论了美国，但你的很多论点都很笼统，我的意思是好的。
So why not, say, a billion people for the European Union?
那么为什么不让十亿人口加入欧盟呢？
You mentioned that America has a tradition of being diverse, but at some point, it didn’t have that tradition.
你提到美国有多元化的传统，但在某些时候，它没有这种传统。
Do you think that countries or regions that don’t have the tradition of being diverse can start being diverse, and the EU, which is actually now pretty diverse, could take in a billion people?
你认为没有多元化传统的国家或地区可以开始多元化，而现在已经相当多元化的欧盟可以容纳十亿人口吗？
I think it would be interesting.
我认为这会很有趣。
The EU has had a lot of problems, I think we’ve all heard, but at some level, if this project continues and they develop more of a European identity, that would be a diverse identity, right?
我想我们都听说过，欧盟遇到了很多问题，但在某种程度上，如果这个项目继续下去，他们会发展出更多的欧洲身份，那将是一个多元化的身份，对吗？
If you look at their little Euro notes, they’re trying to abstract away to styles of bridges instead of national heroes — then that becomes a more accessible identity.
如果你看一下他们的小欧元纸币，你会发现他们试图抽象出桥梁的风格，而不是民族英雄——然后这就成为一个更容易理解的身份。
Conceivably, it’s easier for an immigrant to become “European” than to become specifically Austrian in some way.
可以想象，对于移民来说，成为“欧洲人”比在某种程度上成为奥地利人更容易。
There could be a lot of benefits to that.
这样做可能有很多好处。
I went to Ireland.
我去了爱尔兰。
It was the last international trip I took.
这是我最后一次国际旅行。
It’s a beautiful country, very successful in a lot of ways, but obviously, a really empty country.
这是一个美丽的国家，在很多方面都非常成功，但显然，这是一个非常空虚的国家。
If you’re working on a book about a billion Americans while going across from Dublin to Galway, I could not help but be struck.
如果你在从都柏林穿越到戈尔韦的途中写一本关于十亿美国人的书，我会情不自禁地感到震惊。
It’s like, “Where is everybody here?
就像，“这里的每个人都在哪里？
Couldn’t we do more?”
我们就不能做得更多吗？”
Dublin is this really exciting international city.
都柏林是一座令人兴奋的国际城市。
Somebody told me there was a good Indian restaurant somewhere, and then the staff there was like, “Oh, it’s going to be very spicy.” I was like, “No, no, no, it’s okay.
有人告诉我某处有一家不错的印度餐厅，然后那里的工作人员就说，“哦，它会很辣。”我当时想，“不，不，不，没关系。
I’m not Irish.” But I saw there was an Amazon office near there, and they had some foreign engineers, looked like from South Asia, and they were eating in there, and I thought, okay, that’s good.
我不是爱尔兰人。”但我看到附近有一个亚马逊办事处，他们有一些外国工程师，看起来来自南亚，他们在那里吃饭，我想，好吧，那很好。
That’s okay.
没关系。
I can trust these guys.
我可以信任这些人。
But it’s not the tradition of Ireland.
但这不是爱尔兰的传统。
So it’s a tougher political conversation, but I do think that’s a society that you see changing to be more cosmopolitan and more diverse, and that will ultimately help power them through to the next level.
所以这是一场更艰难的政治对话，但我确实认为这是一个你看到的社会正在变得更加国际化和更加多元化，这最终将帮助他们迈向新的水平。
As you know, city sizes within a country are quite unevenly distributed.
如您所知，一个国家内的城市规模分布很不均匀。
In your vision of the billion people in America, how large does New York City become?
在您对美国十亿人口的设想中，纽约市有多大？
It’s interesting.
这很有趣。
I think probably really, really big.
我想可能真的很大。
It depends obviously on their infrastructure issues.
这显然取决于他们的基础设施问题。
But the case of Japan, which is a big country, but not nearly as big as current US, to say nothing of a billion-people US — that’s a really big city, much bigger on a metro-area basis than New York, and it keeps growing, even though Japan’s overall population has stagnated or shrunk.
但就日本而言，它是一个大国，但远没有现在的美国那么大，更不用说拥有十亿人口的美国了——那是一个真正的大城市，就都市区而言比纽约大得多，而且尽管日本的总人口已经停滞或萎缩，但它仍在不断增长。
That’s because they have a different land-use regulation paradigm there that makes it much easier to keep adding houses to Tokyo.
这是因为他们在那里有不同的土地使用监管范式，这使得在东京继续增加房屋变得更加容易。
I read in some book somewhere that in urban growth, you benefit, agglomeration benefits with congestion costs, which makes sense.
我在某本书上读到，在城市发展中，你会受益，集聚效益和拥堵成本，这是有道理的。
You could draw a good chart like that.
你可以像这样画一个很好的图表。
But in Tokyo, it never seems to happen.
但在东京，这似乎从未发生过。
There’s plenty of other places to go in Japan, but they keep losing people and Tokyo keeps adding them because they don’t have the political constraint that New York or the Bay Area has, and there’s no spot at which Japanese people want to stop clustering in the greater Tokyo area.
日本还有很多其他地方可以去，但人口不断流失，而东京不断增加人口，因为它们没有纽约或湾区那样的政治约束，而且日本人无时无刻不在向大东京地区聚集。
But say, politically speaking, can you imagine New York City running sufficiently well with 70 million people, which would be larger than most countries in the EU, right?
但是，从政治角度来说，你能想象拥有 7000 万人口的纽约市运转得足够好吗？这比大多数欧盟国家还要多，对吗？
That would be a pretty big country right there.
那将是一个相当大的国家。
So if we’re ever a billion, is New York City 70 million, and you still have city councils and a mayor and this just huge police force that could beat most armies?
那么，如果我们的人口达到 10 亿，那么纽约市是不是有 7000 万，而你仍然拥有市议会和市长以及可以击败大多数军队的庞大警察部队？
How does that work?
这是如何运作的？
If we’re talking about the political constraint, then obviously it’s a much lower bound than that.
如果我们谈论的是政治约束，那么显然它的界限要低得多。
New York has a lot of governance problems and they’re going to take a short-term fiscal hit from the pandemic.
纽约存在很多治理问题，他们将因疫情而遭受短期财政打击。
But a question for any political entity is, how do you handle a short-term fiscal hit?
但对于任何政治实体来说，一个问题是如何应对短期财政打击？
Are you able to ride it out and rebound in a strong way?
你能安然度过并强势反弹吗？
Or do you totally wind up running the car into the ditch?
或者你最终会把车开进沟里吗？
I don’t have incredible levels of confidence that New York’s political authorities can avoid the run-into-the-ditch scenario.
我对纽约政治当局能够避免陷入困境的情况没有难以置信的信心。
I just think that, in that abstract, the ability of an urban area to keep growing is bounded by governance issues rather than by the fundamentals of space or congestion per se.
我只是认为，从这个抽象的角度来看，城市地区持续增长的能力受到治理问题的限制，而不是受到空间或拥堵本身的基本原理的限制。
Don’t those governance issues mean we can’t get to a billion because, as we move toward a billion, the new arrivals — a lot of them will want to go to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and they’ll wreck those places, and then we’ll stop.
这些治理问题是否意味着我们无法达到十亿，因为当我们迈向十亿时，新来者 ——他们中的很多人会想去纽约、洛杉矶、芝加哥，他们会破坏这些地方，然后我们就会停下来。
Is that not the equilibrium?
这不是均衡吗？
Or is the equilibrium somehow New York annexes Connecticut, and a lot of it starts operating more like Northern Virginia, and it works pretty well, and it’s all one big happy ending?
或者是纽约以某种方式吞并了康涅狄格州，并且其中很多地方开始像北弗吉尼亚州一样运作，而且效果很好，这一切都是一个大团圆的结局？
Or do we stop?
或者我们停下来？
Well, that’s interesting.
嗯，这很有趣。
I don’t know that it’s clearly true that population growth would pour into a place like New York.
我不知道人口增长是否会涌入纽约这样的地方。
Some people would, but we have seen incredibly dynamic growth in our Sun Belt metro areas, which are unfashionable in various ways, but people are doing very well for themselves in Atlanta and Dallas and Houston and the smaller ones, Nashville, San Antonio, where I spend a lot of time for family reasons.
有些人会，但我们已经看到我们的阳光地带都市区出现了令人难以置信的动态增长，这些地区在各个方面都不时尚，但在亚特兰大、达拉斯和休斯顿以及较小的纳什维尔、圣安东尼奥等较小的城市，人们过得很好，我因为家庭原因在那里呆了很多时间。
They’ve become incredibly international just because America is a good place to live.
他们已经变得非常国际化，只是因为美国是一个居住的好地方。
Chicago, which has a lot of those New Yorky qualities but is much cheaper, has been losing people, which is its own governance-type problems.
芝加哥拥有很多纽约的品质，但价格却便宜得多，它一直在流失人才，这是它自己的治理问题。
But I feel like there’s plenty of space for folks.
但我觉得人们有足够的空间。
The interesting political constraint, obviously, is on immigration, right?
显然，有趣的政治限制是移民，对吧？
I remember you wrote some time ago — I think in response to Bryan Caplan — that it’s look, if you care about immigration and you care about people’s ability to move, let’s maybe chill with the open-borders talk because you’re going to hit a hard political constraint, and the country’s going to lock down.
我记得你不久前写过——我想是为了回应布莱恩·卡普兰（Bryan Caplan）——看起来，如果你关心移民，关心人们的迁徙能力，也许我们会对开放边界的讨论保持冷静，因为你将遇到严格的政治限制，而国家将被封锁。
We’ve seen something like that dynamic in the United States.
我们在美国看到了类似的动态。
We’ve seen it in a lot of countries, so managing people’s level of tolerance for social and demographic change, particularly with foreigners coming in, is an important political concept.
我们在很多国家都看到过这种情况，因此管理人们对社会和人口变化的容忍程度，特别是外国人的进来，是一个重要的政治概念。
That’s where you need — I don’t know what you would call it — wise political leadership and not just strident, analytically correct, abstract people.
