釋放P2P的經濟價值 Peer to peer pressure
Peer-to-peer markets used to be simple: there was eBay. If you had a broken laser pointer you wanted to sell, eBay was the place to find a buyer. Then came the local marketplace Craigslist and, before long, peer-to-peer markets were linking buyers and sellers in every market imaginable: crafts (Etsy); chores (TaskRabbit); transport (Uber); accommodation (Airbnb); consumer loans (Zopa); and even booze (Drizly).
個人對個人(P2P)市場曾經很簡單：最初只有一個eBay。如果你想賣掉一支壞了的激光筆，在eBay能找到買家。接下來有了本地交易網站Craigslist，不久之後，P2P平臺把所有你能想到的市場中的買賣雙方都聯繫在了一起：手工藝品(Etsy)；零工(TaskRabbit)；交通(Uber)；住宿(Airbnb)；消費貸款(Zopa)；甚至酒類(Drizly)。
It was exciting, for a while, to realise that you could actually get a car home on a Saturday night in San Francisco, or make money renting out your attic, but the backlash has been simmering for some time. That backlash mixes two complaints, elegantly exemplified when a group of taxicab owners and drivers sued Uber in Atlanta a year ago.
當你意識到自己真的能在週六晚上的舊金山坐車回家、或是出租閣樓賺些錢時，你會興奮一段時間，但是反對情緒一直在發酵，其中夾雜着兩層抱怨，在一年前亞特蘭大出租車公司和司機起訴Uber一案中被很好地展現了出來。
“Uber has been operating in Atlanta with little concern about the safety of their passengers and zero concern for the laws that protect them,” said one of the plaintiffs in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Our incomes have steadily dropped since Uber started and legally licensed drivers are leaving the business.”
“Uber在亞特蘭大的運營幾乎毫不考慮乘客的安全問題，也從未顧及保護乘客的法律，”一名原告在《亞特蘭大憲法日報》(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)上發表聲明稱，“自Uber開始運營以來，我們的收入節節下滑，擁有合法執照的出租車司機正在離開這個行業。”
In other words, peer-to-peer services such as Uber are said to be hazardous, and they are also unwelcome competition for incumbents. (Several studies have supported the common-sense conclusion that these new competitors threaten the revenue of existing players.)
換句話說，Uber等P2P服務被稱爲危險服務，而且給現有從業者帶來了不受歡迎的競爭。（一些研究支持這個常識性結論：新競爭者威脅到了現有從業者的收入。）
These might seem very different issues. It’s one thing to worry about signposting fire exits when you let out a spare room on Airbnb. Protecting the profit margins of fine upstanding local hoteliers is another matter.
這兩點或許貌似截然不同的問題。你在Airbnb上出租一個單間時擔心消防通道指示是一回事，而保護當地正規酒店經營者的利潤空間是另外一回事。
Yet the two questions are inevitably tangled up, because both touch on the way incumbents are regulated. One would hope that regulators protect consumers, employees and the public by making it more difficult for drunks and sexual predators to drive cars, for firetraps to host unsuspecting tourists, and for employers to exploit workers. But some regulations seem designed more to protect insiders than to protect consumers.
不過，這兩個問題不可避免地被攪在一起，因爲它們都觸及了現有從業者受到監管的方式。人們希望監管機構通過讓醉酒者和性侵者難以當專車司機、易失火建築不能接待毫無戒心的遊客、以及僱主無法剝削工人，來保護消費者、僱員以及公衆的利益。但是，一些法規似乎更傾向於保護局內人，而不是消費者。
Consider the New York taxi medallion system: you can’t drive a taxicab without one, and they’ve been million-dollar assets at times, often owned by investors and leased to drivers at a rate of $100 or more a day. New kids Uber and Lyft not only compete for passengers, they compete for drivers too, who may prefer to pay commission to these new players than the flat fee to the medallion owner.
想想紐約出租車牌照制度：在沒有牌照的情況下你不能開出租車，出租車牌照不時成爲數百萬美元的資產，往往歸投資者所有，由其以每天100美元或更高的價格把牌照租給司機。菜鳥Uber和Lyft不止爭奪乘客，它們還爭搶司機。相比向牌照所有者交份兒錢，司機或許更傾向於把佣金交給這些新老闆。
Taxi medallions are a scarce asset created purely by a stroke of the regulator’s pen, and you don’t need to be a hardcore libertarian to conclude that, in this case, the regulator is motivated by protecting the value of this asset. Nor does it take a free-market fundamentalist to believe that if consumers think that taxicabs provide a safer service, they will pay for that safer service.
