資本主義正走向自毀的不歸路上?

Capitalism seems to be getting it from all sides these days.

這幾天好像所有人都在對資本主義品頭論足。

French economist Thomas Piketty made the rounds in New York and Washington, D.C. last week to promote his new, widely praised tome, Capital in the Twenty First Century, an exhaustive analysis that argues that inequality and the concentration of wealth among the few are the norm, rather than the exception, within capitalist societies.

上週，法國經濟學家托馬斯•皮凱蒂赴紐約和華盛頓宣傳自己的大部頭新作《21世紀的資本主義》（Capital in the Twenty First Century）。這本書通過詳細的分析證明，在資本主義社會，貧富差距以及財富集中在少數人手裏是一種常態，而不是個別現象。

In a less sobering -- at times, overoptimistic -- side of a similar coin, political consultant and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin's recently published The Zero Marginal Cost Society highlights a capitalism that seems to be running itself out of business.

政治顧問和社會理論學家傑里米•裏夫金最近出版的作品《零邊際成本社會》（The Zero Marginal Cost Society）探討的也是類似問題，只是這本書不是那麼冷靜，有時甚至過於樂觀。裏夫金在書中強調，資本主義似乎正在斷送自己的前程。

Rifkin argues that the private market's drive for efficiency and productivity has brought us ever closer to a world in which the marginal cost to produce just about everything will inch closer and closer to zero.

裏夫金指出，私營市場追逐效率和生產率，導致我們越發靠近這樣一種態勢，那就是幾乎所有產品的邊際成本都會一步步地接近於零。

Picture factories run entirely by robots, powered by renewable energy sources like wind and the sun, creating products delivered by driverless vehicles, also run on renewable energy. Maybe these products won't even need to make any kind of journey at all. Perhaps they can simply be produced at your home or a few blocks away with the help of a 3-D printer.

裏夫金在書中做了這樣的設想：工廠完全由機器人負責運營，使用風能或太陽能這樣的可再生能源；製造出來的產品由無人車輛運送，這些車輛同樣使用可再生能源。更有甚者，這些產品可能都不需要運輸——藉助3D打印機，人們在家裏或者幾個街區之外就能進行生產。

Speaking of your home, in Rifkin's new world, your next one may very well be built by locally generated, 3-D-printed materials, in record time, removing the considerable expense of transporting construction goods. Rifkin cites an MIT lab that is working to develop a house frame in a single day "with virtually no human labor." An equivalent frame, Rifkin says, "would take an entire construction crew a month to put up."

說到我們的家，在裏夫金的新世界裏，人們用來修建住宅的很可能是3D打印機就地取材所製造的材料，而且修建時間之短前所未有，從而節省了大量的建材運輸費用。裏夫金提到，麻省理工（MIT）的一座實驗室正在開發“不用人力”就能在一天內建起房屋構架的技術。他說，同樣的構架“可能需要整整一支建築隊伍工作一個月。”

That home will be powered by -- you guessed it -- increasingly cheap renewable energy, and it will be stocked with more sensors than you can imagine, all feeding data into a smart grid, so your house knows how much energy you need and when, and what needs to be repaired.

大家應該已經想到，這樣的住宅將越來越多地使用清潔的可再生能源，其中安裝的傳感器數量之多將超過大家的想象；所有數據都將彙集到智能電網中，這樣住宅就能知道人們在什麼時候需要多少電力，以及哪些東西需要維修。

This is a technological utopia brought to you by the convergence of what Rifkin calls the Communications Internet (how information is shared), the Energy Internet (how energy needs are shared and energy itself is distributed), and the Logistics Internet (how products are built and delivered), all equaling the so-called Internet of Things.

構建這樣一個高科技烏托邦的途徑就是把裏夫金所說的通信互聯網（怎樣共享信息）、能源互聯網（怎樣共享能源需求信息以及怎樣分配能源）和物流互聯網（怎樣製造並運送產品）融合起來，這些網絡就是人們所說的物聯網。

Granted, the initial cost of building such a system will be substantial. But once it's up and running, Rifkin argues, the benefits will fundamentally reshape our economic order. "The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free," Rifkin writes. "The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance."