这就是你需要的地方——“我不知道你会怎么称呼它”——明智的政治领导，而不仅仅是强硬的、分析正确的、抽象的人。
Let’s talk about fertility for a bit.
我们来谈谈生育能力。
Is there a danger that the whole world or most of the world becomes like Japan, where the population just keeps on shrinking, and the world becomes a depopulated place?
是否存在整个世界或世界大部分地区变得像日本一样，人口不断减少，世界变得人口稀少的危险？
Is that on the horizon if we don’t do what you’re saying?
如果我们不按照你说的去做，这种情况就会发生吗？
I think that’s a serious possibility.
我认为这是一个很大的可能性。
People can disagree as to exactly how dire is that.
对于这到底有多可怕，人们可能存在不同意见。
Japan continues to function, as Dean Baker would tell you.
正如迪恩·贝克（Dean Baker）告诉你的那样，日本仍在继续运转。
They’re doing okay by some means.
从某些方面来说，他们做得还不错。
I think that’s a sad outcome, in part for the Derek Parfit-type reasons.
我认为这是一个悲伤的结果，部分原因是德里克·帕菲特式的原因。
But also, in terms of growth and dynamism, I think that it’s important that people be able to have families.
而且，就成长和活力而言，我认为人们能够拥有家庭也很重要。
My thinking evolved a lot when Lyman Stone and others pointed out that people were saying in America that they still wanted to have the classic 2.5 kids on average, and they just weren’t.
当莱曼·斯通 (Lyman Stone) 和其他人指出，美国人说他们仍然想要平均生育 2.5 个孩子时，我的想法发生了很大变化，但他们却没有。
The number of children they were having was slipping to more like 1.8, more like 1.7 now, and that’s sad when people can’t achieve their aspirations.
他们生育的孩子数量从原来的 1.8 个减少到现在的 1.7 个，当人们无法实现自己的愿望时，这是令人悲伤的。
Of course, sometimes people’s aspirations are wildly unrealistic, or they’re incompatible with each other, or something like that.
当然，有时候人们的愿望是非常不切实际的，或者是彼此不相容的，或者诸如此类的。
But I think we know that a world in which most people have two or three children instead of one or two children is a perfectly plausible scenario.
但我认为我们知道，大多数人有两三个孩子而不是一两个孩子的世界是一个完全合理的场景。
That’s not like I wish I had a flying car.
这不像我希望拥有一辆飞行汽车。
We have flying cars, so I think a flying car is more likely.
我们有飞行汽车，所以我认为飞行汽车更有可能。
All right.
好的。
Yeah.
是的。
But let’s say we subsidized fertility with all of your proposals, and we implement them perfectly.
但假设我们通过你们的所有建议来补贴生育，并且我们完美地实施了它们。
Won’t it be the case that we’re shifting the composition of the American population toward people who are much less educated?
难道我们不会将美国人口的构成转向受教育程度低得多的人吗？
Because the people who are very well educated typically have higher incomes.
因为受过良好教育的人通常收入较高。
The subsidies matter less for them, right?
补贴对他们来说不那么重要，对吧？
You can subsidize another birth for Mark Zuckerberg.
您可以资助马克·扎克伯格再生育一次。
It’s not going to affect his calculus.
这不会影响他的计算。
But for less educated people, it’s a bigger factor.
但对于受教育程度较低的人来说，这是一个更大的因素。
So you’ll make the US, on average, much less educated, and you’ll make voters worse.
因此，平均而言，你会让美国的受教育程度大大降低，而且会让选民的情况变得更糟。
No?
不？
So you’re saying it’s going to be dysgenic to be supporting people —
所以你是说支持别人是有害的——
It doesn’t need to be a genetic mechanism.
它不需要是一种遗传机制。
Well, sure.
嗯，当然。
Okay, it doesn’t have to be genetic.
好吧，它不一定是遗传的。
It could be a pure cultural inheritance.
这可能是一种纯粹的文化传承。
That’s interesting.
那很有意思。
I don’t think it’s a big issue necessarily.
我认为这不一定是一个大问题。
I don’t think that the gaps in numbers that we’re talking about are all that enormous.
我认为我们正在谈论的数字差距并没有那么巨大。
I also think that a lot of the way society is structured disincentivizes educated professional people from having a second or third child, even though it’s not that the objective financial cost of doing it is so high.
我还认为，社会的很多结构方式都阻碍了受过教育的专业人士生育第二个或第三个孩子，尽管这样做的客观财务成本并不那么高。
But you think about Democratic Party micro-targeting of everything.
但你想想民主党对一切事情的微观目标。
They’ll say, “Well, okay.
他们会说：“好吧，好吧。
If this little extra boost will help lift some people over the poverty line, we should do that.
如果这一点额外的刺激能够帮助一些人摆脱贫困线，我们就应该这样做。
But if you’re making $140,000 a year, you don’t ‘need’ help with your childcare costs.” That’s how the people in the think tanks think.
但如果你的年收入为 14 万美元，你就不需要帮助支付育儿费用。”智库里的人就是这么想的。
But people care about the impact on their relative standard of living of these things.
但人们关心这些事情对他们相对生活水平的影响。
So I think a program that gives people child allowance–type money or that organizes afterschool activities for people in a plausible way does have an impact, not on Mark Zuckerberg because, obviously, billionaires don’t have a lot of limits on their consumption of things.
因此，我认为向人们提供儿童津贴或以合理的方式为人们组织课后活动的计划确实会产生影响，但对马克·扎克伯格不会产生影响，因为显然，亿万富翁对他们的消费没有太多限制。
But these middle-class professionals who live in Northern Virginia — they do, right?
但这些居住在北弗吉尼亚州的中产阶级专业人士——他们确实如此，对吗？
Even though they’re comfortable, economically comfortable people, their consumption possibilities are still constrained in meaningful ways, and how we structure incentives — what we subsidize, what we don’t subsidize — makes a difference to what people do.
尽管他们是舒适的、经济上富裕的人，但他们的消费可能性仍然受到有意义的限制，而我们如何构建激励措施 ——“我们补贴什么，我们不补贴什么”——会影响人们的行为。
Now, I think people, on average, should become more religious, in part because that would encourage fertility.
现在，我认为人们平均应该变得更加虔诚，部分原因是这会鼓励生育。
Do you also think people should become more religious?
您是否也认为人们应该变得更加虔诚？
Yeah, if I could be full Straussian and kind of —
是的，如果我能完全成为施特劳斯主义者并且有点——
You can be!
你可以！
It’s not a hypothetical.
这不是一个假设。
No. I don’t really know how to do it.
不，我真的不知道该怎么做。
If I put in my book that I think we should make people be more religious, I don’t know how I would do that.
如果我在书中写下我认为我们应该让人们更加虔诚，我不知道我会怎么做。
Not make them, but just root for it.
不是制造它们，而是支持它。
Talk up religion.
谈论宗教。
Look, if you told me, for mysterious reasons, church attendance is going to start going back up again over the next 30, 40 years, I would consider that to be a very optimistic forecast for America.
听着，如果你告诉我，由于神秘的原因，去教堂的人数将在未来 30、40 年内再次开始回升，我会认为这对美国来说是一个非常乐观的预测。
I think good secondary things would follow from that.
我认为随之而来的是好的次要的事情。
I think community institutions are important, and in a practical sense, religious ones are what seems to really work for people.
我认为社区机构很重要，从实际意义上讲，宗教机构似乎真正对人们有用。
When I hear people say, “Oh this new woke anti-racism on the left — that’s like a new religion.” I don’t know that that’s 100 percent accurate.
当我听到人们说：“哦，左翼新兴起的反种族主义运动 ——这就像一种新宗教。”我不知道这是否百分百准确。
I think there’s something to that, and there’s also ways in which it’s not true.
我认为这是有道理的，但也有一些地方是不正确的。
But if it was really literally true — this is a new religion where people are going to get together once a week, and they’re going to know each other, and they’re going to have a higher value system that motivates them, and they’re going to make connections — that would be really good.
但如果这真的是真的的话————这是一种新的宗教，人们每周聚会一次，他们会互相认识，他们会有一个更高的价值体系来激励他们，他们会建立联系——那就太好了。
Bad things have happened by religious people or under religious causes, but generally speaking, it’s good when people go to church.
宗教人士或出于宗教原因发生了不好的事情，但总的来说，人们去教堂是件好事。
If you’re rooting for a more religious America, does that mean, in a sense, you’re rooting for a more right-wing America?
如果你支持一个更加宗教化的美国，从某种意义上来说，这是否意味着你支持一个更加右翼的美国？
These are correlated, right?
这些是相关的，对吧？
Causality may be tricky, but I suspect there is some.
因果关系可能很棘手，但我怀疑确实存在一些因果关系。
I think probably we say that religiousness is almost constitutive of right-wingy-ness, at least in some definitions.
我想我们可能会说宗教性几乎是右翼性的组成部分，至少在某些定义中是这样。
Yeah, I think a more traditionalist America, in some ways, would be good.
是的，我认为在某些方面，一个更传统的美国会更好。
It seems that two-parent families, or maybe three-parent families for that matter, have and support more children than do one-parent families.
似乎双亲家庭，或者三亲家庭，比单亲家庭拥有和抚养更多的孩子。
So what should we do to encourage there being more two- and three-parent families?
那么，我们应该怎样做才能鼓励更多的二、三亲家庭呢？
Yeah, that’s a good one.
是的，那是一件好事。
The book talks about marriage disincentives in welfare-state design because that’s the sort of boring thing I’m into, and because it’s also a real policy lever, right?
这本书讨论了福利国家设计中的婚姻抑制因素，因为这是我喜欢的那种无聊的事情，而且因为它也是一个真正的政策杠杆，对吗？
We could change how Medicaid eligibility rules work and how the ITC phase-ins and phaseouts work.
