【2017-03-07】 照这个替代方案，Obamacare被保留了一大半，去掉的主要是当初引发各州诉讼、涉嫌违宪的条款，保留的是迫使许多保险公司退出的负面激励条款，和最初的声势相比，这是很糟糕的结果。 这个『Obamacare Lite』（不是我取的名字）在有些方面好像比原版更糟，所以（1）福利果子派出去就是很难收回来，无论是真果子还是假果子，2）对本届国会共和党的预期需要调低一点了。  

【2017-02-23】 @研二公知苗 不少人在讲移民问题时，都忽略社会，文化和政治成本，只讲纯经济收益。讲经济收益时，理论上，无论是受高等教育的合法移民还是从事低端工作的非法移民带来的纯经济收益理论上都是正的。但是这种收益不是一些人描绘的帕累托改进。相反，这种收益实际上带有很强的再分配性质。尤其是考虑到非法移民增加了低端工作岗位的供给，压低了低端岗位的工资，实际上是一种带有劫贫济富性质的再分配。 @whigzhou: 你说的是分配效应，distributive effect，不是再分配，后面这个词要难听得多 @whigzhou: 贸易开放、技术进步、资源发现，都有很强的分配效应，但不是再分配，后者是对由市场机制分配的要素报酬通过非市场手段进行人际转移 @whigzhou: 制度和政策上无视分配效应，是自由市场原则的要点之一，否则贸易保护、卢德分子、行会特权、工会垄断，就都有了位置 @研二公知苗: 但现实中，自由市场的运行还是需要政治上的保障。对受损者的补偿就是为了使得自由市场的基本原则在政治上具有可持续性。 @whigzhou: 妥协让步当然可以，但让步不能通过修改自己的是非观来进行，『你欠我100，还不起？好吧，那就免掉你30』vs『你欠我100，还不起？好吧，那就算你只借了70』  

【2017-02-17】 罗伯斯庇尔24岁时当上了阿拉斯主教区刑事法庭的法官，因为这项工作和他强烈反对死刑的原则相冲突，不久便辞职——哈哈，这是我今天听到的最大笑话。 ​​​​ 前几天还听到个笑话，有位自由派议员受不了[[Betsy DeVos]]当上教育部长，说要让自家孩子home schooling，也很劲爆。  

Aid and Politics 援助与政治 作者:Angus Deaton @ 2013-08-16 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:辉格(@whigzhou) 来源:Princeton University Press,http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s2_10054.pdf To understand how aid works we need to study the relationship between aid and politics. Political and legal institutions play a central role in setting the environment that can nurture prosperity and economic growth. Foreign aid, especially when there is a lot of it, affects how institutions function and how they change. Politics has often choked off economic growth, and even in the world before aid, there were good and bad political systems. 要理解援助是如何运作的，我们需要对援助与政治之间的关系做一番研究。在创造恰当环境以促进繁荣和经济增长方面，政治和法律制度扮演着关键的角色。外国援助，特别是大额外国援助，会影响制度的运作及其变迁。政治向来能阻碍经济增长，即便是在援助流行以前，世上也既有好的政治体系，也有坏的。 But large inflows of foreign aid change local politics for the worse and undercut the institutions needed to foster long-run growth. Aid also undermines democracy and civic participation, a direct loss over and above the losses that come from undermining economic development. These harms of aid need to be balanced against the good that aid does, whether educating children who would not otherwise have gone to school or saving the lives of those who would otherwise have died. 但是，外国援助的大规模流入恶化了地方政治，损害了促进长期增长所必须的体制。援助还会破坏民主和公民参与，这种直接损失比破坏经济发展所导致的损失更为严重。援助的这些危害需要与援助所带来的好处进行平衡考量，不管这些好处是给那些原本无法上学的孩子提供教育，还是挽救原本会死去的生命。 From its beginnings after World War II, development economics saw growth and poverty reduction as technical problems. Economists would provide the knowledge that would tell the newly independent rulers how to bring prosperity to their people. If development economists thought about politics at all, they saw politicians as the guardians of their people, motivated by the promotion of social welfare. Politics as an end in itself, as a means of civic participation, or as a way of managing conflict was not part of their operations manual. 自二战结束后发展经济学建立伊始，这门学科就将经济增长和减少贫困视为技术问题。经济学家会向新近获得独立的统治者们提供知识，告诉他们如何为自己的人民带去繁荣。如果说发展经济学家思考过任何政治问题，那就是将政客们看作是人民的守护人，他们的动机是促进社会福利。政治，无论作为目的本身、作为公民参与手段，还是作为冲突管理方式，都不曾体现于他们的操作手册中。 Nor would development experts much concern themselves with the fact that, in many cases, the governments through which they were working had interests of their own that made them improbable partners in a broad-based development effort. There have been dissenting voices over the years, but it is only relatively recently that mainstream development economics has focused on the importance of institutions, including political institutions, and on politics itself. 发展专家们也不太关心这一事实：在许多情形下，他们的工作所需借力的那个政府，自身也拥有利益诉求，因而不太可能在一个牵涉广泛的发展计划中当好合作伙伴。历年来，持不同意见的声音一直都存在，但直到相对晚近时，主流的发展经济学才开始集中关注包括政治制度在内的制度的重要性以及政治本身。 Economic development cannot take place without some sort of contract between those who govern and those who are governed. The government needs resources to carry out its functions—preserving territorial integrity and maintaining its monopoly of violence, at the very least, and beyond that providing a legal system, public safety, national defense, and other public goods—and the resources that these functions require must be raised in taxes from the governed. It is this need to raise taxes, and the difficulty of doing so without the participation of those who are taxed, that places constraints on the government and to some extent protects the interests of taxpayers. 如果在统治者和被统治者之间不存在某种形式的契约，那么经济就不太可能得到发展。政府需要资源才能执行其功能——至少需要保持领土完整、维持垄断暴力，更进一步则需要提供法律体系、公共安全、国防和其他公共物品。而维持这些功能所需要的资源则必须从被统治者头上以税收形式获得。正是这种征税需求，再加上如果没有征税对象参与，税收很难征得，这就给政府施加了约束，并在一定程度上保护了纳税人的利益。 In a democracy, direct feedback from the electorate evaluates the government’s performance, in effect a sort of project evaluation on the programs that are carried out using taxpayers’ money. While this sort of feedback works best in a democracy, the need to raise funds exists every where, and it will often constrain the ruler to pay attention to the demands of at least some of the population. One of the strongest arguments against large aid flows is that they undermine these constraints, removing the need to raise money with consent and in the limit turning what should be beneficial political institutions into toxic ones. 在民主国家，直接来自选民的反馈可以评估政府的表现，实际上就是对那些用纳税人的钱实施的项目进行评估。虽然这种反馈只在民主国家才运作得最好，但是筹集资金的需要到处都存在，而这通常都会约束统治者，迫使他们关心至少人口中一部分人的需求。反对巨额援助涌入的最强论点之一就是：援助会破坏这种约束，移除征得同意以筹集资金的必要性，在极端情况下还会将本来有益的政治制度变成有害的。 Without an adequate capacity to tax, a state denies its citizens many of the protections that are taken for granted in the rich world. They may lack the protection of the law, because the courts do not work or are corrupt, and the police may harass or exploit poor people instead of protecting them. People may be unable to start businesses, because debts are not paid and contracts are not enforced or because civil “servants” extort bribes. They may face threats of violence from gangs or warlords. They may lack clean water or minimal sanitation facilities. There may be local endemic pests that threaten them and especially their children with medically preventable but potentially fatal diseases. They may lack access to electricity, to functioning schools, or to a decent health service. All of these risks are part of what it means to be poor in much of the world, all are causes of poverty, and all are attributable to the lack of state capacity. Anything that threatens that capacity is inconsistent with improving the lives of poor people. 