（上周英语课上老师布置了个作业：自己选择一个议题，先给两小时做研究，然后写一篇议论文章，这是我做过的最长的英语写作题，之前的都不超过300 words，很吃力不过挺有收获。） Why Plumbing Is So Expensive in Australia? by Egbert Tzoe 8 Feb 2018 Plumbing is extremely expensive in Australia. According to 9news, it costs $78.40 an hour on average, the highest among all kinds of trades, while a lawyer service costs only $37 an hour.[1] By contrast, an average American plumber charges $31.61(usd$24.74) an hour.[2] The direct cause of this situation is quite straightforward: there are too few plumbers in this country. Year by year, fewer and fewer young people are willing to become a plumber. Perhaps the most revealing fact is that the average age of Australian plumbers is 55, while the overall workforce average is 38. As Mr Paddy McCrudden, an officer of Plumbing Trades Employees Union, says, “plumbers are fast becoming the dad's army.”[3] But why? What prevents such a high wage from attracting more young (or not so young) people into this business? There are no obvious answers, but we have some clues. Higher education was (and is) booming in recent decades. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, proportion of people aged 25-34 with a bachelor or higher degree increased from 27% in 2004 to 37.3% in 2015.[4] As we can imagine, university graduates tend to have a white-collar or managerial or creative job. They would find a hard, dirty and muscular plumbing job unattractive. It’s simply incompatible with their self-identity. In addition, as more girls go to university, plumbers, as well as other heavy manual labor workers, are becoming less popular in the marriage market, because people consistently choose their partners who have an educational background similar to that of themselves. Like other heavy trades, plumbing is highly masculine. An evidence for this is that more than 99% plumbers are male.[5] But, sadly (or nicely, depends on your taste), masculinity has been declining rapidly for half a century in the Western World, especially in its developed part. Among other evidence are two facts: First, average sperm count in men has dropped 50% between 1974 and 2011.[6] Second, maybe not coincidentally, all the tough guy actors have disappeared from the movie or TV screens since mid-1990s.[7] Well then, how can we fix this? Less uni education? Many people would surely be unhappy or even riot I guess. More visas for plumbers? It doesn’t work. In fact, there is a large and sufficient visa quota for plumbers already, 5507 in 2018 alone, but only 4 or 0.07% of them are filled to date. By contrast, 51 of 2675 (1.9%) visa vacancies for chefs, 2955 of 6202 (47%) for programmers, 2633 of 4785 (55%) for accountants, are filled during the same period.[8] Obviously there are not so many foreign plumbers who are interested in and qualified for migrating to Australia. I think English is the main barrier, because as other tradies, plumbers tend to receive less education than other skilled visa applicants. So maybe lowering the English requirement can be a cure, but I suspect it would help a lot. Maybe there is no solution, or maybe high cost of plumbing is not a problem at all. After all, tough men is an endangered species nowadays, but meanwhile, despite the great advance in automatic technologies in recent years, there is still much work needed for them to do, hence it seems not so unfair to pay a high price for these tough guy survivors. Even better, this high price forces us aussies to do many jobs by ourselves, and get a lot of joys. So let it be.   References: [1] http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/plumbers-electricians-australias-richest-tradies-charging-more-than-the-average-lawyer/news-story/4fee7c5920ff4624e53c5ca20f99e3cb [2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm [3] http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/australias-most-wanted-jobs-tech-heads-health-staff-and-plumbers/news-story/5aed73cf949f668df49be25d5f8b67fe [4] https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/australias-universities/key-facts-and-data#.Wn_ZEiVub4Z [5] http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/ABS@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/4ce9a706f8b1bba7ca2570ec000e3635!OpenDocument [6] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropping-in-western-world/ [7] http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode159.htm [8] http://deltaimmigration.com.au/Plumber-General/334111.htm  

Entrepreneurship and American education 创业活动与美国教育 作者:Michael Q. McShane @ 2016-05-10 译者:Tankman 校对:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值) 来源:AEI,http://www.aei.org/publication/entrepreneurship-and-american-education/ Key Points 要点

• While educational entrepreneurship’s influence has been muted by policy and circumstance, this has nevertheless been a time of great growth for the field.
• 尽管政策和政治氛围已经压制了教育业中创业活动的影响，这个领域还是有了一段时间的显著增长。
• Over the next two decades, educational entrepreneurs will encounter a funding community, policy environment, and changing educational landscape that will profoundly affect the types of ventures and the ability of those ventures to scale, grow, and meet children’s needs.
• 在接下来二十年里，教育业的创业者会受到融资界，政策环境，教育业整体面貌变化等因素的冲击。这些因素会深刻影响风险投资的类型以及这些风险投资发起，壮大和满足孩子需求的能力。
• Entrepreneurship does not guarantee success. If anything, it ensures that there will be failure. For all its imperfections though, it offers a degree of imagination and natural winnowing well-suited to our sprawling, diverse, and pluralistic nation, and it creates an opportunity for truly world-changing products to emerge.
• 创业并不一定会成功。如果要说什么是确定的话，那就是一定会有失败产生。虽然有各种不完美，它提供了一定程度的想象空间和自然筛选，很好的适应了我们这个参差多元，分权共治的国家，而且创造机会让真正改变世界的成果得以涌现。

I have two adorable dogs who I love like children. Georgie is a precocious, 10-pound fur ball Bichon Frise I bought from an Amish man in rural Maryland. Beau is a seven-pound Maltese and silky terrier mix who spent the first five years of his life in a meth den in Missouri before my wife and I rescued him. When we travel, we have to find a place to board them. For years, we used kennels or “open-play” dog boarding facilities. By and large, we were pleased with the care that the dogs received, but boy, was it expensive. 我有两条可爱的狗，我像爱孩子那样爱他们。Georgie是只早熟的，10磅重的圆滚滚毛茸茸的比熊犬。我把它从马里兰州农村的一位阿米绪人那里买来。Beau有七磅，是一只的玛尔济斯犬和澳洲丝毛梗的后代。它生命的前五年在密苏里州的一个毒窝里度过，直到被我和我太太救了出来。当我们旅行时，我们必须为它们找个寄宿的地方。许多年以来，我们使用狗窝或者是“敞开”式宠物狗寄存设施。总体来说，我们对狗狗们受到的照顾感到满意。但这种服务很贵。 That is why it was great when my wife discovered the app Rover. Rover is kind of like Airbnb for dog sitters. Prospective sitters (or walkers or groomers) create profiles, post their rates, and have a space for customers to review them. People can find options that are convenient, in their price range, and the kind of environment they want for their dogs. We use the app whenever we travel and get what I think is far superior care for substantially less than we paid a kennel. It has been a big win for us and our dogs. 因此当我太太发现手机应用Rover时，一切实在太棒了。Rover像是宠物狗看护领域的Airbnb。潜在的看护们（或是遛狗者，或狗美容师）创建了个人简介，贴上他们的要价，留下一个给客户写评论的地方。人们能够在自己满意的价格区间，选择合适的选项，给宠物狗他们觉得合宜的环境。我们每次旅行都要使用这个应用，用明显比狗窝更低的价钱，换来一个更好的服务。这对狗狗和人都大有好处。 Rover illustrates disruptive innovation at work. Its founders identified a practical problem, leveraged knowledge and technology to devise a better solution, and then provided that solution in a way that upends old routines and assumptions. Rover体现了破坏性创新是如何工作的。它的创始人确定了一个实际问题，利用知识和技术来提供一个更好的解决方案，而后那个方案在某种意义上颠覆了旧的常规和假设。 I am of the opinion that it would be good for K–12 schooling if more teachers, school leaders, and entrepreneurs took a Rover-like approach to challenges that plague education. How can we better use school facilities? How can we help children find schools that are a good match for them? How can we help teachers identify the best strategies to address specific learning challenges? The list of vexing problems goes on and on. But what does it take for entrepreneurial problem solving to actually help students, and how do we think about the obstacles it faces and the problems it may create? 我有一种看法：如果更多教师、学校领导和企业家提供一个Rover式的解决方案来挑战如今重疾缠身的教育业，对基础教育将会产生积极影响。如何能更好的使用学校设施？如何能帮助孩子发现适合他们的学校？如何能帮助教师发现应对特定教学挑战的最优策略？令人头痛的问题的清单越拉越长。但是需要什么条件，才能用企业家解决问题的思维来帮助学生？这一途径面临的障碍是什么呢？这种方法又会带来什么问题呢？ Look, Rover is no panacea, but it is a great improvement. I would be the first to admit that in some cities it is probably impractical. There might not be enough supply for great potential dog sitters to want to get involved, or there might not be enough demand to keep prices attractive to sitters. For many dog owners, it is still too expensive. That said, Rover does help solve a particular problem for a lot of people, while opening the door to newer and better solutions. This is what entrepreneurial activity can do. 看，Rover不是一个万灵药，但却是一个巨大的改进。我可以爽快地承认，在某些城市，它很可能不现实。那里可能没有足够多的潜在宠物狗看护者想加入该平台，或是需求量不够大，价格也就无法吸引看护者加入。对很多狗主人来说，价格仍然太高。尽管如此，Rover的确帮很多人解决了一个特殊的问题，也给更新更好的方案留出了机会。这正是创活动所能作的。 In May 2016, Harvard Education Press is releasing a volume called Educational Entrepreneurship Today, which Frederick Hess and I edited.[1] Its content arose during a conference we hosted at AEI during the summer of 2015, where we brought together leading educational entrepreneurs, researchers in the field, and people with experience funding entrepreneurial ventures. What follows are a couple of big ideas that are circulating in the educational entrepreneurship world today and some of the tensions that will define educational entrepreneurship in the future. Will education be a place where Rover- (or Uber- or Airbnb-) like innovation takes place? Do we want it to be? 在2016年五月，哈佛教育出版社发布了一卷Frederick Hess和我编辑的文集，题为《今日教育行业创投》。[1]文集的内容形成于2015年夏季我们在美国企业研究所主持的一个讨论会。在这个会议上，我们把一流的教育业创业者，该领域的研究者和有创投经验的人士召集在了一起。随之而来的则是一些在今日教育业创业界流行的非凡创意，同时还有一些争论将在未来定义教育行业的创投活动。教育业会是一个产生类似Rover（或优步，或Airbnb）那样的创新的领域吗？我们希望如此吗？ Trends in Educational Entrepreneurship 教育业创业的趋势 The first and most important idea that those observing educational entrepreneurship should know is that while its influence over the past decade or so has been muted by policy and circumstance, this has nevertheless been a time of great growth for the field. Sure, it is true that school procurement systems (how schools and teachers shop for and purchase new materials) are stifling and outdated. Teachers and principals have limited flexibility to redesign schools or put new tools to work in ambitious ways. 教育行业创投的观察人士应该知道的第一个也是最重要的一个概念就是：教育行业创投在过去十多年一直在发挥作用，尽管目前已被政策和环境压制，该领域仍然有过一段显著增长期。当然，学校采购平台系统（学校和教师采购新材料的方式）是压抑创新且过时的。老师和校长们重新设计学校，或积极使用新的工作工具的灵活性是有限的。 But there have been many bright spots. Enrollment in charter schools doubled, and then doubled again. Venture capital investments grew from almost nothing to hundreds of millions’ worth. Companies such as Wireless Generation and SchoolNet thrived and then were sold at a handsome rate of return, emboldening more entrepreneurs and investors who seek to emulate those efforts. 但这一行业已然有很多闪光点。特许学校的录取数翻倍，又再翻倍。风险投资额从接近于零，变成几亿美元。如无线世代（Wireless Generation)或学校网（SchoolNet）这样的公司茁壮成长然后再以可观的回报率被收购，这鼓励了更多企业家和投资者去尝试复制上述成果。 The second thing worth noting is that what gets measured gets valued. The No Child Left Behind era heavily emphasized how students perform on state tests in reading and math. In the modern era, there has also been far less appetite or room for entrepreneurs who are not focused on closing reading and math “gaps” for low-income, African American, or Latino youth. Teachers are increasingly evaluated based on these metrics, district schools are at risk of being sanctioned if their students do not perform adequately, and charter schools know their existence depends largely on their test scores. 第二个值得注意的事情是，能被衡量比较的方面才是被认为有价值的。这个“不让一个孩子落后”的时代特别重视学生在州统考中的阅读和数学成绩。在如今这个时代，那些不重视为低收入群体、非裔和拉丁裔青少年缩小阅读和数学成绩差距的企业家很少受到青睐或者得到发展空间。教师评估越来越基于这些指标，如果学生表现不够好，学区的学校可能面临被制裁的风险。而特许学校也知道其生存很大程度上依赖于测试分数。 Test scores tend to define the ways in which schools are judged and compared, and they also mean that new providers can really only demonstrate their mettle in terms of reading and math. When policy and philanthropy treat reading and math tests as the coin of the realm, it creates problems for entrepreneurs who are not offering “whole school” models, focusing on tested grades or subjects, or tackling English Language Arts and math in ways that do not map onto tests. The metrics used to measure success shape the types of solutions that will be offered. 州统考测试分数倾向于被拿来作为评判和比较学校的标准。这也意味着新的教育供应者只能通过阅读和数学成绩来彰显他们的能力。政策和慈善业把分数当作教育业的法定货币，这给一些企业家带来了麻烦。比如有些企业家不提供“完整学校”的模式，他们只关注学校课堂成绩或科目而非州统考成绩或科目；还有些企业家用来促进英语文学和数学教育的方法，无法反映在考试分数上。衡量成功的指标影响了哪些类型的解决方案将被提供。 Finally, the field of educational entrepreneurship needs to take a hard look in the mirror and realize it has suffered from its insularity. As New Schools Venture Fund President Stacey Childress points out in her chapter in Educational Entrepreneurship Today, Teach For America (TFA) alumni were key founders of nearly one in five education ventures launched in the past 20 years.[2] That data point reflects the larger reality that educational entrepreneurs are likely to share common formative experiences and worldviews. This has produced a community that has tended to share certain assumptions (such as the importance of reading and math tests) and embrace a certain set of policies (such as test-based teacher evaluation and charter schooling). 最后，教育行业创投这一领域自身需要被仔细审视，并意识到该领域已经被其孤立性深深伤害。教育行业创投会议上，新学校风险基金的主席Stacey Childress在其专题演讲中指出，过去20年发起的教育业风险投资中，五分之一的创业公司由“为美国而教书”(TFA)组织的前成员作为关键创始人。[2]这数据反映出一个更广泛的现实：教育业创业者很可能有着共同的成长经历或世界观。这就创造了一个倾向于分享特定假设的共同体（例如阅读和数学的重要性），并且支持某特定的政策集（如基于统考测试的教师评估和特许学校教学）。 This insularity has contributed to a simmering tension in several cities with an abundance of entrepreneurial activity and new school formation, such as Detroit, Newark, and New Orleans. Activists, politicians, and community members charge that these ventures are being done to marginalized communities, not with them. Part of this tension is stoked by conflating entrepreneurship and “education reform” more generally (a phenomenon that we will tackle momentarily), but another comes from a genuine fear of snake-oil salesmen and carpetbaggers with agendas of their own. 这种偏狭性在几个创业活动和新式学校丰富的城市导致了沸腾的矛盾，如底特律，纽瓦克和新奥尔良。活动家、政客和社区成员指责这些创业公司让社区边缘化，而不是和社区相伴。更广泛的来说，把创业和“教育改革”结合起来的尝试，激化了部分矛盾（这现象我们很快会谈到）。而另外的激化则来自于对于兜售冒牌货的奸商和有着自己小盘算、想趁机渔利的外来政客的真实恐惧。 Two Dynamics That Will Shape the Next Two Decades of Educational Entrepreneurship 未来20年塑造教育行业创投的两个机制 The “what” of educational entrepreneurship is exciting. The “how” is a lot tougher. Over the next two decades, educational entrepreneurs will encounter a funding community, a policy environment, and a changing educational landscape that will profoundly affect the types of ventures they are able to create and the ability of those ventures to scale, grow, and meet children’s needs. How these dynamics will play out remains to be seen. In fact, there are several key dynamics in educational entrepreneurship that are worth exploring. 教育行业创投的概念是令人激动的。而其实现途径则要困难多了。在接下来二十年，教育业的创业者会受到融资界、政策环境、变化的教育界等因素的冲击。这些因素会深刻影响风险投资以及这些风险投资发起、壮大和满足孩子需求的能力。这些机制如何运作还有待观察。事实上，教育创业有几个关键机制值得探索。 The first dynamic is the tension between big bets and small bets. Because the outcomes of new ventures are uncertain, it makes sense to make a large number of small bets and winnow them over time. This reduces risk for everyone involved and accelerates the rate at which new models can be tried. But this approach flies in the face of much of the thinking that has characterized educational innovation and entrepreneurship during the past decade. Philanthropists and investors have been eager to find “what works” and invest in scaling it up. Proponents of the scale-up approach point to the need nationwide, the slow pace of change, and the messiness of a small-bet strategy. 第一个机制是大额投资和小额投资之间的张力。因为新的风险投资的结果不确定，下很多的小赌注然后再不断筛选它们是有道理的。这减少了每个人涉及的风险，加速了尝试新模式的速率。但是过去十年，教育行业创新、创业的特色思维很大程度上与这一思路相悖。慈善家和投资者渴望发现可行的方案，并加大投资。加大投资这一做法的支持者，提到了全国性的需求、变革的慢节奏以及小赌注方案无序混乱等理由。 Fundamentally, this tension highlights the competing visions of educational improvement in America today. Some see experimentation as eventually converging on a single or small number of “best” models, practices, or programs that should ultimately be adopted everywhere. Others see a far more fluid world, with “best” answers being highly contingent and context dependent. This is not a simple story of entrepreneurs versus bureaucrats, but of good-faith disagreements on the approaches most likely to serve the needs of schools and schooling. 基本上，这种张力突显了在今日的美国教育改进中的竞争理念。有些人把实验看作是最终会收敛的过程。他们认为最后发现的一个或少数几个最优模式、做法或项目应当被用于全国。另一些人则看到一个更加多变的世界，最优答案是高度机缘性且情境依赖的。这不是一个企业家和官僚相争的简单故事，而是一个关于最大可能有助于学校和教学的需要的方法上的善意争执。 The second dynamic—a tension that actually poses a serious risk to current and future entrepreneurial ventures—is the simultaneous desire for experimentation and uniformly positive results. In the world of educational entrepreneurship, there are calls for experimentation, the need to “think outside the box,” and a need to “fundamentally change” American schools. However, in the next breath, the same leaders and advocates who have preached the Innovation Gospel insist on “no excuses” accountability systems aiming for 100 percent proficiency and charter-authorizing systems that require all schools and offerings to prioritize performance on state tests. While it is hypothetically possible to square this circle, the reality is that educational entrepreneurs are whipsawed between an appetite for risk-taking and a strong aversion to it. 第二种机制——实际上给现在和未来的创业风投带来了严重风险——即同时渴望实验和始终如一的正面结果。在教育业创投的世界，有对实验的呼唤，有“跳出盒子思考”的需求，也有对美国学校进行“根本变革”的需求。但同时，同样这些鼓吹创新思维福音的领袖和支持者坚持毫不妥协的系统可靠性，一定要向100%的师资能力水平看齐，而特许学校系统的学校和方案都必须优先考虑州统考的表现。两者兼顾在假想中是可能的，但现实中，教育业创投者则卡在冒险冲动和强烈的风险厌恶之间左右为难。 The casual observer can easily imagine that all the expertise and money involved in venture capital and startups must deliver a high rate of success. The truth is quite different. Ninety percent of all new enterprises fail. Failure is most of what new ventures actually do. That Darwinian process of figuring things out or learning from others’ mistakes is essential to entrepreneurial success. 漫不经心的观察者很容易觉得：风险资本和创业公司配置了所有这些专家技能和资金，回报率一定很高。真相则十分不同。90%的创业公司会失败。失败是大多数新的创投公司实际所做的事。以达尔文过程找到解决方案，或是从别人的错误中学习，对创业公司的成功至关重要。 While the idea of “failure” is disquieting when it comes to children and schools, the value of failure has an important place in classrooms and learning. Students have to feel free to try something new and learn from the experience, whether or not it works out. In American education today, however, there is little tolerance for failure—in classrooms, schools, or the larger landscape. 也许一旦涉及到孩子或者学校，“失败”这个词就让人心神不宁。学生必须有尝试新东西和从经验中学习的自由，无论最后结果成功与否。然而在今日的美国教育领域，失败一点都不被容忍——在教室，学校，或者更大的范围。 This tension is particularly evident in the inclination to support large, established “entrepreneurial” ventures such as TFA or the KIPP Academies. These ventures show track records of success, have proven leaders, and constitute a well-known quantity. At the same time, these are the very things that tend to produce rigidity and routine in any organization. 这种矛盾在支持大型的、发展完备的所谓“创业”风投企业的倾向中显得特别明显，如对TFA或KIPP学院。这些企业有一系列成功的记录，有资质的领袖，规模也广为人知。与此同时，任何这样的组织都倾向产生僵化和陈规。 Organizations such as TFA and KIPP, with more than two decades of experience, records of accomplishment, alumni networks, and stakeholders, are no longer positioned to pioneer wholly new approaches. Rather, they become attractive to funders, policymakers, and education officials as they become less and less the entrepreneurial upstart and more and more a familiar piece of the new education establishment. Rather than think about new ways of preparing teachers, people keep supporting TFA. The consequence is that these organizations are asked to do more and more, stretching their ability to excel while potentially crowding out interest in unproven ventures. TFA和KIPP这样的组织拥有20多年经验、一系列的成就、会友网络和利益相关者，它们不再站在新方法的先驱位置。因为当它们变得越来越不像创业新星而越来越像人们熟悉的新的教育既得利益集团时，它们对投资人、政策制定者和教育官员都变得具有吸引力。人们一直支持TFA，而不是思考培训教师的新方法。后果就是，这些机构被要求做得更多，拓展了其卓越能力的同时也潜在地挤出了那些尚未被认可的创业公司的利益。 Questions about the importance of entrepreneurship and our tolerance for uncertainty are also central to policy debates over entrepreneur-friendly reforms such as education savings accounts, online learning, and expanded school choice programs. After all, such programs are, by their very nature, unproven. 在就对创投友好的各种改革进行政策辩论，如教育储蓄账户、线上课程和范围更宽的择校程序时，创投的重要性和我们对不确定性的容忍度等问题也居于中心。无论如何，这些项目在其最根本性质上尚未证明自己。 So What Can We Do? 那么我们能做什么呢？ If you, like me, appreciate the entrepreneurial impulse and think that it has something to offer the nation’s education system, then there are steps that can be taken to try and advance the cause. 如果你像我一样欣赏创业精神的脉动并认为这可以给这个国家的教育系统带来些什么，那么有以下策略可以尝试和推进这项事业。 Funders can make small bets, as well as large ones. This can help address both the fear of “failing big” and the sense that so much of education reform today is imposed by outsiders on local communities. Insofar as the groups receiving the majority of funding are outsiders that come to town with their already-baked models, well-intentioned philanthropy can unwittingly exacerbate this divide. 投资者可以进行小额投资，就像大投资一样。这可以帮助处理对“大失败”的恐惧，也缓和了如下事实所带来的隔阂感：今日如此之多的教育改革是本地社区的外来者强制推行的。目前的情况是，当拿到大笔投资的团体是来到镇上的外来人，并带着他们已备好的模式时，好心的慈善可以无意中加剧这一隔阂。 An easy rule of thumb here is for funders to be sure they are devoting some modest percentage of their investment giving—whether that is 5 percent or 20 percent—to new ventures. Fortunately, the resources to support the developing, prototyping, and testing process tend to be only a fraction of what it costs to contribute meaningfully to an established operation. 在这里，对投资人来说一个易于施行的拇指规则是，保证他们把投资的一些小额部分，不管是5%还是20%，捐给新的创新公司。幸运的是，用来支持开发，原型制作，和测试过程的资源往往只是有效地捐助一个已建成项目的所需的一小部分。 Entrepreneurs can start with “tiny schools.” Given varying tolerance for risk and limited resources for experimentation, prospective entrepreneurs should take a good look at New Orleans’ 4.0 Schools and their idea of “tiny schools” (described by 4.0 CEO Matt Candler in his chapter).[3] Creating a new charter school typically entails a dozen or more employees, scores or even hundreds of students, and a budget north of $1 million—meaning that failure is slow, expensive, and enormously disruptive. 创业者可以从“小微学校”开始。给定不同的风险容忍度和有限的实验资源，潜在的企业家可以好好审视一下新奥尔良的4.0学校和他们的“小微学校”理念（引自4.0的首席执行官Matt Candler的专题讲座）[3]。创建一所新的特许学校通常需要十几个或者更多雇员，几十甚至几百个学生，一个一百万美元以上的预算——这意味着失败是缓慢、昂贵和极其麻烦的。 Tiny schools mean that educators with a promising idea can start with 5 to 10 kids on Saturday mornings in a public library or school cafeteria. Such a model allows entrepreneurs to experiment, fail, improve, and iterate over the course of several sessions at very low cost and next to zero risk to students. Just as evolutionary change accelerates when new generations are born more often, so entrepreneurial invention benefits from shortened time horizons and more rapid iteration. 小微学校意味着带着有潜质创意的教育者可以从周六上午在公共图书馆或学校食堂以五到十个孩子的规模开始。这种模式允许创业者以一个很低的费用和对学生来说几乎为零的风险，来对课程环节进行实验、失败、改进和试错。就如同新世代出生得更频繁时进化会加速一样。这样，创业型发明就从更短的周期和更快的试错中获益。 Tiny schools accomplish two central tasks. First, they lower the risk of starting a new school. If the idea bears fruit, it can be ramped up. If the teaching methods do not connect with students, at worst, students have lost a couple of Saturdays. Even if the transition cannot be made to a whole-year model, only a few students are affected. 小微学校完成了两个核心任务。第一，他们降低了创立一个新学校的风险。如果创业有成果，它就可以壮大。如果教学方法对学生不起作用，最差也不过就是学生损失几个星期六。即使这一过渡模式无法变为一个全年模式，也只有几个学生会受影响。 Second, they lower the cost of experimentation. In starting an entire charter school, substantial philanthropic and then public dollars are spent on an experiment. It might work out; it might not. While over time there is reason to believe that this will lead to better schools, it is an expensive way to get there. By bridging the gap between nothing and a whole school, tiny schools create space for rapid iteration and improvement. 第二，它们降低了实验成本。为了启动一个完备的特许学校，大笔慈善和财政资金会被用于一次实验。也许有好结果，也许不成功。虽然一直以来这方法被认为会产生好学校，这仍是一个昂贵的手段。通过跨越从一无所有到完备学校的鸿沟，小微学校为快速试错和改进提供了一个空间。 State leaders can complete a comprehensive regulatory review. Although mundane, rules regarding subjects such as procurement, teacher preparation, new school creation, reporting, facilities, special education, online provision, staff development, and charter school authorization can create huge, counterproductive hurdles to new providers and new models of provision. Although these regulations may have made sense at one time, many no longer do. 州政府的领袖可以完成一个综合性规制评议。虽然平凡庸常，但在采购、教师培训、新学校创设、报告、设施、特殊教育、在线授课、雇员培训和特许学校授权机构等诸方面，各种规制能够产生巨大的消极作用，阻碍新的提供者和新的模式投入使用。虽然这些规制过去可能有意义，但也许现在很多已并非如此了。 State leaders would do well to put together a blue-ribbon panel of experts to scour the state education code for outdated and ill-suited statutes and regulations that may be stymieing entrepreneurial solutions. They can also encourage districts, charter authorizers, and schools of education to conduct similar surveys of their own operations and publicly report on where and what they are streamlining. 州政府的领导们能做得更好的方面，也许是推动组成专家委员会来革新州的教育法规并去除那些过时和适应性差并可能阻碍创投方案的法律和规章。他们也可以鼓励学区、特许学校授权机构和学校对其自身的运作进行类似的调查，并公布它们在何处采取了何种加强效率的措施。 Don’t Go Gaga for Entrepreneurs; Foster Entrepreneurship 不要迷信企业家；要鼓励创业精神 The exciting source of dynamism that created everything from Rover to the next cool app to teach students to read is entrepreneurialism, not any particular entrepreneur or entrepreneurial venture. Exciting new entrants age, grow, and evolve. Some succeed and some fail. Those that succeed, with time and success, tend to become members in good standing of the stodgy old establishment. That is the cycle of entrepreneurial life. 企业家精神而不是某个企业家或者创投企业才是令人振奋的动力源。这动力可以创造从Rover到下一个很酷的手机应用，也可以教学生阅读。令人振奋的参与者变得成熟，成长，并且进化。一些成功了，一些失败了。那些成功者，随着它们的年岁和成功，变成了乏味沉闷的老既得利益集团的一部分。这就是创业生命体的周期。 Entrepreneurship does not guarantee success. If anything, it ensures that there will be failure. Of course, if a half century of school reform has taught us anything, it is that system reform is also sure to produce failure—except on a much larger scale and without the dynamism, inventiveness, and self-correction that characterizes vibrant entrepreneurial sectors. 创业不能保证成功。如果说能保证什么的话，它保证这里将会有失败。当然，如果半个世纪的学校改革教会了我们什么的话，那就是系统改革也当然会产生失败--只不过这失败的规模更大，而且没有活力、激励、自我修正等这些有生命力的创业部门所拥有的特征。 For all its imperfections though, educational entrepreneurship offers a degree of imagination and natural winnowing that seems especially well-suited to the sprawling, diverse, and pluralistic nation that we live in, and it creates an opportunity for truly world-changing products to emerge. Those who believe in the power of the entrepreneurial impulse would do well never to cling to any particular venture. The social good is best served by creating the conditions in which entrepreneurs can thrive if—and only if—they are serving the best interests of students. 虽然有种种不完美，教育行业创投活动提供着某种程度的想象力和自然筛选，这些看来对于我们所生活的这个分散，多元和分权共治的国家特别合适。并且创投创造了机会，使得真正改变世界的产品可能涌现。那些相信创业冲劲的人应该避免一成不变地支持某个特定的创投公司。创造条件，让并且只让那些最能为学生利益服务的企业茁壮成长，才是服务社会的最好途径。 Notes 注记

1. Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane, Educational Entrepreneurship Today (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
2. Stacy Childress, “From Generation to Generation: Fifteen Years of Education Entrepreneurship,” in Educational Entrepreneurship Today, ed. Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
3. Matt Candler, “Go Small or Go Home: Innovation in Schooling,” in Educational Entrepreneurship Today, ed. Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2016).

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——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

【2016-09-06】 @whigzhou: Airbnb的模式不知会不会复制到餐饮业，自己做菜的，忙乎两小时十分钟就吃完了感觉很亏，多做一人份的边际成本很小，还可以顺便聊聊天，甚至交些朋友，不过有个问题，其中相当大一部分可能很快会凝固成固定饭搭子，如果比例太高，那在商业上就难以成立了。 ​​​​ @whigzhou: 当然，在缺乏人际信任的某国，怎么都不成立，即便有也会最终蜕变为共雇阿姨，而且据说这条路也堵死了，外卖网都禁止无门店商家入驻。 @MrsRobinson:伦敦颇有一些这样经营的“餐厅”，在自己家做饭，邮件通知、定位，再口碑传。我去过的人多的20多个客人，少的六七个，一人付四五十镑  

沙特阿拉伯可能会在美国石油行业崩溃之前倒下 Saudi Arabia may go broke before the US oil industry buckles 作者：Ambrose Evans-Pritchard @ 2015-8-5 译者：Veidt（@Veidt) 校对：Tankman 来源：每日电讯报，http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11768136/Saudi-Arabia-may-go-broke-before-the-US-oil-industry-buckles.html If the oil futures market is correct, Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade. 如果石油期货市场是对的，那么沙特阿拉伯将会在两年之内开始陷入麻烦。这个国家将会在这个十年的尾声时陷入一场生存危机。 The contract price of US crude oil for delivery in December 2020 is currently $62.05, implying a drastic change in the economic landscape for the Middle East and the petro-rentier states. 目前2020年12月交付的美国原油期货价格是每桶62.05美元，这个价格体现了中东地区和石油租利国家经济版图的一场剧变。 The Saudis took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead to flood the market and drive out rivals, boosting their own output to 10.6m barrels a day (b/d) into the teeth of the downturn. 沙特人在去年11月【译注：本文作于2015年，此处指2014年11月】开始了一场豪赌，他们停止了对石油价格的支撑，转而选择在市场上倾销以挤出竞争对手，他们在市场急转直下的时候将自己的原油产量提升到了每日106万桶。 Bank of America says OPEC is now "effectively dissolved". The cartel might as well shut down its offices in Vienna to save money. 美国银行认为OPEC目前“实际上已经解体了”。这个垄断联盟也许会关闭它在维也纳的办公室以节省资金。 If the aim was to choke the US shale industry, the Saudis have misjudged badly, just as they misjudged the growing shale threat at every stage for eight years. "It is becoming apparent that non-OPEC producers are not as responsive to low oil prices as had been thought, at least in the short-run," said the Saudi central bank in its latest stability report. 如果这么做的目的是打击美国的页岩产业，那么沙特人就犯了个大错，就像他们在过去八年中的每个阶段都错判了成长中的页岩产业的威胁一样。“很显然那些非OPEC产油国对于低油价的反应并不像我们之前所设想的那样剧烈，至少在短期内是这样，”沙特央行在最近的稳定性报告中表示。 "The main impact has been to cut back on developmental drilling of new oil wells, rather than slowing the flow of oil from existing wells. This requires more patience," it said. 这份报告称：“（这项政策）的主要影响是减少了新油井的开发钻探量，而并非降低现有油井的生产速度。这需要更多的耐心。” One Saudi expert was blunter. "The policy hasn't worked and it will never work," he said. 一位沙特专家则更加直白。“这项政策显然没起作用，而且它也永远起不了作用，”他说。 By causing the oil price to crash, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have certainly killed off prospects for a raft of high-cost ventures in the Russian Arctic, the Gulf of Mexico, the deep waters of the mid-Atlantic, and the Canadian tar sands. 通过让油价崩溃，沙特人和他们的海湾盟友们显然杀死了那些试图在俄罗斯北极地区，墨西哥湾，大西洋中部深海和加拿大油砂中提炼原油的昂贵冒险活动。 Consultants Wood Mackenzie say the major oil and gas companies have shelved 46 large projects, deferring $200bn of investments. 咨询公司Wood Machenzie表示，大型油气公司们已经将46个大型项目束之高阁，这推迟了大约2000亿美元的投资支出。 The problem for the Saudis is that US shale frackers are not high-cost. They are mostly mid-cost, and as I reported from the CERAWeek energy forum in Houston, experts at IHS think shale companies may be able to shave those costs by 45pc this year - and not only by switching tactically to high-yielding wells. 沙特人所面临的问题是，美国的页岩油气生产商们的成本并不高。正如我在休斯顿举办的CERAWeek能源论坛上所报告的，这些公司中的大多数成本都处于适中的水平，IHS公司的专家们认为这些页岩油气公司也许能在今年将这些成本削减45个百分点——而这并不仅是靠战术性地转向那些高产的油井来做到的。 Advanced pad drilling techniques allow frackers to launch five or ten wells in different directions from the same site. Smart drill-bits with computer chips can seek out cracks in the rock. New dissolvable plugs promise to save $300,000 a well. "We've driven down drilling costs by 50pc, and we can see another 30pc ahead," said John Hess, head of the Hess Corporation. 先进的井台批量钻探技术让页岩油业者能在同一处钻探点打出5口或10口不同方向的油井。植入了计算机芯片的智能钻探装置能够自动发现岩层中的裂缝。最新的可溶解油栓技术有望为每口油井节省30万美元的成本。“我们已经将钻探成本降低了百分之五十，而且我们认为目前的成本还有百分之三十的下降空间，”Hess集团总裁John Hess表示。 It was the same story from Scott Sheffield, head of Pioneer Natural Resources. "We have just drilled an 18,000 ft well in 16 days in the Permian Basin. Last year it took 30 days," he said. 先锋自然资源公司总裁Scott Sheffield也持相同看法。“我们最近在16天内在二叠纪盆地钻出了一口深达一万八千英尺的油井。而在去年，这样的工程还需要花上30天，”他说。 The North American rig-count has dropped to 664 from 1,608 in October but output still rose to a 43-year high of 9.6m b/d June. It has only just begun to roll over. "The freight train of North American tight oil has kept on coming," said Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil. 北美工作中的钻机数量从去年十月的1608台下降到了目前的664台，但原油产量却在今年六月升至43年来的最高水平——每日960万桶。而这仅仅只是个开始。“运送北美页岩油的货运火车正源源不断地开来，”埃克森美孚公司总裁Rex Tillerson表示。 He said the resilience of the sister industry of shale gas should be a cautionary warning to those reading too much into the rig-count. Gas prices have collapsed from $8 to $2.78 since 2009, and the number of gas rigs has dropped 1,200 to 209. Yet output has risen by 30pc over that period. 他说，页岩气作为姊妹行业其适应能力应该引起那些过多关注钻机数量的人们的深切警醒。天然气价格已经从2009年的8美元暴跌至目前的2.78美元，而工作中的天然气钻机数量则从当时的1200台降至了目前的209台。但产量却在同一时期上升了超过三十个百分点。 Until now, shale drillers have been cushioned by hedging contracts. The stress test will come over coming months as these expire. But even if scores of over-leveraged wild-catters go bankrupt as funding dries up, it will not do OPEC any good. 直到目前，页岩钻探者们一直受到了对冲合约的保护。而未来的几个月中，随着这些合约到期，真正的压力测试将会到来。但即便这些过度使用杠杆的风险弄潮儿最终因为资金枯竭而破产，OPEC也无法从中得到任何好处。 The wells will still be there. The technology and infrastructure will still be there. Stronger companies will mop up on the cheap, taking over the operations. Once oil climbs back to $60 or even $55 - since the threshold keeps falling - they will crank up production almost instantly. 油井仍然在那里。技术和基础设施也仍然在那里。更加强大的公司将会廉价扫货，并接管他们的生意。一旦油价重新回到每桶60美元甚至55美元——这个阈值正在持续降低——他们将会立即重新启动钻机开始生产。 OPEC now faces a permanent headwind. Each rise in price will be capped by a surge in US output. The only constraint is the scale of US reserves that can be extracted at mid-cost, and these may be bigger than originally supposed, not to mention the parallel possibilities in Argentina and Australia, or the possibility for "clean fracking" in China as plasma pulse technology cuts water needs. OPEC目前面临着一个挥之不去的困境。每一波油价上涨就会被一波美国原油产量的激增抵消。对此的唯一限制是全美能够以适中成本开采的原油总储量，而这个数字则很可能比人们之前设想的要大，更不用提在阿根廷和澳大利亚的那些类似的可供开采储量，还有中国未来因等离子脉冲技术降低了对水量的需求，实现“清洁开采”的可能性。 Mr Sheffield said the Permian Basin in Texas could alone produce 5-6m b/d in the long-term, more than Saudi Arabia's giant Ghawar field, the biggest in the world. Sheffield先生表示，单单是德州的二叠纪盆地在长期内的日产出量就能达到500到600万桶，而这个数字比目前世界上最大的石油产区——沙特阿拉伯的大Ghawar油田的产出还要大。 Saudi Arabia is effectively beached. It relies on oil for 90pc of its budget revenues. There is no other industry to speak of, a full fifty years after the oil bonanza began. 沙特阿拉伯这艘大船实际上已经搁浅了。这个国家预算收入中的90%都依赖石油。而在经历了整整50年的石油大繁荣之后，它并没有发展出任何其它值得一提的产业。 Citizens pay no tax on income, interest, or stock dividends. Subsidized petrol costs twelve cents a litre at the pump. Electricity is given away for 1.3 cents a kilowatt-hour. Spending on patronage exploded after the Arab Spring as the kingdom sought to smother dissent. 该国的国民不需要为他们的收入，利息或者股利交税。在加油站可以用每升12美分的补贴价格购买汽油。每千瓦时的电价仅仅是1.3美分。在“阿拉伯之春”开始之后，由于王室试图平息民间的不满情绪，该国用于收买支持的开支也迅速地增长。 The International Monetary Fund estimates that the budget deficit will reach 20pc of GDP this year, or roughly $140bn. The 'fiscal break-even price' is $106. 据国际货币基金组织估计，沙特的财政赤字将在今年占到GDP的20%，也就是大约1400亿美元。而让该国的财政收支达到均衡的油价水平是每桶106美元。 Far from retrenching, King Salman is spraying money around, giving away $32bn in a coronation bonus for all workers and pensioners. 而当今沙特国王萨勒曼却完全没有想要缩减开支的意思，反而四处撒钱，单单是在一次加冕礼上，他就为全国的所有工人和退休者发放了320亿美元的奖金。 He has launched a costly war against the Houthis in Yemen and is engaged in a massive military build-up - entirely reliant on imported weapons - that will propel Saudi Arabia to fifth place in the world defence ranking. 此外，他还对也门的胡塞武装发动了一场代价高昂的战争，并且大肆扩张军备——沙特的军备完全依赖从外国进口武器——这会使沙特的军费开支排到全球第5位。 The Saudi royal family is leading the Sunni cause against a resurgent Iran, battling for dominance in a bitter struggle between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East. "Right now, the Saudis have only one thing on their mind and that is the Iranians. They have a very serious problem. Iranian proxies are running Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon," said Jim Woolsey, the former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency. 沙特王室还需要肩负领导逊尼派对抗东山再起的伊朗的重任，为争夺霸权，整个中东地区的逊尼派和什叶派之间展开了艰苦的斗争。“现在沙特人满脑子都只想着一件事情，那就是来自伊朗人的威胁。他们面临着一个非常严峻的问题，伊朗的代理人目前正控制着也门，叙利亚，伊拉克和黎巴嫩，”美国中央情报局前任局长吉姆·伍尔西表示。 Money began to leak out of Saudi Arabia after the Arab Spring, with net capital outflows reaching 8pc of GDP annually even before the oil price crash. The country has since been burning through its foreign reserves at a vertiginous pace. 在“阿拉伯之春”发生后，资本开始流出沙特阿拉伯，即使在油价崩溃之前，每年资本净流出也占到了GDP的8%。从那时开始，该国的外汇储备就以惊人地速度直线下降。 The reserves peaked at $737bn in August of 2014. They dropped to $672 in May. At current prices they are falling by at least $12bn a month. 沙特的外汇储备在2014年8月达到峰值7370亿美元。而到今年5月，这个数字下降到了6720亿美元。以目前的汇率计算，沙特的外汇储备每月至少会下降120亿美元。【编注：2016年4月 已降至5720亿美元】 Khalid Alsweilem, a former official at the Saudi central bank and now at Harvard University, said the fiscal deficit must be covered almost dollar for dollar by drawing down reserves. 沙特央行的一位前任官员Khalid Alsweilem（目前在哈佛大学担任研究员）表示，沙特政府财政赤字中的几乎每一美元都需要以外汇储备的同等下降为代价来弥补。 The Saudi buffer is not particularly large given the country's fixed exchange system. Kuwait, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi all have three times greater reserves per capita. "We are much more vulnerable. That is why we are the fourth rated sovereign in the Gulf at AA-. We cannot afford to lose our cushion over the next two years," he said. 在该国的固定汇率体系之下，留给沙特人的缓冲余地并不是很大。科威特，卡塔尔和阿布扎比所拥有的人均外汇储备是沙特的三倍。“我们相对而言要脆弱得多。这就是为何我们的主权债评级在海湾地区只排第四，评级水平也仅是AA-。在未来两年中，我们承受不起失去外汇储备缓冲的后果，”他说。 Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook to "negative" in February. "We view Saudi Arabia's economy as undiversified and vulnerable to a steep and sustained decline in oil prices," it said. 标普在今年二月将沙特主权债务的评级展望降为“负面”。“我们认为在油价持续急剧下降的过程中，沙特阿拉伯的经济没有多元化，并且十分脆弱，”标普在他们的报告中表示。 Mr Alsweilem wrote in a Harvard report that Saudi Arabia would have an extra trillion of assets by now if it had adopted the Norwegian model of a sovereign wealth fund to recyle the money instead of treating it as a piggy bank for the finance ministry. The report has caused storm in Riyadh. Alsweilem先生在哈佛大学的一份报告中写道，如果沙特之前采用挪威的主权财富基金模式让外汇储备循环投资，而不是像他们所做的那样仅仅把它当作财政部的一头现金奶牛，目前沙特阿拉伯的资产也许会多出1万亿美元。这份报告在沙特首都利雅得引发了风暴。 "We were lucky before because the oil price recovered in time. But we can't count on that again," he said. “上一次我们很幸运，因为油价适时地恢复了。但是这次我们不能再次指望同样的事情会，”他说。 OPEC have left matters too late, though perhaps there is little they could have done to combat the advances of American technology. OPEC做出反应时已经太晚了，虽然即使早一些意识到问题，他们也做不了太多事情来对抗美国的技术进步。 In hindsight, it was a strategic error to hold prices so high, for so long, allowing shale frackers - and the solar industry - to come of age. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle. 事后看来，让油价在如此长的时间维持在这么高的位置实际上是一个战略性错误，这样那些页岩油气的勘探者们——还有太阳能产业——就能够成长壮大。一旦被放出来，你就无法再将精灵放回瓶子里了。 The Saudis are now trapped. Even if they could do a deal with Russia and orchestrate a cut in output to boost prices - far from clear - they might merely gain a few more years of high income at the cost of bringing forward more shale production later on. 沙特人如今陷入了困境。即使他们能与俄罗斯达成一致共同减产以支撑油价——虽然这样的愿景目前看来一点也不清晰——这也仅仅能让他们享受多几年的高收入，而这样做的代价却是在未来面临更多的页岩油产出的竞争。 Yet on the current course their reserves may be down to $200bn by the end of 2018. The markets will react long before this, seeing the writing on the wall. Capital flight will accelerate. 而如果当前的趋势维持下去，沙特的外汇储备将在2018年底前降至2000亿美元以下。一旦前景明白无误了，市场会在它成为现实前就早早做出反应。资本外流将会加速。 The government can slash investment spending for a while - as it did in the mid-1980s - but in the end it must face draconian austerity. It cannot afford to prop up Egypt and maintain an exorbitant political patronage machine across the Sunni world. 沙特政府可以在一段时间内削减资本开支——就像它在1980年代中期所做的那样——但最终它将面临严峻的紧缩。沙特将无法负担起支撑埃及政权并在逊尼派穆斯林世界里维持一台昂贵的资助机器的开支。 Social spending is the glue that holds together a medieval Wahhabi regime at a time of fermenting unrest among the Shia minority of the Eastern Province, pin-prick terrorist attacks from ISIS, and blowback from the invasion of Yemen. 庞大的社会开支是将一个仍然处在中世纪状态的瓦哈比政权维系在一起的粘合剂，这个政权正面临着东部省份的什叶少数派中正在发酵的动荡，ISIS时而发动的针刺般的恐怖袭击，还有入侵也门所带来的反作用力。 Diplomatic spending is what underpins the Saudi sphere of influence in a Middle East suffering its own version of Europe's Thirty Year War, and still reeling from the after-shocks of a crushed democratic revolt. 庞大的外交开支则是维系沙特在中东地区影响力的基础，而目前中东地区正在经历着类似欧洲“三十年战争”般的苦难，同时还在蹒跚地试图爬出镇压民主反抗运动带来的余震。 We may yet find that the US oil industry has greater staying power than the rickety political edifice behind OPEC. 我们也许会发现，虽然同样处在低谷中，但相比OPEC身后的那座虚弱的政治大厦，美国的石油行业其实拥有着更强的生命力。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