我们可以改变医疗补助资格规则的运作方式以及 ITC 逐步加入和逐步退出的运作方式。
I think the Bush-era stuff like marriage promotion — if you could do that, if that really worked — that would be amazing.
我认为布什时代的东西，比如婚姻促进 ——“如果你能做到这一点，如果那真的有效的话”——那就太棒了。
Some people really sneered at it, like, “This is absurd.
有些人对此嗤之以鼻，“这太荒谬了。
You’re going to tell people to get married?” This is a totally good idea.
你要叫人结婚吗？”这是一个完全好的主意。
I don’t think that they came up with a program that actually did this.
我不认为他们想出了一个真正做到这一点的程序。
But what’s your program?
但你的计划是什么？
Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything, so you should have a plan for this.
伊丽莎白·沃伦对每件事都有一个计划，所以你应该为此制定一个计划。
What is it?
它是什么？
As I said, I think both liberal and conservative people should take marriage-incentive impacts on program design more seriously.
正如我所说，我认为自由派和保守派人士都应该更认真地对待婚姻激励对计划设计的影响。
Liberals should admit that this is a real issue and that we should care about it and that you don’t need to go full Jerry Falwell to see that there’s an advantage to encouraging people to form stable partnerships.
自由主义者应该承认这是一个真正的问题，我们应该关心它，而且你不需要完全理解杰里·福尔韦尔（Jerry Falwell）就能看到鼓励人们建立稳定的伙伴关系是有好处的。
I think conservatives should take their own shit on this a little bit more seriously.
我认为保守派应该更认真地对待自己的事情。
If we have to spend a little bit more money to make this work, we should do it.
如果我们必须多花一点钱来完成这项工作，我们就应该这样做。
The important building blocks of society, the important building blocks of free-market capitalism don’t hinge on the exact spending level on social welfare state programs, I guess, is what I would hope people on the right would appreciate.
我想，社会的重要组成部分、自由市场资本主义的重要组成部分并不取决于社会福利国家计划的确切支出水平，这才是我希望右翼人士能够欣赏的。
What else can we do?
我们还能做什么？
Public leadership probably matters.
公共领导力可能很重要。
It’s probably good for Barack Obama to talk about being a dad, right?
对于巴拉克·奥巴马来说，谈论成为一名父亲可能是一件好事，对吧？
That was nice.
那太好了。
I think Donald Trump is a poor role model in social and personal life, and that we should encourage elite high-profile people to talk about commitment and marriage and why it’s valuable — things like that.
我认为唐纳德·特朗普在社会和个人生活中是一个糟糕的榜样，我们应该鼓励精英人士谈论承诺和婚姻以及为什么它有价值诸如此类的事情。
That’s not a program.
那不是一个程序。
I don’t think we can make it legally mandatory for people to discuss the benefits of being an involved parent, but I think it’s important.
我不认为我们可以在法律上强制人们讨论成为参与父母的好处，但我认为这很重要。
But there’s so many subsidies and taxes in the book.
但书中有很多补贴和税收。
Why not have subsidies and taxes for essentially discouraging divorce and single-parent families?
为什么不通过补贴和税收来从根本上阻止离婚和单亲家庭呢？
That’s interesting.
那很有意思。
I don’t know exactly how you would discourage divorce in a subsidy structure, but I’m open to it.
我不知道你会如何在补贴结构中阻止离婚，但我对此持开放态度。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
Do you have a white paper on that?
你有这方面的白皮书吗？
There is a big literature on comparative divorce law, which I don’t know well.
关于比较离婚法有大量文献，但我不太了解。
But there are some systems across the states which discourage divorce.
但各州有一些制度不鼓励离婚。
I’m not sure they’re good for human happiness.
我不确定它们对人类幸福有好处。
If you just look at the parents, it seems especially women are worse off.
如果你只看父母，似乎尤其是女性的情况更糟。
But the more you wait, a higher number of people is a good thing.
但等得越久，人越多也是好事。
Obviously, you’re confronted with the tradeoff.
显然，你面临着权衡。
Look, I think back when everybody was debating same-sex marriage, right?
听着，我回想起当时每个人都在争论同性婚姻，对吗？
Andrew Sullivan, I think, had a troll take where he was like, “How come none of these people talking about the sanctity of marriage are talking about revisiting no-fault divorce?” I think that was actually a good point.
我认为安德鲁·沙利文（Andrew Sullivan）有一个巨魔的言论，“为什么这些谈论婚姻神圣性的人都没有谈论重新审视无过错离婚？”我认为这实际上是一个很好的观点。
It would be worth looking at.
值得一看。
I don’t know exactly what the literature on that says or where the tradeoff would be, or what’s even politically plausible.
我不知道相关文献到底是怎么说的，也不知道权衡在哪里，甚至不知道什么在政治上是合理的。
Obviously, if you tell people straight up, “Well, we’re going to make you miserable, but it has some hazy long-term payoff,” that doesn’t work in the political system.
显然，如果你直接告诉人们，“好吧，我们会让你痛苦，但它会带来一些模糊的长期回报”，这在政治体系中是行不通的。
But I think that’s a subject people should think about.
但我认为这是人们应该思考的一个话题。
I think in so many areas of life, we look back on the 1970s and we say, “We maybe made some bad decisions back then.” And I don’t think we should completely exempt divorce and marriage law from that general critique.
我认为在生活的很多领域，当我们回顾 20 世纪 70 年代时，我们会说，“我们当时可能做出了一些错误的决定。”我认为我们不应该将离婚和婚姻法完全排除在这种普遍批评之外。
Do you think having more three-child families would set back feminism?
您认为三孩家庭增多会阻碍女权主义吗？
I don’t think that it would.
我认为不会。
Well, look, feminism means different things to different people.
好吧，看，女权主义对不同的人来说意味着不同的事情。
There’s a version of feminism in the United States that is — well, I suppose other countries too — that is extremely focused on the super duper duper high-end elites.
美国有一种女权主义——嗯，我想其他国家也是如此——极其关注超级骗子的高端精英。
I think having larger families is probably bad for women’s equality in the top 0.1 percent of achievement.
我认为拥有更多的家庭可能不利于女性在前 0.1% 成就中的平等。
If you look at the fact that there are many more male billionaires, that having any prospect of leveling that probably goes against family things.
如果你看看男性亿万富翁数量更多的事实，那么任何实现平等的前景都可能与家庭事务背道而驰。
On the other hand, if you’re saying, “Okay, the mainstream ways in which feminism impacts most people — it’s women’s legal and social entitlements to have jobs, to be financially independent, to be able to get out of really bad marital situations.” That kind of thing.
另一方面，如果你说，“好吧，女权主义影响大多数人的主流方式是——女性拥有工作、经济独立、摆脱糟糕的婚姻状况的法律和社会权利。”那种事。
Get school.
上学吧。
The general changes we’ve seen over the decades, where women are now, on average, better educated than men, where the income gap at the median level is starting to narrow — those kinds of things, I don’t think are meaningfully impacted in a negative way by somewhat larger families.
几十年来我们看到的总体变化是，现在女性平均比男性受教育程度更高，中等水平的收入差距开始缩小——我认为，较大的家庭不会对这些事情产生有意义的负面影响。
My view is this — that for reasons that are probably intrinsic and biological, women, on average, care more about the kids than the fathers do.
我的观点是这样的——由于可能是内在的和生物学的原因，平均而言，女性比父亲更关心孩子。
The fathers are more likely to say, “Ah, let them go out and play.
父亲们更有可能说：“啊，让他们出去玩吧。
It’ll probably be fine.” Women, on average, are more inclined to worry.
应该会没事的。”平均而言，女性更容易担心。
That may be hard to change.
这可能很难改变。
So if there are more children in the life of the family, the preoccupations of women will shift more towards the children than will the preoccupations of the men.
因此，如果家庭生活中有更多的孩子，女性的关注点就会比男性更多地转向孩子。
It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, right?
这不一定是坏事，对吧？
It’s certainly good for the kids to have three of them, but it could harm what many people would consider to be feminism.
拥有三个孩子对孩子来说当然是好事，但这可能会损害许多人认为的女权主义。
Right.
正确的。
On the other hand, I think we see that when we had larger families, there was less aggregate worrying, right?
另一方面，我认为我们看到，当我们拥有更多的家庭时，总体的担忧就会减少，对吗？
Sure.
当然。
That’s part of how that went together.
这就是它们如何结合在一起的一部分。
I think it’s true that if you had exactly 2020 parenting norms but with an additional child per family, that would have one set of impacts, I think shifting back to a slightly more relaxed standard might be healthier for everybody involved.
我认为，如果你确实采用了 2020 年的育儿规范，但每个家庭多了一个孩子，那将会产生一系列影响，我认为回到稍微宽松的标准可能对每个参与者都更健康。
I’m going to try to avoid getting myself canceled with too much speculation as to what’s inherent and what’s sociocultural in terms of the gender difference and interest in parenting.
我将尽量避免对性别差异和育儿兴趣方面的内在因素和社会文化因素进行过多的猜测而被取消。
But I do think it’s true that a theme in the book is that we should be thinking about supporting the actual needs and preferences of women rather than the hypothetical egalitarian sketch, right?
但我确实认为这本书的主题确实是我们应该考虑支持女性的实际需求和偏好，而不是假设的平等主义草图，对吗？
We see that women have more desire to have children, that most women, like most men, are working-class people.
我们看到女性更渴望生孩子，大多数女性和大多数男性一样，都是工薪阶层。
They have jobs because they need to pay the bills and things like that, and are not necessarily hyper-obsessed with the glass ceiling and who’s leaning into what.
他们有工作是因为他们需要支付账单之类的事情，并且不一定对玻璃天花板以及谁倾向于什么过于痴迷。
And people want to have nice, happy lives with a high standard of living where they could meet their aspirations, and that is 100 percent in line with some strands of thinking of what’s feminism and very much intention with some others.
人们希望过上美好、幸福的生活，拥有高水平的生活，能够满足自己的愿望，这百分百符合女权主义的一些想法以及其他一些人的意图。
If I think of the well-governed countries in the world, it seems to me that most of them are pretty small.