如果缺乏足够的征税能力，国家就不会向其国民提供富裕世界的人认为理所当然的许多保护措施。他们可能会缺少法律保护，因为法院不起作用或者腐败不堪。警察也可能骚扰或剥削穷苦人群，而不是给他们提供保护。人们可能没法做生意，因为欠债可以不还、契约无法执行，或者因为人民“公仆”会索取贿赂。他们还可能面临黑社会或军阀分子的暴力威胁，可能缺少淡水或最基本的卫生设施。也可能存在地方性的病害虫，给他们、特别是他们的孩子带来潜在致命的疾病威胁，尽管它们医学上完全可以预防。他们可能得不到电力供应，没有学校，或者适当的医疗服务。在世界的许多地区，所有这些风险正是贫穷这一词汇的部分内涵所在，也都是贫困的原因所在，并且都可归因于国家能力的缺乏。所有一切损害这一能力的事物，都与改善穷人生活这一目的相悖。 The argument that aid threatens institutions depends on the amount of aid being large. In China, India, or South Africa, where ODA in recent years has been less than 0.5 percent of national income, and only occasionally more than 1 percent of total government expenditures, aid is not important in affecting government behavior or the development of institutions. The situation is quite different in much of Africa. Thirty-six (out of forty-nine) countries in sub-Saharan Africa have received at least 10 percent of their national income as ODA for three decades or more. 援助危及制度这一论点能否成立，取决于援助量的大小。在中国、印度或南非，近年来的政府开发援助（ODA）都只相当于国民收入的不到0.5%，而且只是偶尔才会占到政府财政支出总量的1%以上，因此援助在影响政府行为或者制度变迁方面并不重要。但在非洲的大部分地区，情况则截然不同。撒哈拉以南非洲（49国之中）有36国的国民收入中至少10%来自于ODA，这种情况已延续长达三十年甚至更久。 Given that ODA comes to governments, the ratio of aid to government expenditure is larger still. Benin, Burkina Faso, the DRC, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Uganda are among the countries where aid has exceeded 75 percent of government expenditure for a run of recent years. In Kenya and Zambia, ODA is a quarter and a half of government expenditure, respectively. 考虑到ODA是流向政府的，因此援助在政府支出中所占比例会更高。贝宁、布基纳法索、刚果（金）、埃塞俄比亚、马达加斯加、马里、尼日尔、塞拉利昂、多哥和乌干达等国所接受的援助最近连续多年占到政府开支的75%以上。在肯尼亚和赞比亚，ODA分别是政府开支的四分之一和二分之一。 Given that much of government expenditure is pre-committed and almost impossible to change in the short run, for these countries (and others for which the data are not available) discretionary expenditures by governments are almost entirely dependent on funds from foreign donors. As we shall see, this does not mean that the donors are dictating what governments spend—far from it. Yet the behavior of both donors and recipients is fundamentally affected by the existence and magnitude of these aid flows. 考虑到大部分政府开支都有预定用途，短期内不太可能改变，因此这些国家（以及数据尚不可得的其他一些国家）政府的自由开支几乎就全部依赖于外国援助者手中的资金。我们将看到，这并不意味着援助者能够决定政府把钱花在哪里——远非如此。不过，援助者和受援者的行为都从根本上受到这类援助资金的存在与规模的影响。 Aid is not the only way in which rulers can rule without consent. A commodity price boom is another. One famous example comes from Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century. Then, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, with its insatiable demand for cotton, the two main sources were the American South and Egypt, and Egypt’s sales of cotton accounted for most of its trade with the outside world. Egypt’s ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, often described as the founder of modern Egypt, paid only a fraction of the world price to the fellaheen who produced the cotton, and he and his court became fabulously wealthy on the proceeds. 援助并不是统治者不经同意而实现统治的唯一途径。大宗商品价格飙升也是。一个著名的例子是19世纪中期的埃及。在这个工业革命的鼎盛时期，市场对棉花的需求无穷无尽，主要的棉花产地有美国南部和埃及，而埃及的棉花销售占了该国对外贸易的绝大部分。当时的埃及统治者穆罕默德·阿里帕夏（常被称为现代埃及的奠基人）只给种植棉花的农民支付世界市场价格的一个零头，自己及朝廷则因棉花收益而富得流油。 The American Civil War tripled the world price in only three years, and under Ali’s successor Isma’il Pasha, this led to what a British report later described as “fantastic extravagance,” while “immense sums were expended on public works in the manner of the East, and on productive works carried out in the wrong way or too soon,” including the Suez Canal. The scale of the spending was so great that it could not be supported even by the wartime cotton price, and Isma’il borrowed on the international capital market. When the price of cotton collapsed after the war, there were riots, armed intervention, and ultimately foreign occupation by Britain. 因美国发生内战，世界棉花价格三年内翻了三倍。在阿里的继任者伊斯梅尔帕夏治下，这种价格飙升导致了一份英国报告后来所称的“极端挥霍”，“发挥东方国家风格，公共工程靡费巨资，生产性项目上的巨额开销要么方向错误，要么上马太快”，其中包括苏伊士运河的开凿。开支规模如此巨大，以至于连战时棉花价格都难以支撑，伊斯梅尔只能向国际资本市场借款。随着战后棉花价格暴跌，埃及出现暴乱，接受武装调停，最后引来英国的占领。 Cotton prices rose from $9.00 for 112 pounds in 1853 to $14.00 in 1860, to a peak of $33.25 in 1865, and they fell to $15.75 in 1870. One might have thought that the foreign lenders—if not Isma’il—would have understood the trouble that lay ahead, but then, as now, the lenders could rely on another government—Britain—to protect and recover their investments. Yet this story of catastrophe is not without its bright side; the Suez Canal, after all, was a useful investment whose benefits need to be counted. 棉花价格从1853年的每112磅9美元上升到1860年的14美元，再于1865年攀至最高价33.25美元，然后在1870年回落到15.75美元。你也许会想，即便伊斯梅尔想不到，那外国放款人本来总该能认清即将发生的麻烦。但那个时候跟现在一样，放款人可以依靠另外一个国家——英国——来保护和收回自己的投资。当然，这场灾难并非全无是处；苏伊士运河毕竟是个有用的投资，其好处需要承认。 There are many parallels between commodity price booms and foreign aid. One is that cash flows come and go in a way that is divorced from domestic needs or domestic politics. In the cotton boom, the cause was the Civil War in America; with aid, it is the economic and political conditions in the donor countries, or international events such as the Cold War, or the war on terror. That aid stimulates government expenditure has been repeatedly documented, and, as in the Egyptian case, the government is freed of the need to consult or to gain the approval of its people. 大宗商品价格和外国援助之间存在许多相似之处，其中之一就是：现金流的进出与国内需求或国内政治脱节。棉花热的原因是美国内战；援助则视乎援助国的经济政治状况，或如冷战一类的国际事件，或反恐战争。援助会刺激政府开支，此类事例史载不绝，如埃及案例所显示的，此时政府已不再需要征询民众意见或寻求民众认可。 With state-owned mines, a high world price, an unlimited supply of poor workers, or a well-funded army, a ruler can stay in power without the consent of his people. With sufficient foreign aid, the ruler can even do without the mines, as eventually happened in Zaire under Mobutu. Aid from abroad kept the regime in business, and most of the aid went to doing so, so that when the regime eventually fell, there was little left, in Swiss bank accounts or elsewhere. 