的確，打造這樣一個系統的初始成本可能會非常高。但裏夫金認爲，建成並投入運行後，這個系統所帶來的益處將從根本上改變我們的經濟秩序。他寫道：“物聯網已經讓生產率達到了以接近於零的邊際成本提供諸多產品和服務的水平，這些產品和服務實際上已經處於免費狀態。由此產生的結果是，公司利潤開始枯竭，產權開始弱化，富裕經濟開始慢慢取代以稀有性爲基礎的經濟。”

Actually, corporate profits in the U.S. are increasing, both in absolute terms and as a portion of national income. Sure, some industries are struggling against the waves of technological disruption (e.g. almost the entire media sector). And then there are energy giants like Exxon and Chevron, which are facing daunting, expensive headwinds in the search for and cultivation of additional sources of fossil fuel. But businesses overall are making money, and quite a bit of it.

但實際情況是，美國公司的利潤正在上升，無論用絕對水平，還是用佔國民收入的比例來衡量都是如此。當然，在科技的顛覆之下，有些行業正在苦苦掙扎（比如幾乎整個媒體行業）。同時，埃克森（Exxon）和雪佛龍（Chevron）等大型能源企業在尋找和開發新化石燃料資源方面遇到的高成本阻力讓人望而卻步。但總的來說，企業都在賺錢，而且賺的相當多。

Where does capitalism fit into Rifkin's world? "In the coming era," he says, "both capitalism and socialism will lose their once-dominant hold over society, as a new generation increasingly identifies with Collaboratism."

資本主義和裏夫金的世界有什麼契合點呢？他的答案是：“在即將到來的時代，隨着新生代越來越認同協作主義（Collaboratism），資本主義和社會主義都將失去主導社會的能力。”

To explain how we reached this novel economic moment, The Zero Marginal Cost Society takes readers on a grand historical tour, from feudal Europe, to Adam Smith and Karl Marx, to the rise of steam, steel, and railroads, and the oil age. Rifkin argues that creating the industrial order of the past few centuries was so expensive that it required massive, publicly held companies like General Electric, Ford, and AT&T. Electrifying society, connecting them by phone and rail, and putting the masses behind the wheel of a car were wildly ambitious projects. Centralized corporations were up to this task. Today, Rifkin argues, those companies are becoming less relevant.

爲了闡釋我們怎樣才能邁向這個經濟新篇章，《零邊際成本社會》帶着讀者在歷史中暢遊了一番，從歐洲的封建社會到亞當•斯密和卡爾•馬克思，再到蒸汽、鋼鐵和鐵路的興起，然後是石油時代。裏夫金指出，過去幾百年中，建立工業秩序的成本如此之高，以至於我們需要通用電氣（General Electric）、福特汽車（Ford）和美國電話電報公司（AT&T）這樣的大型上市公司。實現社會電氣化，用電話和鐵路把人們聯繫在一起，以及讓普通民衆用上汽車，這些都是規模極爲宏大的項目。過去，集權型企業可以勝任這項任務。但裏夫金認爲，今天，這些公司正在變得不那麼舉足輕重。

To Rifkin, we are entering the age of the social commons, where ownership of goods is less essential to consumers than merely having access to them, pointing to car sharing services like Zipcar, apartment sharing sites like Airbnb and , and children's toy exchanges like Baby Plays and Spark Box Toys as pioneers. Expand this kind of behavior to other parts of the economy -- peer-to-peer renewable energy sharing and crowdfunded personal and business loans, for example -- and all sorts of companies may soon end up selling far fewer goods and services to even fewer people. You would need to put aside measurements like GDP and profits to gauge the success of such an economy.

對裏夫金來說，我們正在進入社會要素的時代；就消費者而言，和只是獲得物品相比，物品所有權已經不再處於那麼核心的位置。他指出，汽車共享網站Zipcar、租房網站Airbnb和以及兒童玩具交換網站Baby Plays和Spark Box Toys都是這方面的先驅。把這樣的行爲延伸到其他經濟領域後，比如點對點的可再生能源共享以及通過衆籌方式獲得個人和企業貸款，所有公司的產品和服務銷量可能很快就會大幅下降，而他們的客戶甚至會減少得更厲害。衡量這樣的經濟是否成功也許不能再用GDP和利潤這樣的指標。

There are, of course, hitches to this master plan. Rifkin himself admits several of them. To start, how can you deliver all the wonders of an "Internet of Things society" when, for example, a little less than 30% of the U.S. population has a fixed broadband Internet subscription? Rifkin praises incipient efforts to build a nationwide, free Wi-Fi network in the U.S., but such proposals are in their infancy and will likely face opposition from broadband behemoths like Time Warner Cable and Comcast, two companies that will gain even more control of the market if their proposed merger goes forward.