如果我想到世界上治理良好的国家，在我看来，它们中的大多数都相当小。
There’s Denmark, there’s Singapore, there’s New Zealand.
有丹麦，有新加坡，有新西兰。
You know the list, right?
你知道名单，对吧？
Mm-hmm.
嗯嗯。
If I think of the very populous countries, I wouldn’t quite call them a wreck, but they’re much, much less well governed.
如果我想到人口众多的国家，我不会称它们为“废墟”，但它们的治理要差得多。
It’s amazing, in a sense, the US is not more corrupt and screwed up than it is.
令人惊奇的是，从某种意义上说，美国并没有比现在更加腐败和混乱。
So if we move to a billion people, are we lowering the quality of governance in this country?
那么，如果人口达到十亿，我们是否会降低这个国家的治理质量？
And by how much?
增加多少？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
That’s an interesting question.
这是一个有趣的问题。
I sometimes think, well, one reason that the governance standouts are small is that there’s more variance in the small countries because there’s a lot of them.
我有时认为，治理突出的原因之一是小国家的差异更大，因为它们数量很多。
You go around, and there’s a couple really nice ones, and there it is, which is different from a causal question.
你四处走走，有几个非常好的问题，就在那里，这与因果问题不同。
Does scaling up make it worse?
扩大规模会使情况变得更糟吗？
I think it’s probably true, though, that a billion Americans will be more of a mess in the sense that people will scan the headlines of the latest in politics.
不过，我认为十亿美国人可能会变得更加混乱，因为人们会浏览最新的政治头条新闻，这可能是真的。
It’s like, “Oh my God!
就像，“天哪！
What a catastrophe!” Because it’s people who don’t know each other, people who don’t have anything in common.
真是一场灾难！因为这是互相不认识的人，没有任何共同点的人。
Politicians opportunistically are trying to create weird new identity cleavages to mobilize people, and it’s all very ugly, and everybody hates politics, and now all the politicians are unpopular.
政客们机会主义地试图制造奇怪的新身份分裂来动员人们，这一切都非常丑陋，每个人都讨厌政治，现在所有的政客都不受欢迎。
We would only go more in that direction.
我们只会朝这个方向走得更多。
Whereas, if you have a homogenous small town, people who don’t like it just leave, right?
然而，如果你有一个同质化的小镇，不喜欢它的人就会离开，对吗？
So you’re left behind with a nice community of people who have a lot in common, who share a lot, who can directly self-monitor each other, that could be really well-informed about whether the guy in charge of the fire department knows what he’s doing.
所以你留下了一个很好的社区，他们有很多共同点，有很多共同点，可以直接互相自我监控，可以非常了解消防部门的负责人是否知道他在做什么。
Probably the right solution is something to do with federalism, but it’s definitely a different book as to why American federalism does not deliver on its promise in the way that we might think it should.
也许正确的解决方案与联邦制有关，但这绝对是一本不同的书来解释为什么美国联邦制没有以我们认为应该的方式兑现其承诺。
If I think of myself — when I analyze, say, Denmark or Singapore, I’m less libertarian than when I analyze America because I think their governments have a higher chance of succeeding at what they might set out to do.
如果我想到我自己——比如说，当我分析丹麦或新加坡时，我会比分析美国时更少自由主义者，因为我认为他们的政府有更大的机会成功实现他们可能要做的事情。
So this Matt Yglesias one-billion-Americans world of the future — will that future, Matt Yglesias, be more libertarian, just like I’m less libertarian when I analyze Denmark?
因此，马特·伊格莱西亚斯（Matt Yglesias）的这个拥有十亿美国人的未来世界 ——马特·伊格莱西亚斯（Matt Yglesias）的未来会更加自由主义吗，就像我在分析丹麦时不那么自由主义一样？
I think in terms of direct public provision of things is one way in which some of the small countries really suggest nonlibertarian solutions to problems that I don’t think is appropriate for America or would be for the future.
我认为，就直接公共供给而言，一些小国确实建议采用非自由主义解决方案来解决我认为不适合美国或未来的问题的一种方式。
I was in Stockholm sometime, and I was super-confused by how their city bike-share thing worked.
我曾经在斯德哥尔摩，对他们的城市共享单车的运作方式感到非常困惑。
And I just went into the Teavana, and I asked someone who worked there — obviously in English, not in domestic language — I was like, “How does this public service that you are not responsible for in any way or work for, how does it function?” She explained it really well to me in a foreign language for no good reason.
我刚刚走进茶瓦那，我问在那里工作的人 ——“显然是用英语，而不是国内语言 —— 我当时想，“这个你不以任何方式负责或工作的公共服务是如何运作的？”她毫无理由地用外语向我解释得很好。
Like, no, I’m sure they have strong unions there.
就像，不，我确信他们在那里有强大的工会。
There’s no reason for her to provide high quality customer service, and no American transit agency employee would do that.
她没有理由提供高质量的客户服务，美国交通机构的员工也不会这样做。
That’s just nice, right?
这很好，对吧？
That’s not America, and it’s not going to be America, and it’s really not going to be one-billion-Americans America.
那不是美国，也不会是美国，而且真的不会是拥有十亿美国人的美国。
I think that level of libertarianism in which we do not expect direct public provision of things to be all that high quality is very much baked into the cake and could become even more so.
我认为，我们不期望直接向公共提供高质量的东西的自由主义水平已经成为蛋糕，而且可能会变得更加如此。
On things under- and overrated
关于被低估和高估的事情
It’s time for a bout of overrated versus underrated.
是时候进行一场高估与低估的较量了。
Are you game?
你是游戏吗？
Sure.
当然。
You had him for a class — Robert Nozick — overrated or underrated?
你让他上了一堂课——“罗伯特·诺齐克”——“高估还是低估？”
Underrated.
被低估了。
Why?
为什么？
I think most people do not pay attention to what the end of Anarchy, State, and Utopia actually says, or to some of his other books.
我认为大多数人并没有关注《无政府状态、国家和乌托邦》的结尾到底说了什么，或者他的其他一些书。
But he’s a really deep thinker.
但他确实是一位很有深度的思想家。
Particularly because so few academics are right of center, it is really to people’s benefit.
特别是因为中间偏右的学者很少，这确实对人们有利。
This is probably not to the specific benefit of the Conversations with Tyler audience.
这可能不会给《与泰勒对话》观众带来具体好处。
But people should really try to engage these major works like his in a serious way, not with like, “I’m going to get my highlighter pen and debunk this guy.”
但人们真的应该尝试以严肃的方式参与这些像他这样的主要作品，而不是像“我要拿起我的荧光笔来揭穿这个家伙的谎言”。
It was one of the great privileges of my life to be in a small seminar with him and really learn from him.
能和他一起参加一个小型研讨会并真正向他学习是我一生中最大的荣幸之一。
I have obviously not become a Nozick-style deontological libertarian —
我显然没有成为诺齐克式的义务论自由主义者——
Nor did he.
他也没有。
— but you learn a lot more with that kind of thing.
— 但是通过这种事情你可以学到更多东西。
Another Harvard philosopher, Hilary Putnam.
另一位哈佛哲学家希拉里·普特南。
Hilary Putnam, I don’t think is that widely rated at all, but I’m definitely a Putnam fan.
希拉里·普特南（Hilary Putnam），我认为她的评价没有那么广泛，但我绝对是普特南的粉丝。
The pragmatic tradition in American philosophy is good.
美国哲学的实用主义传统是好的。
He taught the single best class I ever took in my life on philosophy of language.
他教的是我一生中上过的最好的语言哲学课程。
LeBron James — overrated or underrated?
勒布朗·詹姆斯——被高估还是被低估？
I think correctly rated.
我认为评级正确。
At this point, everyone with a brain sees LeBron for what he is, and he’s excellent.
在这一点上，每个有头脑的人都看到了勒布朗的真实面目，他非常出色。
Gilbert Arenas?
吉尔伯特·阿里纳斯？
Well, he got in trouble for that gun thing, right?
好吧，他因为那把枪的事惹上麻烦了，对吧？
Of course.
当然。
The other guy in that conflict turned out to be an actual murderer.
这场冲突中的另一个人原来是真正的凶手。
They canceled him.
他们取消了他。
Right.
正确的。
I don’t even remember his name, but he was an actual murderer —
我什至不记得他的名字，但他是一个真正的凶手——
Crittenton, right?
克里坦顿，对吗？
— who went to jail.
—— 谁进了监狱。
So, Gilbert got a raw deal in that.
所以，吉尔伯特在这件事上受到了不公平的待遇。
He pioneered the long-distance three, correct?
他是长距离三分球的先驱，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
So maybe he’s underrated.
所以也许他被低估了。
Now you spent a number of weeks recently up in the state of Maine.
您最近在缅因州待了几周。
Overrated or underrated?
被高估还是被低估？
Underrated.
被低估了。
It’s a great state.
这是一个很棒的状态。
What is it we don’t know about Maine?
关于缅因州，我们有什么不知道的？
I think not a lot of people know about Maine off the coast.
我认为没有多少人了解缅因州沿海地区。
Interior Maine and the North Maine Woods are really cool and great in a very different way from coastal Maine.
缅因州内陆和北缅因森林确实很酷，很棒，但与缅因州沿海地区截然不同。
A lot of people come up there for a brief visit.
很多人来这里短暂参观。
They see the rocks, they eat a lobster, and they say, “All right, this is okay.” And then they come back.
他们看到岩石，吃龙虾，然后说：“好吧，没关系。”然后他们回来了。
But Maine contains multitudes.
但缅因州人口众多。
You’ve got to get to Greenville and Millinocket, see the real weird shit up there.
你必须去格林维尔和米利诺基特，看看那里真正奇怪的东西。
What makes it weird?
是什么让它变得奇怪？
What makes it weird?
是什么让它变得奇怪？
Yeah.
是的。
Because America has a rural culture that is regional in a particular way — southern and midwestern and that kind of northern New England is just different in its own way.