如果统治者拥有国有矿藏，国际市场价格高企，贫穷工人源源不断，或军队资金充裕，那他就能无需其人民同意而掌握大权。若有充足的外国援助，统治者甚至可以无需占有矿藏，蒙博托治下的扎伊尔最终就是如此。外国援助维持着政权运转，而且绝大多数援助款都被用在这方面，所以最终政权垮台时，不管是瑞士的银行账户还是别的什么地方，全都所剩无几。 Of course, with aid the government has a responsibility to the donors, and, unlike in the Mobutu case, which was driven by Cold War geopolitics, one might hope that the donors have the interests of the people in mind. But as we shall see, there are good reasons why this does not work in practice; the motivation of the donors helps much less than one might think. 当然，接受援助的政府对援助者负有责任，而且与冷战地缘政治所导致的蒙博托案例不同，你可能觉得，援助者心中会考虑人民的利益。但我们将看到，有很多可信的理由使得实情并非如此。援助者的动机助益不大，比你想象的要小得多。 Aid, like commodity price booms, can have other unhappy effects on local institutions. Without unrestricted inflows, governments not only need taxes, but also need to be able to collect them. The huge oil revenues in the Middle East are partly responsible for poor democratic institutions in the oil-producing countries. In Africa, presidential systems are common, and an externally funded president can govern through patronage or military repression. Parliaments have limited power; they are rarely consulted by the president; and neither parliaments nor judiciaries have power to rein in the presidency. There are no checks and balances. In extreme cases, large external flows, from aid or commodity sales, can increase the risk of civil war, because rulers have the means to avoid sharing power, and because the value of the inflows gives both sides a prize that is worth fighting over. 跟大宗商品价格飙升一样，援助可能对当地制度造成不幸的影响。如果没有源源不断的资金流入，政府不仅仅需要税收，而且需要有能力征税。中东地区产油国缺少民主，部分原因就在于它们拥有巨额石油收入。总统制在非洲很流行，一个得到外部资金支持的总统能够通过政治分赃或军事镇压维持统治。议会权力有限；总统很少征求其意见；不管是议会还是司法机关都无力约束总统。没有分权制衡。在极端情况下，大额的外部资金流入，不管是来自援助还是来自商品销售，都可能增加内战之危，因为统治者有办法拒绝分享权力，也因为流入资金庞大到值得双方不惜为之一战。 Why does accountability to the donors not replace accountability to the local population? Why can’t the donors withhold aid if the president refuses to consult parliament, declines to reform a corrupt police force, or uses aid flows to bolster his own political position? 那么，为什么受援国统治者对本国人民负责的必要性（因外国援助而放松之后）无法由他们对援助者负责的必要性所取代呢？如果总统拒绝与议会磋商，拒不改革腐败的警察机关，或者使用援助资金来巩固自身政治地位，为什么援助者不能暂停援助呢？ One problem is that the donor governments and their constituents—the ultimate donors—can’t make the right calls because they do not experience the effects of aid on the ground. Even when the crunch comes, and the donors see what is happening, it is rarely in the interests of the donor countries to withhold aid, even in the face of egregious violations of agreements, however much they may have wished to do so in advance. 困难之一是：援助国政府及其选民——也就是最终的援助者——并不能做出正确的决策，因为他们并没有亲自体验援助的影响。即便危机降临，援助者看清了正在发生的事，哪怕恶性违反协议的行为当面发生，暂停援助也很少会符合援助国的利益——无论事前他们是多么渴望这么做。 It is the local people, not the donors, who have direct experience of the projects on which aid is spent and who are in a position to form a judgment. Such judgments will not always be well informed, and there will always be domestic debate on cause and effect and on the value of specific government activities; but the political process can mediate these normal divergences of views. For foreign donors or their constituents—who do not live in the recipient countries—there is no such feedback. They have no direct information on outcomes; they must rely on the reports of the agencies disbursing the aid, and so tend to focus on the volume of aid, not its effectiveness. 只有当地人民，而不是援助者，才能直接体验援助款所支持的那些项目，也才有资格做出判断。这类判断并不总是信息周全的，对于特定政府活动的原因结果及其价值，国内也总是存在争议，但政治进程能够调和这类常规的观点分歧。然而对于外援国或他们的选民而言，由于他们并不生活在受援国，就不存在这种反馈。对于结果，他们没有直接的信息来源，他们必须依赖负责分配援助的各种机构所提供的报告，所以会倾向于更加关注援助的体量，而不是其效力。 The aid agencies, in turn, are accountable to their ultimate donors, and there is no mechanism that holds them responsible if things go wrong for the recipients. I once asked an official of one of the most prominent non-governmental aid agencies in which part of the world she spent most of her time. “The West Coast”—which turned out not to be Africa, but the United States, where several of the agency’s largest donors lived. As we have already seen, World Bank officials have long moved on to other things by the time the effects of their handiwork become visible. There is no responsibility of donors to the recipients of their aid. 而援助机构则是对最终援助者负责，如果受援者那里出了问题，并没有什么机制来追究援助机构的责任。我曾问过某著名非政府援助机构的一个官员，她在世界上什么地方呆的时间最长久。答案是“西海岸”——不是非洲西海岸，而是美国西海岸，该机构几位最大的援助者就住在那里。正如我们所见，早在他们的劳动效果显现之前很久，世界银行的官员们就已经忙别的事去了。援助者对于受援者并没有负什么责任。 Sometimes the agencies know that aid is going wrong and are alarmed by what they see, but can do nothing about it. The director of one national aid agency gave me a bloodcurdling account of how aid funds had gone to gangs of murderers—people who had already carried out one massacre and were training and arming themselves to return to finish the job. I asked him why he continued to supply aid. Because, he replied, the citizens of this country believe that it is their duty to give and will accept no argument that aid is hurting people. The best that he could do was to try to limit the harm. 有时候，援助机构知道援助已出了问题，并且已经对所见所闻感到忧虑，却什么也做不了。某国家援助机构的主任曾向我提供过一份令人毛骨悚然的记录：援助资金到了谋杀团伙的手里，这些人已经实施过一次大屠杀，现在正在加强训练和武装，准备杀回去把事情做个彻底。我问他为什么还要继续提供援助。他回答说，因为本国公民相信提供援助是他们的义务，并且拒不接受任何指出援助正在害人的观点。他能做的，只是尽力减少伤害。 Even when donors know what conditions ought to be imposed, they will often be reluctant to penalize recipient governments who flout them. Donors may threaten punishment to induce good behavior, but when the good behavior is not forthcoming they may be reluctant to take action if the penalties harm themselves or their constituents. 即便援助者知道应该施加何种限制条件，但当受援政府无视这些条件的时候，通常援助者也会对是否惩罚左右迟疑。援助者可能会以惩罚相威胁的方式来诱导良好的行为，但如果好行为迟迟不出现，且如果真正施加惩罚会伤及自身或本国选民，他们可能又会迟疑。 This would hardly apply to the arming of murderers, but it can be a problem in lesser cases. In effect, aid conditionality is “time-inconsistent,” a favorite term of economists: what you want to do in advance is no longer in your interests after the fact. The governments who are receiving aid understand this very well; they can call the donor’s bluff and ignore the conditions with impunity. 在武装谋杀犯问题上，这种情况当然不太可能发生，但在其他没那么严重的事情上，则可能成问题。实际上，援助的限制条款具有“时间不一致性”（这是经济学家爱用的一个词汇）：在木已成舟的情况下，你原先想做的事已经不再符合你的利益。