Inequality and Risk

August 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at Defcon 2005.) Suppose you wanted to get rid of economic inequality.

2005 年 8 月（本文摘自 Defcon 2005 上的一次演讲。）假设您想消除经济不平等。

There are two ways to do it: give money to the poor, or take it away from the rich.

有两种方法可以做到这一点：把钱给穷人，或者从富人那里拿走钱。

But they amount to the same thing, because if you want to give money to the poor, you have to get it from somewhere.

但它们的意义是一样的，因为如果你想给穷人钱，你就必须从某个地方得到它。

You can't get it from the poor, or they just end up where they started.

你无法从穷人那里得到它，否则他们就会回到起点。

You have to get it from the rich.

你必须从富人那里得到它。

There is of course a way to make the poor richer without simply shifting money from the rich.

当然，有一种方法可以让穷人变得更富有，而无需简单地从富人那里转移资金。

You could help the poor become more productive — for example, by improving access to education.

你可以帮助穷人提高生产力——例如，通过改善受教育的机会。

Instead of taking money from engineers and giving it to checkout clerks, you could enable people who would have become checkout clerks to become engineers.

您可以让本来会成为收银员的人成为工程师，而不是从工程师那里拿钱给收银员。

This is an excellent strategy for making the poor richer.

这是让穷人变得更富有的绝佳策略。

But the

但是

evidence of the last 200 years shows that it doesn't reduce economic inequality, because it makes the rich richer too.

过去200年的证据表明，它并没有减少经济不平等，因为它还让富人变得更富有。

If there are more engineers, then there are more opportunities to hire them and to sell them things.

如果有更多的工程师，那么就有更多的机会雇用他们并向他们出售东西。

Henry Ford couldn't have made a fortune building cars in a society in which most people were still subsistence farmers; he would have had neither workers nor customers.

在一个大多数人仍然是自给自足的农民的社会里，亨利·福特不可能靠制造汽车发家致富。他既没有工人也没有顾客。

If you want to reduce economic inequality instead of just improving

如果您想减少经济不平等而不仅仅是改善

the overall standard of living, it's not enough just to raise up the poor.

总体生活水平，仅仅提高穷人的生活水平是不够的。

What if one of your newly minted engineers gets ambitious and goes on to become another Bill Gates?

如果您的一位新晋工程师雄心勃勃并最终成为另一个比尔盖茨怎么办？

Economic inequality will be as bad as ever.

经济不平等将一如既往地严重。

If you actually want to compress the gap between rich and poor, you have to push down on the top as well as pushing up on the bottom.

如果你真的想缩小贫富差距，你就必须压低上层和上层。

How do you push down on the top?

怎样才能把上面推下来呢？

You could try to decrease the

你可以尝试减少

productivity of the people who make the most money: make the best surgeons operate with their left hands, force popular actors to overeat, and so on.

赚最多钱的人的生产力：让最好的外科医生用左手做手术，强迫受欢迎的演员吃得过多，等等。

But this approach is hard to implement.

但这种方法很难实施。

The only practical solution is to let people do the best work they can, and then (either by taxation or by limiting what they can charge) to confiscate whatever you deem to be surplus.

唯一实际的解决方案是让人们尽其所能地工作，然后（通过征税或限制他们可以收取的费用）没收任何你认为多余的东西。

So let's be clear what reducing economic inequality means.

因此，让我们弄清楚减少经济不平等意味着什么。

It is

它是

identical with taking money from the rich.

与从富人那里拿钱是一样的。

When you transform a mathematical expression into another form, you often notice new things.

当您将数学表达式转换为另一种形式时，您经常会注意到新的事物。

So it is in this case.

在这种情况下也是如此。

Taking money from the rich turns out to have consequences one might not foresee when one phrases the same idea in terms of "reducing inequality." The problem is, risk and reward have to be proportionate.

当人们用“减少不平等”来表达同样的想法时，从富人那里拿钱会产生人们可能无法预见的后果。问题是，风险和回报必须成比例。

A bet with only a 10% chance of winning has to pay more than one with a

一场只有 10% 获胜机会的投注必须支付超过 10% 的赌注

50% chance of winning, or no one will take it.

50%的获胜机会，否则没人会接受。

So if you lop off the top of the possible rewards, you thereby decrease people's willingness to take risks.

因此，如果你放弃可能获得的最高回报，就会降低人们冒险的意愿。

Transposing into our original expression, we get: decreasing economic inequality means decreasing the risk people are willing to take.

转换成我们原来的表达，我们得到：减少经济不平等意味着减少人们愿意承担的风险。

There are whole classes of risks that are no longer worth taking if the maximum return is decreased.

如果最大回报减少，那么所有类别的风险就不再值得承担。

One reason high tax rates are

高税率的原因之一是

disastrous is that this class of risks includes starting new companies.

灾难性的是，这类风险包括创办新公司。

Investors Startups are intrinsically risky.

投资者 初创公司本质上是有风险的。

A startup is like a small boat in the open sea.

初创公司就像大海中的一艘小船。

One big wave and you're sunk.

一个大浪，你就沉没了。

A competing product, a downturn in the economy, a delay in getting funding or regulatory approval, a patent suit, changing technical standards, the departure of a key employee, the loss of a big account — any one of these can

竞争产品、经济低迷、获得资金或监管批准的延迟、专利诉讼、技术标准的变化、关键员工的离职、大客户的损失——其中任何一个都可能

destroy you overnight.

一夜之间毁了你。

It seems only about 1 in 10 startups succeeds.

似乎只有大约十分之一的初创公司取得了成功。

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