因为美国有一种以特定方式具有区域性的乡村文化——南部和中西部，而新英格兰北部则有其独特的方式。
It’s cut off spatially from the rest of rural America.
它在空间上与美国其他农村地区隔绝。
It’s tucked away in with Quebec.
它隐藏在魁北克省内。
There’s weird towns up there where everybody speaks French, and it’s a different kind of place.
那里有一些奇怪的城镇，每个人都说法语，这是一个不同的地方。
I’m like you, right?
我和你一样，对吧？
I’m just somebody who likes weird stuff and places not a lot of people go.
我只是一个喜欢奇怪的东西和很少有人去的地方的人。
Why is your father, Rafael Yglesias, so underrated as a novelist?
为什么你的父亲拉斐尔·伊格莱西亚斯（Rafael Yglesias）作为小说家被如此低估？
That’s a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
It’s because not enough old people have listened to you over the years.
这是因为多年来没有足够的老人听你的。
But that’s true about anything, right?
但任何事情都是如此，对吧？
People need to see it.
人们需要看到它。
I am not a literary person on any level, but I think that a certain kind of social-realist fiction writing has become unfashionable and that applies to him and his books and also to my grandfather’s books.
我在任何层面上都不是一个文学家，但我认为某种社会现实主义小说写作已经不再流行，这适用于他和他的书，也适用于我祖父的书。
When you revisit your earlier musical tastes, what is your perspective?
当你重新审视你早期的音乐品味时，你的观点是什么？
If I think of a group such as Rancid — you used to listen to them.
如果我想到像 Rancid 这样的团体，你过去常常听他们的。
I bought that CD.
我买了那张 CD。
I thought it was pretty good.
我觉得还不错。
I listened for a while, but now I never go back to it.
我听了一会儿，但现在我再也没有回去过。
It just seems derivative of the Clash.
它似乎只是冲突的衍生品。
I’m not opposed to their body of work, but it seems irrelevant.
我并不反对他们的工作，但这似乎无关紧要。
The music you used to like — do you feel that way about it?
你以前喜欢的音乐 —— 你有这样的感觉吗？
The Arctic Monkeys — do they contribute anything of value?
北极猴子 — 它们贡献了任何有价值的东西吗？
You think back on your life, and there’s stuff that you’ve listened to because .
你回想你的生活，你会发现有些东西是你听过的。
.
。
.
。
I’ll say for me, right?
我就替我说吧？
Like, I think, most people, I have a curve of new music adoption, right?
我想，就像大多数人一样，我有一个接受新音乐的曲线，对吧？
There was just a time in my life when I was super into going to see bands.
在我的一生中，有一段时间我超级喜欢去看乐队。
I was always checking out new things.
我总是在检查新事物。
I was getting into new CDs, and new music that happened to come out in those mid-aughts years loomed really, really large in my mind.
我开始接触新的 CD，那些在 20 世纪中期出现的新音乐在我的脑海中浮现出来。
Then as I become an old person, I stopped going to concerts.
后来我年纪大了，就不再去听音乐会了。
I stopped being as on top of new stuff.
我不再热衷于新事物。
I have a much longer back catalog to go through.
我有一个更长的目录需要浏览。
And a lot of that stuff — I don’t even know what you’d call it, but mid-aughts rock and roll stuff that white people in their 20s were listening to — I don’t think holds up that well, and it’s not going to stand the test of time.
还有很多这样的东西 ——我什至不知道你会怎么称呼它，但是二十多岁的白人正在听的二十多岁的摇滚乐东西——我认为没有那么好，也经不起时间的考验。
So what in popular music has proven to be enduring for you?
那么流行音乐中的哪些元素对你来说是经久不衰的呢？
Enduring for me.
为我忍耐。
Well, Rancid is enduring for me.
嗯，Rancid 对我来说是持久的。
I will always stand up for Let’s Go.
我将永远支持Let’s Go。
Okay, what else?
好吧，还有什么？
From the era that I was dismissing, Metric is the band that I really liked, that I look forward to all the new stuff.
从我不屑一顾的时代开始，Metric 是我真正喜欢的乐队，我期待所有的新东西。
I revisit the old stuff all the time.
我总是重温旧事。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
I haven’t thought that much about popular music.
我对流行音乐没有想太多。
How would you redesign Twitter?
您将如何重新设计 Twitter？
How would I redesign Twitter?
我将如何重新设计 Twitter？
They have to make blocking tools much more prominent, right?
他们必须让拦截工具更加突出，对吧？
It’s really important on Twitter, I think, to be constantly editing your experience, and they don’t present it that way for, I’m sure, various reasons.
我认为，在 Twitter 上不断编辑你的体验非常重要，但我确信他们不会以这种方式呈现，原因有多种。
But one thing I always want to do is — sometimes you see a post, and it’s terrible, and you should be able to just mass block everybody who gave it a little heart.
但我一直想做的一件事是 — 有时你看到一个帖子，它很糟糕，你应该能够大规模屏蔽所有给予它一点爱心的人。
Because there’s too much — I don’t know — just like trolling.
因为太多了 —— 我不知道 —— 就像恶搞一样。
Twitter’s great, honestly.
老实说，推特很棒。
It’s an incredible way to be in touch with other people, to have these kinds of mechanisms.
拥有这样的机制是与其他人联系的一种令人难以置信的方式。
But so much of what people do on there is just reinscribe their affiliations, and to get value out of it, you need to try to dial that down and really take control over what you see.
但人们在那里所做的很多事情只是重新定义他们的隶属关系，为了从中获得价值，你需要尝试降低它并真正控制你所看到的内容。
Today is, I think, August 21st, give or take.
我认为今天是 8 月 21 日，或多或少。
At this point, what do you think we are learning from the NBA bubble?
此刻，您认为我们从 NBA 泡沫中学到了什么？
About basketball, not about COVID testing.
关于篮球，而不是关于新冠病毒检测。
What are we learning about the NBA bubble?
关于 NBA 泡沫，我们学到了什么？
That is an excellent question.
这是一个很好的问题。
I think we’re learning that there is stuff going on off the court that is impacting what we see on the court in a more clear way than we necessarily knew.
我认为我们正在了解到，场外发生的事情正在以比我们所知道的更明显的方式影响着我们在场上看到的东西。
The games have been more different.
比赛更加不同。
The quality of the defense has been lower.
防守质量较低。
Something is off, and I think it stems from people’s routines being disrupted.
有些事情不对劲，我认为这是因为人们的日常生活被打乱了。
I don’t think we know exactly what it is that’s going on in there, but there’s something more to the game than what’s happening within the four lines of the court.
我不认为我们确切地知道那里发生了什么，但比赛的意义不仅仅是球场四线内发生的事情。
What’s your prediction about what kind of team or what kind of player is favored by the bubble?
您对什么样的球队或者什么样的球员会受到泡沫的青睐有何预测？
Hmmm, that’s a good question.
嗯，这是个好问题。
People will hear this and be able to judge your prediction, just to be clear.
人们会听到这个并能够判断你的预测，只是为了清楚起见。
I know.
我知道。
I really hesitate to make sports predictions.
我真的很犹豫是否要进行体育预测。
I think it’s like having incredible amounts of self-confidence with your offense.
我认为这就像对自己的进攻充满了难以置信的自信。
We were talking about Gilbert Arenas and how he pioneered the really far long-range three.
我们正在谈论吉尔伯特·阿里纳斯以及他如何开创超远距离三分球。
There were all kinds of problems with him, right?
他身上有各种各样的问题，对吗？
But it was that kind of spirit of, “I, in fact, can hit this shot, so I’m going to go take it.” Knowing that and being assertive, I think, has proven its value in the NBA over the past 10, 15 years.
但正是这种精神，“事实上，我可以击中这一球，所以我要去接球。”我认为，了解这一点并保持自信已经在过去 10、15 年的 NBA 中证明了它的价值。
And with what seems, to me, to be a slipping level of defensive focus inside the bubble, it’s even more just like, pull the trigger.
在我看来，泡沫内的防守焦点水平正在下降，这更像是扣动扳机。
Some urban and YIMBY questions.
一些城市和 YIMBY 的问题。
Will there still be a YIMBY movement, say, three years from now, when coronavirus, we hope, is more or less gone?
比如说，三年后，当我们希望冠状病毒或多或少消失时，还会有 YIMBY 运动吗？
Yes, I think that there will be.
是的，我认为会有。
But if you see a lot of the YIMBY movement as coming for the Bay Area, the impetus to build there might be much weaker.
但如果你看到很多 YIMBY 运动都涌向湾区，那么在那里建设的动力可能会弱得多。
Support from builders might be weaker.
建筑商的支持可能会较弱。
Rents could be, say, 15 percent, maybe 20 percent lower.
租金可能会降低 15%，甚至 20%。
Palantir’s moving out of Palo Alto.
Palantir 即将搬出帕洛阿尔托。
Maybe COVID-19, in a sense, is the rent-lowering mechanism, not in a good way, but —
也许从某种意义上说，COVID-19 是一种减租机制，但不是一种好的方式，但是——
Yeah.
是的。
I think you’ve seen, in some ways, the biggest YIMBY political successes in Oregon rather than in the Bay Area, and the people who work on that — they all say to me that the fact that the prices are not as high as they are in the Bay Area is helpful to them, that it becomes more comprehensible to people why new construction, new market-rate construction improves the market because it’s not so mindbogglingly out of reach for normal people.
我想你在某种程度上已经看到，YIMBY最大的政治成功是在俄勒冈州而不是在湾区，而从事这一工作的人都对我说，房价不像湾区那么高，这一事实对他们有帮助，人们更容易理解为什么新建筑、新的市场价格建筑改善了市场，因为它对普通人来说并不是那么令人难以置信的遥不可及。
It’s like, “Okay, this nice new house might just be better than the house that I’m in, and I could move into it.” So I have a case for new construction.