I’m an Oregon rancher. Here’s what you don’t understand about the Bundy standoff. 俄勒冈农场主来信：谈谈“邦迪对峙”中你所不知道的一些事情 作者： Keith Nantz @ 2016-1-8 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：Tankman 来源：The Washington Post， https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/08/im-an-oregon-rancher-heres-what-you-dont-understand-about-the-bundy-standoff/ The Obama administration has pushed our livelihood to the brink. 奥巴马政府把我们的生计推到了崩溃边缘。 This week, the Ammon Bundy-led seizure of a federal wildlife refuge thrust Oregon’s ranchers into the spotlight. While I don’t agree with the occupiers’ tactics, I sympathize with their position. Being a rancher was always challenging. And it has become increasingly difficult under the Obama administration. 本周，由阿蒙·邦迪领导的一场占领某联邦野生动物保护站的行动将俄勒冈的牧场主们推到了聚光灯下。尽管我并不赞同占领者的策略，但我同情他们的立场。牧场主历来难当，在奥巴马政府治下更是日益艰辛。 I grew up in a ranching community in northeast Oregon. Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to be a rancher. After eight years as a firefighter, I’d saved enough to start my own business. I wanted to work on the land, raising delicious, wholesome beef for our growing population. 我自幼在俄勒冈东北部的一个放牧社区长大。还在孩提时代，我就知道自己想要做个牧场主。当了八年消防员之后，我攒够了钱，启动了自己的生意。我渴望在土地上劳作，为我们日益增长的人口生产出美味可口的健康牛肉。 For almost a decade, I’ve done just that. Most days, I’m up before the sun rises. I spend my mornings tending to my horses, dogs and livestock. In the winter, when it’s bitter cold, I’m outside with my cattle, making sure their water isn’t frozen and that they’re properly fed. In the summer, I often work 15-hour days, cultivating my crops and tending to the animals. In the afternoons, I’m in my office, reaching out to customers and handling the ranch’s business side. Over the course of a given day, I act as a vet, a mechanic, an agronomist and accountant. 有大约整整十年，我就在做这个事情。大多数日子，我会在天亮之前起床。整个早上都要去照料我的马匹、狗和牲畜。冬天的严寒时节，我也需要和牛群呆在外边，确保它们的饮水不会结冰，进食不会出错。夏天，我通常每天工作15小时，种植庄稼、照料动物。下午则呆在办公室里联络顾客、处理农场的经营事务。每天的不同时候，我需要扮演兽医、技工、农艺师和会计等不同角色。 I love the work, but it’s grueling. As a rancher, I’m always one bad year away from financial disaster. Every purchase I make — from new cows ($2,000 each) to a new piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — is a major investment. And my ranch operates on very slim margins, so I have to be savvy to make ends meet. 我热爱这份工作，但确实很累。作为一个牧场主，我离出现财务悲剧永远只有一个糟糕年份的距离。每购进一样东西——不管是新的奶牛（每头2000元）还是价值数十万的新设备——都是一次重要投资。我的农场盈利微薄，所以我必须精打细算、量入为出。 Money isn’t the only challenge. Raising cattle requires a lot of land, much more than most ranchers can afford to own outright. I lease about a third of the space I use from private owners. But most ranchers aren’t so lucky. The federal government controls a huge amount of land in the west (more than 50 percent in some states, like Oregon), and many ranchers must lease that space to create a sustainable operation. 钱并不是唯一的麻烦。养牛需要大片土地，多数牧场主做不到全部使用自有土地。我所用的土地中，约有三分之一是从其他私人业主手中租用的。但多数牧场主没有我这种好运。在西部，联邦政府控制着巨量土地（在一些州，如俄勒冈，联邦政府土地占有量超过50%），许多牧场主必须从其手中租用，以支撑牧场持续运转。 Utilizing federal land requires ranchers to follow an unfair, complicated and constantly evolving set of rules. For example, a federal government agency might decide that it wants to limit the number of days a rancher can graze their cattle to protect a certain endangered plant or animal species, or they might unilaterally decide that ranchers can’t use as much water as they need because of a fight over water rights. Or they might take over land that once belonged to the state or private individuals, imposing an entirely new set of restrictions. 使用联邦土地要求牧场主遵从一系列不甚公平、复杂且持续多变的规则。比如，某联邦机构可能会决定限制牧场主放牧牛群的时间，以保护某种濒危植物或动物；或者，他们也可能单方面要求牧场主不能足量地使用淡水，因为在水权问题上有争执。或者，他们也可能接管原属于州政府或私人的土地，强加一套全新的规制。 I saw this play out firsthand when the federal government considered listing the sage grouse, a chicken-like bird, as endangered. That regulation would have shrunk the amount of land where ranchers could graze cattle, putting many out of business and decimating the industry. 我曾亲眼目睹上述现象上演，起因是联邦政府考虑将艾草榛鸡——一种外形像鸡的鸟——列为濒危物种。一旦政府作出这一规定，牧场主用于放牧牛群的土地面积就将大为缩减，许多牧场会因此倒闭，整个行业也会大受伤害。 To avoid this, ranchers like myself and local officials spent months meeting with federal officials looking for compromise. We ultimately found middle ground. But we already have an enormous workload in our daily lives. The pressure of having to drop everything to lobby against a rule (which happens more often than you’d think) is a tremendous burden. 为避免发生这种事情，像我这样的牧场主及地方官员费时数月之久去和联邦官员会谈，寻找折中方案。最后，我们找到了中间立场。但我们的日常经营本来就有庞大的工作量，要我们放下手头一切事情去游说政府放弃某条规则（此类事情的发生频率比你想象的要高），这种压力对我们而言是极大的负担。 Most of the time, those regulations are written by people with no agriculture experience, and little understanding of what it takes to produce our nation’s food. The agencies that control these lands can add burdensome regulations at any time. Often, they will begin aggressively enforcing them before ranchers have a chance to adjust. 大多数时候，制定此类规定的人没有任何农业经验，也对生产全国食物需要付出什么缺乏任何了解。控制土地的各类机构任何时候都可以添加各种累赘麻烦的规定。通常，在牧场主们有机会为此做任何调整之前，他们就已经咄咄逼人地强制执行开了。 This forces us to either find new grazing land, reduce the size of our herd or sell out completely. In rural communities, this can have a catastrophic effect on the local economy and environment. Ranching is a billion-dollar industry in Oregon. 这就迫使我们要么找到新的放牧用地，要么削减牧群规模，要么彻底卖光牲畜。对于农村社群而言，这就有可能对地方经济和环境造成灾难性影响。在俄勒冈，放牧是一门价值十多亿的生意。 Overall, agriculture accounts for 15 percent of the state’s economic activity and 12 percent of the state’s employment. The income of a local farm generates double the money for the local economy as a supermarket’s income in the same area, according to the London-based New Economics Foundation. 总体而言，农业在全州经济活动中占到15%，在全州就业中占到12%。根据位于伦敦的“新经济学基金会”估计，就对俄勒冈地方经济的货币贡献而言，一个地方农场的收入是同一地区一个超市收入的两倍。 The siege on our industry has only increased under the Obama administration. Officials are effectively regulating us out of business by enforcing a string of unprecedented environmental restrictions. In Malhuer county (next to Harney county, where the current standoff is taking place), the Obama administration is considering a measure that will turn 2.5 million acres of federal land into a “national monument,” a move that would severely restrict grazing. These restrictions would cause a huge economic downturn for those communities. 对我们这一行业的围攻在奥巴马当政期间有增无减。官员们通过实施一系列前所未见的环境管制，事实上正把我们规制得走向歇业。在马卢尔郡（临近此次对峙所在地哈尼郡），奥巴马政府正考虑采取一项举措，将250万英亩联邦土地变成“国家保护区”。此举将会极大地限制放牧。这类管制将会使此类社群面临巨大的经济衰退。 These decisions are being made by people who are four to five generations removed from food production. The rule-makers don’t quite understand our industry, and are being spurred on by extreme environmentalist groups asking for unreasonable policy changes. 这类决策的制定者祖上四代或五代人之前就已经远离食物生产。规定制定者并不很了解我们这一行业，并且受到了要求进行不合理的政策变革的极端环保主义团体的鼓动唆使。 It’s not that I don’t care what the environmental community wants. In every part of my business, I try to find a balance between economics, mother nature and our culture. I know that if we don’t treat our land properly, we will go out of business by our own hands. It is of utmost importance for us to be true conservationists if we want to continue producing the most nutritious and safest protein in the world. 并不是说我不关心环保团体的要求。在我的生意的方方面面，我都努力寻求在经济、大自然母亲和我们的文化之间达成平衡。我知道，如果我们不善待自己的土地，我们就会在自己手上歇业完蛋。如果我们期望持续地生产出世界上最营养、最安全的蛋白质，那么最重要的一点就是要做一个真正的自然资源保护主义者。 But all too often, I’m not given the autonomy to do so. I’m given rules, not a conversation about how ranchers and government officials and environmentalists might be able to work together. That’s an approach that fails everyone. 但反复发生的事情是，我并没有得到自决权去这么做。他们给我定规则，而不是和我就农场主、政府官员和环保主义者如何可能共同合作进行对话。这种办法令所有人都失望透顶。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The New York Times’ Nail Salons Series Was Filled with Misquotes and Factual Errors. Here’s Why That Matters. （Part 1） 《纽约时报》美甲沙龙系列文章充满征引错误和事实错误。我们来看看这事为什么要紧。（第一弹） 作者：Jim Epstein @ 2015-10-27 译者：沈沉（你在何地-sxy） 校对：Tankman 来源：Reason ，https://reason.com/blog/2015/10/27/new-york-times-nail-salon-unvarnished Reporter Sarah Maslin Nir's investigative series violated the standards of responsible journalism. 记者Sarah Maslin Nir的系列调查报道违反了负责任新闻报道的规范。 A two-part series in The New York Times on nail salons has brought sweeping changes to an industry dominated by Korean and Chinese immigrants. Written by reporter Sarah Maslin Nir, the series, which ran in print on May 10 and 11, focused on the plight of nail salon manicurists in New York City and Long Island. It depicted a community of immigrant workers paid shockingly low wages to beautify the fingers and toes of affluent New Yorkers while inhaling toxic fumes that cause miscarriages and cancer. 《纽约时报》关于美甲沙龙的前后两篇报道给这个由韩国移民和中国移民主导的产业带来了深远影响。这一系列报道由记者Sarah Maslin Nir撰写，发表于5月10日和11日，集中讲述了纽约市和长岛美甲沙龙里美甲师的窘困境况。在它所描绘的画面里，一群移民工人为了点极度微薄的工资，呼吸着能够导致流产和癌症的有毒气体，为纽约的富人们修饰手指和脚趾。 Nir, who spent 13 months on the project, said in an interview that she initially pitched the story as an "expose," adding that the "great lesson" readers should come away with is that there's "no such thing as a cheap luxury." The only way "you can have something decadent for a cheap price is by someone being exploited." (My Reason colleague, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, wrote a critique of Nir's series shortly after it was published.) Nir在这篇报道上耗费了13个月时间。在接受采访时她说，最初设计这个故事就是为了“曝光”。她还补充说，读者应从该报道中得到一个“重大教训”：世上并不存在“所谓的廉价奢华”。“廉价的放纵奢靡”只能用一个办法得到，那就是“某人遭到剥削”。（我在Reason的同事Elizabeth Nolan Brown在Nir的系列见报不久就写了一篇批评文章。） The "great lesson" here is actually something different. I've spent the last several weeks re-reporting aspects of Nir's story and interviewing her sources. Not only did Nir's coverage broadly mischaracterize the nail salon industry, several of the men and women she spoke with say she misquoted or misrepresented them. In some cases, she interviewed sources without translators despite their poor English skills. When her sources' testimonies ran counter to her narrative, she omitted them altogether. 但事实上，这里应被视为“重大教训”的，是另外一件事。过去几周，我都在重新报道Nir的故事的方方面面，并重新采访其信源。Nir的报道不仅明显扭曲了美甲沙龙产业，而且，曾与之交谈的几位男女还说她错误引用了他们的话或对他们描绘有误。有时候，尽管信源的英语水平很低，她在采访时也没有带翻译。如果信源的说法与她的故事有所抵触，她就会彻底无视这类说法。 The second article lent the Times' imprimatur to unproven theories, while committing science journalism's cardinal sin of highlighting alarmist anecdotes that aren't representative of systematic research. 系列文章中的第二篇则让《时报》为未经验证的理论提供了官方认可，该文犯下了科学新闻的核心重罪：突出强调危言耸听者所提供的那些不能代表系统研究的小道消息。 If it hadn't had real-world consequences, the series—and subsequent attempt by Nir and her editors to parry criticism—wouldn't be worth such intense scrutiny. But the day after the first article appeared in the print edition of the Times, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) announced a new multi-agency task force to inspect nail salons. In August, Cuomo issued an emergency order mandating that salons purchase a new form of insurance called a "wage bond" so that if owners are discovered paying their employees less than the legally required wage, the workers have recourse to collect. 两篇文章及随后Nir及其编辑为了回避批评所做出的种种努力本不值得用心细细考察，但是它们对真实世界的影响实在太大了。首篇文章在《时报》印刷版登出来的第二天，Andrew Guomo州长（民主党-纽约州）就宣布成立一个新的多部门联合特别小组，负责调查美甲沙龙。8月，Guomo签发了一条紧急命令，责令各沙龙购买一种叫做“工资保证金”的保险，一旦店主支付雇员的工资低于法定要求，工人们就有办法收账。 The rush to legislate based solely on the Times' shoddy reporting has hurt the industry. New nail salons, "which used to open every week in New York," have stopped appearing, according to Aiming Feng, an accountant and leading business advisor to nail shops. 这种仅仅基于《时报》劣质报道就做出的匆忙立法已经对这一行业造成伤害。据身为会计师和顶尖的美甲业商业顾问Aiming Feng所说，新的美甲沙龙已经停止开业，“此前纽约可是每周都会有新店开张”。 Salons once provided a steady source of jobs for undocumented immigrants; now many owners say they'll hire only legal workers who've completed an occupational licensing program because they're afraid of getting in trouble. 美甲沙龙曾为非法移民提供了一个稳定的工作来源。但是，许多店主说，他们以后只会雇佣完成了执业执照课程的合法工人，因为他们担心惹麻烦。 In September, two industry groups filed a discrimination lawsuit over the wage-bond mandate in New York State Supreme Court on the grounds that the state has unfairly singled out an Asian-dominated industry. 9月，有两个行业团体就工资保险令向纽约州最高法院提起歧视诉讼，理由是州政府此举单独针对由亚裔主导的行业，很不公平。 Another group has organized multiple protests, including a demonstration on October 6 in front of The New York Times Company's offices in midtown Manhattan. "Apology Now, Fire Nir!" was printed on one sign at the protest; "Shame On You New York Times, Your Lies Kill Our Shops," read another. Another protest is scheduled at 11a.m. today in front of the Times building. 另有一个团体则已经组织了多次抗议，包括10月6日在纽约时报公司位于曼哈顿中城的办公室外面所举行的示威。抗议活动中打出的一个标语上写着“立刻道歉、开除Nir”；另有一个标语则是“纽约时报你不知羞耻、你们的谎言害死我们的店”。按照计划，今天11点在时报大厦前面将举行另外一场抗议活动。 I'm not the first reporter to scrutinize Nir's reporting. In July, Richard Bernstein, a 24-year veteran of the Times who left the paper in 2006, published "What the Times Got Wrong About Nail Salons" in the online edition of The New York Review of Books. His knowledge of the industry comes through his wife, Zhongmei Li, who owns and manages two nail salons in Manhattan. 我并是不第一个仔细检讨Nir报道的记者。曾为《时报》工作24年并于2006年离职的老前辈Richard Bernstein已在《纽约书评》在线版上发表文章“时报在美甲沙龙问题上犯了什么错”。他对这一行业的了解来自他的妻子Zhongmei Li，Li在曼哈顿拥有并管理着两家美甲沙龙。 Bernstein charged that Nir's story focused on a small segment of the industry while ignoring the vast majority of nail salons, which pay above the minimum wage and hire only licensed manicurists. His piece specifically challenged the Times' claim that the Asian-language newspapers are "rife" with manicurist ads offering shockingly low wages. After Bernstein's story appeared, the Times' editors penned a public letter offering new evidence to support Nir's claim. Bernstein指责Nir在报道中只注意了该行业的一隅，忽视了大多数美甲沙龙，它们的薪酬高于最低工资，并且只录用拥持证美甲师。针对《时报》关于亚州语言报纸“充斥”着工资极低的美甲师招聘广告的说法，Bernstein在文章中还专门提出质疑。此文问世之后，《时报》编辑又撰写了一封公开信，提供新的证据支持Nir的说法。 As I'll explain, the Times editors mistranslated and misconstrued that new evidence, which actually validates Bernstein's argument. 下文我将解释，《时报》的编辑们对这一新证据的翻译和解释都有误，该证据实际上证实了Bernstein的论点。 Nir and her editors declined my interview requests. Instead, a Times spokesperson provided a prepared statement, asserting that the paper is "extremely proud" of the series and pointing to the high number of labor violations discovered by Cuomo's inspection task force since the series appeared. Nir及其编辑拒绝了我的采访请求。反倒是《时报》有个发言人提供了一份事先准备好的声明，坚持说该报为这两篇报道感到“非常骄傲”，并且援引了报道问世后由Cuomo的特别调查小组所发现的大量违法用工案例。 Those labor violations don't reveal what the Times claims they do. In its zeal to cite the government's ex post vindication of its own reporting, the paper further obfuscated what's really happening in the industry. 这些违法用工并不能展现《时报》认为它们所能展现的情况。通过热情征引政府在其报道之后所提供的事后证词，时报进一步模糊了这一行业中正在发生的实情。 My look at Nir's reporting and its shortcomings will appear in three installments. First, I'll revisit the Times' back-and-forth with Bernstein and explain why the paper's claim that manicurists are paid shockingly low wages is based on shoddy research and misconstrued evidence. 我对Nir报道及其缺陷的检查将分为三个部分呈现。首先，我要再次分析《时报》与Bernstein之间的交锋，并解释为什么说该报关于美甲师工资极低的断言只是基于劣质的调研和曲解的证据。 Next, I'll look at Cuomo's inspection task force, the fines and violations being handed out to salon owners, and how the governor's actions have had the unintended consequence of making it harder for undocumented immigrants to get jobs in nail salons. (That article is now online here.) 然后，我会考察Cuomo的特别调查小组、沙龙店主接到的罚款和违章，以及州长的行动如何产生了意料之外的后果，使得非法移民比之前更难在美甲沙龙找到工作。（第二弹在线阅读地址在这里。 ） The third installment will look at the Times' claim that chemicals present in nail salons are causing cancer and miscarriages, which is based on nonexistent evidence. (Click here to read part three.) 第三部分要考察的则是《时报》的一个说法：美甲沙龙中的化学物质正在导致癌症和流产。这一说法全无依据。（可通过以下链接阅读第三弹。） Job Ads "Paying So Little" They "Appear To Be a Typo" 招聘广告“工资极低”“还以为是印刷错误”。 In an early paragraph in the Times' first story in the nail salon series, we read: 在《时报》关于美甲沙龙的系列文章第一篇中，我们在前面几段中可以读到以下说法：

Asian-language newspapers are rife with classified ads listing manicurist jobs paying so little the daily wage can at first glance appear to be a typo. Ads in Chinese in both Sing Tao Daily and World Journal for NYC Nail Spa, a second-story salon on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, advertised a starting wage of $10 a day. The rate was confirmed by several workers. “亚洲语言报纸充满了列有美甲师招聘的分类广告，日薪极低，初看起来还以为是印刷错误。“NYC美甲Spa”是曼哈顿上西区一家位于二楼的沙龙，在《星岛日报》和《世界日报》上的中文广告中给出的起薪是10美元一天。好几位工人证实确为这一价格。”

Richard Bernstein, who rightly called this paragraph a "linchpin" of Nir's first article, was incredulous that anyone would advertise a day wage of $10 given that his wife must guarantee wages of about ten times that to attract qualified applicants. So he went looking through the classifieds in back issues of the Chinese-language newspaper, The World Journal, and couldn't find a single ad that mentioned wages under $70 per day. He found one ad offering to pay between $110 and $130 per day. Richard Bernstein极为正确地把这一段叫做Nir首篇文章的“要害之处”。他不相信有任何人会在广告中登出日薪10美元的工资，因为他的妻子必须保证提供大约10倍左右的工资才能吸引到合格的应聘者。所以他就去翻阅《世界日报》这份中文报纸过刊中的分类广告，结果没能找到任何一个广告所提工资低于70美元一天。其中一份广告甚至愿意支付110到130美元的日薪。 Other than the $10 ad that Nir references—which I'll return to in a moment—Nir doesn't cite any other specific ads paying wages so low they "appear to be a typo." But after Bernstein highlighted this passage in The New York Review of Books, Times editors Dean Baquet, Wendell Jamieson, and Michael Luo co-signed a letter defending Nir's reporting. Nir除了提到这一10美元广告之外（下文会再来讨论这个问题），并没有引用过任何其他工资极低以至于让人“以为是印刷错误”的特定广告。但在Bernstein在《纽约书评》上突出强调了这一段之后，《时报》的编辑Dean Baquet, Wendell Jamieson和Michael Luo一起签署了一封公开信，捍卫Nir的报道。 Their letter cites three more ads to support Nir's claim: 这封信又提到另外三份广告，以支撑Nir的说法：

One [ad] from June 19, 2014, in the World Journal, for example, showed a starting wage of $40 a day for "small job"…Another ad from July 17, 2014 in The World Journal also showed a $40 a day wage. And another one from April 17, 2014 showed a pay range of $40 to $90 a day. These examples were taken from a random sampling of days. “比如，在《世界日报》2014年6月19日的一份广告里，一份‘小工作’的起薪是40美元每天……《世界日报》2014年7月17日的另外一份广告，也开出了40美元的日薪。另外一份2014年4月17日的，则提到日薪在40美元至90美元之间。这些例子只是我们从随机选择的日子里看到的。”

The Times editors also posted high-resolution copies of the three ads to the photo-sharing site Flickr, but, somewhat suspiciously, the Chinese characters are out of focus and my translator couldn't decipher them. So I went to The World Journal's headquarters in Queens and obtained new copies of the ads, which I've posted here. 《时报》编辑还把这三份广告的高清复印件放到了图片分享网站Flicker上面，但有些可疑的是，上面的中文却没有对好焦，我的翻译都看不清。所以我去了《世界日报》位于皇后区的总部，找到了这些广告的新拷贝，将它们贴在这里。 The ads don't say what the Times editors claim they do. Two of the ads they cite actually say that a mani/pedi costs $40 at the salon, not that a worker would be paid $40. Why include such a detail in a job ad? It implies big tips. 这些广告并没有表达《时报》编辑宣称它们所表达的那层意思。他们所提到的广告中，其中有两份实际说的是在沙龙中做一次指甲/趾甲全套需花费40美元，而不是说工人工资是40美元。为什么广告中要提到这种细节？因为它意味着小费很高。 The first one translates as: "UV gel, big jobs, experienced small jobs, and cosmeticians. Flushing pickup and drop-off. Mani/Pedi $40 with commission, good percentage tips, may file taxes." 第一份广告翻译如下：“UV胶、大工、熟手小工兼美容。法拉盛接送。手脚$40，多提成。好小费。可报税。” The second one reads: "Seeking UV gel experienced big jobs, small jobs, and cosmeticians. Pickup and drop-off at Flushing, Mani/Pedi $40 or more, expensive jobs." 第二份广告说的是：“请UV大工，经验小工，兼美容。开车，法拉盛接送。手脚$40，多大脚。” Both ads were posted by Michael Ling, the owner of a nail salon in Fairfield, Connecticut. (The World Journal is a regional paper). In an interview conducted through a translator, Ling confirmed that what the ad said is correct. He included the price of a mani/pedi to entice potential employees by indicating that the store serves a wealthy, and likely generous, clientele. 登广告的是Michael Ling，他是康涅狄格州费尔菲尔德一家美甲沙龙的店主（《世界日报》是一家区域性报纸）。在有翻译在场的采访中，Ling确认广告所言没错。他将做指甲/趾甲全套的价格写进去是为了表示店里服务的都是富裕且可能很慷慨的客户，以吸引潜在雇员。 The third ad the Times editors produced in response to Bernstein offers a wage of "$40-90." I interviewed the salon owner who posted that ad, David Lee. His shop went out of business in 2014, in part, he says, because he struggled to attract enough qualified manicurists. Lee says he was offering full-time workers a base salary of $90 per day and part-time workers $40 per day. 《时报》编辑为回应Bernstein而找出的第三份广告提供的工资是“40至90美元”。我采访了刊登这一广告的沙龙店主David Lee。他的沙龙已经于2014年停业，据他所说，部分的是因为他奋力想要吸引足够的合格美甲师。Lee说他给全职员工支付的底薪是每天90美元，而兼职工则是每天40美元。 The $10 Ad 日薪10美元的广告 The only remaining evidence that the Asian-language newspapers are "rife" with ads listing "jobs paying so little the daily wage can at first glance appear to be a typo" is the $10 ad Nir specifically referenced. 亚洲语言报纸“充斥”着“日薪极低，初看起来还以为是印刷错误”的广告，这种说法现在只剩下唯一的证据了，那就是Nir特别提到的日薪10美元的广告。 "[I]t’s not clear whether the reporter saw the ad at all," Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Review of Books. “完全不知道记者有没有看到这份广告。”Richard Bernstein在《纽约书评》上如是说。 It turns out Nir did see the ad, but once again it doesn't say what the Times claimed it does. The day Bernstein's article appeared, Nir posted an image of the ad to Twitter: 结果是，Nir确实看过这份广告，但这里也一样，这份广告并没有表达《时报》宣称它所表达的意思。Bernstein的文章出来的当天，Nir就在Twitter上贴出了这份广告的图像：

The ad that "doesn't exist" according to @R_Bernstein & @nybooks who calls me a liar & didn't bother to interview me — Sarah Nir (@SarahMaslinNir) July 25, 2015 @R_Bernstein和@nybooks 宣称这份广告“并不存在”，说我是骗子，却不愿意费心采访一下我 —— Sarah Nir （@SaraMaslinNir）2015年7月25日

That ad (Nir later tweeted a magnified version) actually offers to pay manicurists $75 per day in base pay; under that, it notes that "apprentices," or "trainees," can earn $10 per day. What does it mean to be a "trainee?" Was Nir wrong to leave that detail out? 这份广告（Nir后来曾在Twitter上贴出其放大版）实际上给美甲师开出的底薪是每天75美元；后面则提到“学徒”或“实习工”每天可以赚到10美元。“实习工”是什么意思？Nir对这一细节的忽略有错吗？ "Lest there be confusion...these are not the equivalent of unpaid summer interns at a magazine," wrote the Times editors in their defense of Nir's reporting. "Interviews by Ms. Nir and her team with employees of the salon confirmed that these were essentially beginning workers, doing the same jobs as others in the salon," they wrote. “不要误解……他们跟没有薪酬的杂志暑期实习生并不一样”，《时报》编辑在他们为Nir报道的辩护中如此写道。他们还说，“Nir小姐及其团队经与沙龙雇员交谈证实，实习工本质上就是新手，在沙龙里做的事与其他人没有什么不同。” But the salon owner who posted the ad disputes the Times’ characterization—as does one former apprentice who answered that $10 ad back in 2014. 但是，刊登这一广告的沙龙店主可不同意《时报》的描述。同样，一位在2014年曾答复过这份日薪10美元广告的前学徒工也不同意。 "We would never let them touch customers," said Yun Jun Long, the former owner of NYC Nail Spa, in an interview conducted through a translator. "If the customer is spending money, you can't stick them with an inexperienced worker." (Long's salon went out of business a month after the Times' story appeared, which he attributes to the negative publicity. He's now helping to organize the recent protests.) “我们绝不会让他们接触顾客”，“NYC美甲Spa”的前店主Yun Jun Long在有翻译在场的一次采访中如是说。“如果顾客花了钱，你不能让一个没有经验的员工去应付他们。”Long的沙龙在《时报》报道出来一个月之后停业了，他认为原因就是负面名声。他现在正帮忙组织近期的抗议活动。 The $10, he says, was meant to cover subway fare and lunch, and those who signed on could come and go as they pleased. During slow periods they could practice on other employees or receive lessons from Long's wife and mother-in-law—partners in the business who also worked in the store. 他还说，广告里提到的10美元只是为了提供地铁票和午餐，并且受雇的人来去自如。如果店里不忙，他们就可以在其他员工身上做练习，或者跟着Long的妻子和岳母（都是Long的生意合伙人，同时也在店里工作）学习。 At my request, Long put me in touch with Jay, a 28-year old undocumented immigrant and former trainee at NYC Nail Spa who asked that I not include his full name. Through a translator, Jay confirmed that he never worked on a customer for the two weeks when he was making just $10 per day. 应我的请求，Long帮我联系上了Jay。Jay是个28岁的无证移民，曾在“NYC美甲Spa”当过实习工。他要求我不提及其全名。通过翻译，Jay向我证实，在每天只赚取10美元的两个星期中，他从没有给任何顾客做过美甲。 Nir has said on Twitter that she visited NYC Nail Spa six times. (Long recalls seeing her come into the store just once.) Even if that's true, it wouldn't be surprising if she misreported what was actually going on in the shop; at several points in her coverage, Nir muddled what apprenticeship programs of this sort are all about. Nir在Twitter上曾说，她到“NYC美甲Spa”访问过6次（而Long记得她只到过店里1次）。即便这是真的，她对店里的真实情况的报道会出错，也并不令人生奇；在报道中的数个地方，她都没有搞清这种学徒计划到底是什么意思。 The main character in the first installment of the series was a 20-year-old Chinese immigrant named Jing Ren, who also went through an apprenticeship program. Without any prior experience doing nails, she got a job working unpaid for her first three months. Ren was also initially asked to pay $100 to the owner of her salon for teaching her basic skills. 在这个系列报道的第一部分中，主要人物是一个20岁的中国移民，名叫任静。任静也参加过学徒计划。在此前没有任何美甲经验的情况下，她找到了一份工作，头三个月没有工资。一开始，她还被要求向她所在沙龙的店主支付100美元，因为后者要教她基本技能。 Times readers may find this practice reprehensible, but Nir left out background details that might lessen their outrage. These apprentice programs are an alternative to going through one of the New York State-certified nail training programs, where tuition is about $1,000 and students must complete 250 hours of formal training before getting licensed. 《时报》的读者可能觉得这种做法应该谴责。但是Nir在此略去了一些背景细节，而这些细节有可能能够缓解读者的愤慨。如果不参加这种学徒计划，你就得全程参加由纽约州批准的美甲培训计划之一，费用大约1000美元，而学员必须在完成250小时的正式培训之后，才能得到执照。 It was technically illegal to work as a manicurist without completing one of these training programs when Nir was doing her reporting. (In July, two months after the Times series appeared, the state passed a bill creating a legal pathway to learn on the job, which I'll discuss in the next installment in this series.) 在Nir进行报道的时候，如果没有完成任何一个此类培训计划就去做美甲师，严格来说是非法的。（7月份，也就是《时报》的系列报道面世两个月之后，纽约州通过了一项法律，为边做边学提供了合法通道。关于这一点，我将在第二弹中加以讨论。） This type of arrangement is by no means an industry norm, but some salon owners flouted the law because they had more customers than employees; generally, the demand for skilled labor outpaces the number of licensed manicurists the beauty schools can mint. They got away with it because enforcement was lax. 这种办法绝非行业通例，一些沙龙店主对这一法律并不以为然，因为他们的顾客比雇员要多。一般来说，对熟练劳工的需求会超过美容学校能够生产生的持证美甲师的数量。店主们之所以能够铤而走险，是因为执法并不严格。 Like Jay, Jing Ren had the option of spending about a month and a half studying at a state-certified school and paying $1,000 to learn her craft. Instead, she opted to pay $100 and work for no pay for three months. It’s not clear that Nir ever asked Ren why she made that choice. 任静跟Jay一样，本可以选择去一个由州政府批准的学校学习这门技术，所费时间大约是一个半月，而价格则是1000美元。不过，她选择的是花费100美元，不领工资上班3个月。我们不清楚Nir是否追问她做出这种选择的理由。 Jay, who was in debt when he started as a trainee at NYC Nail Spa, couldn't afford beauty school. The apprenticeship program worked out for him: Now he's employed as a manicurist at a salon in New Jersey, where his daily base pay is $90, not including tips. Jay刚开始在“NYC美甲Spa”做实习工时已经负债累累，无法支付美容学校的费用。学徒计划对他很有帮助。他如今在新泽西的一家美甲店里被聘为美甲师，每天的底薪是90美元，此外还有小费。 The apprenticeship program also worked out for Jing Ren, who by the end of the Times story was making $65 a day in base compensation. 学徒计划对任静也很有帮助，在《时报》报道的结尾，她的底薪已经是每天65美元了。 Are Apprenticeship Programs Prevalent in the Nail Industry? 美甲行业中学徒制很流行吗？ Nir declares that "[Jing Ren's] deal was the same as it is for beginning manicurists in almost any salon in the New York area." (Italics mine.) Nir宣称，“在纽约地区几乎所有沙龙中，刚刚入行的美甲师都需要经历类似任静的这种交易。”（斜体为本文所加。） Yet she provides no proof for this statement, and all the available evidence indicates that Ren's deal was unusual. There are 30,610 licensed manicurists in New York State, all of whom would have had no need for an apprenticeship program. According to the Korean-American Nail Salon Association, there are more than 7,000 shops. 但她没有为这一断言提供任何证据，而所有可以找到的证据都表明，任静所做的交易并不寻常。纽约州有30610位持证美甲师，他们就无需学徒计划。根据“韩裔美国人美甲沙龙协会”的信息，美甲店超过7000家。 Nir supports this claim with anecdotal examples, including a disputed paragraph about a shop called May's Nail Salon, located on 14^th Street: Nir为这一说法提供的支撑都是些道听途说的个例，其中有一段涉及位于十四街一家叫做“小梅美甲沙龙”的，就很有争议：