接受援助的各国政府深知这一点，他们面对援助者的虚张声势，会直接要他们摊牌，从而能无视限制条件而不受任何惩罚。 Why the reluctance to enforce conditionality? 为什么在执行限制条件上产生迟疑？ The economist Ravi Kanbur was the World Bank representative in Ghana in 1992. He was called upon to enforce conditionality by withholding a tranche of a previously agreed loan in response to the government having violated the agreement by awarding an 80 percent pay increase to public-sector workers. The tranche was large, almost an eighth of Ghana’s annual import bill. Opposition to the cut-off came from many sources, not just the government of Ghana. Many innocent bystanders would be hurt, both Ghanaians and foreign contractors, who would likely not be paid. 经济学家Ravi Kanbur曾于1992年担任世界银行驻加纳代表。由于加纳政府违反协定，给公共部门工作人员增加了80%的工资，Kanbur接到呼吁，要求他执行限制条款，暂停拨付贷款协议中的一笔款项。这笔款项数额巨大，大约是加纳年度进口额的八分之一。反对中断贷款的呼声此起彼伏，加纳政府只是其中之一。许多无辜旁人，包括加纳和外国的承包商，都有可能受到伤害，因为他们可能将收不到工程款。 More fundamentally, the normal, good relations between the donors and the government would be disrupted, threatening not only the government but also the operations of the aid industry itself; “the donors control so much in the way of funds that to stop these, at any rate to stop them sharply, would cause major chaos in the economy.” In effect, it is the aid industry’s job to disburse funds, and its operatives are paid to do so and to maintain good relations with its client countries. A face-saving compromise was eventually reached, and the loan went ahead. 更为根本的是，援助国与加纳政府的正常友好关系可能受到破坏，不仅会危及加纳政府，而且也会危及援助行业本身的运转。“援助者对资金运作有很大控制，以至于如果停止贷款，至少停贷过于突然，将会给经济造成重大混乱。”实际上，援助行业的任务就是分配资金，从业人员拿着薪水就是要做好这一本职工作，并与客户国维持良好关系。最终，双方保存体面，达成妥协，贷款得以继续发放。 Kenya provides another example of the dance among donors, the president, and parliament. The donors periodically become exasperated by the corruption of the president and his cronies, and they turn off the flow of aid. Parliament meets and starts discussing how to raise the revenue required for the government to meet its obligations. The donors heave a huge sigh of relief—they too are under threat if the aid ceases to flow—and turn the taps back on; parliament is shuttered until the next time. Government ministers also sigh with relief and order up the latest-model Mercedes from Germany; the locals refer to these wealthy beneficiaries as the “WaBenzi.” 关于援助者、总统和议会之间的这种委蛇周旋游戏，肯尼亚也是个例子。援助者总是会周期性地被总统及其党羽的腐败激怒，然后暂停援助。此时议会就会召开，开始商量如何增加政府收入，以满足政府履行义务的必需用度。援助者会大松一口气，然后又把水龙头打开——因为如果援助真正停止，他们也会面临威胁。于是，议会就可以关门歇业了，直到下次再发生类似事情。政府的部长们也会大松一口气，又开始从德国订购最新型号的奔驰汽车。当地人管这些富裕的受益者叫做“奔驰族”。 The award for sheer creativity might go to Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, president of Mauritania from 1984 to 2005. He adopted a pro-Western stance and in 1991 abandoned his previous support for the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Even so, in the early 1990s, his domestic repression became too much for donors, and aid was withdrawn. Real political reforms were begun—at least until the president had the brilliant idea of becoming one of the few Arab countries to recognize Israel. The aid taps were reopened and the reforms rescinded. 绝对原创奖可能还是要颁给1984至2005年任毛里塔尼亚总统的马维亚·乌尔德·西德·艾哈迈德·塔亚。塔亚1991年采取了亲西方的立场，放弃支持伊拉克的萨达姆·侯赛因政权。即便如此，90年代初他在国内的镇压行动对援助者来说仍属过分，援助因此而撤销。此时，真正的政治改革拉开大幕，改革至少维持到了总统突发奇想，成为承认以色列的极少数阿拉伯国家之一。援助龙头重新打开，改革又被废止了。 Domestic policies in the donor countries can also make it difficult to turn off aid. Government aid agencies are under pressure from their domestic constituencies to “do something” about global poverty —a pressure that is stoked by a well-intentioned but necessarily poorly informed domestic population—and this makes it hard for government agencies to cut back on aid even when their representatives on the ground know that it is doing harm. Politicians in both donor and recipient countries understand this process. 援助国的国内政策也可能使停止援助面临阻碍。国内选民会向政府援助机构施加压力，要求他们为全球贫困“做点事”。这些国内民众虽然满怀好意，但在信息掌握上却总是非常缺乏。他们把这压力之火烧得通红，使得政府机构难以切断援助，即便它们在当地的代表知道援助正在害人。 Recipient governments can use their own poor people as “hostages to extract aid from the donors.” In one of the worst such cases, government officials in Sierra Leone held a party to celebrate the fact that UNDP had, once again, classed their country as the worst in the world and thus guaranteed another year’s worth of aid. 受援国政府能把自己的贫困人口当做“从援助国身上索取资金的人质”来使用。塞拉利昂的政府官员是此类案例最糟糕的表现之一，在联合国开发计划署再次将该国列为世界最差国家，因此保证了该国下一年度的援金之后，他们居然开了一个派对来庆祝。 On the other side, donor politicians can give aid to buy political credibility at home when they are deeply unpopular for unrelated reasons; they too will oppose the cessation of aid, even when it is clearly being misused. When this happens—as it did with British aid during the Kenyan elections in 2001, when aid was used to subvert the elections and preserve the power of a corrupt elite—Africans suffer to burnish the tarnished reputations of Western politicians. 另一方面，如果援助国的政客因为其他一些无关原因而非常不受欢迎，他们也可能通过提供援助来收买国内政治信用。因此即便援金明显遭到滥用，他们也会反对停止提供。比如英国在肯尼亚2001年大选期间提供的援助就是如此，当时援金就被用于颠覆选举，帮助腐败精英维持大权。此类事情发生时，相当于非洲人民为了擦洗西方政客的声名污点而受苦受难。 Lyndon Johnson helped hype a largely nonexistent famine in India in order to distract attention from the Vietnam War, not to mention to gather support from American farmers by buying their crops. The givers and receivers of aid, the governments in both countries, are allied against their own peoples. All that has changed from colonial times is the nature of what is being extracted. 为了把民众视线从越南战争上面引开，林登·约翰逊不仅帮助印度虚假宣传了一场基本上并不存在的大饥荒，还通过收购美国农民的农产品来收买支持。援助的提供者和接受者，即两国政府，联合起来欺瞒自己的人民。与殖民时代相比，唯一的变化只是它们索取的东西性质不同了。 There are also practical reasons that restrict the ability of donors to enforce conditionality. Aid is fungible; a recipient can promise to spend aid on health care and do so with projects that would have been undertaken in any case, freeing up funds for nonapproved purposes. It is often difficult for donors to monitor such diversions. The aid industry is competitive, and if one country refuses to fund another will often step in, with a different set of priorities and conditions. The donor who tries to enforce conditions is then shut out and may lose political influence or commercial opportunities, with no compensating gain. 