就像，“好吧，这座漂亮的新房子可能比我现在住的房子更好，我可以搬进去。”所以我有一个新建筑的案例。
I think that unless we see cities unraveling, having somewhat of a decline in the incredible pressure on prices in the Bay Area could be constructive.
我认为，除非我们看到城市崩溃，否则湾区令人难以置信的价格压力有所下降可能是建设性的。
Also, there’s at least some chance — with fiscal problems affecting cities — that the municipal budget stakeholders get more involved in the fact that .
此外，至少有一些机会————随着财政问题影响城市————市政预算利益相关者更多地参与这一事实。
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A city like New York actually has the ability to increase and enhance its tax base anytime they want to, by making it easier to do market-rate building.
像纽约这样的城市实际上有能力随时增加和加强其税基，通过更容易地建立市场税率。
That constituency — even though there’s a robust group of people who would like their salaries and their pensions to be paid — have not really been mobilized on behalf of that cause, so we’ll see.
该选区——尽管有一大群人希望获得工资和养老金——但并没有真正为这一事业而动员起来，所以我们拭目以待。
I don’t want to go too into this “it’s a crisis, but it’s also an opportunity”–type paradigm.
我不想过多讨论“这是一场危机，但也是一个机遇”类型的范式。
But places prove themselves when they are hit with problems.
但当地方遇到问题时，就会证明自己。
It forces you to either try to address your issues in order to survive or get much, much worse.
它迫使你要么试图解决你的问题以求生存，要么变得更糟。
I think we’re going to see a bit of a turning point.
我认为我们将会看到一个转折点。
Say 10 years from now — how do you think New York City will be different for having had Covid-19 as compared to a non-Covid trajectory?
假设 10 年后 ——你认为纽约市在感染了 Covid-19 后的发展轨迹与未感染 Covid-19 的轨迹有何不同？
I think probably more of a reset to even more of a youth-oriented nonfamily-type place.
我认为可能更多的是重新设置为一个更加面向年轻人的非家庭型地方。
I’ve been going back to New York sporadically for years, and I’ve been struck that it’s become a lot more family friendly than I remember it from growing up there.
多年来，我偶尔会回到纽约，令我惊讶的是，这里比我记忆中成长的时候更加适合家庭。
I think there’s a pretty good chance that Covid pushes it back toward more of that ’90s equilibrium.
我认为新冠疫情很有可能将其推回到 90 年代的均衡状态。
If there was a mutual fund for each and every well-known American city, which one would you go long on?
如果美国每一个著名城市都有一个共同基金，你会看多哪一个？
Which one would I go long on?
我会长期关注哪一个？
Relative to market opinion.
相对于市场的看法。
Relative to market opinion.
相对于市场的看法。
The future for Austin is very bright, but I think market opinion already knows that.
奥斯汀的未来非常光明，但我认为市场舆论已经知道这一点。
Maybe Nashville, maybe San Antonio, Minneapolis.
也许是纳什维尔，也许是圣安东尼奥，明尼阿波利斯。
I’m going to say Minneapolis actually, because right now people are getting very low on Minneapolis because of their looting problems, but the fundamentals there are very strong.
事实上，我要说的是明尼阿波利斯，因为现在明尼阿波利斯的人们由于抢劫问题而变得非常低落，但那里的基本面非常强大。
And where would you short?
你会在哪里做空？
Where would I short?
我会在哪里做空？
I think definitely San Francisco, which is not just taking this Covid hit.
我认为肯定是旧金山，它不仅仅受到了新冠疫情的打击。
But I think had a real .
但我认为有一个真正的。
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New York — there’s a lot of different things happening in New York.
纽约 — 纽约发生了很多不同的事情。
There’s a lot of different foundations that economic cluster there, and there’s a real proven ability to lose certain things and gain other kinds of things.
那里有很多不同的经济基础，而且确实有能力失去某些东西并获得其他东西。
The attitude between people in San Francisco and the technology industry is really toxic and poisonous in a way that would give me serious pause about the city’s future.
旧金山人和科技行业之间的态度确实有毒，让我对这座城市的未来产生了严重的犹豫。
You could actually imagine civic leaders there thinking that they welcome the departure of that entire ecosystem, which is really dangerous for them.
你实际上可以想象那里的公民领袖认为他们欢迎整个生态系统的离开，这对他们来说确实很危险。
It’s true that there have been problems associated with the growth of tech in San Francisco, but the number of people there — serious, well-informed people — who don’t see that that’s more of an asset than a penalty.
确实，旧金山的科技发展存在一些问题，但那里的很多人——“严肃、消息灵通的人”——并不认为这更多的是一种财富而不是一种惩罚。
It puts them at big risk.
这使他们面临很大的风险。
Now I’m very much an outsider to Portland and Seattle.
现在我对波特兰和西雅图来说已经是一个局外人了。
But just from my great distance, it strikes me as a public-choice puzzle that the mayors seem to put up with so much nonsense in their cities.
但仅从我遥远的距离来看，市长们似乎在他们的城市中容忍了如此多的废话，这让我觉得这是一个公共选择难题。
Yes.
是的。
You don’t have to believe the most extreme right-wing conspiratorial view of this, but I still don’t understand why what happens there happens.
你不必相信最极端的右翼阴谋论观点，但我仍然不明白为什么会发生这样的事情。
Can you explain that to me?
你能向我解释一下吗？
It’s very mysterious.
非常神秘。
I don’t know either of those cities well.
我对这两个城市都不太了解。
I think it must have something to do with the fact that those are the whitest of the major cities in America, and that they don’t have the .
我认为这一定与这些城市是美国主要城市中最白人的事实有关，而且他们没有。
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I saw a lot of people remarking at the Democratic convention — they say, “Oh, they put all these African American mayors up there instead of the activists who are yelling at the mayors.” I was thinking, “Well, yeah, of course.” You put up responsible, accountable elected officials who have to manage the various considerations that are up there, not activists yelling in the streets.
我看到很多人在民主党大会上发表评论——他们说，“哦，他们把所有非裔美国市长都放在那里，而不是那些对市长大喊大叫的活动人士。”我当时想：“嗯，是的，当然。”你任命的是负责的、有责任的民选官员，他们必须处理那里的各种考虑因素，而不是在街上大喊大叫的活动人士。
I feel like Seattle and Portland don’t have the kind of political institutions and political stakeholders who can say, “No, this is not helping.
我觉得西雅图和波特兰没有那种政治机构和政治利益相关者可以说：“不，这没有帮助。
I agree that there’s a problem here, and I want to work on it.
我同意这里存在问题，并且我想解决它。
But the specific thing that you guys are doing right now in the streets is not in any way related to that.” It’s just very white Democratic parties in those cities, and I don’t think it is helpful to managing racial tensions.
但你们现在在街上做的具体事情与此没有任何关系。”这些城市的民主党都是非常白人的政党，我认为这对管理种族紧张局势没有帮助。
You wrote a well-known essay suggesting that American democracy is doomed.
你写了一篇著名的文章，暗示美国的民主注定会失败。
If I look at the history —
如果我回顾一下历史——
There’s some tension there.
那里有些紧张。
Why tension?
为什么紧张？
Well, with the idea that we should add more people and that the country is going to collapse.
好吧，我们应该增加更多的人口，国家就会崩溃。
Well, all of that can happen, right?
好吧，所有这些都有可能发生，对吧？
Yes.
是的。
If you think American democracy is doomed, does that make you less interested in adding more people?
如果您认为美国民主注定要失败，这是否会让您对增加人口不再感兴趣？
Or a bit like, “Well, it will be rich here.
或者有点像，“好吧，这里会很富有。
They’re not going to create that many political problems anyway, since we won’t have democracy.
无论如何，他们不会制造那么多政治问题，因为我们不会有民主。
So you might as well crowd in some more people from other nondemocracies and raise their standard of living?” How does the whole picture fit together?
所以你不妨多吸纳一些来自其他非民主国家的人，提高他们的生活水平？”整个画面如何组合在一起？
Well, I wouldn’t say .
好吧，我不会说。
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My forecast there was not that the United States of America will cease to be a democratically governed country in the long run, but that the United States is due for a constitutional rupture.
我的预测并不是美利坚合众国从长远来看将不再是一个民主治理的国家，而是美国将面临宪法破裂。
We’ve seen in French history and a number of other countries over the years that they continue to be democracies or democracy is restored, but you have breaks in the system.
多年来，我们在法国和其他一些国家的历史中看到，它们仍然是民主国家，或者民主已经恢复，但制度却出现了断裂。
You have a moment where there’s a rewrite of things.
你有一个需要重写事物的时刻。
Even in the United States — of course, our famous moments in history now are the Founding Fathers calling backsies on some of the Articles of Confederation or the country completely falling apart after Abraham Lincoln was elected.
即使在美国——当然，我们现在历史上著名的时刻是开国元勋们对某些《邦联条款》提出支持，或者是亚伯拉罕·林肯当选后国家彻底分崩离析。
And you come out on the other side of it, and we now call those people the heroes of our historical epic.
而你从它的另一边走出来，我们现在称这些人为我们历史史诗的英雄。
How you have a successful country over the long term is that, when things break down, you come out on the other side with something better rather than with something worse.
从长远来看，一个国家的成功在于，当事情崩溃时，你会带着更好的东西而不是更糟糕的东西走出去。
My main aspiration in writing that essay is to try to get people — American people — to be a little less mad at each other and to have a little bit more recognition of the extent to which there are structural issues in our governance that is making it hard for us to proceed and that it’s not all “Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with those people?” Because if problems arise, if something goes badly wrong, I think you want to say what they did after the Articles of Confederation, which is, “We need to change the rules here.
我写这篇文章的主要愿望是试图让人们——————美国人民————少一点互相生气，多一点认识到我们治理中存在的结构性问题在多大程度上使我们难以前进，而不仅仅是“天哪，这些人到底出了什么问题？”因为如果出现问题，如果出现严重错误，我想你想说的是他们在《邦联条例》之后做了什么，那就是，“我们需要改变这里的规则。
We need to change the system.” Not “We need to kill our political opponents.”