Step into the prim confines of almost any salon and workers paid astonishingly low wages can be readily found. At May's…new employees must pay $100, then work unpaid for several weeks, before they are started at $30 or $40 a day, according to a worker. A man who identified himself as the owner, but would give his name only as Greg, said the salon did not charge employees for their jobs, but would not say how much they are paid. 走进几乎任何一家沙龙的整洁隔间，很容易就能找到工资低得惊人的员工。在小梅美甲店，一个员工说，新员工要先交100美元，接下来需要免费工作几周，然后才开始日薪30-40美元的工作。一个自称店主的男人只愿意透露自己叫Greg，他说他们不要求员工交钱换工作，但拒绝透露员工工资。

The owner of May's Nail Salon is actually a woman named Bao Mei Fitzgibbons, who goes by "Mei." Greg, who Nir mistook as the owner, is an employee at the shop. Nir could easily have found Fitzgibbons' name by searching New York State's online corporation and business entity database. 小梅美甲店的店主实际上是个女的，叫做Bao Mei Fitzgibbons，大家管她叫“梅”。而被Nir误认为店主的Greg则是店里的一个雇员。如果Nir搜索一下纽约州的“公司与企业单位在线数据库”，她就能轻松找到Fitzgibbons的名字。 Fitzgibbons says she was never interviewed by Nir, and scoffed when I asked if she charges new employees $100. "Think about it," Fitzgibbons says, "you work for me and I charge you $100?" The framed licenses of Fitzgibbons' employees are prominently displayed on the wall of her shop, indicating that they went through the official, state-authorized training program. Fitzgibbons说Nir从来没有采访过她，当我问她是不是向新员工收取100美元时，她连连冷笑。“你想想嘛”，她说：“你为我工作，然后我收你100美元？”Fitzgibbons把雇员们的执照装裱好，显眼地挂在门店的墙上，以表明他们都完整接受过正式的、经州政府认可的培训计划。 Fitzgibbons says she observed Nir come into her store and engage one of her manicurists in conversation without a translator. According to Fitzgibbons, the woman, who barely speaks English, later said that she was misquoted in the Times. The manicurist says she told Nir—again according to Fitzgibbons—that there are salons out there that charge trainees $100; she didn't say that May's is one of them. Fitzgibbons说她注意到Nir进了她的店子，并与她的美甲师之一进行了交谈，当时没有翻译。Fitzgibbons还说，被采访的女性基本不会说英语，后来还表示《时报》错误引用了她的话。这位美甲师说（这里还是根据Fitzgibbons的说法），她告诉Nir的是，有些沙龙会向实习工收取100美元，她没说梅的店也是如此。 (On my behalf, Fitzgibbons reached out to the manicurist interviewed by Nir, who no longer works at the store. Fitzgibbons says the woman declined my interview request on the grounds that "she doesn't want publicity.") （Nir采访过的这位美甲师现已不再在Fitzgibbons的店里工作。应我的请求，Fitzgibbons联系了她。Fitzgibbons说她拒绝了我的采访请求，原因是“她不想曝光”。） In another case, Nir spent time reporting at a salon that hires only licensed manicurists trained at a beauty school but left it out of her coverage. 另外，Nir还曾花费时间在一家只雇佣受过美容学校培训的持证美甲师的沙龙里采访，但在文章中却没有提及。 ThinkPink is a small chain of nail salons in Manhattan run by Eun Hye Lee (she goes by "Grace"), who says she was interviewed by Nir. Lee, who is careful to maintain her books to the letter of the law, granted my request to inspect her payroll records. They showed that one experienced manicurist at ThinkPink's West Village branch had earned $680 in base pay, plus $216 in overtime, totaling $896 for a 48.5 hour week. A beginning manicurist in the same shop earned $493 for a 39-hour workweek, or $12.64 per hour. ThinkPink是曼哈顿一家小型美甲连锁店，经营者叫做Eun Hye Lee（人们叫她Grace）。她表示曾接受过Nir的采访。Lee恪守法律条文的规定，很仔细地记有账本，并惠允我查阅她的薪酬发放记录。记录表明，一个在ThinkPink西村分店工作的熟练美甲师，某星期工作48.5小时，赚到底薪680美元，另外还有216美元加班费，共896美元。在同一门店，某位刚入行的美甲师某周工作39小时，赚得493美元，每小时合12.64美元。 Lee says Nir first interviewed her at ThinkPink in 2014. Several months later, she returned unannounced and asked for a pedicure. She struck up a conversation with her manicurist, a Chinese immigrant named Xiao Su, who goes by Zoey. Lee说Nir第一次采访她是在2014年，在ThinkPink店里。几个月后，Nir没打招呼就来到店里，请人给她修脚。之后她就和美甲师谈了起来，她的美甲师是位来自中国的移民，叫做小苏，大家都叫她Zoey。 Lee put me in touch with Su, who no longer works at ThinkPink. She said in a phone interview that she told Nir that the pay at ThinkPink was "very good" and that Lee was a good boss who's always "very nice." She declined to tell Nir her salary, deeming it a rude question. Su, who emigrated from China in 1997, is a licensed technician who attended manicurists' school. Lee帮我联系上了小苏，她如今已不在ThinkPink工作。她在电话采访中说，她告诉过Nir，ThinkPink的薪酬“很可观”，而且Lee是个好老板，总是“特别友善”。她拒绝向Nir告知自己的薪水，认为这种追问是失礼。小苏1997年从中国移民到美，上过美甲师学校，是位持证技师。 Neither ThinkPink, nor Nir's interview with Lee, were mentioned in the Times' coverage. 关于ThinkPink以及Nir对Lee的采访，《时报》的报道均没有提及。 More Evidence of Low Wages? 更多低薪证据？ To gauge the average pay for manicurists, Nir might have turned first to the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The agency reported that in 2014, manicurists in New York's metropolitan area earned an average hourly wage of $9.19 per hour. It also reports an annual mean wage of $19,110. 要估计美甲师的平均薪酬，Nir本该首先求助联邦劳工统计局（BLS）。根据该局2014年报告，纽约大都市区范围内的美甲师赚取的平均时薪是9.19美元。报告里还提到，他们的平均年薪为19110美元。 BLS data, which is routinely cited in the Times, is subject to error and certainly overly precise. But in this case, these figures are the best information available. And the numbers indicate that the average manicurist earns above the minimum wage. BLS的数据经常被《时报》引用，当然包含有错漏之处，有时则显得过分精确。但就当前争论而言，这些数据是我们可以拿到的最可靠信息。数据表明，美甲师的工资平均而言高于最低工资。 Instead of citing the BLS' numbers, however, Nir relied on her own survey that included "more than 100 workers." In fact, other than the classified ads, this is her main piece of evidence that the "vast majority" of salon workers earn less than the minimum wage. 但是，Nir却没有引用BLS的数据，而是依靠自己针对“超过100位工人”的调查。事实上，“绝大部分”美甲店员工工资低于最低工资这一说法的主要证据，除了分类广告之外，就是她的这一调查了。 Nir collected the data on the streets of Queens early in the morning, where salon owners (mostly from Long Island) often pick up manicurists in vans and drive them to work, and in chats that she struck up with manicurists (many of whom aren't native English speakers) while having her nails done. Nir是在清晨的皇后区大街上收集到这些数据的，那正是沙龙店主（主要来自长岛）用面包车来接美甲师并把他们送到工作地点的时候，也有一些是在做指甲时通过和她的美甲师（其中大多数人母语非英语）交谈获得的。 In an interview with the Times about her series after it appeared, Nir says she kept "detailed spreadsheets" with this information. I asked for a copy of these spreadsheets. She declined my request. 在系列文章面世之后接受《时报》采访时，Nir说她保存有这些信息的“详细表格”。我曾问她索要一份，遭到了她的拒绝。 Gathering data of this sort is inherently difficult, even for professionals. Pollsters at organizations like Gallup, Pew, and BLS strive to reach population samples that mirror the broader communities they're studying. They carefully frame questions in an unbiased manner, and only impartial interviewers do the asking. Under the best of circumstances, figures derived with these methods are imprecise and reporters generally cite them along with a margin of error. 即便对于专家，此类数据收集工作也有着内在的困难。在盖洛普、皮尤和BLS等组织工作的民意测验专家都要辛苦奔忙，以使自己的人口样本能够反映他们所研究的更大群体。他们以一种无偏的方式小心设计问题，而且只找不带偏见的访谈者来提问。在最好的情况下，以这种方法得到的数据都并不精确，记者在引用它们的时候通常也会附带些许错误。 Economists are skeptical of the wage survey data collected by the BLS because it's based on trust and memory. (How many hours did you work last week?) The gold standard in wage data—reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis—is derived from documentation that companies are required to provide the government related to unemployment insurance. 经济学家并不太相信BLS收集的工资调查数据，因为这项调查基于信任和记忆。（比如，请问你上周工作了多长时间？）工资数据的优质标准是联邦经济分析局的报告，它来自于各公司按要求提供的与失业保险有关的文件。 The Times might have hired a polling firm to improve on the BLS' finding. Instead, it relied on Nir's survey, which was drawn from a non-representative sample and carried out by a reporter who won't share her methodology, question phrasing, or tabulated results. There’s simply no reason to believe that Nir’s data presents an accurate, representative picture of nail industry wages. 《时报》本来可以请一家调查公司来改进BLS的发现。不过，它选择依靠Nir的调查，而该调查的抽样并不具备代表性，而负责实施的记者又不愿意公开其方法、提问措辞或调查结果表格。我们没法相信Nir的数据呈现出了美甲行业工资的准确且有代表性的图景。 Also, Nir’s report doesn’t discuss gratuities. In fact, nowhere does the Times coverage attempt to gauge average daily tips in the industry or what workers actually take home in total compensation. 另外，Nir的报告还没有提及小费。事实上，《时报》的报道没有一处地方试图估计一下美甲行业的日均小费是多少，或者员工们拿到手的总报酬是多少。 This is like writing a 7,000-word piece on what waiters make for a living but focusing only on base compensation. "There should have been several paragraphs on the subject," says Aiming Feng, the accountant and business consultant who counts about 50 nail salons as clients. (Feng also volunteers once a week at once a week at the Lin Sing Association, a social service organization in Manhattan's Chinatown, where he helps manicurists with legal and tax issues.) 这就像是写篇7000字的文章描述餐厅服务员们以何为生，却只关注他们的底薪。“应该花几个段落讨论下这个问题”，Aiming Feng说，他是一位会计兼商业顾问，大概有50家美甲沙龙是他的客户。（Feng也是曼哈顿唐人街一家叫做“Lin Sing协会”的社会服务组织的志愿者，他每周服务一次，帮助美甲师们解决法律和税务问题。） Feng says that during "sandal season" at many shops tips equal or exceed base compensation. Feng说，一到“凉鞋季”，许多店里的小费能够追平甚至超过底薪。 Another "Damning" Piece of Evidence? 另一条“确凿” 罪证？ Nir offers more proof that the "vast majority" of manicurists earn less than the minimum wage: a two-sentence summary quote derived from an interview with Sangho Lee, the president of the Korean-American Nail Salon Association. 关于“绝大多数”美甲师工资低于最低工资，Nir有更多证据：一条两句话的总结，引用来自她对Sangho Lee的采访。Lee是“韩裔美国人美甲沙龙协会”的主席。 Nir writes: Nir写道：

[Lee] declined a request to address issues of underpayment. So many owners do not pay minimum wage, he said, that he believed answering any questions would hurt the industry. “Lee拒绝回应我关于报酬过低问题的提问。他说，许多店主支付不到最低工资，所以他觉得回答此类问题会伤害到整个行业。”

In their letter defending Nir's reporting, the Times editors highlighted Lee's testimony as among "the most damning findings." 在为Nir的报道辩护的公开信中，《时报》的编辑们强调，Lee的证词是“罪证确凿的发现”之一。 These two sentences came from the roughly two-and-a-half hours Nir spent interviewing Lee on two occasions. First, she met with him in person at the Association's office in Flushing, Queens with a Korean translator named Jiha Ham present. She later did a follow-up interview over the phone without a translator. According to Lee, Nir's paraphrase of his statement comes from the second interview. 这两句话来自于Nir对Lee的采访，两次采访总长大概有两个半小时。第一次，她亲自去皇后区法拉盛该协会的办公室拜访Lee，当时有一位韩国翻译Jiha Ham在场。后来，她又在电话里做了一次跟踪访谈，这次没带翻译。根据Lee的说法，Nir转述的他的言论发生于第二次访谈。 Lee says that he was misquoted. "I told her that like any industry, there are nail salons that pay less and have worse conditions," he said. "Then I told her that even though 80 to 90 percent of the industry pays much more than the minimum wage, it would inappropriate for me to say anything negative about the industry as the president of the leading industry association." Lee说他遭到了错误引用。“我告诉她的是，跟许多行业一样，也有些美甲沙龙存在薪酬较低、条件恶劣的情况”，他说，“然而，我还告诉她，尽管行业中有80%到90%的薪酬水平远高于最低工资，让我发表关于这一行业的负面看法也是不恰当的，因为我是一个十分重要的行业协会的主席。” Is Lee telling the truth that Nir distorted his comments? Since there were no third-party witnesses to the conversation, there's no way to know. But it's hard to believe that Lee would disparage the nail salon industry. Lee有关Nir曲解了他的言论的说法是否真实？由于谈话时并没有第三方见证人在场，我们不得而知。但我们很难相信Lee会诋毁整个美甲行业。 Founded 28 years ago, the Korean-American Nail Salon Association's mission is to promote best practices in the industry. It has 1,200 dues-paying member stores. A thick glossy magazine published annually by the Association includes letters from elected officials lauding nail salons for their contribution to the local economy. The group also awards an annual $1,000 scholarship to six college students whose parents work as manicurists in its members' shops. 成立于28年之前的韩裔美国人美甲沙龙协会致力于在整个行业中推广最好的做法。它拥有1200家缴纳会费的成员店。协会每年出版一份厚厚的有光纸杂志，上面还刊登有经选举上任的官员因美甲沙龙对地方经济作出贡献而撰写的表扬信。该团体每年还给父母为成员门店美甲师的6位大学生提供各1000美元的奖学金。 So why would the president of an industry organization undo decades of hard public relations work by making a "damning" statement to a Times reporter? Maybe Nir misconstrued his remarks: Lee barely speaks English, and yet Nir interviewed him over the phone without a translator on the line. 因此，为什么一位行业组织主席会破坏几十年来的公共关系辛苦成果，向《时报》记者提供这种“罪证确凿”的陈述呢？也许Nir误会了他的说法。Lee的英语非常不好，而Nir却不请翻译就通过电话采访了他。 How the Times Responded to a Salon Owner's Attempt to Correct the Record 当沙龙店主试图更正记载时，《时报》是如何回应的呢 Nir writes that at Iris Nails on Manhattan's Upper East Side "longtime workers described starting out at wages of $30 and $40 a day." Nir写道，在位于曼哈顿上东区的“艾丽斯美甲”店，“长期工人说他们的起步工资是每天30或40美元。” It's hard to believe that even beginning manicurists at Iris Nails would earn such meager pay. Located in one of New York City's wealthiest neighborhoods, Iris is the type of shop manicurists aspire to work at for the generous tips. 即便是艾丽斯美甲店里的美甲师新手拿到这么低的工资，那也很难令人置信。艾丽斯开在纽约市最富有的街区之一，是所有美甲师都渴望去工作的地方，因为小费很慷慨。 When reporting the story, Nir left a message for Iris Nails' owner, a Korean immigrant named Alex Park. He says he didn't return her message because he didn't understand the nature of the request. 在报道这一故事的时候，Nir给艾丽斯美甲的店主留了一则消息。这位名叫Alex Park的韩国移民说，他并没有回复，因为他没搞明白Nir的请求是什么意思。 When Park attempted to defend his reputation after the article appeared, the Times thwarted his efforts. The whole episode highlights the power imbalance between the Times and an immigrant community lacking in media savvy. 文章出来以后，Park试图捍卫自己的名声，而《时报》挫败了这一企图。整个剧情凸显了《时报》与缺乏媒体经验的移民群体之间的权力不平衡。 Park emphatically denies that his workers earn so little in base pay. He estimates that his lowest-level employees earn about $180 a day, including tips, and his most experienced employees can earn as much as $400 per day including tips and commission. (Park declined to allow me to examine his wage statements.) Park断然否认他的员工所赚取的底薪如此之低。据他估计，最底层的雇员每天大约能挣到180美元，其中包含小费，而最熟练的雇员最多时每天能挣到400美元，其中包括小费和提成。（Park拒绝让我查看他的工资详单。） After the article appeared, Park hired attorney Daniel Kim to contact the Times and demand a correction. Kim had a back and forth with the company's assistant general counsel, David McCraw. (Through a spokesperson, McGraw declined my request for an interview.) The paper refused to alter the online version of the article, and it didn't investigate the truthfulness of Park's claim. Instead, Kim says, McCraw agreed that the Times would print a letter to the editor written by Park. 文章见报后，Park就聘请律师Daniel Kim联系纽约时报，要求进行更正。Kim和时报公司的助理法律总顾问David McCraw来来回回接触了多次。（McCraw通过发言人拒绝了我的采访请求）。时报拒绝更改文章的在线版本，也没有调查Park说法的真实性。作为替代，Kim说，McCraw同意在《时报》上刊登Park写给编辑的一封信。 Kim shared with me the letter Park submitted to Sue Mermelstein, an editor in the paper's letters department: Kim向我展示了Park写给时报读者来信部编辑Sue Mermelstein的信件：

To the Editor: 致编辑： Your recent article "The High Price of Pretty Nails" will damage my business, Iris Nails. It seems that you needed a nail salon in a well-heeled neighborhood and targeted my business. 你们最近刊发的“漂亮指尖的高昂代价”一文将会伤害我的企业，即艾丽斯美甲。你们似乎就是想找到这么一家位于富裕街区的美甲沙龙，然后瞄准了我的企业。 I am preparing to retire after having worked for more than 22 years without any incident. Many of the employees in this type of services business have learned, earned and moved on to open their own shops. I have always treated all of my employees fairly and never took advantage of them. 我工作22年了，从未发生任何事故，现在正准备退休。在这类服务性企业工作过的许多雇员都已经学到东西、赚到钱并且更进一步经营起他们自己的门店。在对待自己的员工方面，我从来都很公平，从未占过他们便宜。 There is no employee who receives $30 to $40 a day on a full-time basis. There is no employee who receives below the minimum wages required by the State of New York. In fact, most of our employees make double of minimum wages including tips. 根本就没有全职员工每天只能获得30到40美元的事。也没有任何员工拿到的工资低于纽约州规定的最低工资水平。事实上，把小费包含在内，我的大多数员工能赚到最低工资的两倍。 Korean-American business owners in New York are very hard-working people. We have dedicated our lives to whichever field afforded us an opportunity to prosper and live out the American dream. I write this letter with great sorrow and anger. 生活于纽约的韩裔美国人店主都很吃苦耐劳。只要某个领域能够给我们提供机会，让我们走向成功并实现美国梦，我们都会全身心地投入进去。写这封信的时候，我心中充满悲伤和愤怒。

The Times did print a version of the letter on May 17—but with notable changes. 《时报》5月17日确实刊登了此信件的一个版本，但改动颇大。 First, it cut out Park's assertion that the paper had erred in its reporting. These three sentences were dropped: 首先，它删除了Park认为该报之前报道出错的观点。删去的是以下三句话：

There is no employee who receives $30 to $40 a day on a full-time basis. There is no employee who receives below the minimum wages required by the State of New York. In fact, most of our employees make double of minimum wages including tips. 根本就没有全职员工每天只能获得30到40美元的事。也没有任何员工拿到的工资低于纽约州规定的最低工资水平。事实上，把小费包含在内，我的大多数员工能赚到最低工资的两倍。

In their place, the Times added a new sentence that reads, "I am committed to abiding by the law in paying my employees." In other words, the rewrite makes it sound as if Park was conceding that the Times' reporting on his store was not only correct, but that it inspired him to reform his illegal practices. 在这个地方，《时报》插入了一个新句子，内容是：“在支付员工工资方面，我决心遵从法律规定。”换句话说，这一改写让Park听起来像是在承认《时报》关于他的美甲店的报道很正确，不仅如此，他似乎还受此激励，准备改变之前的非法做法。 Times editor Sue Mermelstein said in a phone interview that there was an extensive back-and-forth with attorney McGraw over the wording of the letter. "We don't have the resources to go out and check the facts," she says, "and we didn't want to let him make a statement that we felt was inaccurate." 《时报》编辑Sue Mermelstein在接受电话采访时说，在该信件的措辞方面，曾与律师McGraw进行过大量的意见交换。“我们没有办法去检验事实”，她说，“而且我们也不想让他发表一个我们觉得并不准确的声明。” So they decided to cut out Park's contention that the coverage was inaccurate and replaced it with a line that McGraw "felt comfortable with because it's not a factual statement." 所以他们决定删除Park关于报道不真实的观点，并用McGraw“觉得舒坦”的一句话取而代之，因为“这句话不是在陈述事实。” The Times ran the new wording by Kim and Park, and they signed off on it. Attorney Kim doesn't recall the specific details, but says his client decided not to pursue the matter any further because he's "afraid of The New York Times." 《时报》把新的措辞发回Kim和Park征求意见，他们在上面签字了。律师Kim不再记得具体细节，但是他说，他的客户决定不再继续追究这一事件，因为他“害怕《纽约时报》”。 Did the Times Get the Story Right Anyway? 《时报》的故事究竟是对是错？ Nir's claim that manicurists earn shockingly low wages was based on mistranslated and misconstrued classified ads, anecdotes and interviews contested by her sources, and an anecdotal survey that she used in place of official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nir关于美甲师工资极低的说法，依据只有翻译错误和理解错误的分类广告、道听途说和遭到其信源反驳的采访，另外还有她弃劳工统计局官方数据不用而进行的一次业余调查。 Yet did she still get the story right? In response to Nir's critics, the Times has pointed to the high number of minimum wage violations reported by the state Department of Labor since the article appeared. 但是，她的故事仍然还是对的吗？在回应对Nir的批评时，《时报》又指出该文发表以后由州劳工部提供的违反最低工资法的超高案例数。 In the next piece in this series, I'll scrutinize those violations and explain why, in fact, they don't show what the Times claims. (That article is now online here.) 在本系列的下一篇中，我将仔细考察这些违法案例，并解释为什么它们事实上并没能证明《时报》的说法。（此文已经上线。） （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The US Has The Best Rail System in the World, and Matt Yglesias Actually Pointed Out the Reason 美国拥有世界上最好的铁路系统，Matt Yglesias其实已经点出了背后的原因 作者:Warren Meyer @ 2016-5-2 翻译:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 校对:babyface_claire(@许你疯不许你傻) 来源:www.coyoteblog.com，http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/05/the-us-has-the-best-rail-system-in-the-world-and-matt-yglesias-actually-pointed-out-the-reason.html Yglesias has a very good article on why passenger rail is not a bigger deal in the US. In it, he says this (emphasis added): 关于为何客运铁路在美国并未大行其道，Yglesias写了篇很好的文章。在那篇文章中，他说道：

Instead the issue is that the dismal failure of US passenger rail is in large part the flip side of the success of US freight rail. America's railroads ship a dramatically larger share of total goods than their European peers. And this is no coincidence. Outside of the Northeast Corridor, the railroad infrastructure is generally owned by freight companies — Amtrak is just piggybacking on the spare capacity. 相反，美国客运铁路的萧索其实很大程度上可视为其货运铁路兴盛的另一面。比起欧洲的铁路，美国的铁路承担全国货物运输的比重要大得多。而这并不是巧合。除了东北走廊线，美国的铁路设施基本由货运公司拥有——Amtrak【译注：美国国家铁路公司，其全部优先权股份都由美国联邦政府所有，并接受政府投资以维持公司运转。公司的运作模式为准政府机构，董事会成员皆由总统提名经参议院同意而任命】）仅仅肩负了剩余的运输能力。

It is a short article, so it does not go into more depth than this, but I have actually gone further than this and argued that the US freight-dominated rail system is actually far greener and more sensible than the European passenger system.  As I wrote years ago at Forbes: 这是篇短文章，所以只是点到为止，但我其实做过更深的研究，并提出货运占主导的美国铁路系统其实远比欧洲的客运系统更环保和更合理。正如多年前我在《福布斯》上发表的文章所说：