也有一些实践上的原因会限制援助国执行限制条款的能力。援助具有可替代性；比如受援国可以先承诺将援助用于医疗保健，然后用即使没有援助本来就会实施的项目来履行承诺，从而腾挪资金用于未经授权的项目。援助者很难对这类腾挪实施监督。援助行业充满竞争，某国拒绝提供援助，另一国就会带着一套新的政策偏好和限制条款来插手。于是，试图执行限制条款的援助国会被拒之门外，可能会丧失其政治影响力或商业机会，而且得不到补偿。 Aid agencies have recently tried to move away from conditionality, and their language has moved toward an emphasis on partnership. The recipient proposes a plan according to its own needs, and the donor decides what to finance. Of course, none of this disposes of the reality that the donors are responsible to their constituents in the rich world, and that the recipients, knowing this, will design plans that mimic just what they think the donors would have proposed on their own—a process that has been aptly described as “ventriloquism.” It is not clear what sort of partnership is sustainable when one side has all the money. 近来，援助机构已在试图放弃限制条款，转而强调伙伴关系。受援国会根据自身需要提出一份计划，然后由援助国来决定向哪些提供资助。当然，这些都无法绕开援助者需对身处富裕世界的本国选民负责这一现实，受援者深知这一点，因此他们在提出计划时会刻意鹦鹉学舌，提出在他们的心目中援助国自身可能设想出的方案。这一过程已经被人恰当地称为“腹语术”。在一方拥有全部资金的情况下，我们想不出何种伙伴关系才是可持续的。 Politics and politicians, doing what they regularly do, undermine aid effectiveness, but it works the other way too: aid flows undermine the effectiveness of politics. Donors decide matters that should be decided by recipients; even democratic politics in donor countries has no business deciding whether HIV/AIDS should be prioritized over antenatal care in Africa. Conditionality violates national sovereignty. 政治和政治家的惯常行事准则会破坏援助的有效性，但事情也可能在相反方向上发生：援助资金会破坏政治的有效性。本应由受援者决定的事，变得由援助者来决定了。即便是援助国的民主政治也没有理由来决定非洲国家是否应将艾滋病优先于产前保健考虑。限制条款侵犯国家主权。 Imagine a well-funded Swedish aid agency coming to Washington, D.C., and promising to pay off the national debt and fund Medicare for fifty years. The conditions are that the United States abolish capital punishment and fully legalize gay marriage. Perhaps some governments are so dysfunctional that such violations have little cost to their populations. But taking a country into foreign receivership is hardly a good start on building the kind of contract between government and governed that might support economic growth over the long haul. It is not possible to develop someone else’s country from the outside. 试想，如果瑞典一家资金充裕的援助机构跑到华盛顿来，承诺帮我们清偿所有国家债务，并会援助国家医疗保险五十年，条件是美国废除死刑，并将同性结婚全面合法化。也许有些国家政府确实无能透顶，因而此类侵犯行为并不会对该国人民造成什么损害。但是，一国接受外国的托管，对于建立政府与人民之间的契约关系而言并不是什么好开头，而这种契约关系从长远来看可能有助于经济增长。不可能从外部来发展别国。 We have already seen that it is difficult to give convincing evidence of the effects of aid on economic growth, and the same applies when we look at the effects of aid on democracy or on other institutions. Yet once again, we have the fact that small countries that get a lot of aid also tend to be less democratic; sub-Saharan Africa is the least democratic area of the world, and the one that receives the most aid. Countries that receive aid from their ex-colonists are not the most democratic. Perhaps most interesting is a counterpoint to Figures 1 and 2: there has been an upsurge not only in growth but also in democracy in Africa since the cut in aid that followed the end of the Cold War. As always, there are other possible explanations for these facts, but they are what we would expect if democracy were undermined by foreign aid. 之前我们已经提到，关于援助对经济增长的效用，我们拿不出什么有说服力的证据。同样，援助对民主或其他制度的效用也是如此。不过，我们这里又有一个事实：接受大量援助的小国也趋向于更不民主；撒哈拉以南的非洲是全世界最不民主的地区，同时也是接受援助最多的地区。接受原殖民母国援助的国家并非最民主的。最有意思的可能是图1和图2【译注：原文无图，略】的对比：随着冷战结束后援助的减少，非洲不但出现了经济上升，而且出现了更多的民主政体。当然，对于这类事实，总是有其他可能的解释。但是如果民主会受到外援的破坏，这一事实就与我们的预期一致了。 The antidemocratic aspects of foreign aid have been exacerbated by the long-held donors’ belief that aid—and economic development itself—is a technical issue, not a political one. In the hydraulic theory (recall, we are just fixing the plumbing), there can be no legitimate dispute over what needs to be done. This belief has led donors and advisers to ignore or be impatient with local politics. 外援的反民主面向还被援助者长期持有的一种信念加剧了：他们相信援助和经济发展本身都只是技术问题，而非政治问题。在水力学理论（记住，我们不过是在修理水管）看来，关于我们需要做什么，没有什么值得争论的。这一信念导致援助者和建议者都对当地政治置之不理或毫无耐心。 Worse still, the donors have often deeply misunderstood what people needed or wanted. Population control is the worst case; to the donors it was obvious that if there were fewer people each person would be better off, while to the recipients, the opposite was just as obviously (and correctly) true. Western-led population control, often with the assistance of nondemocratic or well-rewarded recipient governments, is the most egregious example of antidemocratic and oppressive aid. Effective democracy is the antidote to the tyranny of foreign good intentions. 更糟的是，关于人民需要什么或渴望什么，援助者通常误解甚深。人口控制就是最糟糕的例子：在援助者看来，很显然人口更少则人均状况就会更好，但是在受援者看来，相反的看法【编注：即人口多没坏处】同样显而易见且真确无误。西方人推动的人口控制，通常伴随着非民主或受益丰厚的受援国政府的协助，是援助之反民主和压迫性的最恶劣例证。有效的民主是外国善心暴政的解毒剂。 The anthropologist James Ferguson, in The Anti-Politics Machine, one of the greatest books about aid and economic development, describes a large Canadian-funded development project in Lesotho in the 1980s that was based on a profound misunderstanding of the way the economy functioned; what in reality was a reservoir of labor for the South African mines was reimagined as a textbook subsistence-farming economy. 人类学家詹姆斯·弗格森在《反政治机器》这本有关援助和经济发展的杰作中，为我们描绘了1980年代在莱索托实施的一项由加拿大资助的发展项目，该项目从根本上就对经济运转方式存在深刻误解。该国经济模式实际本来应是南非矿业的劳动力储军，却被臆想为一种教科书式的自给农业经济。 The agricultural investment projects designed for the imagined economy were about as likely to be successful as a project to grow flowers on the moon. The project administrators—busily fixing the plumbing—remained unaware of how the project was being manipulated by the ruling party for its own political purposes and against its political opponents. In the end, there was no development or poverty reduction, only an extension of the state’s monopoly of political control, an anti-politics machine that made an extractive elite even less responsive to its people. 为这种想象的经济所设计出来的农业投资项目，其成功的可能性就跟在月球上栽花差不多。该项目被执政党操纵，以实现他们自身的政治意图，压制政治对手，而忙于修水管的项目管理人员自始至终对此毫不知情。最后，项目得到的并不是发展或贫困减少，而只是加强了国家对政治控制的垄断性质，催生了一种反政治的机器，这种机器使得榨取型精英对其人民甚至更加漠视。 