我们需要改变这个系统。”不是“我们需要杀死我们的政治对手”。
What’s the most plausible scenario for that rupture?
最有可能发生这种破裂的情况是什么？
The Civil War — we know how that went.
内战 ——我们知道那是怎么回事。
The Constitution, Articles of Confederation — that’s past history.
《宪法》、《邦联条例》——那都是过去的历史了。
What do you actually see happening?
您实际上看到发生了什么？
Not a prediction, but just the modally most plausible path?
不是预测，而是模态上最合理的路径？
I think the configuration would involve something like a very unpopular Republican administration being replaced with a very left-wing Democratic president who, for the demographic-balance reasons in Congress, doesn’t have majority support in the Senate, and who then faces a lot of pressure from his supporters to govern in extra-constitutional ways.
我认为这种配置将涉及一个非常不受欢迎的共和党政府被一个非常左翼的民主党总统取代，由于国会人口平衡的原因，他在参议院没有获得多数支持，然后他面临来自支持者的巨大压力，要求他以超宪法的方式执政。
Then conversely, a lot of elite actors in the business community, in law enforcement, in the military are very motivated to resist that president’s factors.
相反，商界、执法部门、军队中的许多精英人士都非常积极地抵制总统的因素。
It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in Latin American presidential-type systems, and that could happen here very plausibly.
这是我们在拉丁美洲的总统制体系中看到的那种事情，而且这种情况很可能在这里发生。
That’s not Joe Biden, right?
那不是乔·拜登，对吧？
But the Democratic primary could have gone in different kinds of ways.
但民主党初选可能会以不同的方式进行。
Eight, twelve years in the future, you might have a different outcome in this sort of situation.
未来八年、十二年，在这种情况下，你可能会有不同的结果。
Now, you and I both know Donald Trump is not favored to win, but he does, in fact, have some chance of winning, even with very high unemployment, serious problems with the pandemic, a long history of being corrupt, other issues surrounding rhetoric I don’t need to tell you.
现在，你和我都知道唐纳德·特朗普不被看好获胜，但事实上，他确实有一些获胜的机会，即使失业率很高、大流行问题严重、腐败历史悠久，以及其他与言论有关的问题我不需要告诉你。
What is your best account of why Trump is still in the race?
对于特朗普仍在竞选的原因，您最好的解释是什么？
I think there’s two versions of it.
我认为它有两个版本。
One is that polarization has created a situation in which there’s a lot of loyalty.
一是两极分化造成了一种高度忠诚的局面。
If you were, broadly speaking, in agreement with the ideas of the Republican Party, you are now highly motivated and highly incentivized to back the leader, right?
如果从广义上讲，您同意共和党的想法，那么您现在就会非常积极地支持这位领导人，对吧？
You can imagine a different kind of political system where you would say, “Okay, we’re going to get rid of this guy.
你可以想象一种不同的政治制度，你会说：“好吧，我们要摆脱这个人。
We’re going to put somebody else up who’s going to stand for the same sort of general values, but have a different approach.” In America you can’t do that.
我们将任命其他人代表同样的普遍价值观，但采取不同的方法。”在美国你不能这样做。
The other thing is that progressive politics in the United States is very .
另一件事是，美国的政治非常进步。
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I wouldn’t say it’s very unpopular because it was very unpopular, anywhere or whenever.
我不会说它非常不受欢迎，因为它无论何时何地都非常不受欢迎。
But the public has serious doubts about putting the left in power in places in ways that a lot of people I know are a little bit in denial about, even though the facts are staring you right in the face.
但公众对让左派掌权的方式抱有严重怀疑，我认识的很多人都有点否认这一点，尽管事实就在眼前。
Why are there Republican governors in Maryland and Massachusetts and Vermont?
为什么马里兰州、马萨诸塞州和佛蒙特州的州长都是共和党人？
Why is Andrew Cuomo so popular even though people on the left complain about him constantly?
为什么安德鲁·科莫如此受欢迎，尽管左翼人士不断抱怨他？
It’s because people don’t want to put left-wing activists in charge of the country.
这是因为人们不想让左翼活动人士掌管国家。
Democrats, I think, will probably beat Trump because people don’t think that’s what electing Biden would accomplish.
我认为民主党可能会击败特朗普，因为人们认为选举拜登不会实现这一目标。
But it’s out there, and it’s not a new fact in American politics, but an enduring truth.
但它就在那里，而且这在美国政治中并不是一个新事实，而是一个持久的事实。
How should we attract more talent to state and local governments?
我们应该如何吸引更多人才加入州和地方政府？
I mean this in a purely nonpartisan way.
我的意思是纯粹无党派的。
Just smarter, harder-working people.
只是更聪明、更努力工作的人。
Ooh, yeah, smarter, harder-working people in state and local governments.
哦，是的，州和地方政府的人们更聪明、更勤奋。
For local government, I think a lot of this probably has to do with cleaning up some of the muck.
对于地方政府来说，我认为这很大程度上可能与清理一些淤泥有关。
There’s too many different local government institutions.
有太多不同的地方政府机构。
People don’t know who they are or who does what — things like that — and trying to get a …
人们不知道自己是谁，也不知道谁在做什么 — 类似的事情 — 并试图获得……
Lenin said, “better fewer, but better,” which I think you could accomplish a lot with in local governments in the United States.
列宁说过，“越少越好”，我认为美国地方政府可以通过这一点取得很多成就。
State government is interesting.
州政府很有趣。
We have a big problem where the media — people who follow politics — don’t get at all emotionally or intellectually invested in what’s happening in Indiana, even though state government carries an incredible amount of the load.
我们面临一个大问题，即媒体————那些追随政治的人————根本没有在情感上或智力上投入到印第安纳州正在发生的事情上，尽管州政府承担着令人难以置信的重担。
All the first-order service delivery is done there, but it’s very .
所有的一阶服务交付都在那里完成，但它非常。
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It’s not just low prestige.
这不仅仅是声望低。
It’s like almost people don’t pay attention to it at all.
就好像几乎人们根本不关注它一样。
Well, that is low prestige, yeah.
嗯，威望很低，是的。
Sure, yes.
当然，是的。
What can we do about that?
对此我们能做些什么呢？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
David Schleicher says we should concentrate more power in governors’ hands because people do know who the governor is and pay attention, and bad governors tend to get replaced.
大卫·施莱彻 (David Schleicher) 表示，我们应该将更多权力集中在州长手中，因为人们确实知道州长是谁并予以关注，而糟糕的州长往往会被取代。
That has some merit to it.
这有一些优点。
It gives me pause on some level, but I guess if I had to pick, that would be my solution — that you have to strengthen the decentralized institutions of American government by centralizing them.
这让我在某种程度上犹豫了，但我想如果我必须选择的话，这将是我的解决方案——你必须通过集中化来加强美国政府的分散机构。
One question on monetary policy: Has the pandemic shown that a nominal GDP rule is unworkable?
关于货币政策的一个问题：疫情是否表明名义GDP规则行不通？
Because say real GDP falls by 10 percent over some specified timeframe.
因为假设实际 GDP 在某个特定时间范围内下降了 10%。
Then, to stay on the nominal GDP path, you have to inflate by that much more?
那么，为了保持名义GDP的增长，就必须增加那么多的通货膨胀吗？
That seems both not desirable and politically impossible, and that the rule will just break.
这似乎既不可取，在政治上也是不可能的，而且规则将会被打破。
What do you think?
你怎么认为？
I think hitting a strict target might be unworkable, but it’s also shown the value of the nominal framework.
我认为达到严格的目标可能是行不通的，但这也显示了名义框架的价值。
Because we are otherwise finding ourselves spending a lot of time quibbling about how to understand inflation adjustment in a strange period of trajectory.
因为否则我们会发现自己花了很多时间争论如何理解一个奇怪的轨迹时期的通胀调整。
It’s like if college wants to charge you full tuition, but they’re only giving you online courses.
这就好像大学想向你收取全额学费，但他们只为你提供在线课程。
I think probably the right thing to say about that is that that’s massive inflation.
我认为也许正确的说法是，这是大规模的通货膨胀。
But you really can’t redo how the CPI works in real time and then hit a CPI target.
但你确实无法实时重做 CPI 的运作方式，然后达到 CPI 目标。
I do think you might have to say, “Faced with a big shock, all right, we’re settling for less.” Something like that.
我确实认为你可能不得不说，“面对巨大的冲击，好吧，我们会接受更少的冲击。”类似的事情。
But a lot of the apparatus of NGDP targeting — that we should have a futures market, that we should be paying attention to what this is, that we should be trying to get the newspapers to talk about nominal GDP — I think it’s all been validated by this experience.
但是很多 NGDP 目标的机制——“我们应该有一个期货市场，我们应该关注它是什么，我们应该试图让报纸谈论名义 GDP”——我认为这一切都被这次经验所验证。
It all got very in vogue as a discussion topic because of the Great Recession, 2008–2009 crash.
由于 2008 年至 2009 年的经济大衰退，这一切都成为了一个非常流行的讨论话题。
But from a macroeconomic perspective, I think that was a very conventional situation, whereas this pandemic is a little bit weird.
但从宏观经济的角度来看，我认为这是一个非常传统的情况，而这次疫情却有点奇怪。
But the strength of nominal targeting is that it can help you think about the demand-side aspect of real shocks in a clearer way.
但名义目标的优势在于，它可以帮助您更清晰地思考实际冲击的需求方方面。
On the Matt Yglesias production function
关于 Matt Yglesias 生产函数
Last but not least is the Matt Yglesias production function.
最后但并非最不重要的是 Matt Yglesias 生产函数。
As you know, many public intellectuals — they use economics as a base, and then that shapes how they comment on public policy.
如你所知，许多公共知识分子——他们以经济学为基础，然后这决定了他们对公共政策的评论。
The way I’ve read a lot of your career is you’ve used analytic philosophy as your base, then later learned some economics.
我读过你的很多职业生涯的方式是，你以分析哲学为基础，然后又学习了一些经济学。
Is that something you did consciously?