The US rail system, unlike nearly every other system in the world, was built (mostly) by private individuals with private capital.  It is operated privately, and runs without taxpayer subsidies.    And, it is by far the greatest rail system in the world.  It has by far the cheapest rates in the world (1/2 of China’s, 1/8 of Germany’s).  But here is the real key:  it is almost all freight. 与世界上几乎所有其他铁路系统都不一样，美国的铁路系统基本全部由私人出资，并由私人建设。它由私人运营，不需要拿纳税人的钱进行补贴。而且，目前为止它是世界上最大的铁路系统，也是目前为止最便宜的系统（成本为中国铁路系统的二分之一，德国的八分之一）。但真正的关键在这：它基本上完全为货运服务。 As a percentage, far more freight moves in the US by rail (vs. truck) than almost any other country in the world.  Europe and Japan are not even close.  Specifically, about 40% of US freight moves by rail, vs. just 10% or so in Europe and less than 5% in Japan.   As a result, far more of European and Japanese freight jams up the highways in trucks than in the United States.  For example, the percentage of freight that hits the roads in Japan is nearly double that of the US. 若以百分比计，在美国，铁路承担的货运量（同汽车运输相比）比世界上几乎其他任何国家都大得多。欧洲和日本完全不在同一档次上。具体来说，美国40%的货运由铁路承担，而欧洲为10%左右，日本则不到5%。结果便是，比起美国，在欧洲和日本，多得多的货物在卡车里堵在了高速公路上。例如，在日本由公路运输的货物的百分比几乎是美国的两倍。 You see, passenger rail is sexy and pretty and visible.  You can build grand stations and entertain visiting dignitaries on your high-speed trains.  This is why statist governments have invested so much in passenger rail — not to be more efficient, but to awe their citizens and foreign observers. 如你所见，客运铁路性感、招人喜欢，更容易被人看见。你可以修建雄伟的车站并以此取悦前来参观高速铁路的政要。这便是为何国家主义的政府已在客运铁路上投入了如此多的资金——并不是为了更高效，而是为了让他们的市民和外国参观者感到敬畏。 But there is little efficiency improvement in moving passengers by rail vs. other modes.   Most of the energy consumed goes into hauling not the passengers themselves, but the weight of increasingly plush rail cars.  Trains have to be really, really full all the time to make for a net energy savings for high-speed rail vs. cars or even planes, and they seldom are full.  I had a lovely trip on the high speed rail last summer between London and Paris and back through the Chunnel — especially nice because my son and I had the rail car entirely to ourselves both ways. 但是同其他方式相比，用铁路运输旅客并没有什么效率上的提高。大部分的能源被用在制动和运送日益豪华的车厢，而不是运送旅客上。同汽车（甚至飞机）相比，火车必须始终装得非常非常满才能更节省能源，而它们很少是满载的。去年夏天，在往返伦敦和巴黎时，我选择了乘坐穿梭英吉利海峡隧道的火车。那趟旅程可谓惬意——尤其考虑到往返旅程中车厢里都只有我和我儿子时。 The real rail efficiency comes from moving freight.  As compared to passenger rail, more of the total energy budget is used moving the actual freight rather than the cars themselves.  Freight is far more efficient to move by rail than by road, but only the US moves a substantial amount of its freight by rail.    One reason for this is that freight and high-speed passenger traffic have a variety of problems sharing the same rails, so systems that are optimized for one tend to struggle serving the other. 火车的真正效率来自货运。同客运铁路比起来，总能量开销更多被用来运输货物而不是车厢本身。用铁路运输货物要比用公路有效率得多，但只有美国用铁路运输大量货物。原因之一是客货共线存在许多问题，这样，被优化用于一种运输方式的系统会很难为另一种提供服务。 Freight is boring and un-sexy.  Its not a government function in the US.  So intellectuals tend to ignore it, even though it is the far more important, from and energy and environmental standpoint, portion of transport to put on the rails. .... 货运既无聊又不性感。在美国这不是政府职能之一。所以知识分子倾向于忽视它，尽管从能源和环境角度，货运都是交通极为重要的组成部分。 I would argue that the US has the world’s largest commitment to rail where it really matters.  But that is what private actors do, make investments that actually make sense rather than just gain one prestige (anyone know the most recent company Warren Buffet has bought?) 要我说，在它真正能够施展身手的地方，美国才是全世界向铁路交托了最大重任的国家。但那是私人部门所为，他们做有实际意义的投资而不是仅仅买得一个虚名（有谁知道沃伦·巴菲特新近买下的公司吗？） The greens should be demanding that the world emulate us, rather than the other way around.  But the lure of shiny bullet trains and grand passenger concourses will always cause some intellectuals to swoon. 绿党分子们应该要求全世界模仿我们，而不是反过来。但是闪亮的子弹头列车和雄伟的乘客广场总是太诱人，引得一些知识分子意乱情迷。

Which would you rather pounding down the highway, more people on vacation or more big trucks moving freight?  Without having made an explicit top-down choice at all, the US has taken the better approach. 在高速公路上，你乐意看到更多出门度假的人还是更多载货的大卡车？全然没有一个清晰的至上而下的选择，美国已然采用了更好的方式。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The Lower Productivity Of Organic Farming: A New Analysis And Its Big Implications 有机农业生产率更低：一项新的分析及其重大含义 作者：Steven Savage @ 2015-10-9 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：babyface_claire 来源：Forbes，http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage/2015/10/09/the-organic-farming-yield-gap/ The productivity of organic farming is typically lower than that of comparable “conventional” farms. This difference is sometimes debated, but a recent USDA survey of organic agriculture demonstrates that commercial organic in the U.S. has a significant yield gap. 有机农业的生产率通常低于可比的“传统”农业。其中差异时有争论，不过美国农业部最近关于有机农业的一项调查证实，美国的商业有机作物存在一个巨大的产量差距。 I compared 2014 survey data from organic growers with overall agricultural yield statistics for that year on a crop by crop, state by state basis. The picture that emerges is clear – organic yields are mostly lower. To have raised all U.S. crops as organic in 2014 would have required farming of one hundred nine million more acres of land. That is an area equivalent to all the parkland and wildland areas in the lower 48 states or 1.8 times as much as all the urban land in the nation. 我将采自有机作物种植者的2014年调查数据与农业总产量统计数据分作物、分州别进行了对比，得出的画面非常清晰——有机作物的产量一般都更低。如果2014年全美农作物都是有机种植，那么需要耕种的土地将比实际多出1.09亿英亩。这一面积相当于本土48州所有绿地和荒地的总和，或全国所有城市用地之和的1.8倍。 As of 2014 the reported acreage of organic cropland only represented 0.44% of the total, but if organic were to expand significantly, its lower land-use-efficiency would become problematic. This is one of several reasons to question the assertion that organic farming is better for the environment. 到2014年，公开的有机农用地面积只占全部农地的0.44%，但如果有机种植大幅扩张，它那较低的用地效率将很棘手。有人断言有机农业对环境更有利，这里提到的只是质疑理由之一。 The USDA conducted a detailed survey of organics in 2008 and then again in 2014. Information is collected about the number of farms, the acres of crops harvested, the production from those acres, and the value of what is sold. The USDA also collects similar data every year for agriculture in general and makes it very accessible via Quick Stats. 美国农业部2008年对有机作物进行了一次详细调查，2014年又做了一次。采集的信息包括农场数量、作物收获面积、产量和卖出总价。美国农业部每年还针对全部农业采集类似数据，并在Quick Stats上公开发布。 It is interesting that they don’t publish any comparisons of these two data sets as they would be able to make comparisons on a county basis. By working with both USDA data resources I was able to find 370 good comparisons of organic and total data for the same crop in the same state and where the organic represented at least 20 acres. That comparison set covers 80% of US crop acreage. 有意思的是，尽管他们对这两组数据能够做到分县对比，他们却从不发布任何比较结果。通过使用这两份来自美国农业部的数据，我得以找出370组有机数据和总数据之间的高质量比较，每组比较的均是有机作物种植面积20英亩以上的同一个州的同一种作物。这一比较涉及了美国农作物种植面积的80%。

【2014年有机与传统农业统计数据比较概要】

For 292 of those comparisons, the organic yields were lower (84% on an area basis). There were 55 comparisons where organic yield was higher, but 89% of the higher yielding organic examples involved hay and silage crops rather than food crops. The organic yield gap is predominant for row crops, fruit crops and vegetables as can be seen in the graphs below. 在其中292个比较结果中，有机作物产量都要更低（以面积而言占到84%）。有机作物产量更高的，有55组比较结果。但这些产量更高的案例中有89%种的是干草和青贮饲料作物，而非食用作物。以下图表显示：有机作物产量差距在中耕作物、水果作物和蔬菜中非常突出。 The reasons for the gap vary with crop and geography. In some cases the issue is the ability to meet periods of peak nutrient demand using only organic sources. The issue can be competition from weeds because herbicides are generally lacking for organic. In some cases its reflects higher yield loss to diseases and insects. Although organic farmers definitely use pesticides, the restriction to natural options can leave crops vulnerable to damage. 出现差距的原因随作物和地理不同而有所不同。在某些情形中，问题出在只用有机资源来满足营养需求高峰的能力上。问题也可能出在杂草竞争，因为有机作物中一般不用除草剂。在某些情形中，它反映的是因病害和虫害导致的减产。尽管种植有机作物的农场主绝对也会用杀虫剂，但是对天然产品的限制要求仍会让作物更易受到伤害。 I’ve posted a much more detailed summary of this information on SCRIBD with the data at the state level. 有关上述信息，我已在SCRIBD上贴了一份更加详细的摘要，用的是州级层面的数据。