當然，這個宏偉計劃也面臨着一些障礙。裏夫金自己也承認存在這樣的不利因素。比如，首先一點，在只有將近30%的美國人能用上寬帶的情況下，怎麼創造出“物聯網社會”的所有這些奇蹟呢？裏夫金對在美國建立全國免費無線Wi-Fi網絡的初步努力表示讚賞，但這樣的方案纔剛剛起步，而且時代華納有線（Time Warner Cable）和康卡斯特（Comcast）這樣的寬帶市場巨無霸可能會出面阻撓——如果這兩家公司的合併計劃付諸實施，它們對市場的控制力就會進一步加強。

And even if you somehow build a powerful, expansive Internet that can bring a nation's energy and economic infrastructure into a new, nearly costless era, you will need to protect it from all kinds of harm. To his credit, Rifkin devotes significant attention to the potential consequences of cyberterrorism, especially if the U.S. continues to develop a centralized energy grid (the kind that could be taken out by a massive cyberattack) rather than building several individual microgrids, which is what the European Union plans to do.

就算人們設法建立起了功能強大而且面積廣泛的互聯網，從而可以讓一個國家的能源和經濟基礎設施進入新的近似零成本時代，還需要保護它免受各種各樣的侵害。值得讚揚的是，裏夫金非常關注網絡恐怖主義可能帶來的後果，特別是如果美國繼續建設集中式能源網絡（這種能源網絡可能因爲大規模網絡襲擊而癱瘓），而不是建立幾個獨立的小型網絡（歐盟正計劃這樣做）。

Then there's the granddaddy of all threats to just about any future economic arrangement: the untold effects and consequences of climate change. Unpredictable weather and limited food supplies, clean water, and raw materials all pose major complications, whether or not you take advantage of technology that can reduce the cost of production.

接下來就是氣候變化的作用和影響，所有威脅今後幾乎任何經濟舉措的因素都源於此，而且這個問題說不清道不明。無論能否利用先進技術來降低生產成本，無法預測的天氣以及有限的食品供應、清潔的水資源和原材料都會成爲重大問題。

Rifkin, who initially made his name as an environmental activist in the 1970s and '80s, is all too aware of these potential setbacks, and argues that the kind of collaborative, sharing economy he sees developing could be just what we need at this point, pointing to the power of cooperative and nonprofit organizational models as a way forward. "We will need to leave behind the parochialisms of the past and begin to think and act as a single extended family living in a common biosphere," he writes.

裏夫金最初成名於20世紀70和80年代的環保活動，對這些不利因素絕對了如指掌。他認爲，目前我們需要的可能恰恰就是他所預見的這種處於成長狀態的協作和共享經濟，而且協作的力量和非營利組織的模式就是今後發展的方向。他寫道：“我們需要摒棄以往的狹隘主義，像生活在同一個生物圈裏的一個大家庭那樣思考和行動。”

The Zero Marginal Cost Society is admirable in its scope. Rifkin offers a wide-ranging overview of the kind of tech advances that will redefine how many people live in the coming decades (the wildest of all: 3-D bioprinters that can produce human tissue and perhaps one day generate entire human organs). While his techno-utopian vision may seem unrealistic at times, Rifkin makes sure to ground much of his predictions in data, documented scientific advances, and a fair amount of caveats.

《零邊際成本社會》的眼界令人讚歎。裏夫金談到了大量的技術進步，這些技術進步將重新定義今後幾十年很多人的生活狀態（其中最非同尋常的一項是3D生物打印機，它能製造出人體組織，也許有一天還能造出完整的人體器官）。雖然他所描繪的高科技烏托邦有時候看起來似乎並不現實，但裏夫金利用數據、記錄科技進步的文獻和相當數量的預先聲明，從而確保他的許多構想都有據可查。

Much of what Rifkin writes about has been covered by the business and tech press in recent years. But what makes The Zero Marginal Cost Society worth reading is its audacity, its willingness to weave a vast string of developments into a heartening narrative of what our economic future may hold for the generations to come. You can call it naive, but it's much more than that. It's hopeful. And, perhaps in a moment of hope-induced blindness, Rifkin fails to mention the ultimate cost for us mortals, the one that really isn't going anywhere anytime soon: time.

裏夫金在書中寫道的很多東西已經出現在近幾年的商業和科技報道中。但《零邊際成本社會》想法大膽，而且樂於把各種各樣的科技進步組織成一種令人振奮的聲音來描述未來幾代人的經濟前景，這一點成就了它的可讀性。大家可以認爲這是天真，但這本書遠不僅限於此，它還傳遞着希望。而且，也許是因爲眼裏只有希望，裏夫金並沒有提到我們凡人短期內無法真正擺脫的終極成本：時間。