这是你有意识做的事吗？
Do you agree with that characterization?
您同意这种描述吗？
And why do people do that?
人们为什么要这么做？
I definitely agree with that characterization.
我绝对同意这种描述。
I think it is not a conscious plan of attack.
我认为这不是一个有意识的攻击计划。
I majored in philosophy for very naive reasons, like I enjoyed the intro class, and my TA was flattering and encouraged me to pursue it as a major.
我主修哲学是出于非常幼稚的原因，比如我喜欢入门课，我的助教很奉承我，鼓励我把它作为一个专业。
But I do think it’s a good .
但我确实认为这是一件好事。
.
。
.
。
To the extent that people will want to be writers about things, I think that’s pretty good training.
就人们想成为作家而言，我认为这是很好的培训。
I did a panel discussion at American Philosophical Association one time with Andrew Sullivan and with another writer.
我有一次在美国哲学协会与安德鲁·沙利文和另一位作家进行了小组讨论。
We were all old philosophy majors, and we were talking about this.
我们都是哲学专业的老学生，我们都在谈论这个。
It’s a good background because it’s really about words, and how they work, and how to think about things, and how to draw distinctions, and how to parachute in to conversations that you don’t know anything about and still make some useful contribution to them.
这是一个很好的背景，因为它实际上是关于文字的，以及它们如何运作，如何思考事物，如何区分，以及如何跳伞进入你一无所知的对话并仍然为它们做出一些有用的贡献。
You can always read a textbook about something else, learn something.
你总是可以读一本关于其他东西的教科书，学到一些东西。
Economics is obviously an important subject, and economists know a lot of good and useful things.
经济学显然是一门重要的学科，经济学家知道很多好的和有用的东西。
But in academia, you are rewarded for pushing the frontiers, for having the edgiest idea out there.
但在学术界，你会因突破前沿、提出最前卫的想法而获得奖励。
But you don’t really want to base policy recommendations on something like that, right?
但你真的不想将政策建议建立在类似的基础上，对吧？
One promising line of research that some hot shots have two new papers on is not what you want to bet the future on.
一些热门人物发表了两篇新论文的一项有前途的研究方向，并不是你想把未来押在它上面的。
To talk about policy, I think you want to know the basics, but the basics are relatively easy to learn.
谈政策，我想你想了解基础知识，但基础知识是比较容易学的。
Do you think of yourself, in some ways, as a kind of successor to the 1960s, 1970s Jewish New York intellectual scene, but now hyper-powered by the internet?
您是否认为自己在某些方面是 20 世纪 60 年代、1970 年代纽约犹太知识界的继承者，但现在受到互联网的超级推动？
Is that also your tradition?
这也是你们的传统吗？
I don’t think so.
我不这么认为。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
How are you different than that scene?
你和那个场景有什么不同？
You are from the West Village, right?
你是西村的吧？
Yes.
是的。
I’m from New York and I’m Jewish.
我来自纽约，我是犹太人。
I don’t —
我不——
And your father’s a writer.
你父亲是一位作家。
Yeah.
是的。
I don’t know that much about those guys, to be honest.
老实说，我对那些人不太了解。
I’m not saying it’s not true, but that’s not something that I think about or situate myself with.
我并不是说这不是真的，但这不是我思考或定位的事情。
What did you learn about yourself from your stint working as an actual manager?
从担任实际经理的经历中，您对自己有了哪些了解？
Oh, man.
哦，伙计。
It’s so easy when you do your job to get mad at your managers, and to then make the subsequent turn to like, “All these people have no fucking idea what they’re doing.”
当你做好自己的工作时，你很容易对你的经理发脾气，然后又会说：“所有这些人他妈的都不知道他们在做什么。”
But it turns out it is challenging to manage.
但事实证明，管理起来很有挑战性。
It involves real skills.
它涉及真正的技能。
It stressed me out.
这让我压力很大。
I don’t think I did a great job of it.
我不认为我做得很好。
You get a good appreciation for the idea that, even though it might be hard to measure or to see externally, there is real skill being deployed in middle management.
你会很欣赏这样一个想法：尽管可能很难衡量或从外部看到，但中层管理人员拥有真正的技能。
And the meta management skill that must be .
以及必须具备的元管理技能。
.
。
.
。
I didn’t reach this level, but the managers who have to pick the other managers — they are doing something that must be, I think, really hard to even conceptualize, but must have incredible influence on the success of really big organizations.
我没有达到这个水平，但是那些必须挑选其他经理的经理们——我认为，他们所做的事情一定很难概念化，但一定会对真正大型组织的成功产生难以置信的影响。
Now, blogging was very important for your career it seems — helped you a lot.
现在，博客似乎对你的职业生涯非常重要——对你帮助很大。
Why is it that blogging doesn’t seem like it’s coming back right now if it was useful to you, useful to me, useful to many other people?
如果博客对你有用、对我有用、对许多其他人有用，为什么它现在似乎还没有回归呢？
Is it Facebook?
是脸书吗？
Is it Twitter?
是推特吗？
Is it something else?
难道是别的什么？
Why not?
为什么不呢？
I think we blame Facebook and Twitter, conventionally, for it.
我认为我们通常将其归咎于 Facebook 和 Twitter。
But I don’t think that it’s necessarily just about the technological modes.
但我认为这不一定只是技术模式的问题。
Part of why blogging was such an interesting moment was that it introduced a genuine disruption into the ecosystem, and that people who, early on, were not affiliated with important institutions or necessarily well known, by colonizing the open space became a big deal in our own little niches.
博客如此有趣的部分原因在于，它对生态系统带来了真正的破坏，而那些早期不属于重要机构或不一定知名的人，通过殖民开放空间，在我们自己的小利基市场中成为了一件大事。
Twitter has had some of that impact, right?
Twitter 已经产生了一些影响，对吗？
There are smart, good people who’ve come to public attention through their ability to tweet, which is good, right?
有些聪明、善良的人通过发推文的能力引起了公众的关注，这很好，对吧？
That’s a strong thing.
这是一件很强大的事情。
But I don’t think if you brought blogging back, it wouldn’t be blogging in that sense, right?
但我不认为如果你把博客带回来，它就不再是这个意义上的博客了，对吧？
People would want to read the blogs of famous people or the blogs that had big brands behind them, or the New York Times would own blogging or something.
人们会想阅读名人的博客或有大品牌支持的博客，或者《纽约时报》拥有博客之类的东西。
Whereas what was special about that blog moment in its first decade was the extent to which people who we didn’t know would just write stuff and become influential.
而博客在第一个十年的特别之处在于，我们不认识的人会在多大程度上写东西并变得有影响力。
What did you learn from Paul Joskow, the famous economist and also your uncle?
您从著名经济学家、您的叔叔保罗·约斯科 (Paul Joskow) 身上学到了什么？
I learned a lot of stuff from Paul.
我从保罗身上学到了很多东西。
You learn specific things about certificate-of-need rules for hospitals.
您将了解有关医院需求证明规则的具体内容。
But we always, in my family — a lot of economists — he and his brother, Andy, and my grandfather, Jules, are all economists, PhD people.
但在我的家庭中，我们总是——“很多经济学家”——他和他的兄弟安迪，还有我的祖父朱尔斯，都是经济学家、博士。
I was always interested in the subject.
我一直对这个话题很感兴趣。
I liked to ask questions at family discussions.
我喜欢在家庭讨论中提问。
His real specialty is in regulatory-type issues and I came to appreciate from things he said just exactly how complicated these questions are, like, what should we do with utility-type infrastructure, with these regulated-type industries?
他真正的专长是监管类型的问题，从他所说的事情中我开始意识到这些问题到底有多么复杂，比如，我们应该如何处理公用事业类型的基础设施，以及这些受监管类型的行业？
So many people I know fall back on very hazy, big-picture, ideological things.
我认识的很多人都依赖于非常模糊的、大局观的、意识形态的东西。
They heard something happened that was called deregulation, and it was bad.
他们听说发生了所谓放松管制的事情，这很糟糕。
This is not true that it was bad.
这并不是事实，说它很糟糕。
It’s like, what is deregulation?
就像，什么是放松管制？
It’s a harder question than I think most people appreciate, and that’s something I definitely learned from him.
这是一个比我认为大多数人所理解的更难的问题，这绝对是我从他那里学到的东西。
Very last question: what is the most important thing you learned from your mother?
最后一个问题：你从母亲那里学到的最重要的事情是什么？
Most important thing I learned from my mother — personally or intellectually?
我从母亲那里学到的最重要的事情是——个人方面还是智力方面？
Combined.
合并。
I am not a visual person, but she was, and she really helped me.
我不是一个视觉型的人，但她是，而且她确实帮助了我。
I am always reminded by her emphasis on that, and how much it actually matters what things look like, and how the visual design is, and that that’s not a superficial question, that our communications with one another — not exclusively — we have podcasts, but so much of what we do comes through our eyes, right?
她对这一点的强调总是提醒我，事物的外观、视觉设计实际上有多重要，这不是一个肤浅的问题，我们彼此之间的交流 ——“不完全是”——我们有播客，但我们所做的很多事情都是通过我们的眼睛来实现的，对吧？
That impacts the message in a profound and real way, and you shouldn’t think of it as just a distorting field, that that’s actually what we’re doing when we write something — we’re creating images that other people look at.
这对信息产生了深刻而真实的影响，你不应该将其视为一个扭曲的场，这实际上就是我们在写东西时所做的事情 ——我们正在创造其他人看到的图像。
Matt Yglesias, thank you very much.
马特·伊格莱西亚斯，非常感谢你。
Again, everyone, a big plug for Matt’s new book, One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger.
再次，大家，马特的新书《十亿美国人：思考更大的案例》的重要内容。
Of course, you can also find Matt on Twitter and in many other places.
当然，你也可以在 Twitter 和许多其他地方找到 Matt。
Matt, thank you.
马特，谢谢你。
Thank you.
谢谢。
You ask tough questions.
你问了一些棘手的问题。