【大量主要中耕作物采用有机种植时产量大幅降低】

【有机水果和坚果的产量绝大多数都大幅低于传统种植】

【蔬菜作物中的产量差距存在巨大差异】

There is some potential for artifacts within this data set. If the proportion of irrigated and non-irrigated land differs between organic and conventional that would skew the data. With lettuce and spinach it is likely that the organic is proportionally more in the “baby” category making yields appear dramatically lower. 这组数据中可能存在一些人为现象。如果在有机种植和传统种植中，灌溉地和非灌溉地的比例不同，那么数据就有所扭曲。生菜和菠菜的有机种植可能很大程度上仍属于“婴儿”类，故而产出差距看起来十分大。 But overall this window on farming is useful for understanding the current state of commercial organic production. Since the supply of prime farmland is finite, and water is in short supply in places like California, resource-use-efficiency is an issue even at the current scale of organic (1.5 million cropland acres, 3.6 million including pasture and rangeland). 但总体来说，这一农业信息窗口很有用，能让我们了解商业有机作物生产的现状。由于优质农田的供给是有限的，而在加州等地，水也存在供给短缺，因此，即便是以有机作物当前的种植面积（150万英亩耕地，包括草地和牧场则为360万亩）来说，资源利用效率也是个大问题。 You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com. I’d be happy to share a data file with interested parties and to get feedback about where particular yield comparisons might be misleading. A more detailed presentation is available at https://www.scribd.com/doc/283996769/The-Yield-Gap-For-Organic-Farming 欢迎提出评论或发送邮件至savage.sd@gmail.com。我愿意和感兴趣者分享数据文件，如果哪个具体的产量比较可能具有误导性，我也希望得到反馈。更详细的介绍请见：https://www.scribd.com/doc/283996769/The-Yield-Gap-For-Organic-Farming （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Why Aren’t America’s Shipping Ports Automated? 美国的航运港口为何没有实现自动化？ 作者：Flexport @ 2015-9-30 译者：Veidt（@Veidt) 校对：小聂（@PuppetMaster） 来源：Priceonomics，http://priceonomics.com/why-arent-americas-shipping-ports-automated/ The massive cranes that sit at the Port of Oakland are veritable money-printing machines. 那些坐落在加州奥克兰港的巨型起重机都称得上是名副其实的印钞机。 As ships coming from Asia dock in the San Francisco Bay, these industrial behemoths quickly usher goods-bearing containers off the deck and onto land. Modern container ships are filled with thousands of containers. At peak efficiency, a single crane can remove about 40 of these per hour — and for each one they unload, companies moving containerized cargo are charged a terminal handling fee of around $300. 随着来自亚洲的船只驶入旧金山湾，这些巨型工业设备迅速开始将装满货物的集装箱从货轮的甲板上卸到岸上。现代的集装箱货轮中装载着数以千计的集装箱。在最高工作效率之下，一台起重机每小时能从船上卸下大约40个集装箱——对于它卸下的每个集装箱，运送集装箱货物的公司需要向港口交纳大约300美元的码头作业费。 But in many ways, the Port of Oakland, and most American ports in general, are some of the most technologically antiquated in the world. While many high-wage, developed countries have embraced and integrated automation in the process of moving shipping containers, Oakland has shied away from more technologically advanced solutions. 但是在许多方面，奥克兰港以及美国的大多数港口实际上都排在世界上技术最陈旧的港口之列。当许多高工资的发达国家热情拥抱自动化技术，并将其整合到装卸货运集装箱的流程中时，奥克兰港却回避了那些技术上更先进的解决方案。 A port terminal recently opened in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands tells a different story: almost every part of the process of unloading containers is handled by software, and office workers remotely control the cranes over their computers. Some have called the operation the world’s most advanced container-ship terminal. 最近在荷兰鹿特丹开放的一个港口码头则讲述了一个完全不同的故事：在卸载集装箱的流程中，几乎所有的部分都是由计算机软件操作完成的，坐在办公室里的工人通过他们的电脑远程操纵起重机。有人称其为世界上最先进的集装箱船码头。 Comparing the ports of Oakland and Rotterdam shows just how far American ports are lagging when it comes to automation. 对奥克兰港和鹿特丹港的比较，清楚地显示出美国港口在自动化方面已经落下了多远的距离。 How Does a Container Port Work? 一个集装箱港口是如何运作的？ As many great articles and a highly-influential book have argued, containers are one of the great inventions of the modern world. In the shipping world, a “container” is defined as a standardized 20, 40 or 45 foot long steel receptacle that houses any variety of goods. 正如许多杰出文章和一部非常有影响力的著作【编注：指Marc Levinson的The Box，中译本《集装箱改变世界》】所认为的那样，集装箱属于现代世界的诸多伟大发明之一。在航运界，集装箱被定义为一个长20，40或45英尺的标准化钢制容器，它能够装载任何类型的货物。 These containers are a global ISO standard and work on essentially any ship, truck, or railcar that is fitted for them. This standardization, of course, alleviates concerns over how to pack a ship, what’s on it, whether the goods will be stolen at the dock, or whether it fit on a certain truck or train. Containers let you treat the physical atoms of the world almost like computerized bits. 这些集装箱都符合一个国际通用的ISO标准，并且能够与几乎所有针对它调整过的轮船，卡车或是有轨列车配合工作。这种标准化工作显然缓解了人们对于诸如该怎样装满一艘货船，船上都装了些什么，停放在港口的货物是否会被偷走，或者货物能否被装进一辆特定的卡车或列车这类问题的担忧。集装箱为你提供了一种像对待计算机中的比特位一样来对待真实世界中物理原子的方式。 The development of containers revolutionized trading among nations. Within 5 years of “containerization,” posits one estimate, trade among nations increased 320%; within 20 years, trade increased by 790%. In 1965, before containerization, a crew could move 1.7 tons of goods per hour. After containerization, a crew could move 30 tons per hour — a 17.6x increase in productivity. 集装箱的发展为国家间贸易带来了一场革命。根据一项估计，在集装箱化开始的5年内，世界各国间的贸易量增长了320%；在20年内，增长了790%。在集装箱化开始前的1965年，一名工人每小时能够搬运1.7吨货物。而在集装箱化之后，一名工人每小时则能够搬运30吨货物——这意味着生产率提高了17.6倍。 Typically, containers arrive via specialized ships at designated ports that have the particular equipment for unloading and loading the cargo as well as loading it onto trucks that can bring the goods to their destinations. The ports, and the level of efficiency with which they can process goods, have profoundly affected the global economy. 通常，集装箱会由特制的集装箱船运往那些拥有装卸货物的特定设备的指定港口，然后被装上集装箱卡车，将货物运送到目的地。而港口，以及它们处理货物的效率水平，对全球经济有着深刻的影响。 From the perspective of a ship coming into a port with containers and in the simplest terms, there a[re] three critical pieces of technology: the “gantry cranes” that lift the containers from the ships, the transport vehicles that move the containers strategically around each port’s container yard to a designated delivery location, and the stacking cranes that pile up the containers so that trucks can come take them away. For exporters, who move containers from truck to ship, this process operates in reverse. 从一艘装载着集装箱驶入港口的货轮的角度来看，通俗地说，有三项关键技术影响着效率：从货轮上吊起集装箱的龙门起重机，负责按照特定策略将集装箱运往港内集装箱堆场中指定位置的运输车，还有负责堆放集装箱以让运输卡车能够将集装箱运出港口的堆垛起重机。而对于货物的出口商而言，由于他们需要将集装箱从卡车转运到货轮上，整个流程的顺序则是相反的。 The machinery of these three components (gantry cranes, transport vehicles, and stacking cranes) can be operated either by humans or software. In Oakland, like most of the United States, all three are operated by humans. But the reality is that software automation can not only make this process faster and safer, but available at a lower variable cost. 这三部分的机械装置（龙门起重机，运输车和堆垛起重机）既可人工操作，也可以由软件来操作。在奥克兰港，与美国的大多数港口一样，全部三个部分都是人工操作的。但事实是，软件自动化不仅能让这些流程更加安全快速，而且可变成本也更低。 While the process of automation hasn’t yet started in the Port of Oakland, Rotterdam began implementing port automation back in the 1990s. After investing hundreds of millions of dollars, Rotterdam’s port boasts an operation in which all stacking cranes that pile up the containers and transport vehicles are run by software. 奥克兰港直到今天还没有开启港口自动化的进程，而鹿特丹港早在上世纪九十年代就已经开始实施港口的自动化运作了。在投入了数亿美元资金后，鹿特丹港骄傲地向人们展示了新的操作流程，在该流程中，所有负责堆放集装箱的堆垛起重机以及运输车辆都是由软件操控的。 This is a far cry from Oakland, where every transport vehicle has a driver and each stack crane has multiple operators working in pairs for a single shift as well as dockman and clerks to help coordinate and direct the operators and vehicle flow within the container yard. 而奥克兰港的情况则与此相去甚远，在奥克兰港，每辆运输车都有一名司机，而每台堆垛起重机在进行一次搬运时都需要多名操作员结对工作，此外还需要码头工人和一些记录员在集装箱堆场内帮助协调引导操作员和运输车流。 The most difficult part of the port to automate is the gantry crane, which plucks the container from the ship—partly due to the extreme potential danger involved. At most ports, before a container can be removed from a ship, a human must unlock the lower container lock; in a fully-automated system, there exists the omnipresent risk that a completely robotic gantry crane might not notice the human who unlocked the container. 在整个港口机械中最难自动化的部分是龙门起重机，它负责从货船上吊起集装箱——之所以难以自动化，其中的部分原因是这种操作中蕴含着极大的潜在危险。在大多数的港口，集装箱在能够被从货船上吊走之前，一名操作员必须人工解开集装箱下端的锁；而在一个全自动化的系统中则存在一种无处不在的风险，就是一个完全自动化的龙门起重机可能不会注意到负责人工将集装箱解锁的那名操作员。 However, many vessels have started to convert towards automatic locking and unlocking equipment that eliminates the need for a person to climb amongst the stacks of containers on a vessel and unlock containers before they are unloaded. In an automated system, humans would only need to interact with the equipment in this setting if there was a malfunction with the locking mechanism and bringing attention to a safety stoppage until the malfunction is addressed. Ultimately, this lends further support to the safety benefits to increased levels of automation. 然而，很多货船已经开始转向自动化的集装箱锁定和解锁设备，以消除对那些需要在船上成堆的集装箱中攀爬并在集装箱被卸载之前为其解锁的操作员的需求。在一个自动化的系统中，人们只需要在锁定机制发生故障时与这套设置中的设备进行交互，请求系统关注并启动安全停工机制，直到故障被排除。最终，这种机制通过带来更多的安全收益为更高水平的自动化赢得了更多的支持。 In Oakland, teams of humans operate on-site gantry cranes. In the newest terminal at Rotterdam, however, a single person who operates this crane sits in an office and controls the machine from his or her computer. A person is still operating the controls of the gantry crane, but that person now has software assisting him, making the job more comfortable, easier, and more productive. 在奥克兰港，龙门起重机是由一队队的工人操作的。而在鹿特丹港最新的码头，一台龙门起重机唯一的操作员坐在办公室里通过电脑来控制这台机器。龙门起重机仍然需要一个人来操控，但这名操作员现在有了软件的协助，这使得这项工作变得更轻松，更舒服，同时也更有效率。 At a build cost of over $535 million, the Rotterdam port is now considered the most advanced in the world, with all three major parts of the container moving process automated. In Rotterdam’s other terminals, almost every single transport vehicle and stacking crane are fully automated. 鹿特丹港新集装箱码头的建造成本超过了5.35亿美元，它被认为是目前世界上最先进的集装箱码头，流程中所有的三个主要部分全都已经自动化了。而在鹿特丹港的其它集装箱码头，几乎所有的运输车和堆垛起重机的运作也已经完全自动化了。 Contrasting Levels of Productivity 对比鲜明的生产率水平 It is difficult to make an apples to apples comparison of productivity between the two ports; due to the variables in the way in which they are structured, vessel size, vessel call schedules, shipping channel depth, gantry crane height and reach as well as limited public information for additional metrics. However, let’s take our best stab at figuring out just how much more efficient Rotterdam is than Oakland. 由于两个港口在建造方式，货轮大小，货轮调度时间表，航运通道的水深，龙门起重机的高度和范围以及其它一些难以从公开信息中获得的更多变量上存在的诸多不同，很难将奥克兰港和鹿特丹港的生产效率进行一一对应的同类比较。尽管如此，我们仍然可以尽量尝试着看看鹿特丹港究竟比奥克兰港要高效多少。 Rotterdam is the much larger port of the two, with 445 millions tons passing through it each year compared to just 47 million per year in Oakland. Much of this difference, however, is attributed to the fact that Rotterdam also accepts shipments of resources like oil that do not come in containers, whereas Oakland predominantly accepts containers. 鹿特丹港要比奥克兰港大得多，每年通过鹿特丹港运输的货物达到了4.45亿吨，相比之下，奥克兰港每年的货运量只有4700万吨。但这其中很大一部分差异要归因于鹿特丹港还接受诸如原油这类不使用集装箱来运输的资源，而奥克兰港则基本上只接受集装箱。 Instead of gauging volumes, let’s start by looking at how many containers pass through Rotterdam versus Oakland. The industry metric for number of containers is the "TEU”, or “twenty-foot equivalent unit”. In the 2014 shipping year, 12.3 million TEUs passed through Rotterdam, compared to 2.4 million in Oakland. Naturally, there are more berths for ships and cranes in Rotterdam, so that doesn’t necessarily mean Rotterdam is more productive (it could simply just be bigger). 先不看货运量，让我看看有多少集装箱分别通过鹿特丹港和奥克兰港进行运输。航运业内衡量集装箱数量的单位是TEU，也就是“二十英尺等量单位”。在2014航运年度，有1230万TEU的集装箱货运量通过鹿特丹港，而只有230万TEU的集装箱货运量通过奥克兰港。很自然地，因为鹿特丹港拥有更多的船舶泊位和起重机，这并不一定意味着鹿特丹港比奥克兰港的生产率更高（可能仅仅是因为鹿特丹港更大）。 Publicly available data tells us that there are 36 gantry cranes in Oakland versus 103 in Rotterdam (note: this is pre-automated terminal, which is only just getting started, but will add 26 more cranes). To get our best estimate of productivity, let’s take a look at how many TEUs are processed by each of those cranes in Rotterdam (where most of the process is automated), versus in Oakland: 可公开获得的数据告诉我们，奥克兰港拥有36台龙门起重机，而在鹿特丹港，这个数字是103（作者注：这个数字仅仅包括了还没有完全自动化的货运码头，而这仅仅是个开始，之后还将有26台起重机加入进来）。为了得到我们对于生产率的最优估计，让我们看看在鹿特丹港（那里大多数的流程都已经自动化了）和奥克兰港，一年内分别有多少TEU的集装箱货运量通过一台龙门起重机： By this (admittedly rough) calculation, cranes in Rotterdam are almost 80% more productive than in Oakland. 根据这项计算（必须承认它很粗略），鹿特丹港的起重机的效率要比奥克兰港高出接近80%。 Why Does Automation Make Things Faster? 为什么自动化能提高效率？ It should go without saying that automation makes ports operate faster, but the exact reasons for this are less obvious. 自动化能够让港口运转得更快这个结论似乎是无需多言的，但其中实际的原因却并不是那么显而易见。 First, and perhaps most importantly, high levels of automation make it easier to have multiple shifts per day and better utilize expensive capital assets (cranes, trucks, berths, etc). In Oakland, it’s extremely expensive to run a second shift to quickly unload a ship because it is necessary to pay employees overtime wages in order to do so. 首先，或许也是最重要的一点是，高水平的自动化让每天处理多个班次变得更加容易，而这意味着对那些昂贵的资本资产（起重机，卡车，泊位等）更加有效的利用。在奥克兰港，想要加一个班次以尽快将一整船货物卸载完毕是一件非常昂贵的事情，因为这么做需要向雇员们支付加班工资。 In Rotterdam, it’s much more the normal course of business to operate two or three shifts per 24 hour period, especially for container yard deliveries. All terminals in the Port of Oakland still run 1st, 2nd and 3rd shift operations as needed based on volume, it is just at much higher cost to both capital and human assets. 而在鹿特丹港，在24小时的周期内进行两班或三班倒则更像是一种常态化的运作，尤其是对于像集装箱堆场内的运输这样的任务而言。奥克兰港所有的货运码头仍然根据货运量的具体需求来加班，甚至是三班倒，而这对于资本和人力资产而言都会带来高得多的成本。 Human-operated and software-operated cranes, can, in theory, move containers at the same rate. However, humans get tired and distracted, and don’t consistently operate at peak performance. Software, on the other hand, operates at the same rate no matter what. Technology can also make workers’ jobs easier and safer, reducing workplace stress which can increase productivity in its own right. 理论上说，人工操纵的起重机和软件操纵的起重机应该能够以相同的速率搬运集装箱。但是，人会变得疲劳，注意力也容易被分散，因此不能一直维持峰值表现。而软件则能够在任何情况下都以相同的效率进行操作。技术还能够让工人们的工作变得更加轻松和安全，从而减轻工作压力，而这本身也能够让生产率得到提升。 Why the Lack of Automation in Oakland? 为何奥克兰港缺乏自动化运作？ A key reason that Oakland and the United States lag in terms of automation is that upgrading to automated systems is extremely expensive: new, fully automated terminals cost over half a billion dollars to implement. Nevertheless, one expert estimates that automation makes financial sense when a port is handling around one million TEUs per year. 奥克兰港和美国其它港口在自动化方面落后的一个核心原因是，升级到自动化系统的费用非常高昂：建造一个新的完全自动化的货运码头需要花费超过5亿美元。然而，一位专家估计，如果一个港口每年能够运送大约100万TEU的集装箱货运量，那么自动化便有其财务价值。 Oakland, currently handles more than twice that amount in total TEU, however none of the terminals in the Port individually service over a million TEU in volume. There are several terminals that are close and in the very near future could hit that tipping point for the return on the investment in automation technologies. 虽然奥克兰港目前以TEU计算的总货运量超过了这个数字的两倍，然而其中并没有任何一个货运码头每年独立承担的货运量超过100万TEU。有几个码头的货运量接近这个数字，并且可能在不远的将来达到自动化技术投资回报的临界点。 A second reason for the delay in adopting modern automation is the effect on union jobs. Some have estimated that if the Port of Oakland were to implement a modern level of automation, 40-50% of the jobs would be eliminated. 第二个使美国港口迟迟没有采用现代自动化技术的原因则是自动化技术对工会职位所产生的影响。一些人已经作出估计，如果奥克兰港达到了现代的自动化水平，那么40%到50%的职位将会消失。 All ports on the West Coast of the United States are organized under a single union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which gives them a tremendously powerful collective bargaining position. A strike doesn’t just affect one port, but every single port on the West Coast. 美国西海岸的所有港口都被组织在同一家工会之下——国际码头和仓库工人工会（ILWU），这让他们处于一个强有力的集体谈判地位。一次罢工并不仅仅是影响一个港口，而是会影响到西海岸的每一个港口。 This union power was used to oppose the introduction of containers in the 1960s and, later, computerized systems for tracking cargo. In each case, however, the union eventually conceded the introduction of these technologies in exchange for higher wages for existing workers and buyouts for displaced ones. 这家工会的力量曾经在1960年代用来反对集装箱的引入，在之后还曾被用来反对引入用于跟踪货物的计算机系统。但每一次，工会最终都接受了这些技术的引入，以换取现有员工的更高工资以及那些被替代工人的买断费用。 As with previous disruptive technology ILWU will need to be compensated for any reduction in jobs. Today, the average member of the union in Oakland makes $147,000 per year in wages, with benefits equal to another $82,000 per year. Needless to say, providing buyouts to force retirement on these union workers, many of whom have dedicated their entire working lives to port operations, is not an appetizing prospect for the terminal operators. 和之前那些颠覆性技术一样，对于港口自动化技术，ILWU也将为任何因此被削减的职位要求补偿。目前，在奥克兰港工作的工会会员的平均工资是每年14.7万美元，此外他们还享受着每年等价于8.2万美元的福利。不用说，为这些工会工人的强制退休提供买断费用——他们中的很多人将自己的整个职业生涯都献给了港口工作——对于码头运营商们而言并不是一个看起来很有吸引力的选项。 Nevertheless, several mitigating factors may allow automation to proceed. For one, the job loss calculations largely assume that shipping volumes will not be affected by automation. However, as automation reduces the price of shipping, we should expect to more shipping, which will partially offset some of the job losses. 然而，一些正在缓和的因素可能会让自动化技术的引进变得可行。一方面，对于工作职位减少量的计算在很大程度上是假设货运量不会受到自动化技术的影响。但是自动化技术会降低航运的成本，我们可以预期这将带来更多的货运量，从而抵消一部分由它带来的职位削减。 More importantly, the returns on investment in port terminal automation are large enough that there should be room for a negotiated settlement that makes both the union and the terminal operators happy. 更重要的是，投资于港口货运码头的自动化技术所带来的回报足够大，这将为工会和港口运营商之间的谈判提供空间，以达成一个能让双方皆大欢喜的协议。 Port terminal automation is no different from any other form of technological disruption, which almost inevitably leads to displacement of some segments of the workforce. In the long run, however, technology ends up creating better jobs and expanded opportunities across broad spectrums of the economy. Managing the transition is hard, often requiring social safety nets from government, as well as concessions from those who stand to benefit from the new technology. 港口货运码头的自动化与其它任何形式的颠覆性技术相比并没有什么不同，它们几乎不可避免地会替代某些现有劳动力。但从长期来看，技术最终会在更广阔的经济民生中创造出更多更好的工作机会。管理由技术带来的转变是困难的，这通常需要政府的社会保障网络提供帮助，同时还需要那些新技术的受益者作出一些让步。 Given the march of “software eating the world,” it’s hard to imagine a future where American ports do not become more automated. Difficult as the transition toward port automation may be, shying away from the challenge means less trade among countries. Shipping technology advancements have shown themselves time and again to be capable of creating a more prosperous and interconnected world. 在“软件改变世界”的大潮之中，很难想象在未来美国的港口不会变得更加自动化。也许向港口自动化的转变过程会很艰难，但回避其中的挑战意味着国家间的贸易将因此减少。航运技术的进步已在过去一次次证明了它们有能力创造一个更加繁荣和更具连通性的世界。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The Market for Human Hair 人发市场 作者：Alex Mayyasi @ 2015-12-02 译者：Horace Rae 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源：Priceonomics，http://priceonomics.com/the-market-for-human-hair/ The Venkateswara Temple in Tirumala, India, had a problem. 印度Tirumala的Venkateswara寺有了个麻烦。 Thirty to forty million pilgrims visit the temple each year, and in a gesture of humility and sacrifice, 10% to 25% of them, men and women both, have their heads shaven. Every day, the Venkateswara Temple staff fills giant vats with human hair, and for a long time, its staff burned thousands of pounds of hair—a noxious process that produces toxic gases like ammonia and was eventually banned by the Indian government in the 1990s. 每年有三千到四千万名朝圣者造访这间寺院。为了表示谦恭与牺牲，他们中10%－25%的人会剪掉自己的头发，其中男女皆有。每天，Venkateswara寺的工作人员要把头发塞进大桶里。很长一段时间，工作人员会把上万磅头发烧掉，这一行为十分有害，会产生氨气等有毒气体。1990年代，这种行为最终被印度政府禁止。 By then, however, they had discovered a new way to get rid of the hair: sell it for millions. 不过，那时候他们已经找到了一种解决头发问题的新方法：把它们卖掉，大赚一笔。 When fashion companies make wigs—and when stylists tape or weave hair extensions into customers’ hair in salons—they want to use real human hair. To get it, they rely on places like the Venkateswara Temple, which sells its hair in annual auctions. In 2014, fashion companies bid almost $12 million for what temple employees call “black gold.” 时装公司生产假发时，或者发廊的造型师给顾客接假发时，都想使用真正的人发。为了获得人发，他们依赖类似Venkateswara寺这样的地方。Venkateswara寺会在年度拍卖中出售头发。2014年，时装公司出价将近1200万美元，购买这种被寺院员工叫做“黑金”的东西。 The Tirumala Temple auction is part of a multi-billion dollar market for human hair—a global endeavor that includes collecting long locks to make fashionable hairpieces and its more industrial counterpart of turning hair into fertilizers, stuffing for clothes, and even amino acids used in pizza dough. Tirumala的寺院拍卖只是数十亿美元规模的人发市场的一部分。这一全球性行当包括收集长发以制作时髦假发，还包括更加工业化的部分：把头发制成化肥、衣服填充物，甚至做成披萨面团制作中用到的氨基酸。 Nearly everyone has hair they discard without a thought. Yet it can also be one of the world’s most precious resources, and businesses can’t get enough of it. 几乎所有人都会想也不想地扔掉头发。但是，同时，它也能成为世界上最宝贵的资源，许多公司对头发的需求总是多多益善。 From Tirumala to the Salon 从Tirumala到发廊 A quality wig made of human hair sells for thousands of dollars in the United States, and hair extensions made of real hair can sell for several hundred or thousand dollars. But it takes a lot of work to turn the hair of Venkateswara pilgrims into a luxury product. 在美国，一顶使用人发制作的优质假发可以卖到数千美元，人发制作的接发材料也可以卖到数百甚至上千美元。但是，要把Venkateswara朝圣者们的头发变成昂贵的商品，有很多事情需要做。 When companies buy hair from the temple for as much as $700 per pound, it contains sweat, blood, and lice. The temple warehouses reek from mildew and fungus. Investigative journalist Scott Carney visited Tirumala and called the hair a “foul-smelling heap.” As 600 barbers each shave a head every 5 minutes, they leave bloody scalps and hair balls littering the floor. 当厂商以每磅700美元的价格从寺院买来头发时，头发中还有汗水、血块和虱子。寺院的仓库散发着霉味。调查记者Scott Carney造访Tirumala时，把那里的头发形容为“一大堆恶臭”。大约600名理发师，每位理发师每隔5分钟剃光一个头，血淋淋的头皮和发球就会杂乱地铺在地上。 It takes someone in the industry to recognize why the hair is so valuable. Only long women’s hair is sold at auction—the temple sells men’s hair at a pittance for industrial uses—and since many pilgrims come from humble, rural towns, they have not used shampoos or styled and treated their hair in ways that damage it. 只有业内人士才能认识到为什么头发如此宝贵。只有女性的长发能在拍卖中出售——而男性头发则被寺院低价出售，用作工业用途。因为许多朝圣者来自偏远贫穷的村庄，他们没有用过洗发水，也没有做过发型，而且他们对付头发的方式对它造成过损伤。 To transform the best (longest) hair from trash into treasure, teams of workers untangle the hair, sort it by length, pick out lice and other particles, wash and dry it, and dye it a variety of colors. Companies then either ship the hair out to salons where stylists will sew, tape, or bond the extensions into customers’ hair, or sew the hair into wigs. 为让最优质（最长）的头发变废为宝，需要许多工人团队把头发理顺，按长度分类，把虱子和其他东西挑出来，之后把头发洗净并干燥，然后把它们染成不同的颜色。厂商要么把这些头发送到发廊，发廊的造型师会把头发编织、粘贴或者嫁接在顾客的头发上；要么把它们编织成假发。 The process is incredibly labor intensive. “To make a high-end wig,” says Mo Hefnawy of Lori’s Wigsite, one of many retailers of wigs made by Indian and Chinese manufacturers, “someone sat there with a needle and sewed a few hairs at a time. It takes 3 or 4 days.” 这一过程需要大量劳动力。中国或印度所产假发的众多经销商之一，Lori’s Wigsite的Mo Hefnawy说：“为了生产出一顶优质假发，需要有人坐着，用缝针一次编织几根头发。这一过程需要3天到4天。” Retailers like Lori’s Wigsite sell wigs made of fake, synthetic hair, and they cost $250 where a human hair wig would cost $1,500. But synthetic wigs don’t last as long, can’t be styled, and look and feel less natural. Most people want wigs made of real hair, Hefnawy says, but Lori’s sells more synthetic wigs than human hair wigs because they are more affordable. 类似Lori’s Wigsite这样的经销商也出售人工合成毛发制作的假发，这种假发的价格是250美元，但是真发制成的假发要1500美元。但是合成假发很快就会损坏，也不能做造型，看起来摸起来也没有那么自然。Hefnawy说，大部分人都想要真发制成的假发，但是Lori’s出售的合成假发比人发假发多，因为前者更加便宜。 The majority of Lori’s customers suffer hair loss from chemotherapy or conditions like alopecia. A minority are religious women who buy wigs as an alternative to modestly hiding their hair, and some older men and women buy wigs to cover thinning hair. Lori’s 的顾客大多是因化疗或脱发症而脱发的人，一小部分女性宗教信徒购买假发是为了隐藏起自己的头发以示谦恭，还有一些老年人购买假发来遮盖自己日益稀薄的头发。 For the moment, though, hair extensions are increasingly popular among young women who want to quickly change their hairstyle or buy the long, thick hair celebrated in shampoo commercials. Among other celebrities, Victoria Beckham, Beyonce, and Kylie Jenner of Kardashian fame are known for wearing extensions. 但是现在，一些年轻女性想要迅速改变发型，或是想要洗发水广告中那样的浓密飘逸的长发，所以接发在她们中间非常流行。明星中间，像Victoria Beckham， Beyonce以及Kardashian家的Kylie Jenner，都因接发而闻名。 Prices have increased with popularity. In several burglaries of hair salons, thieves ignored cash registers and went straight for hair extensions worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. 随着接发流行开来，其价格也水涨船高。在一些针对发廊的盗窃案中，窃贼们对收款机视而不见，径直去寻找接发用的假发，其价值常高达数万甚至数十万美元。 When nonprofits like Locks of Love ask people to donate their hair (to make hairpieces for children suffering from hair loss), they are not asking because long hair is hard to find. The human hair market is well established, and anyone can go online and instantly order hair by the pound. 当“一缕关爱”（Locks of Love）这样的非营利性组织号召人们捐出头发（用来给脱发的孩子制作假发）时，不是因为长发难以得到。人发市场已经相当成熟，所有人都可以上网，即刻预订头发，按磅计价。 Locks of Love asks for donations because hair is so expensive that many patients can’t afford thousand dollar wigs. “一缕关爱”号召人们捐头发，是因为头发过于昂贵，许多患者买不起价值数千美元的假发。 The Secret Life of Hair 头发的隐秘故事 The market for human hair has always been a mechanism for getting hair from people in poor areas to those who need or want it in wealthier ones. 人发市场向来是个从贫穷地区的人手中获取头发，然后把头发卖给富裕地区有需要的人的机制。 History is full of examples of human hair being treated as a valuable commodity. Archeologists have discovered human hair wigs held together with resin and beeswax in Ancient Egyptian tombs. Upper class men in 18th century Europe wore long periwigs made of human or horse hair, and thieves commonly worked in teams to steal and resell them. An observer of an annual “hair harvest” in a poor Italian village in the 19th century described seeing girls “sheared, one after the other, like sheep.” Their hair went to Parisian markets that sold 200,000 pounds of human hair each year. 历史上，人发成为昂贵商品的例子俯拾皆是。考古学家们已经在古埃及的墓穴中发现了用树脂和蜂蜡粘合的人发假发。十八世纪，欧洲上流社会的男性会佩戴人发或是马鬃制作的假发。当时的盗贼常常会组团盗窃、转卖假发。十九世纪，在一个贫穷的意大利村庄，有人曾见证了一年一次“头发收割”，他写道，自己看见女孩们“一个接一个地剃头，就像剪羊毛一样”。她们的头发会被出售到巴黎市场，那里每年有20万磅人发售出。 The difference today is that the market has changed with globalization. Hair does not move from provincial Europe to capital cities; it moves from poor countries to wealthy ones. The vast majority of hair and hair products come from India and China and are sold in the United States and Europe. 与过去相比，现在的不同是，人发市场已经因全球化而改变。头发不再从欧洲的乡下被运往首都，而是从贫穷国家运往富裕国家。绝大多数头发与发制品来自印度和中国，并被出售到美国和欧洲。 In the hair industry, no one bothers to equally celebrate each and every person’s hair. For them, hair is a product, and the way they talk about hair reflects economic and social realities—and made us squirm. 在人发产业中，没人会费心去平等的称颂每个人的头发。对他们来说，头发就是物品，他们谈论头发的方式反映了经济和社会的现实——且令我们不安。 “Indian hair is best,” retailers and manufacturers told us without hesitation. They cite the strength of Indian hair and how plentiful it is thanks to places like the Venkateswara Temple. But its most valuable attribute is that it closely resembles caucasian hair. “Oriental hair is used,” one industry expert bluntly added, “because there is a lot of it.” “印度人的头发最好，”经销商和生产厂家毫不犹豫地告诉我们。他们谈论印度头发的强韧度，以及拜Venkateswara寺这种地方所赐的巨大供应量。但是它最具价值的因素是它和白人头发的相似性。“我们使用东方人的头发，”行内专家坦白道，“因为东方人的头发供应量很大。” Hair flows from poor countries to rich countries, but when a woman with blond hair is willing to sell her hair, the market pays incredibly well. Destitute Russian women regularly sell their blond hair for fifty to several hundred dollars. Mo Hefnawy says he knows a young woman whom wig makers flew out from Indiana and paid $1,500 for her hair, which they made into an $8,000 wig. 头发从贫穷国家流入富裕国家，但是当金发女人愿意卖出她的头发，市场给出的价格特别慷慨。贫穷的俄罗斯女人定期卖掉自己的金发，能卖到五十美元甚至上百美元。Mo Hefnawy说他认识一个年轻女人，假发制造商为了她的头发从印第安纳州远道飞来，付给她1500美元，用她的头发制作的假发售价8000美元。 Africa also bucks global trends: despite the prevalence of poverty in many countries, Africa is an importer of hair. Elaborate wigs may no longer separate royalty from commoners, but hair has not lost its political and economic relevance. 非洲则逆全球趋势而行。尽管非洲的大部分国家都十分贫穷，但非洲是头发进口地。精致的假发可能不再能区分王室与平民，但是头发还没有丧失其政治和经济意义。 Projects like My Nappy Roots and Good Hair have explored the efforts that black people, especially women, go through to style their hair, and in particularly the time and expense of straightening their curly hair—often with the help of hair extensions. Responding to this question of why “women adopt a concept of ‘beauty’ that is not based on the natural characteristics of their hair,” Al Sharpton says in Good Hair, “We wear our economic oppression on our heads." 诸如 My Nappy Roots和Good Hair之类的项目发现，黑人，尤其是女性，会费尽心力给头发做造型，尤其是他们会费时费财地去把他们的卷发拉直——这一过程经常需要接发。在回答“为什么女性不把她们与生俱来的头发特征当作美的标准”这一问题时，Al Sharpto在Good Hair中说：“我们头上戴的是经济压迫。” As a result, hair extensions and products are popular among African Americans and wealthy Africans, but hair traders have little interest in black hair. 因此，接发和假发产品在非裔美国人和富裕的非洲人之间非常流行，但是，头发经销商对黑人头发的兴趣有限。 Collecting Hair at Scale 规模化采集 If you ask people in the industry where they get human hair, they talk about temples in China and India like the Venkateswara Temple. 如果你询问业内人士他们的原料来自何处，他们会谈到中国和印度的寺庙，比如Venkateswara寺。 It’s no surprise they do; collecting hair from pilgrims is an elegant solution to manufacturers’ need for human hair. Shaving one’s head is a traditional, voluntary practice that avoids the exploitive undertones of desperate women selling their hair. Most pilgrims don’t know that the temple sells their hair. But we have not seen reports of religious leaders pocketing millions. The temple administrators have used the proceeds on gold wall panelling for the temple, but they say they primarily spend the money on charitable endeavors like feeding the needy and running hospitals. 这么做并不令人惊讶；从信徒那里收集头发是满足生产厂家头发需求的完美方案。剃发是一种有历史渊源而且自愿的行为，这就避免了走投无路的女性忍痛卖发的剥削寓意。大部分朝圣者不知道寺院卖掉了他们的头发。尽管如此，我们并未听说寺院管理者因此腰缠万贯。他们用这笔钱给寺院的墙板镀金，但他们声称这笔钱优先用于慈善用途，比如施粥行善或资助医院。 Yet only a minority of hair comes from temples. In India, a regional Minister for Textiles and Commerce told The Guardian, “all the Indian temples together contribute only 20 out of every 100 locks of premium hair sold abroad.” The Minister added, “Where the rest comes from, we have no idea.” Retailers and wholesale providers we spoke to voiced similar uncertainty. 但是只有一小部分头发来自寺庙。在印度，某地方的纺织和商业部部长告诉《卫报》，“印度所有寺庙出售的头发只占出口优质头发的20%。”他补充道：“剩下的头发是哪里来的，我们就不知道了。”与我们交谈过的零售商以及批发商同样语焉不详。 We do know that collecting hair is a large, decentralized undertaking that employs tens of thousands of people in India alone. Barber shops and salons collect and sell hair—both long hair sold to fashion companies and short hair sold cheaply to be used as stuffing, fertilizer, or, once broken down into component chemicals, in industrial uses ranging from food to pharmaceuticals. Waste pickers scrounge hair from trash and dumpsters. Hair traders visit villages—in a slum outside Chennai, a bell announces a trader’s arrival—to buy hair with either cash or trinkets and hair accessories. 我们知道，收集头发是一个巨大的去中心化产业，仅在印度就有数万人参与。理发店和发廊收集并出售头发，长发卖给时装公司，短发则被低价出售，用来制作填充物、化肥，或者被分解成化学物质，制作从食物到药品制剂的各种产品。垃圾分拣员在垃圾堆中寻找头发。头发收购人们寻访村庄——在Chennai周边的一个贫民区，铃声宣告着他们的到来——用现金或是小装饰品以及发饰购买头发。 The traders may buy hair that women have collected from combs and brushes, or the scenes may resemble the shearing of 19th century Italian villagers. No one can say exactly how often, but hair is not always sold willingly. Press has reported on husbands who receive $10 for their wives’ hair. One Indian woman told The Guardian, “I was held down by a gang of men who hacked at my hair… the police don't care, they will do nothing to protect women.” In Russia, prison wardens have admitted to forcibly cutting female inmates’ hair in order to sell it. 收购人买到的头发可能是妇女们从梳子或是刷子上收集来的，也有可能出现像十九世纪意大利村庄中一样的剃发场景。没人知道剃发的准确频率，但是，出售头发并不总是自愿的。媒体曾经报道过丈夫出售妻子的头发获得十美元报酬的事情。一个印度女人告诉《卫报》：“我被一群男人按倒在地，他们抢走了我的头发……警察漠不关心，他们不做任何保护妇女的事。”在俄罗斯，有狱卒承认曾经强迫女性犯人剃发，然后卖掉。 Whether it’s people scrounging hair from dumpsters or men forcing women to give up their hair, the hair business can be a dirty one. 不论是在垃圾桶里搜捡头发，还是男性强迫女性出售头发，头发行业有时十分肮脏。

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So far, the hair industry has not had its ethically-sourced moment. 到目前为止，人发行业还没有遭遇其道德溯源时刻。 American customers are typically unconcerned about the origins of extensions, the founder of a hair extensions trade group told the New York Times, other than to ask if they are hygienic. For retailers and manufacturers, the demand for hair makes it a financial necessity not to ask too many questions. 一位假发销售公司的创始人告诉《纽约时报》，美国顾客很少关心假发的来源，他们只在乎假发是不是卫生。对于零售商和制造商来说，在假发需求的驱使下，为了赚钱，最好还是不要问太多问题。 "The hair business is unlike any other," the owner of an Indian hair-exporting business told journalist Scott Carney. "In any other business, buying a commodity is easy; it's the selling it to retailers that is difficult. Here it's all reversed. It's simple to sell hair, just difficult to buy it." “人发产业跟其他产业都有所不同，”某印度头发出口企业的业主告诉记者Scott Carney说，“在其他行业中，商品买进很容易，将它卖给零售商就很难。但人发行业是颠倒过来的。头发卖出去很容易，买进来很难。” Better synthetic hair is coming. As China and India’s economic growth has reduced poverty, hair donors have been harder to find, which has increased prices and pushed companies to research alternatives. In the last 5 years, Mo Hefnawy of Lori’s Wigsite tells us, progress has been made on making synthetic wigs thicker and more heat-resistant. “I’d give it a few more years and they will have it,” he says. 更好的合成头发即将面世。随着中国和印度经济的增长，贫困有所减少，卖头发的人已经比以前更难找到了，这抬高了价格，促使企业研究替代方案。Lori’ Wigsite的Mo Hefnawy告诉我们，过去5年，在制造更浓密、更耐热的合成假发方面已有所进步。他说，“我想再过几年，他们会成功的。” Until then, though, a resource everyone has growing on the top of their head will remain a secretively lucrative commodity. 不过，在此之前，这种每个人头顶上都在生长的资源，仍将是一种鲜为人知的厚利商品。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

【2015-12-18】 @海德沙龙 《猪肉产业的政治游戏》 直到二战前，美国人吃的猪肉远远多于牛肉，更多于其他肉类，然而从上世纪初开始，猪肉地位一路下滑，到50年代被牛肉超过，70年代起，出于红肉恐惧，许多消费者又转向禽鱼肉，于是从1985年起，猪肉界发起了一场猪肉保卫战，其口号是：猪肉是另一种白肉 @海德沙龙：1985年，国会通过了猪肉复兴法案，据此农业部牵头组织了全国猪肉委员会（NPB），负责向消费者推广猪肉，次年起，它每年投入数百万美元，大力宣传“猪肉是另一种白肉”，然而诡异的是，到2011年，这一口号已经被放弃，而同时农业部官方资料也不承认猪肉是白肉，但这笔每年数百万的费用却仍在照常支付。 @海德沙龙:本文介绍了这件事情里的政治勾当，从中我们可以从一个侧面窥见美国政治的某些运作机制 @whigzhou: 养猪户联合起来，组成行会，向其缴费，委托其推进共同利益，这原本是再平常不过的商业行为，但政府一掺和，性质就变了，入会和缴费都变成了强制性的，而且行会独此一家没得选，结果当然是腐败和权力滥用，以及自由的丧失 @whigzhou: 工会和劳工法的关系也是如此，若仅仅是自愿组织，工会就没什么不好，但那些亲工会的劳工法把它变成了特权垄断组织，只要人数超过某个比例，工会与雇主的议价结果就对非工会成员也有了强制力，于是雇主和非工会成员便丧失了契约自由，同时工会也变得极端腐败 @whigzhou: 全国猪肉委员会实际上体现了联邦政府干预产业和经济的典型模式，和美联储如出一辙，就是在一个私人行会的基础上，通过专项立法将其置于行政部门控制之下，取得其决策机构成员的部分任命权，同时赋予其垄断地位，结果就变成了一个特权垄断性质的半官方组织。 @whigzhou: 此类机构在日常事务上仍是自治的，并且通常也还代表行业利益，前提是必须听政府的话，配合其政策 @whigzhou: 但是因为有了垄断地位，它所代表的行业利益基本上只是行业巨头的利益，虽然在自愿组织的行会中，主导权通常也掌握在行业巨头手里，但小厂商有退出权，可以用脚投票，而只要有竞争，就坏不到哪儿去，对小厂商的压制也很有限，但有了特权垄断，小厂商就惨了  