The technical, anti-political view of development assistance has survived the inconvenient fact that the apparently clear technical solutions kept changing—from industrialization, planning and the construction of infrastructure to macroeconomic structural adjustment, to health and education, and most recently back to infrastructure. That the ideas kept changing did nothing to imbue the developers with humility or uncertainty, nor did the sensitivity of the fashions to first-world politics appear to undercut the technical certainty of the aid industry. The antipoverty rhetoric of the World Bank when Lyndon Johnson was U.S. president was replaced by the “getting prices right” rhetoric when Ronald Reagan was president. “Our” politics seems to be a legitimate part of development thinking, while “their” politics is not. 发展援助问题上的这种技术性、反政治的观点始终存在，尽管我们面临一个尴尬事实：看似显然的技术解决方案经常在变，从工业化、计划和基础设施建设变成宏观经济结构调整，又变成健康和教育，最近又回到基础设施。想法一直在变，但这并没能促使开发人员保持谦逊或心生犹疑，发生在第一世界政治领域中的潮流敏感似乎也没能减少援助行业的技术自信。林登·约翰逊担任美国总统期间由世界银行提出的反贫困辞藻在罗纳德·里根当政时期被“矫正价格”的辞藻所取代。“我们的”政事似乎在发展思考当中理所应当占据一席之地，而“他们的”政事则并不如此。 Aid and aid-funded projects have undoubtedly done much good; the roads, dams, and clinics exist and would not have existed otherwise. But the negative forces are always present; even in good environments, aid compromises institutions, it contaminates local politics, and it undermines democracy. If poverty and underdevelopment are primarily consequences of poor institutions, then by weakening those institutions or stunting their development, large aid flows do exactly the opposite of what they are intended to do. It is hardly surprising then that, in spite of the direct effects of aid that are often positive, the record of aid shows no evidence of any overall beneficial effect. 毫无疑问，援助和由援金所资助的项目助益良多；世上多出了许多公路、大坝和医院，没有援助是不可能的。但援助的负面影响始终存在；即便实施环境友好，援助也会损害制度、污染当地政治，且会破坏民主。如果说贫困和欠发达首先是因为制度糟糕，那么通过削弱此类制度或阻碍其正常发展，大规模援助资金的实际效果确实事与愿违。因此，尽管援助的直接效果通常都是正面的，但援助史上并没有证据表明它们总体上带来了有益效果，对此我们不必感到惊讶。 The arguments about foreign aid and poverty reduction are quite different from the arguments about domestic aid to the poor. Those who oppose welfare benefits often argue that aid to the poor creates incentives for poor behavior that help to perpetuate poverty. These are not the arguments here. The concern with foreign aid is not about what it does to poor people around the world—indeed it touches them too rarely—but about what it does to governments in poor countries. The argument that foreign aid can make poverty worse is an argument that foreign aid makes governments less responsive to the needs of the poor, and thus does them harm. 关于外国援助与减少贫困之间关系的论争，与关于针对穷人的国内援助的论争颇为不同。反对福利津贴的人通常论证说，援助穷人会激励穷人做出使得贫困得以长期维持的行为。我们这里的论证则与此不同。在外国援助问题上，我们所关注的并不是它们对世上的穷人起到了什么作用——实际上援助极少触及穷人——而是它们对贫穷国家的政府起到了什么作用。外国援助会使得贫困恶化这一论点说的是，外国援助会使得受援国政府更加漠视穷人的需求，从而对他们造成损害。 The harm of aid—even in the presence of some good—poses difficult ethical problems. The philosopher Leif Wenar, criticizing Peter Singer’s vision, with which I began this chapter, notes that “poverty is no pond”; Singer’s analogy is not helpful. Those who advocate more aid need to explain how it can be given in a way that deals with the political constraints. They should also think hard about the parallels with the colonialism that came before the era of aid. 援助的危害——即使也会有某些好处——提出了一些伦理难题。本章开头，我曾引用过哲学家彼得·辛格的设想【译注：本文是作者著作The Great Escape第7章的一小节。第7章开头数页，作者曾提到辛格的著名比喻：由于我们所需要付出都很小，拒绝援助非洲儿童的伦理错误就跟拒绝挽救池塘落水儿童一样。而我们离非洲较远、离落水儿童较近这一事实并不会造成什么伦理上的区别】。莱夫·韦纳对此提出批评，他说“贫困并非池塘”，辛格的比喻并没有什么用。鼓吹加大援助的人需要解释，援助如何以一种能够考虑政治约束的方式分发。他们也应该努力思考，援助与援助时代之前的殖民主义之间的对比。 We now think of colonialism as bad, harming others to benefit ourselves, and aid as good, hurting us (albeit very mildly) to help others. But that view is too simple, too ignorant of history, and too self-congratulatory. The rhetoric of colonialism too was all about helping people, albeit about bringing civilization and enlightenment to people whose humanity was far from fully recognized. This may have been little more than a cover for theft and exploitation. 我们现在觉得殖民主义是坏的，只是损人利己，而援助则是好的，是损己（尽管很轻微）利人。但这种观点过于简化，对历史过于无知，同时也过分自夸。殖民主义的论调一样说的全是帮助他人，虽然只是要把文明和启蒙带给其人性尊严远远还未被承认的人们。这种说法有可能仅仅只是偷盗或剥削的文过饰非。 The preamble to the charter of the UN, with its ringing and inspiring rhetoric, was written by Jan Smuts, premier of South Africa, who saw the UN as the best hope of preserving the British Empire and the dominance of white “civilization.” Yet at its worst, decolonization installed leaders who differed little from those who preceded them, except for where they were born and the color of their skins. 联合国宪章的序言部分用语响亮且令人振奋，其作者南非前总理杨·史末资可是将联合国视为维持大英帝国和白人“文明”统治地位的最大希望所在。然而，在最糟糕的情形中，殖民地独立后上台的领导人跟他们的前辈并没有什么不同，区别只在于出生地点和皮肤颜色。 Even today, when our humanitarian rhetoric acts as a cover for our politicians to buy themselves virtue, and when aid is our way of meeting our moral obligations to deal with global poverty, we need to be sure that we are not doing harm. If we are, we are doing it for “us,” not for “them.” 即便是在今天，当人道主义辞藻被我们的政客用来为自己购买德性名声时，当援助被我们当成是履行自己对于全球贫困所负道德义务的手段时，我们也需要明确，我们并没有在害人。如果我们确实在害人，那援助就只是为了“满足自己”，而不是为了“帮助他人”。 （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——

【2017-02-15】 Flynn事件的最佳结果是：除掉川普团队中的几条川普狗，让共和党主流塞进更多人，最终让川普专注于上镜头过戏瘾和给白左做脱敏治疗，把大事交给其他人……好像也不是完全不可能。 ​​​​  

【2017-01-06】 @whigzhou: 川普几条tweets的恐吓威胁，就足以让福特通用们屈膝匍匐，噤若寒蝉，屁不敢放，仅此一点，即可体会联邦政府的权力已膨胀到了何种程度。 ​​​​ @whigzhou: 众多自称爱自由的人看到这种场面居然还能喜欢川普，实在无语。 @夫子大师兄: 我现在也挺不喜欢川普，但之前联邦权力的膨胀跟他没关系吧。 @whigzhou: 对，没关系，他只是在毫无克制的用这根越来越粗壮的权力大棒痛殴私人企业 @whigzhou: 很多人会从『讨厌川普』迅速跳到『投票给希拉里』甚至『喜欢希拉里』，我只能说他心智不健全 @whigzhou: 我对投川普票没什么意见，有N多理由可以做此选择，比如：1）更不喜欢希拉里，2）不了解川普，只知道他是共和党，3）川普虽讨厌，政策相对好一点，4）年纪大的或许靠谱点，5）索性烂个透反倒可能有转机……这些理由都不足以让我对他产生负面看法，但『喜欢川普』就是另一码事了 【2017-01-19】 @whigzhou: 既然川普不能容忍制造业外迁，他会容忍自动化吗？比如数十万卡车司机失业？上百万收银员呢？若要阻止，他会做什么？谷歌亚马逊uber 一家家恐吓过去？

【2017-01-01】 @大鱼说漫画 中国各级官员除了西装之外，还统一会穿这种款式的夹克。母剃刀老师曾经花三千块钱买过同款。这个着装是什么时候开始形成的规则？哪位老师给讲讲？ ​​​​ @黄章晋ster:回复@Duchee_Ren:只是一个猜测，西装有一套来自西方的完整的礼仪规范讲究，无论从习惯还是从观念上，都不好直接照搬中国来，夹克虽然同样来自西方，但它并没有这套规范，既能显示身份又可显示亲民，故成为领导干部非正式场合着装的不二之选 @whigzhou: 动物庄园有一种推动审美趣味不断龟孙化的内在动力 @whigzhou: 爬到猪上校的位置之前，任何个人魅力的展示都是对猪的挑战，爬到后，就算想展示也已不会了，结果就是开国斧头帮的土匪腔去掉江湖气之后的阉匪味  