出租車牌照成爲稀缺資產，純粹是由監管者的一紙文書造成的。在這種情況下，即使不是狂熱的自由主義者，你也能看出監管者的動機是保護這些資產的價值。再說，不只是自由市場原教旨主義者纔會相信：如果消費者認爲出租車提供的服務更安全，他們會花錢購買更安全的服務。
It may help to approach the debate from a different direction. Are these new players providing a valuable new service or are they merely an arbitrage play, using technology to sidestep taxes that others must pay, and to limbo-dance under regulatory hurdles that rivals must jump?
這或許有助於從不同角度來探究這場辯論。這些新競爭者是否提供了有價值的新服務，還是隻是利用技術規避了其他人必須支付的稅款以此套利、從其他競爭者必須跳過去的監管障礙下面鑽了過去？
If the economic value is real, then it is up to the regulators to figure out how to unleash that value rather than trying to legislate it out of existence.
如果它們有實實在在的經濟價值，那麼就該由監管者琢磨出如何釋放價值，而不是試圖通過立法去消滅它。
A new study of peer-to-peer markets by economists Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato and Jonathan Levin argues that the economic value is there all right. Peer-to-peer markets make two things possible that were previously hard to imagine.
麗蘭褠納夫(Liran Einav)、基婭拉法羅納託(Chiara Farronato)和喬納森萊文(Jonathan Levin) 3位經濟學家對P2P市場進行的新研究發現，其經濟價值確實存在。P2P市場讓兩件過去難以想象的事情成爲可能。
The first is to make arid markets lush and fertile. The quintessential example is eBay, enabling buyers and sellers of the quirkiest products to find each other and gain by trading. Etsy fits the eBay mould, with sellers who will knit you a cuddly toy designed to resemble a dissected frog, a product that seems unlikely to find a niche on the high street.
第一，它令貧瘠的市場變得富饒而肥沃。eBay就是一個典型的例子，它使得離奇產品的買賣雙方找到彼此並從交易中受益。Etsy和eBay的模式一樣，你可以在這裏找到出售像肢解的青蛙一樣的毛絨玩具（似乎不太可能在商業街找到立足之地的產品）的賣家。
The second peer-to-peer trick is to introduce part-timers into the market to meet surges in demand. It’s inefficient to build hotels just to cope with the summer rush, or taxis to cope with New Year’s Eve but, if the demand is there, peer-to-peer markets can pull in a bit of extra supply. As a result, it should be easier to get a cab at 11pm on a Friday, and prices for hotel rooms should be more reasonable during school holidays.
P2P第二個妙招是將兼職者引入該市場以滿足需求激增時的情況。只是爲了應對暑假旺季就建設新酒店，或是爲了解決新年夜的打車高峯而增加出租車——那是效率低下的；但是，只要有需求，P2P市場就可以引入一些額外的供應。結果就是，週五晚上11點在P2P平臺更容易叫到車，學校假期時P2P提供的客房價格更合理。
Peer-to-peer markets are well worth having. The challenge for regulators, then, is to catch up. How should Airbnb landlords who let a room for 10 nights a year be placed on a level playing field with regular bed-and-breakfast landlords? Are Uber drivers employees (as a California labour commissioner recently ruled)? Or freelancers using Uber’s software to help them do their jobs (as Uber insists)? Or something else?
P2P市場非常值得擁有。因此，監管者面臨的挑戰是趕上其發展的腳步。應該如何把Airbnb上每年只把房間出租10晚的房東與長期經營住宿加早餐旅店(B&B)的房東放在同一個監管層面上？Uber專車司機是公司僱員（就像加州勞工委員會最近裁決的那樣），還是利用Uber軟件工作的自由職業者（像Uber主張的那樣）？或是其他性質？
James Surowiecki, writing in The New Yorker, recently argued for “something else”, and called for a regulatory overhaul to give “gig-economy workers a better balance of flexibility and security”. That sounds like an admirable aim, although achieving it isn’t straightforward. Giving pensions, vacation rights or unemployment insurance to Uber drivers or TaskRabbit “taskers” would require both clever rules and clever admin systems.
詹姆斯蘇洛維爾奇(James Surowiecki)最近在《紐約客》(New Yorker)的專欄認爲是這屬於“其他性質”，呼籲進行監管改革給“零工經濟的工作者提供一個更好地兼顧靈活性和安全性的辦法”。這聽起來像是一個令人嚮往的目標，儘管實現它並沒有那麼簡單。爲Uber司機或是TaskRabbit的“任務方”提供養老金、帶薪休假或是失業保險，將需要明智的法規和明智的管理體系。
Peer-to-peer markets may once have been simple; now there is more at stake than the occasional broken laser pointer.
P2P市場或許曾經很簡單；但如今它關係到的遠遠不只是偶爾有一支壞掉的激光筆。