Why Boston's Sports Fans Rejected the Olympics Boondoggle—and L.A. Said Bring It On 为什么波士顿的体育迷拒绝承办劳民伤财的奥运会——而洛杉矶却说我来办 作者: Garrett Quinn @ 2015-9-15 译者: Who视之(@Who适之) 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源: Reason，https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/15/why-bostons-sports-fans-rejected-the-oly The long, sad history of overspending on the international games. 国际性赛事超支的心酸历史 As the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) submits the city of Los Angeles as the country’s official nominee to host the 2024 Summer Games, sports fans in Boston are whooping it up like they did after the Red Sox finally won another World Series. 当美国奥委会正式提名洛杉矶代表美国申办2024年夏季奥运会，波士顿的体育迷欢呼雀跃，好似红袜队又拿下了一场世界系列赛。【译注：美国棒球联盟和全国棒球联盟优胜者之间的年度比赛】 And with good reason. Earlier this year, the USOC had picked Boston to represent America in the Olympics-host sweepstakes. Then the sports-mad fans of the Red Sox, the Bruins, the Celtics, and the Patriots told city fathers—especially Mayor Martin J. Walsh—to pound sand when it came to hosting the Olympic Games with tax dollars. 他们这么高兴是有道理的。今年早些时候，美国奥委会挑选波士顿代表美国参加奥运会主办城市的赌赛。那些红袜队、棕熊队、凯尔特人队和爱国者队的死忠们告诉市府大员们——特别是市长Martin J. Walsh——若是用纳税人的钱来办奥运会，就要把这主意掐死。 How Boston’s rabid sports fans rejected the Olympics—and how chumps in Los Angeles enthusiastically stepped up to potential bankruptcy—is a tale worth understanding, especially the next time your city or state tries selling voters on a new stadium or venue for billionaire sports team owners. 为啥波士顿的狂热体育迷拒绝奥运会，而洛杉矶的呆逼们兴高采烈地踏上潜在的破产之旅，这事值得弄弄明白，特别是下次你的城市或州政府为身家亿万的球队老板们着想，试图向选民们兜售新的体育场馆时。 The Summer Games routinely use billions of taxpayer dollars to throw the equivalent of a three-week-long international party that ends with a trashed house and a financial hangover that lasts for years. Montreal hosted the games in 1976 and built a stadium that was called the Big O. ­­Since it took fully 30 years to pay off the municipal debt that underwrote the Games, locals dubbed it "the Big Owe." 夏奥会一贯会花费纳税人几十上百亿美元，举办为期三周的国际大趴，结局是一地垃圾和延续若干年的财务宿醉症。蒙特利尔1976年承办了夏奥会，建了一座叫Big O的体育场。由于用了整整30年才还清为承办奥运会而发行的市政债，当地居民给这个体育场起了个“Big Owe”的外号【译注：Owe是欠账的意思】。 As sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has noted, the Summer Games might generate $6 billion in total revenue, half of which goes to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) while costing the host city $20 billion (London) or even $40 billion (Beijing). And don’t think that any new stadiums or infrastructure will have much of an economic afterlife. Indeed, the main achievement of the 2004 Athens games was to create modern ruins to match the ancient ones that actually draw tourists to Greece. 体育经济学家Andrew Zimbalist注意到，夏奥会可能产生了60亿美元的总收入，其中一半归国际奥委会，而主办城市会花费200亿美元（伦敦），甚至400亿美元（北京）。不要以为那些新的运动场馆和基础设施在会后能有什么经济效益。实际上，2004年雅典奥运会的主要成就，就是兴建了一批现代废墟来配合真正吸引游客到希腊去的古代废墟。 On top of all that the Olympics have an established reputation for bringing graft, a draconian security state, and horrific traffic and business disruption everywhere they go. "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to participate," declared the creator of the modern Games, the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, who obviously wasn’t stuck paying any of the bills. 不仅如此，奥林匹克运动已经建立起这样一个名声：它走到哪，哪就会有贪腐、苛刻的安保，以及严重的交通和商务混乱。现代奥林匹克创始人，法国人顾拜旦宣称：“奥运会重在参与而不是取胜。”这人显然不管付账。 Earlier this year, Boston seemed up for the challenge and was selected to be the city that the USOC would put forward to host the 2024 Games. To its slim credit, the IOC had reformed some of its practices after a stunning show of disinterest from western democracies in hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics (an even bigger money-loser than the Summer Games). The reforms, known as Agenda 2020, are designed to make hosting the games less financially burdensome and will be applied for the first time during the bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics. 今年早间，波士顿看着像要去挑战一下，被美国奥委会选为竞办2024奥运会的城市。得承认，在西方民主国家对举办2022年冬奥会（这是个比夏奥会更能亏钱的玩意）显示了令人震惊的冷淡之后，国际奥委会对其做法进行了一些改革。这些改革称为“2020议程”，将在竞办2024年夏奥会时实施，目的是让承办奥运会的经济负担不至于过分沉重。 After Boston’s bid was initially approved by the USOC, more and more details of the financing started dripping out and the city’s enthusiasm went softer than one of Tom Brady’s footballs. While it’s true that the people of Boston are diehard, always-annoying sports fans you want to punch in the neck, they are not suckers and have a long, proud history of telling team owners and elected official to take a hike when it comes to paying for sports venues. 波士顿的竞办申请被美国奥委会批准后，越来越多的融资细节开始泄露，市民的热情变得比Tom Brady【译注：美式橄榄球四分卫】的某个传球还弱。虽然波士顿人是死硬的、让人讨厌的、欠揍的体育迷，但这些人一点不蠢；如果球队老板和民选官员想让纳税人掏钱建体育场馆，波士顿人对这种想法的回答有着长久的光荣传统：您哪凉快哪呆着去。 In the 1990s the Patriot and Red Sox sought to build waterfront stadiums on the South Boston Waterfront as part of project dubbed the MegaPlex. The plan only required a tiny commitment from taxpayers but it was still too much to placate the dialed-in citizens of Boston. The plan eventually died when late Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino turned against it. 1990年代，爱国者队和红袜队想在波士顿南部滨水地带兴建滨水体育场，作为名为MegaPlex项目的一部分。这个计划只需要纳税人一点微小的承诺，但仍然不能安抚那些打电话反对的市民。该计划在已故市长Thomas M. Menino转而反对后夭折。 Now, the once vacant area is home to a booming innovation district and soaring residential towers. When the Bruins and Celtics replaced the rat infested Boston Garden with a new building in 1995, it was build with private money after much public handwringing. 现如今，那片原先的空地上建起了生机勃勃的创新产业园区和高高的住宅楼。棕熊队和凯尔特人队在1995年把鼠患猖獗的波士顿花园重建，在公众表示很大关注之后，花的是私人老板的钱。 In 2015, a rag-tag group of activists and young professionals organized against the 2024 bid in an extremely effective manner that put pressure on elected officials to stop the games and created a climate of intense negativity around Boston’s Olympic bid. It was a remarkable display of activism. It pitted the city’s captains of industry against a group of activists with little more than pennies to rub together and smartphones. 2015年，一群由活动分子和年轻的专业人士组成的草根组织了一次非常有效的反申奥活动，使民选官员受到阻止赛会的压力，并为波士顿的申办活动创造了极为负面的气氛。这群除了几块钱和智能手机外啥都没有的活动分子，得以和波士顿的行业大佬们叫阵。 The group pushing the bid had their hands tied by various USOC decrees and limitations. They couldn’t respond quickly and effectively to their opponents and they committed all sorts of unforced errors that stoked the anti-Olympics sentiment: Property owners were caught off guard about venue locations, residents were not contacted before the plan was devised, and community stakeholders were only included in the process when it was all but too late. 支持申办的团体受到美国奥委会各种条例和限制的约束。他们未能及时有效地回应反对者，犯下很多本可避免的失误，使得反奥运情绪如火上浇油：业主们被场馆选址弄得猝不及防，居民们在规划设计之前没有得到通知，而利益相关的社区成员直到时机已过才被纳入进程中去。 The bid’s biggest public supporter, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, was often forced to publicly chastise the USOC and bid organizers for not releasing information in a timely or transparent manner. For many, the announcement that former Governor Deval Patrick was being paid $7,500 a day as a consultant on the project was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 申办活动最大的公共部门支持者，市长Martin Walsh，经常被迫公开批评美国奥委会和申办组织者没有及时透明地公开信息。对很多人来说，前任州长Deval Patrick每天可以得到7500美元的项目顾问费这一消息，是压断骆驼的最后一根稻草。 Opinion poll after opinion poll showed the public just did not trust the organizers to be honest about how much it would all cost locals. Boston’s bid conformed to the reforms outlined in the IOC’s reform agenda but the final sticking point was something that is still Olympic policy: Host cities must take a binding pledge that puts taxpayers on the hook for any cost overruns. 一个接一个的民意调查显示，公众就是不相信组织者对当地人需付总价的估算。波士顿的申办符合国际奥委会做出的改革，但最后胶着点仍然是奥林匹克的这个态度：主办城市必须做出有法律约束的保证，让纳税人为任何成本超支付账。 It wasn’t just Boston-area residents who soured. Elected officials across Massachusetts like Governor Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo balked at the idea of being on the hook and said publicly that they would not sign a taxpayer guarantee for the Olympics. Period. The USOC grew tired of the local reluctance and eventually pulled the bid on July 29, after Walsh said he would not sign a taxpayer guarantee at a hastily called city hall press conference carried live on all local TV stations. 不仅仅是波士顿地区的居民对此不开心，马萨诸塞州各处的民选官员，比如州长Charlie Baker和众议院议长Robert DeLeo，都对做出这种承诺迟疑不决，公开说他们不会为奥运会签署纳税人的担保，这事没得谈。在一场面向所有当地电视台直播的匆忙召集的市府新闻发布会上，Walsh说他不会签署纳税人的保证，美国奥委会受不了波士顿的勉强，最后在7月29日撤回了竞办。 Meanwhile, all the way across the continent, a two-time Olympic host city waited in the wings to pick up the torch as soon as Boston threw it down: Los Angeles. 与此同时，横跨美国大陆的另一边，一个曾经两次举办奥运会、伺机而动的城市在波士顿放弃申办后，马上接棒了。洛杉矶来了。 The City of Angels hosted the Summer Games in 1932 and in 1984. Memories of those latter games are especially warm and fuzzy for Angelenos. In many ways, the ’84 Games were the coming-out party for L.A., a city that had grown rich in post-war America while never quite being taken seriously in America, much less the rest of the world. To this day and despite the city’s standing as the second-largest metropolis in the country, it nurses a cultural inferiority complex bigger than the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster. 天使之城在1932和1984举办过夏奥会。后一次的奥运会对洛杉矶人来说尤其感觉温馨可人。在很多方面，1984年奥运会是洛杉矶的成年派对，这座城市在战后美国富裕了起来，却一直没有被美国人认真对待过，更不要说在全世界了。直到今天，尽管洛杉矶是美国第二大城市，它的文化自卑情结比一场好莱坞大片的预算还要大。 In 1984, the tremendous performances of Carl Lewis, Mary Lou Retton, and both the men’s and women’s swim teams—along with a boycott by the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other Eastern bloc countries—resulted in the U.S. winning more than three times as many medals as any other country. More important to the current debate, the games were supervised by Peter Uberroth, who insisted on using existing facilities whenever possible, exercised ultra-rare but effective financial discipline, and leaned hard on local philanthropies to kick in lots of free money. The result was what is still widely hailed as "the most successful games ever," at least from a public accountant’s point of view. 1984年，美国的Carl Lewis，Mary Lou Retton，男女游泳队发挥卓越，加上苏联和东欧国家的抵制，美国得到的奖牌数比第二名的三倍还多。对于当前争议而言，更重要的是，这次运动会由Peter Uberroth主管，他坚持尽量使用现有设施，表现出少有但有效的财务纪律性，依靠当地的慈善力量，省下很多钱。结果是这届奥运会被称为“最成功的奥运会”，至少从会计角度看是这样。 In the ‘80s, L.A. and California were booming. Things are different this time around. The recession was not kind to Los Angeles and the city continues to amass debt, lose jobs, struggle to provide basic services, and hang on to its middle class. California in general is struggling to pay its bills, too, while keeping the lights on. 在80年代，洛杉矶和加州欣欣向荣，可这次情况不同了。经济衰退对洛杉矶毫不客气，该市一直在堆积债务，流失就业机会，忙于提供基本服务，求助于中产阶级。加州基本上也是在让灯亮着的同时挣扎着付清账单。 Yet this time around, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to support Mayor Eric Garcetti’s pursuit of the Games even though it means putting the city’s taxpayers on the line for any kind of cost overruns. And the state government has a history of coming to the city’s rescue. During their pursuit of the 2016 games, the California legislature set aside $250 million in state funds to help Los Angeles’s bid (it lost out to Rio de Janeiro). California Gov. Jerry Brown has not officially committed to financially backing the games but that did not stop bid organizers in Los Angeles from saying he was on board anyway. 可是这一次，洛杉矶市议会投票一致支持市长Eric Garcetti申办奥运会，尽管这意味着纳税人要为任何成本超支买单。该州政府有搭救市府的传统。在申办2016运动会时，加州议会拨出2.5亿美元州资金来帮助洛杉矶申办（最后不敌里约热内卢）。加州州长没有正式承诺在财务上支持运动会，但这并未阻止洛杉矶的申办者宣称州长和他们站在一起。 The rosy-colored view of the games is not limited to the California political elite. Sports columnists such like Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times tend to be uncritical boosters of Southern California and are enthusiastically on board. In Boston, there was almost uniform opposition to the games in the press and the reception from the sports media was more vicious than the drunks in the Fenway Park bleachers when the Yankees are in town. Even the limited polling on the games shows Los Angeles actually wants the games. Over 81 percent of respondents in a recent poll sponsored by the USOC said they backed the games. 对奥运会玫瑰色的展望并未局限于加州的政治精英，体育专栏作家们，如《洛杉矶时报》的Bill Plaschke，都是南加州不加批评的支持者，对申办全心支持。在波士顿，报界几乎一致反对奥运会，体育媒体的反应，比纽约扬基队来叫阵时，Fenway公园露天看台上醉鬼的骂声更加邪恶。有限的民意测验显示，洛杉矶人确实想申办奥运会。在最近一个美国奥委会组织的调查中，超过81%的受访者说他们支持。 So it seems that Los Angeles and its residents appear far more willing to mortgage their future to host a three-week party in 2024 for the world’s elite than Boston was. Come 2017, when the IOC will announce the winning city from applicants that include Paris, Toronto, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome, Hollywood may well be breaking ground on yet another boulevard of broken dreams. That is, if Los Angeles is selected to host the game for a third time. 看来洛杉矶和它的居民比波士顿更加愿意把他们的未来抵押在2024年为世界精英们举办一次为时三周的国际派对。2017年奥委会将宣布巴黎、多伦多、布达佩斯特、汉堡、罗马这些申办城市中的胜者。如果洛杉矶第三次获选举办奥运会，好莱坞很可能要为另一条碎梦大道破土动工。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