说说川普吧。平时懒得说这些事情，过年集中说几句。 先说好的。 【亮点】 从已报道的人事安排看，川普的国内政策看起来不错，至少会比希拉里好很多，特别是教育部、劳工部、环保局、卫生部的人选，是其中几大亮点。 从这些人选，加上共和党在国会的多数，有几项前景比较肯定： 1）联邦最低工资不会提高，大好事； 2）势头正盛的特许学校不会受阻挠； 3）暖球党在联邦政府内将全面失势，气候与环境相关的管制会有松动，甚至许多预算和职位会被取消； 4）页岩革命的势头将不会在联邦层面受阻挠，此事的国际后果比国内后果意义更大； 【医保】 川普说要废[[Obamacare]]，但具体怎么弄不太明确，不过他挑了个重量级共和党国会大佬掌管卫生部，此人有医生背景，且此前在医保案上投入很多，提了个替代方案，貌似这事情会是川普的一个政策重点。 废Obamacare自然是好事，不过替代方案会怎么样很难说，推不推得动也大为可疑。 医保是个大坑，消耗政治资源极多，收获却很渺茫，弄不好的话，川普的势头和共和党团结很可能都被它拖垮。 【移民】 边境控制会加强，难民配额会减少甚至取消，这是好事。 不过，对于造成问题的拉丁移民，移民动力比司法控制的影响重要得多，而实际上，拉丁移民的动力近些年正在削弱，所以这件事情上川普其实没有多大发挥余地。 同时，他可能去削减技术移民，那是坏事，而且不像非法移民难控制，削减合法移民配额会有立竿见影的效果。 两类移民有着完全不同的选择机制，限制后一类属于自残。 【大法官】 稍乐观，川普提名的大法官肯定比奥巴马和希拉里的好，但也不必期望太高，我稍稍乐观是因为我觉得他可能对这事情不太感兴趣，所以会听从共和党主流意见。 【金融管制】 相比环境方面的管制，金融管制的后果严重的多，比如Sarbanes-Oxley和Dodd-Frank，但从川普的民粹倾向和他对待企业的态度看，不太能指望他在放松金融管制方面有多大作为。 【政治正确】 川普带来的最好前景可能是政治正确紧箍咒的打破，许多人们敢怒不敢言的烂事将得到遏制，一些蒙尘已久的常识正义得以恢复，西方传统价值观有机会再次扬眉吐气。   再说坏的。 【宪政传统】 川普不是个尊重宪法和宪政传统的人，远远不是，在这一点上，除罗斯福外，我想不出比他表现更差的美国总统，其他政客藐视宪法还会偷偷摸摸遮遮掩掩，他连遮掩都不会，这是他最令我反感的地方。 我曾反复说过，宪法≠《宪法》，复制宪法文本、议事程序、政府结构很容易，但达致宪政均衡却很难，既有的均衡依靠参与各方对传统的尊重以及对违背传统之后果的预期。均衡一旦打破很难恢复，川普很可能是个破坏者。 以候选人身份公然威胁媒体，勒令制造企业回迁，暗示不接受选举结果……，有些恶劣做法（第三项尤其恶劣）虽不会有短期后果，但会改变人们的预期——原来这么没下限的事情也是可以被接受的啊？ 【经济政策】 川普人选中最烂的一个就是[[Peter Navarro]]，此人要么是蠢蛋，要么是哗众取宠的投机分子，对Navarro的青睐最清楚的展示了川普对经济问题的理解力。 【基础设施建设】 蠢。暴露了骨子里的国家干预主义。 【跨国公司】 现在还不清楚川普会如何拿跨国公司下手，如果贸易保护法案通不过或者不起作用，会不会从其他方面下阴招？比如海外利润，避税问题，EB5配额，其他管制陷阱？如果川普果真把制造业回归当成重点，跨国公司估计没好日子过。 【贸易保护】 从专门为Navarro设立新机构（National Trade Council）这个动作看，川普的保护主义看来不会是空话了。 废[[NAFTA]]的后果之一将是正在退潮的墨西哥移民猛增，这我之前说过。 假如贸易保护是专门用来打击中国的，那倒还说得过去，但必须明白这是为打击中国而付出的代价，不是收益，判断他是否明白这一点，可以看他是否为此而从其他方面寻求弥补，比如向盟友和潜在盟友提供更好的贸易条件，从川普对待TPP的态度看，不太可能。 乐观点是，国会大概不会同意将关税提至两位数，大概也不会废NAFTA和WTO，而川普能做的主要是停止推动更多自由贸易协定，在行政分支的权限内展开贸易战，设置一个个双边壁垒，推动贸易相关的管制，果若如此，其伤害将小于Smoot-Hawley法案。 【西方联盟】 川普可能做出的最坏事情将在外交方面，具体说就是：挫伤盟友，毁掉联盟。 美国总统在内政上推动能力有限，尤其是那些利益牵扯广泛的事情（比如税收、医保和最低工资），但在国际事务上行动能力要强得多，而这恰恰是川普最危险的地方。 打击中国，强挺以色列，踢开联合国，这些都很好，问题是，毁掉西方联盟这一件事，足以抵消其他全部好处百倍不止。 停掉TPP的前景已经挫伤了不少亚太盟友，未来假如在南海问题上甩手，西方联盟的这条腿就折了。 从川普对待普京的态度看，他很可能抛弃东欧和GUAM的盟友（后者实际上已经破裂了）。 最重要也最令人痛惜的被挫伤者或许将是英国，本来，英国退欧是强化盎格鲁联盟并以此为基础重建世界秩序的一次良机，但川普极可能毁掉这个机会，在这一点上他比希拉里更指望不上。 【总结】 从截止目前的表现看，川普将带来许多好东西，但不幸的是，他在最重要问题上极可能犯的错误，将让这些好处全部黯然失色。 当然，也可能我看错了，他或许不会犯下我所预料的错误，他过去的姿态或许只是一种姿态，果若如此，将是美国之幸，文明之幸。 所以我在此设定一个开关：假如未来的进展证明他的贸易保护政策仅仅用来打击文明的敌人，假如他积极拥抱退欧后的英国，不抛弃盟友，不牺牲其利益，不将他们推向敌人怀抱，我会立即黑转粉，并满心喜悦的承认自己看错了。  

【2016-12-28】 一群马其顿学生玩营销号逗川普粉的故事，有趣～ 几点观察： 1）这种东西大概不会改变个体的投票选择，但可能会略微提高川普粉投票率， 2）主要功能是心理按摩，没人在意从中得到什么信息， 3）类似游戏对左派玩不动，因为主流媒体已经为他们提供足够多按摩师了，而川普粉的饥渴恰好是个生态空档， 4）facebook看来也是养营销号的好地方， 5）社交网让模因学终于有了可施展的地方，貌似，  

封侯拜爵的神仙们 辉格 2016年12月11日 中国民间信仰以其神仙繁多而著称，宋代仅湖州一地的寺观祠庙里供奉的神祗，有史料可查者即有92个，扣除名号重复者，还有50多个，粗略估算，全国各地的神祗数量大约介于乡镇数和村庄数之间，看来古代中国人『积极造神，见神即拜』的名声并非虚浪。 如此多神仙得到敬拜，还要归功于神仙来源的多样化，和大众在神仙制造方式上的创造性；早期神祗来源大致和其他文化相仿，比如司掌某种自然力的自然神，或者被认定为某一族群共同祖先的始祖神，然而自中古以降，一种新型神祗开始大量涌现。 这些新神都是不久前还生活于人世的真实人物，因某种显赫成就或奇特经历而被认为拥有神力；认定神力的入门标准很低——担任过高官，参加过某次战役，遭受过冤屈，或者离奇死亡——总之，任何在大众眼里有点特别的地方都可以让他们获得候选资格，但真正确立其神灵地位的，是『灵验』事迹，即有人在向他祈求佑助时得偿所愿。 在《变迁之神》一书中，人类学家韩森考察了此类神祗的兴起，发现其数量在宋代经历了爆发性增长，而之所以神界能容得下如此规模的神口增长，是因为他们都是地方性的，其神力作用半径不过数十里，各地若想有神可求，就得自己造一个，而同时，造神逻辑本身确保了新神的供给：灵验的随机性意味着总是不断会有旧神失宠，新神崛起。 有趣的是，帝国朝廷对这场民间造神运动颇为热心，从11世纪初起，宋廷便挑选一些信众认可度较高的地方神祗予以官方承认，编入祀典，许多还授予官爵名号，拨给公款用于立碑修庙；一旦某神获得这样的官方地位，地方官便有责任定期组织祭祀敬拜活动，甚至提供财政和劳役支持。 韩森注意到，从1075年起，为地方神仙封授官爵的做法大面积铺开，并在此后成为政府的一项常规职能，其规模甚大，每年封授数十位神仙，每次封授都要经历一个繁杂的流程，涉及尚书省、礼部和太常寺的众多衙门，还有地方政府的两轮灵验性查证，那么，朝廷为何要花费大量行政与财政资源来做这样一件看起来没有实际功效的事情呢？ 要理解这一点，我们最好将它和帝国的另一项重要制度——科举——对照着看；表面上，科举只是为帝国选拔官员的（它也确实有这功能），但实际上，它最重要的功能是为全民提供一部开放、全面覆盖且贯通到底的社会上升阶梯，而在此之前，上升通道往往为数十个门阀豪族所垄断，其他人只能凭借战功、偶然的恩宠、内乱造成的重新洗牌等非经常性机会来谋求晋身。 科举的这一功能对赢取精英阶层的广泛效忠从而强化帝国权力起着极为根本的作用，它让人口中最富有、最有才智、最有野心的那些人将其视为实现抱负的好机会，而假如没有这样的机会，他们很可能去支持其他潜在的权力中心，或者以官方所不愿看到的方式施展抱负，因而对帝国权力构成威胁。 科举也是推行官方价值体系和历史叙事的工具，求取功名者心甘情愿接受和传播官方说辞，而一旦取得功名便成为这一体系的既得利益者因而有足够动机去维护它，并将其渗透植入到他们拥有巨大影响力的家族传统和地方文化中。 虽然只有百分之几的成年男性参与科举，取得功名者更少，但无论是巩固还是颠覆帝国权力基础，这都是最有能量的一群人，而且，科举功名带来的权力、财富、士绅特权，甚至仅仅是读写能力，都会将他们置于家族和地方社区的领袖地位，因而笼络他们就笼络了他们所在的家族和地方。 从唐代起，帝国通过封授土司对未归化地区实施羁縻政策，科举与士绅特权的结合，其实就是对政治结构中帝权难以直接通达的部分实施羁縻，通过士绅羁縻家族与地方，类似的，为地方神仙封授官爵，则是对民间信仰与崇拜活动的羁縻。 之所以神仙也需要羁縻，是因为，对于世俗权力，神是个危险的存在，每个神灵名下都可能凝聚起一套价值观，道德规范，行为准则，乃至行动纲领，其中每一样都可能与官方版本相冲突，都有潜力在权力竞争中成为敌方的动员与组织基础，特别是当它们被一个独立的僧侣团体所控制时，就更危险了。 凭借封授制度，朝廷有机会对神祗进行筛选、约束、引导、改造和控制，很明显，他们会竭力排除最危险的那些神，比如有着另一套行为准则的道德神，或一神教中极具动员力的排他性神，或有着现成经典因而其合法性可能被僧侣组织掌握的神，还有附带着行动纲领的弥赛亚，而最合他们胃口的，将是那些不具有全国性动员能力的地方神，以及能够提供现世佑助却又毫无道德要求的功利神，或许并非巧合的是，后两种恰是此后中国最流行的神灵。  

Yuri Kochiyama, today’s Google Doodle, fought for civil rights — and praised Osama bin Laden 今天的谷歌Doodle：为民权作斗争并歌颂本拉登的河内山百合 作者:Dylan Matthews @ 2016-05-19 译者:bear 校对:Tiff 来源:VOX,http://www.vox.com/2016/5/19/11713686/yuri-kochiyama Thursday, May 19, this year would've been the 95th birthday of Yuri Kochiyama, a prominent Japanese-American activist who passed away at 93 two years ago. Google is marking the occasion with one of its trademark doodles. 今年五月十九日的这个周四是河内山百合的95岁诞辰，这位生前著名的日裔美国激进分子，于两年前93岁时去世。谷歌把这一天标记为一个Google doodle。【译注：Google doodle是谷歌为了庆祝节日、纪念伟人以及其它伟大成就的临时主页标志。】 Some of Kochiyama's work was deeply, clearly admirable. As an associate of Malcolm X, she was an important nonblack ally to the more militant end of the civil rights movement. She endured forced internment during World War II, and was an outspoken advocate for reparations to internees, which would eventually be passed in 1988. She was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and advocate for inmates she viewed as political prisoners. 河内山的一些工作是值得被深刻地、清晰地赞颂的。作为马尔科姆·艾克斯【译注：马尔科姆·艾克斯与马丁·路德·金并称为20世纪中期美国历史上最著名的两位黑人领导人，但他反对后者的“非暴力”的策略，主张通过以暴力革命的方式获取黑人的权利。】的伙伴，她是民权运动中战斗在第一线的重要的非黑人同盟。她在二战时期被强制收容【译注：由于二战时日本是美国的敌对国，日裔美国人被强制收容】，并且成为“被收容者赔偿”法案的积极倡导者，而这项政策最终在1988年通过。她也为反越战发声，并且支持那些她视为政治犯的囚犯。 But other commitments of hers were more ambiguous. She was an outspoken admirer of Mao Zedong even after the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. She praised Malcolm X for his "admiration for Mao and Ho Chi Minh," and worked closely with the Revolutionary Action Movement, an "urban guerrilla warfare" organization based on "a synthesis of the thought of Malcolm X, Marx and Lenin, and Mao Zedong." The activist Robert Williams gifted her with a copy of the Little Red Book, and she later thanked him for "the gift of Mao's philosophy." 但是她其他的追求则更为暧昧一些。她是毛的直言不讳的崇拜者，即便是在大跃进和文革之后。她因为马尔科姆·艾克斯对毛和胡志明的赞赏而赞扬他，并且和“革命行动运动”组织亲密合作—这是一个基于马尔科姆·艾克斯思想、马克思列宁思想以及毛思综合体的“城市游击战”组织。