A $60 million pork kickback? 一份6千万美金的猪肉回扣？ 作者：Danny Vinik @ 2015-8 译者：陆嘉宾（@晚上不买白天买不到） 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源：Politico，http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/08/a-60-million-pork-kickback-000210 Unhappy small farmers detect a racket in a pork branding deal—and the USDA signed off on it. 不幸的小农户们从一桩猪肉品牌服务交易中发现了诈骗行为，并且美国农业部还在这上面签了字。 Pork hasn't been "the other white meat" for years—after a 24-year run as the centerpiece of billboards and the butt of jokes, the slogan was retired in 2011 and replaced with "Pork: Be Inspired," a logo you might have seen on the apron of Ted Cruz as he grilled pork chops at the Iowa State fair last week. 猪肉已经很多年没有被称作“另一种白肉”【校注：1986年，鉴于当时消费者普遍接受了红肉不利健康的观念，全国猪肉委员会发起了一场旨在让消费者相信“猪肉是另一种白肉”的宣传活动】了——在当了24年的广告牌要点以及笑柄之后，这条广告语在2011年退休，取而代之的则是一条新标语：“猪肉，振奋人心”。你可能看过，Ted Cruz【校注：2016年美国共和党总统提名竞争者之一】上周在爱荷华州博览会上烤猪排时穿的围裙上就有这条标语。 But the National Pork Board, a government-sponsored entity funded by a tax on hog farmers, still writes a check for $3 million every year to license the unused slogan—a bewildering payout that only makes sense, critics say, when you realize the money goes straight to an industrial pork lobby that has long been closely tied to the board. Farmers who pay for the board are crying foul, saying the deal amounts to a scheme to let the board skirt anti-lobbying laws and promote an agenda directly against their interests. 但是，“全国猪肉委员会”，这个资金来源于生猪养殖户所缴税收的政府资助实体，为了让这条已不再使用的广告语获得许可，每年仍会开出300万美元的支票。批评者说，这笔支出乍看的确令人困惑，不过当你意识到这些钱其实直接交给了一个和该委员会联系甚密的猪肉工业游说团体时，一切就都说得通了。给委员会付款的农户骂声一片，他们说这笔交易相当于一个阴谋，想要让委员会绕过反游说法，发起一项直接损害他们利益的议程。 “It’s a shell game,” said Hugh Espey, the executive director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, who has been fighting for years to roll back the mandatory payments to the Pork Board. “这是个骗局，”Hugh Espey说道，他是“爱荷华州社区改善公民组织”的执行主任，多年来一直在努力争取减少缴纳给猪肉委员会的强制性付款。 Saying the U.S. Department of Agriculture should have recognized the deal as corrupt and blocked it, Espey and a group of small hog farmers, along with the Humane Society of the United States, sued the federal government to undo the deal and recoup the millions of dollars already paid for the defunct “other white meat” slogan. Earlier this month a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit allowed the suit to proceed. 由于认为美国农业部应该认定这笔交易为腐败行为并加以阻止，Espey和一群小型生猪养殖户连同“美国人道协会”一起状告联邦政府，要求撤销这笔交易，并且追回已经花在废弃广告语“另一种白肉”上的数百万美元。本月早些时候，哥伦比亚特区巡回上诉法院受理了这一上诉。 The deal sends $60 million over 20 years from the nonpartisan Pork Board to the slogan’s legal owner, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), a lobby with which it once shared an office. Small farmers have long been unhappy about the close relationship between the two groups, and see the rich payments for a defunct slogan as an egregious example of the government taking their money and then letting it be siphoned off to an industry group. 20多年间，上述交易将6000万美元从无党派的“全国猪肉委员会”转移到广告语法定所有人“全国猪肉生产者理事会”（NPPC）这一游说团体手上，而双方曾经共用同一个办公室。小型农户早已对这两个组织的过从甚密心存不满，并且他们认为政府收了他们的钱之后任由其被转移到产业集团手中，而用在这条废弃广告语上的巨额花费就是一个非常恶劣的例子。 Many critics also see the deal as symptomatic of a far broader problem with the "checkoff" programs that have become common across the agricultural world, in which the government requires farmers to make regular payments to promotional boards. Checkoffs exist for dairy farmers, mushroom producers, and even popcorn processors. Critics say they violate economic freedom and distort the market; big corporate farmers, they allege, easily find ways to influence the boards and siphon the money off to push their own causes. 许多批评家还认为，这笔交易也反映了一个更为深远的问题，也就是农业界已经司空见惯的“缴款”方案。通过这一程序，政府要求农户们定期为广告牌支付费用。缴款方案涉及奶农，食用菌生产者，甚至还有爆米花生产者。批评者称这些做法违反了经济自由并扭曲了市场；他们还指控，大型农业公司很容易就能找到方法来影响各委员会，并抽取资金以用于他们自己的事业。 “In one sense, it’s a classic case of the larger producers are the more powerful political forces within these organizations,” said Dan Glickman, the Agriculture Secretary at the end of the Clinton administration who largely supports checkoff programs. “从某种意义上说，这是一个反映大型生产商在这些组织内享有更强大政治力量的典型案例，”Dan Glickman说道，他是克林顿政府后期的农业部长，基本上支持缴款制度。 For the unhappy hog farmers, the current problem started with the 1985 Pork Law, when Congress set up the National Pork Board and required all farmers to contribute. Today, hog farmers must hand over 40 cents out of every $100 in revenue from pork sales. The board uses the money, totaling nearly $100 million a year, to conduct research and promote the pork industry, but is not allowed to lobby. 对于那些不爽的生猪养殖户来说，目前的问题开始于1985年《猪肉法案》，当时国会设立了全国猪肉委员会，并要求所有农民作出缴纳。今天，生猪养殖户必须从每100美元的猪肉销售收入中交出40美分。委员会用这笔每年总额将近1亿美元的款项开展调查研究，促进猪肉产业发展，但不允许进行游说。 The main pork lobby is the National Pork Producers Council, which donated nearly a half million dollars to candidates in the 2014 midterms – mainly, its critics say, to press the interests of big corporate hog farms. Legally, it isn’t supposed to use Pork Board money for its lobbying activities. 主要的猪肉游说团体是全国猪肉生产者理事会，在2014年的中期选举中曾捐赠将近50万美元－－根据批评者的说法，这主要是为了推进大型生猪养殖公司的利益。从法律上讲，它不应该将猪肉委员会的资金用于其游说活动。 But critics say the two groups have never been as separate as the law calls for, and now are essentially colluding through a deal that lets the Pork Board funnel money to the NPCC by assigning an absurdly inflated value to the “other white meat” slogan; the money then goes to promote the NPPC’s lobbying agenda. 但是批评者说这两个组织从未像法律规定那样保持分离，而且现在通过这笔为广告语“另一种白肉”设置荒谬天价的交易，猪肉委员会得以向NPPC输送资金，这也使得它们实质上是在串通。NPPC在获取了这笔资金之后便将之用于推动其游说议程。 The Pork Board referred comments about the case to the USDA. A spokesperson for the department said in an email that “the assessments and expenditures by the National Pork Board were proper,” but declined to discuss the case further. 猪肉委员会将关于这桩案件的意见提交给了美国农业部。该部一位发言人在一封电子邮件中表示“由全国猪肉委员会做出的评估和支出是妥当的，”但是他拒绝进一步讨论案情。 The NPPC and NPB have always been very close, so close that a 1999 Inspector General report said that the government had to put more space between the two entities to limit the pork lobby’s influence at the board. NPPC和NPB一直走的很近，以至于1999年的一份监察长报告称，政府需要在这两个实体之间设置更多的隔离，以限制猪肉游说团体对该委员会的影响。 “It's a little bit like these super PACs with campaigns. Same people doing the same thing,” Glickman said about problems with the pork checkoff in the late 1990s. “That wasn't what Congress intended.” “这有一点像竞选中的那些超级政治行动委员会。同样的人做同样的事情，”Glickman谈起1990年代末期的猪肉缴款问题是这么说的。“那并不是美国国会原来设想的。” Espey and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement have long fought the pork checkoff program, and once came close to eliminating it altogether. In 2000, opponents gathered enough signatures among hog farmers to force a referendum on the checkoff. More than 30,000 hog farmers voted; by 5 percentage points, they chose to kill the program. Espey和爱荷华州社区改善公民组织已经与猪肉缴款方案持续作战很久了，并且曾经一度接近将其彻底消灭。2000年，反对者们从生猪养殖户中收集到了足够的签名，推动发起了一场针对缴款的公投。超过30000名养猪农户参加了投票；以领先5%的优势，他们选择终止这个方案。 Glickman began dismantling it, but the NPPC challenged the referendum in court, and when the Bush administration took office that January, incoming USDA secretary Ann Veneman reversed Glickman’s decision. Instead, she crafted a “separation agreement” that overturned the referendum result but required the NPPC and NPB to adjust their operations so they were independent. Glickman开始着手撤销这个方案，但是NPPC在法庭上质疑了这次公投，而且在那年一月布什政府上台之后，新任农业部长Ann Veneman就推翻了Glickman的决定。相反，她起草了一份“分离协议”，推翻了之前的公投结果，但要求NPPC和NPB必须调整他们的运营方式以保持相互独立。 “It was window dressing. It was bullshit,” Espey said. “Essentially, she was throwing out our vote.” “这根本就是敷衍了事，胡说八道，”Espey说道。“实际上，她完全抛弃了我们的投票。” After the agreement, the NPB and NPPC made some changes. The NPPC could no longer be the NPB’s general contractor, meaning the Board had “to conduct its own programming and coordinate its own activities,” according to the NPB’s own video history. The two groups no longer shared an office and a number of staffers switched from the pork lobby to the board. To the NPB and NPPC, Espey and Co. were simply scapegoating the organizations for their own failures. 在达成协议之后，NPB和NPPC做出了一些改变。根据NPB自己的历史记录片，NPPC不再是NPB的总承包商，这意味着委员会必须“自行进行规划，自行协调其活动”。两个组织不再共用办公室，一部分员工也从猪肉游说团体转到了委员会工作。对于NPB和NPPC来说，Espey及其公司仅仅是在为他们自己的失败寻找替罪羊。 The NPPC, which declined comment for this piece, has always owned the “other white meat” slogan, and as part of the separation agreement, it licensed the slogan to the board for around $1 a year. In 2004, the NPB agreed to increase the annual licensing fee to $818,000 a year. Despite the success of “the other white meat” trademark, an agricultural economist recommended that the board not pay more than $375,000 a year to license the slogan, according to the complaint. 拒绝为本文提供评论的NPPC一直拥有“另一种白肉”这条广告语，根据“分离协议”，它将这条广告语以每年一美元的价格授权给了委员会。到了2004年，NPB同意将每年的授权费用提高到818000美元。控告显示，尽管“另一种白肉”这个标志十分成功，某农业经济学家仍然建议，委员会每年最多只能为这条广告语的授权支付375000美元。 In 2006, the NPB signed a deal to buy the slogan for $3 million a year for 20 years—a four-fold jump in price, even though almost no other group would conceivably have any interest in the slogan. 2006年，NPB签署了一项协议，在几乎没有任何其他组织有可能对这条广告语有任何兴趣的情况下，以每年300万美元——四倍跳价——购买了这条广告语的20年使用授权。 “Are the artichoke producers competing for the slogan "Pork: The Other White Meat"? No, I don't think so.” says Parke Wilde, an associate professor of food science and policy at Tufts University who has written extensively about the $60 million deal and considers it corrupt. “是洋蓟生产商在争夺‘猪肉：另一种白肉’这条广告语吗？不，我不这么认为。”Parke Wilde说道。他是塔夫茨大学的食品科学与政策副教授。关于这一6千万美金的交易，他写了大量文章，并且认为这就是腐败。 According to the plaintiffs, the $60 million valuation came from calculating the cost of creating a new tagline, not on the slogan’s market value. But several specialists contacted for this story suggested that with no other reasonable potential buyers, it’s a mistake to pay the full value. 据原告，这6千万美元的估值，是根据创建一个新的品牌口号的成本来计算的，而不是根据这条广告语的市场价值。但在本文写作过程中联系到的一些专家看来，在没有其他合理的潜在买家的情况下，支付全价是一个错误。 “If you’re the single buyer out there, you’d expect a deep discount and that deep discount would be at least 25 percent, perhaps 50 percent,” said Weston Anson, the chairman of CONSOR Intellectual Asset Management, a firm that specializes in valuing intellectual property. “如果你是市场上的唯一买家，你会期望一个非常高的折扣，而这个折扣至少是25%，或许有50%，”Weston Anson说道，他是CONSOR知识资产管理公司的董事长，这是一家专注知识产权定价的公司。 Even stranger, to observers, is that when the Pork Board retired the slogan five years later, it continued paying the $3 million to the pork lobby—despite having the right to cancel the deal with a year’s notice. 对于观察者来说更奇怪的是，在猪肉委员会将这条广告语停用了将近5年之后，尽管它拥有在提前一年告知的前提下取消这笔交易的权利，它依旧继续支付给了猪肉游说团体3百万美元。 “If they have that out, they should be taking it,” Anson said. “如果他们有抽身的机会，他们应该会把握住的，”Anson说。 The NPB says that the “other white meat” slogan still has value as a “heritage brand,” though Anson disagreed: “As best as we can determine, they are not using this brand at all. If that’s true, then this is not a heritage brand. Then, it’s a fallow brand—one that’s been retired—and would be difficult to value given that it has no income, no market presence and only residual awareness.” NPB表示“另一种白肉”这条广告语依旧具有作为“传承品牌”的价值，但安森并不同意：“即使是往最好的方向揣测，他们也根本没在使用这个品牌。如果这是真的，那这就不是一个传承品牌。这是一个已经退出市场的闲置品牌，给它定价会是一件困难的事情，因为它没有收入，没有市场占有率，只有残留的认知度。” Though the Pork Board is subject to federal oversight, what worries Espey and others is that it really operates like a private organization entitled to take farmers’ money, and then spend it out of view of the public – all with the blessing of the USDA. 虽然猪肉委员会受联邦政府监管，Espey和其他人真正担心的是，它实际上像一个有权收取农民金钱的私人组织那么运作，并且它还在公众的视野之外使用这些资金——这些都拜美国农业部所赐。 “The real problem with all of these check-offs is they depend on strict USDA oversight in order to achieve their purpose,” Matthew Penzer, a lawyer for the Humane Society, said. “In this case, that oversight has failed.” The Humane Society has long been critical of the pork lobby and the farming techniques of large pork producers. “这些缴款方案真正的问题在于，如果想要达到其目标，那将有赖于美国农业部的严格监督，” Matthew Penzer说道，他是人道协会的一名律师。“在这桩案件中，监管失效了。” 人道协会长期以来一直批评猪肉游说活动和大型猪肉生产者的养殖技术。 The suit, filed in 2012, was dismissed for lack of standing in 2013 but the appeals court reversed that dismissal on August 14. The government now has 45 days to appeal the circuit court ruling, before the case returns to the D.C. District Court for a ruling on its substance. In the meantime, the payments continue. 2012年提出的该诉讼在2013年由于缺乏诉讼资格被驳回，但是上诉法院在8月14日推翻了这次驳回。在案件返回到哥伦比亚特区地方法院裁定其实质内容之前，政府现在有45天时间对巡回法院裁决提出上诉。在此期间，支付在继续。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The fascinating economics behind Playboy's decision to drop nudes from its magazine 花花公子杂志做出取消裸照的决定背后迷人的经济学 作者：Timothy B. Lee @ 2015-10-13 译者：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值） 校对：小册子（@昵称被抢的小册子） 来源：Vox，http://www.vox.com/2015/10/13/9523879/playboy-nudity-no On Monday, the New York Times reported on a development that sounds like an April Fool's joke: Playboy magazine is going to stop publishing images of naked women. 周一，《纽约时报》报道了一条听起来像愚人节笑话的新闻：《花花公子》杂志将不再刊登裸女照片了。 But Playboy CEO Scott Flanders is serious. He believes the Playboy brand can transcend its salacious origins and become a lucrative vehicle for selling mainstream products. There's already a wide variety of Playboy-branded clothing and jewelry out there, and the Playboy brand is particularly popular in China, where pornography is officially illegal. 然而花花公子的CEO Scott Flanders是认真的。他相信花花公子品牌能够超越自己的色情业出身，通过销售主流产品而获利。花花公子品牌的服装和珠宝早就款式繁多了。而且花花公子品牌在中国特别受欢迎，尽管色情业在中国是非法的。 Playboy tested this strategy out with the Playboy.com website, which has been free of explicit nudity since last year. The company says it's been a big success, attracting a much bigger and younger audience. Now it's hoping to expand on that success with what used to be the country's most popular pornographic magazine. 花花公子已经开始在它的网站Playboy.com上试行这一新策略，该网站从去年开始就已经没有露骨的裸体照片了。公司声称此举已经获得了巨大成功，吸引到了比以前多得多且年轻得多的用户。现在公司正希望将成功扩展到这份一度是全国最具人气的色情杂志上。 Playboy is dropping explicit nudity from its flagship magazine 花花公子正把露骨的裸体从它的旗舰杂志中去除 Starting in March 2016, there won't be any explicit nude images of women in the US edition of Playboy magazine. 从2016年3月开始，美国版《花花公子》杂志将不会再有任何露骨裸照了。 In 1953, Playboy made its mark by being one of the first mainstream magazines to feature pictures of nude women. In the pre-internet era, porn was a lot harder to obtain, so there was a big market for pornographic magazines. The magazine grew to more than 5 million subscribers by the 1970s and attracted a bunch of competitors. 在1953年，《花花公子》作为最早以裸女图为特色的主流杂志之一而名留史册。在前互联网时代，获得色情内容比现在要困难得多，因此色情杂志有很大的市场。到1970年代，《花花公子》已拥有超过五百万订户，并吸引了一堆竞争者。 But the internet has totally transformed the pornography industry. Today, any kind of porn you can imagine is just a Google search away, and in most cases is available for free. So over the past couple of decades, the value proposition of paying $19.95 a year to have a few dozen nude images delivered in dead-tree format each month has become less and less compelling. Today the magazine only has around 800,000 subscribers. 然而互联网彻底改变了色情业。如今，只需google搜索一下就能找到各种你能想到的色情内容，而且多数是免费的。因此，为了每月几十张纸质裸体图片而每年花19.95美元这种买卖，在过去几十年里越来越没吸引力了。现在《花花公子》只剩下大约80万订户了。 On the other hand, Playboy has always aspired to be more than just a pornographic magazine. Over the decades, those 5 million subscribers allowed Playboy to do interviews with a wide variety of famous people, including Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, and Steve Jobs. 另一方面，一直以来《花花公子》所追求的都不仅仅是做一本色情杂志。过去数十年间，五百万的订户量让《花花公子》得以采访到众多名人，其中包括马丁·路德·金、吉米·卡特和史蒂夫·乔布斯。 There's a long-running joke about people "reading Playboy for the articles," but Playboy's non-pornographic content really has been pretty good over the years. Now it won't be such a joke anymore. Playboy will replace its explicit nude images with the kind of PG-13 images found in men's magazines such as Maxim and Stuff, and will beef up its coverage of other topics, including a new sex column and expanded coverage of the liquor business. “为了读文章而看《花花公子》”是个长盛不衰的老笑话，然而这么多年来《花花公子》的非色情内容确实非常不错。现在这笑话将不再是笑话了。《花花公子》将使用诸如《Maxim》和《Stuff》这样的男士杂志中的PG-13（13岁以下未成年人需在家长指导下阅读）级图片来替代露骨裸照，并将丰富其它话题的内容，这其中包括一个新的性爱专栏和增加对酒水生意的报道。 Cutting nudity from Playboy.com was a big success 将裸体从Playboy.com上移除获得了巨大成功 Playboy used to look like a conventional media company with a stable of magazines, websites, television stations, and so forth. But that business model hasn't done well in the internet age, and it reached its nadir in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. 花花公子曾经看起来像传统的媒体公司一样，拥有一批杂志、网站、电视台等。但这样的商业模式在互联网时代不太玩得转，并随着2008年的金融危机落到最低谷。 So the company began downplaying its media properties and focusing instead on promoting and licensing its iconic brand. And Flanders started to wonder whether distributing pictures of naked women was becoming a business liability. "You could argue that nudity is a distraction for us and actually shrinks our audience rather than expands it," he argued last year. 因此公司开始把重心从媒体资产中转移，转而将注意力集中在推广其偶像品牌及品牌授权使用。Flanders开始怀疑发布裸女图片是否成了公司的商业负累。“可以说，裸体内容让公司分心，事实上还减少而非增大了我们的读者数量”，去年Flanders如是说。 Lots of people are attracted to the risqué vibe of the Playboy brand, but there are situations in which outright pornography isn't allowed. Apple's App Store, for example, doesn't allow apps to have sexually explicit imagery, for example, nor do Facebook and Instagram. 很多人被花花公子品牌性感暧昧的气质吸引，但有些地方禁止直白的色情内容。例如苹果公司的应用商店不允许带有露骨性爱图像的应用上架，Facebook和Instagram也一样。 So last year, Playboy overhauled its primary website, Playboy.com, and took out all the explicit nudity (there are still plenty of racy near-nude shots of the type you'll find in other men's magazines). Playboy executives told the New York Times that this was a huge success: Traffic quadrupled, and the average age of readers fell from 47 to 30. 因此，花花公子去年对其主网站Playboy.com做了次大扫除，移除了所有露骨的裸体内容（网站上依然还有大量那种你会在别的男士杂志里看到的近乎裸体的火爆图片）。花花公子的管理层告诉《纽约时报》，此举获得了巨大成功：网站流量翻了四倍，读者的平均年龄从47岁下降至30岁。 In other words, young people who grew up in the porn-saturated world of the internet aren't that interested in Playboy.com as a place to get porn. And the existence of naked women on the site made it awkward to read Playboy articles at work — where many people spend time goofing off online — or share Playboy content on social media sites. Dropping the naked women dramatically expanded the potential audience for Playboy.com without significantly reducing its appeal. 换句话说，在充斥着色情内容的互联网世界中成长起来的年轻人们对通过Playboy.com获得色情内容这件事不感兴趣。网站上的裸女使得在工作场所阅读网站的文章——很多人在工作的时候偷闲上网——或在社交媒体网站上分享花花公子网站的内容变得很尴尬 。去除裸女这招在不严重影响网站吸引力的同时大幅扩展了Playboy.com的潜在用户群。 Playboy is trying to become a mainstream consumer brand 花花公子正努力成为一个主流消费品牌 More traffic and a younger audience are big successes in their own right, but even more importantly, the shift helps make the Playboy brand more mainstream. There's already a large demand for Playboy-branded merchandise, and Flanders is betting that that demand will grow even more if Playboy becomes less associated with explicit pornography in the minds of the public. 更大的网站流量和更年轻的用户，本身就是一个巨大的成功，而更重要的是，公司的转变使得花花公子品牌更加主流。花花公子品牌的商品本来就拥有很大的市场需求，而Flanders深信，如果在大众心目中花花公子与露骨色情联系不那么紧密的话，市场需求将获得更大增长。 The decision to drop nudity from the magazine is best seen in this light. The goal isn't so much to make the magazine itself more successful — though presumably its owners would like to do that — but to make the magazine a more effective sales tool for the Playboy brand more generally. 最好从这样的角度来看待将裸体从杂志中去除的决定：该举措的主要目标并非为了让杂志本身更成功——尽管杂志的所有人想必希望如此——而是为了使杂志成为更有效的营销工具，在更广范围内推动花花公子品牌商品的销售。 Playboy's magazine hasn't been a big money maker in years. Flanders told the New York Times that the US edition of the magazine lost around $3 million last year. But Playboy's efforts to cash in on its brand — and particularly its famous bunny logo — is paying big dividends. 花花公子的杂志已经有些年头没怎么赚钱了。Flanders告诉《纽约时报》，去年杂志的美国版亏损了大约3百万美元。但花花公子通过品牌——特别是公司著名的兔子商标——创收的努力目前正在带来巨额红利。 Playboy's brand is not only widely known in the West, but it's also surprisingly popular in China. Last year, Playboy-branded products generated $1.5 billion in revenues in China, about a third of the worldwide total. Playboy merchandise is available in 3,500 retail outlets in China — which is particularly remarkable because pornography is officially illegal there. 花花公子品牌不但在西方广为人知，在中国也出乎意料地受欢迎。去年，花花公子品牌产品在中国卖出了15亿美元，大约是其全球总收入的三分之一。花花公子的商品在全中国的3500个零售直营店有售——考虑到色情作品在中国并不合法，该业绩就特别值得称道。 Flanders hopes that making the magazine less porny and more mainstream will help make the Playboy-branded products more mainstream as well — and dramatically expand the market for them. Flanders希望杂志不那么色情并且变得更加主流，能使得花花公子品牌的产品也变得更主流——并为产品大幅扩展市场。 Playboy-branded pornography isn't going away 花花公子品牌的色情产品并未离开 There will no longer be naked ladies in Playboy magazine or at Playboy.com, but that doesn't mean we'll stop seeing explicit imagery distributed under the Playboy brand. 裸女将不再出现在《花花公子》杂志和Playboy.com网站上，但我们依然可以在花花公子的品牌之下，看到露骨图像。 In 2011, Playboy signed a deal with the internet porn company Manwin, since renamed MindGeek, to manage many of the company's online properties and television channels. Playboy later regained control over the Playboy.com site, but the rest of Playboy's pornographic empire, including the Playboy Plus subscription service and Playboy TV, continues to be operated by MindGeek. 2011年，花花公子与互联网色情公司Manwin签约，Manwin自此改名为MindGeek，并负责管理花花公子公司的网上资产和电视频道。后来花花公子又收回了Playboy.com网站的控制权，但花花公子色情帝国的其它资产包括Playboy Plus会员服务和Playboy TV将继续由MindGeek运营。 This might mean that Playboy can have the best of both worlds: It could enjoy the commercial benefits of a more mainstream image while continuing to profit indirectly from its pornography business. 这或许意味着花花公子将鱼与熊掌两者兼得：它将从一个更主流的形象获取商业收益，同时继续从其色情产业上间接获利。 On the other hand, if dropping pornography from its website pays big dividends for its licensing business, it's possible that Playboy will seek to shut down its other pornographic properties as well. That might be tricky, since Playboy's licensing agreement with MindGeek runs for 15 years (meaning Playboy might not get control back until 2026). But if Playboy becomes determined to separate itself fully from the pornography business, it might be able to cut a deal with MindGeek to end the deal early, or to choose a new brand name for its pornographic content. 另一方面，倘若将色情内容从网站去除能为其品牌授权业务带来巨大红利，那花花公子也可能关闭其它的色情产业。但这可能有些棘手，因为花花公子与MindGeek达成的授权协议有效期为15年（意味着花花公子在2026年之前可能无法取回控制权）。但假如花花公子决心剥离色情产业，他们或许可以和MindGeek商量提早终止协议，或者为其色情内容选择一个新品牌。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Walmart Is Changing Its Labor Model: How Many Workers Will Lose Their Jobs? 沃尔玛正在改变其劳工模式：有多少工人会因此而失业？ 作者：Tim Worstall @ 2015-9-06 译者：黑色枪骑兵（@忠勇仁义诚实可靠小郎君） 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源：福布斯，http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/06/walmart-is-changing-its-labor-model-how-many-workers-will-lose-their-jobs/ Walmart is quite significantly changing its labor model. Moving from a near hire any live body and let them get on with it one to something where people are well trained, well paid and presumably of rather higher productivity. 沃尔玛正在对其劳工模式进行大刀阔斧的改革。从之前的“几乎是个活人就愿意雇佣，并让他们一直干下去”逐步转变为“让员工接受更好的培训，拿到更高的薪水，以期带来更高的生产率”。 This is what many have been crying out for the company to do for years of course: move to something closer to the Costco model than the one that Walmart has traditionally pursued. 当然，许多人一直就迫切呼吁沃尔玛采取这些行动：从沃尔玛的传统模式转向更类似于Costco的模式。 However, as some like me have been pointing out all along there is a flip side to that change in models. Which is that the end aim is of course to employ fewer of those more productive people at those higher wages. 然而，一些人，比如我，自始至终认为这一模式改变存在负面影响。这种改革的最终目的，是以更高的工资雇佣数量更少但是生产率更高的员工。 The point being that if one can raise productivity levels by more than the increase in cost then of course profits will rise: that being the end goal for all shareholder owned companies. 这个观点的核心在于：如果提升的生产率超过所增的花费，收益就会提升——这是所有股份制公司的终极目标。 The interesting question is going to be how many people either lose or don’t get jobs as a result of this strategic change: and I’ll suggest a method by which we can calculate this a little later. 那么一个有趣的问题就来了：有多少人会由于这种战略性转变而失去或者得不到工作呢？稍后我会推荐一个计算这个数值的方法。 There’s two prongs to Walmart’s new approach. The first is to take a leaf from Henry Ford’s book with that $5 a day thing: 沃尔玛的新方案包括两部分。第一部分是照着亨利·福特的“每天五美元”画葫芦：

One motive is better public relations at a time when inequality is a hot-button political issue. But bottom-line calculations also play a role. 当分配不均成为一个热点政治话题的时候，更好的公共关系就成了动机之一。但实际利益计算也发挥了作用。 Employee turnover costs money—by industry estimates as much as $5,000 per front-line worker, or 20% to 30% of an entry-level salary. 员工的流动替换是要花钱的——按业内估计，每位一线工人的流动所费多达5000美元，也就是入门级薪水的20%到30%。 Standard turnover in retail is 50% in the first six months. If Wal-Mart can reduce this churn, persuading people to stay at least 12 to 18 months, it will save “tens of millions of dollars a year,” according to Ms. Oliver. 零售业员工在工作头六个月内的流动率通常是50%。如果沃尔玛能减少这种流动，劝说员工至少工作12到18个月，照Ms. Oliver 的估计，“每年能省下数千万美元”。

As I explained way back here, Henry Ford’s $5 a day was not what most people think it was. It was most certainly not, as all too many would have it, so that the newly richer workers could all buy a Model T. 我老早之前就已说过，亨利·福特的“每天五美元”并不是大多数人想象的那个样子。这么做的目的，根本就不是许多人所理解的那样，要让那些新富工人都能买T型轿车。 That would have been a great way to lose lots of money. A company cannot pay its own workers more, then see profits rise as they spend that cash on the company’s products. 想大把亏钱的人才会那么干。一个公司不能向他的员工支付更多薪水，并期待员工会把钱花到自家公司的产品上，然后公司利润会增加。 This is trying to raise yourself by your bootlaces. It also wasn’t about trying to create a vibrant midle class. What it was about was reducing the job churn on the assembly line. 这相当于是要拎着自己的靴带把自己提起来。这么做，也不是为了塑造一个有活力的中产阶级。它要做的，只是减少装配线上的人员流动。 Ford was getting through 50,000 workers a year in order to have 13,000 working on the line at any one time. That had vast recruitment and training costs. 福特每年雇佣50000名工人，以保证生产线上时刻都有13000名工人工作。这需要庞大的招募和训练费用。 So, that’s what Walmart is doing here. Let’s see if we can reduce those costs by having less churn. 所以，这就是沃尔玛现在要做的事。让我们看看减少人员流动能否减少这些花费。 That, in turn, means perhaps not bottom fishing in the labor market but improving pay relative to others so that people will stick around a little longer. 这反过来意味着，也许不再从劳动市场底层招人，而是比别家支付更高的工资，以期员工能待得更久。 This could well be a good move too but only time will tell. 这可能是一招好棋，但是效果只能交给时间检验了。 There’s also a second prong to the new strategy: 这项计划还有另一部分。

Front-line employees—cashiers, cart pushers and sales associates—will now spend their first months at the company in a supervised on-the-job training program. 现在，一线员工，比如收银员、手推车整理员和销售助理，入职后的头几个月会在公司接受有人指导的在职训练计划。 In the past, they sat through a few days of orientation and safety drills, many of them focused on compliance with environmental and health regulations. 过去，他们会耐着性子接受几天新人指导和安全训练，这些训练大多数集中在遵守环境条例和卫生条例上。 The only real job training happened in the store—knowledge passed on by more experienced employees. 在店里接受的唯一真正的工作培训是由更有经验的员工传授的知识。

There’s two sides to this. One is the obvious point that if you’re expecting your workers to stick around longer then you’re also going to be willing to invest in them rather more. 这件事是有两面性的。一方面很明显，那就是如果你预期你的雇员会待得更久，那么同样，你也将会更加乐于在他们身上投资。 Because you’ll be able to amortise your investment in them over that longer period that they’re working for you. 因为你在他们身上的投资会随着他们为你工作时间的增长而分期收回。 And there’s the more obvious point of that end goal: better trained workers will be, ceteris paribus, more productive. And thus we can see that Walmart is trying to move from one labor model to another: 另一个更为明显的作用就是终极目标的实现：训练更好的员工，让他们在相同条件下生产率更高。因此我们能明白沃尔玛正在推进劳工模式的转变：

Economists who study retail distinguish between “low-road” and “high-road” employers. One group keeps labor costs down, the other invests more in workers and reaps the benefits in higher productivity. Cost-conscious Wal-Mart is trying to move toward the high road. 研究零售的经济学家区分“低端”和“高端”雇主。前者压底劳工成本，后者会给员工更多的投资，然后通过更高的生产率获益。注重节约成本的沃尔玛正在向“高端”的方向靠拢。

This is all entirely traditional labor economics by the way, there’s nothing mysterious about any of it. However, there is a sting in the tail here. 顺便说一下，这全部都是传统劳动经济学的内容，没什么神秘的。然而，这里有一个令人始料未及的缺陷。 For well over a decade now I’ve been pointing out that yes, sure, Costco pays its workers very much better than Walmart does. But it also uses, per unit of sales, about half the labor that Walmart does. 十多年来，我一直在说，是的，没错，Costco支付给员工的薪水比沃尔玛要多很多。但是达成单位销量时，它用的劳动力大约是沃尔玛的一半。 Thus the shouting that Walmart can and should pay its workers like Costco does comes with that sting in that tail: for moving to the same pay structure would entail at least attempting to move to the same productivity levels. 因此“沃尔玛能够且应该像Costco一样支付工资”这种呼吁就有个意料之外的缺陷：因为采取相同的工资结构就意味着至少需要尝试把生产率拉到相同的水平。 Meaning that Walmart would employ about half the number of people per unit of sales than it currently does. 这就意味着，将来沃尔玛单位销量的雇工数量将只有目前数量的一半。 And now we’re seeing that Walmart is taking at least baby steps to that higher road labor model. And the interesting thing is going to be, well, is the prediction about employment levels going to come true too? 现在我们正目睹沃尔玛在向着“高端”劳工模式蹒跚学步。值得关注的事情将是，关于雇佣水平的预期真的会实现吗？ Just in a little more detail. Productivity is the amount of work (really, the amount of value added) that we get from one hour of labor. Raising productivity thus means getting more value added from one hour of labor. 再说得详细一点。生产率是劳动力每小时的工作量（实际上，是增加的价值量）。那么提高生产率就意味着从单位劳动量里得到更多的增加值。 And if sales are static that then obviously also means using less labor per unit of sales. 如果销售不变，那么这就明显意味着用更少的劳动力达成单位销量。 Thus raising productivity is the very same thing as saying that less labor is going to be used. This still holds even if sales or output rise: there’s still less labor going to be used than there would have been at the earlier, lower, level of labor productivity. 那么提高生产率就等同于使用更少的劳动力。销量或者产出上升的时候，这一点依然成立：需要用到的劳动力比之前劳动生产率水平更低的时候更少。 And the way to test it is pretty simple, because we can find the numbers we need to measure labor productivity in the Walmart accounts. 验证的方式很简单，因为我们能从沃尔玛的账目中找到所需的用来衡量劳动生产率的数字。 We know the number employed in the US….some 1.4 million….and we know what sales are in the US…$288 billion….so labor productivity is $205,000 and change per worker. 我们知道沃尔玛在美国的雇员数量，大约一百四十万，我们也知道它在美国境内的销售额，2880亿美元，所以劳动生产率是大约是每个员工205000美元多一点。 That’s actually sales not value added but that still gives us what we want, a number to compare over time (Costco’s sales per employee are about double this). 这个数据事实上是销售额而不是增加值，但是我们还是能从中得到我们想要的，即可以进行跨时段对比的数据。（Costco的每位雇员销售额大约是这个数字的两倍） As labor productivity rises as a result of more training and lower churn from the pay rises then we would expect to see this number rise. 当劳动生产率随着培训增加以及工资提升导致的流动率降低而增长时，我们可以预期上述数字会增加。 More sales per employee. And then we will also be able to calculate how many jobs have been lost to this rise in productivity. 每个员工将对应更多的销售量。然后我们就能计算出有多少工作岗位会由于生产率的上升而减少。 For, say, that sales rise to $250k per employee. We can then calculate how many employees would have been needed if productivity was still the old, lower, number. 因为，假设人均销量上升至25万美元。我们可以计算，如果生产率还是之前的老的、比较低的数值，那将需要多少雇员。 The number of jobs lost will therefore be the difference between the number actually employed and the number who would have been without the productivity gain. 工作岗位的流失量就是实际雇佣员工数和生产率增加之前本该雇佣的人数的差额。 Yes, obviously, we would need to discount this for the general inflation rate. 当然，我们要给这个数字打个折，因为存在通胀因素。 My prediction is that productivity will indeed rise at Walmart in the coming years. And also that sales per employee will rise, meaning that the number employed will fall. 我的预期是，沃尔玛的生产率确实会在未来几年逐步上升，人均销售额也会提升，这就意味着被雇佣的人数会减少。 Not fall necessarily from the current absolute level, but fall relative to where it would have been absent the productivity increase. 这种减少不是说其绝对值一定会低于当前水平，而是说它会相对地低于生产率没有增加时本该达到的水平。 Anyone want to bet against that prediction? 有人想跟我赌赌这个预测吗？ （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

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