【译注：Revolutionary Action Movement是马尔科姆·艾克斯的伙伴Max Stanford建立的半秘密组织，制定了用马克思列宁主义建立黑人国家主义的运动纲领】社会活动家罗伯特·威廉姆斯送了她一本红宝书作为礼物，对此她以这是“一份毛思的礼物”为由表示了感谢。 Yuri Kochiyama was a supporter of the terrorist group Shining Path 河内山百合是恐怖组织光明之路的支持者 Two positions of Kochiyama's stand out as particularly alarming. First, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the Peruvian terrorist group Shining Path, a Maoist organization that has conducted a brutal insurgency killing tens of thousands of people since 1980.Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that Shining Path personally killed or disappeared at least 30,000. 河内山有两个立场尤其让人警觉。第一，她是秘鲁恐怖组织光辉道路的狂热拥护者——这是一个毛派组织，从1980年开始发起了一场导致数万人死亡的血腥叛乱。秘鲁真相与和解委员会认为至少三万人遭到了光辉道路的亲自杀害或导致失踪。 "Its tactics include the burning of ballot boxes and the public 'executions' of moderate local leaders and others, including nuns and priests, who are seen as rivals for the allegiance of the poor," according to a 1992 New York Times report. "In wildly exaggerated demonstrations of Maoist precepts, children have been killed for political 'crimes.' Amnesty International says the guerrillas routinely torture, mutilate and murder captives. 纽约时报在1992年的一则报道中提到：“它的策略包括烧毁投票箱和公开处决温和的本地领袖和其他人，包括修女和神父——他们被视为无产阶级的敌人”，“在疯狂的毛派戒律夸张示范中，孩子由于政治犯罪被杀害。大赦国际组织说这个游击队经常折磨，残害和杀害俘虏。” "We reject and condemn human rights because they are reactionary, counter-revolutionary, bourgeois rights," founder Abimael Guzmán declared in one document. "Rather than concentrate its attacks on the armed forces or police, Shining Path has predominantly singled out civilians," Human Rights Watch noted in 1997. "The Shining Path has pragmatically avoided taking captives unless it intends to execute them … Shining Path has been reported to torture captured civilians before executing them." Shining Path also used rape as a weapon of war. 创始人阿维马埃尔·古斯曼在一份文件中声称:“我们拒绝并谴责人权因为它是反动的，反革命的，资产阶级法权的。”“针对军队和警察的攻击还是次要的，光辉道路主要是甄选平民”人权观察组织在1997年写道，“光辉道路实用主义地避免抓俘虏，除非它打算处决他们……有报道称光辉道路在处决被抓的平民前会折磨他们。”光辉道路还把强奸作为一种战争武器。 This did not appear to bother Kochiyama, who joined a delegation to Peru organized by the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, which defends the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. She read, in her words, "the kind of reading materials that I could become 'educated' on the real situation in Peru; not the slanted reports of corporate America. The more I read, the more I came to completely support the revolution in Peru." In other words, she read, and believed, Maoist propaganda denying Shining Path's war crimes. 这似乎并没有对河内山造成困扰，她曾加入过一个由支持大跃进和文革的毛派共产主义革命党组织的代表团去秘鲁。她读道——她的原话：“这类读物能让我知晓秘鲁真实的现状；有别于美国企业的那些带有偏见的报道。我越读越觉得我在变得更加支持在秘鲁进行的这场革命。”换句话说，她阅读并且相信毛派的宣传，并且否认光辉道路的战争罪行。 After her return from Peru, she declared, "What has been taking place in both Peru and the US is a serious campaign to discredit Guzmán and the Shining Path movement, tainting them as terrorists, undermining their struggle with lies, isolating them, and intimidating anyone who might support them." 在她从秘鲁回来后，她声称：“在秘鲁和美国正在发生的是一场严重的运动——抹黑古斯曼和光辉道路运动，污蔑他们是恐怖分子，用谎言破坏他们的斗争，孤立他们，并且恐吓任何可能支持他们的人。” Yuri Kochiyama declared Osama bin Laden "one of the people that I admire" 河内山百合声明本拉登是“我尊敬的人之一” Kochiyama was a thorough-going opponent of what she viewed as American imperialism, and like some radical anti-imperialists this occasionally led her to admiring truly loathsome figures, because she thought they were effective at combating American empire. Abimael Guzmán was one. Osama bin Laden was another. 河内山是所有被她视作美帝主义事物的死对头，并且，就像一些激进的反帝国主义斗士一样，这偶尔使她仰慕一些真正令人讨厌的人物，因为她认为他们在有效地和美帝战斗。阿维马埃尔·古斯曼是一个，本拉登是另一个。 In a 2003 interview for the Objector: A Magazine of Conscience and Resistance, Kochiyama explained: 2003年，在《反对者：一份良心和抵抗的杂志》的采访中，河内山解释道：

I’m glad that you are curious why I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire. They had much in common. Besides being strong leaders who brought consciousness to their people, they all had severe dislike for the US government and those who held power in the US. 我非常高兴你对我将本拉登视为我尊敬的人之一的理由感到好奇。对我而言，他在我心中的位置和马尔科姆·艾克斯、切·格瓦拉、帕特里斯·卢蒙巴（译注：刚果民主共和国首任总理）、菲德尔·卡斯特罗，以及所有我尊敬的领袖是一样的。他们有很多共同点。除了以强大的思想领导他们的人民之外，他们都对美国政府和那些在美国掌权的人有着强烈的厌恶。 bin Laden may have come from a very wealthy family, but by the time he was twenty, he came to loathe the eliteness and class conduct of his family… 本拉登可能是来自非常富裕的家庭，但在20岁之时，他开始憎恨精英阶级和他家人所在阶级的做法…… …You asked, "Should freedom fighters support him?" Freedom fighters all over the world, and not just in the Muslim world, don’t just support him; they revere him; they join him in battle. ……你问：“自由斗士应该支持他吗？”全世界的自由斗士，不仅在穆斯林世界，不但支持他；他们尊敬他；他们在战斗中加入他。 …You stated that some freedom fighters responded that bin Laden’s agenda is more reactionary and does not speak to the needs of the masses of people who exist under US dominance. bin Laden has been primarily fighting US dominance even when he received money from the US when he was fighting in Afghanistan. He was fighting for Islam and all people who believe in Islam, against westerners, especially the US--even when he was fighting against the Russians. ……你提到一些自由斗士回应说本拉登的事业是更加反动的，并且没有为生活在美国主导下的人民群众的需求发声。即便是在他接受美国资金在阿富汗战斗的时期，本拉登的主要精力就已经放在和美国主导做斗争上了。他在为伊斯兰和所有信仰伊斯兰的人民和西方势力斗争，特别是美国——即便是在他和俄罗斯战斗的情况下。

To be clear, this is Kochiyama defending bin Laden — who, besides being a mass murderer, was a vicious misogynist and hardly the brave anti-imperial class traitor Kochiyama fancies him as — against other leftists who correctly noted that you can oppose American imperialism without allying or supporting violent jihadism. 需要明确的是，这是河内山为本拉登所作的辩护，而另一些左派人士正确地指出，在不支持暴力圣战主义或不与之结盟的情况下，也可以反对美帝国主义，对此她持反对意见。而本拉登，除了是一个大规模的杀人凶手外，还是一个恶毒的厌恶女性的人，并且他不可能像河内山赞许的那样是一个勇敢的反帝国主义的阶级反叛者。 Kochiyama's praise for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro is also controversial, and, I think wrong, but is at least somewhat common on the left. Sympathy for Shining Path and bin Laden, by contrast, is not a common left position basically anywhere. 河内山对切格瓦拉和卡斯特罗的赞美同样是有争议的。我认为这是错的，但至少在左派中还算常见。相比之下，对光辉道路和本拉登的同情在任何的左派阵营都不寻常。 （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——

When Democracy Meets the Ghost of Evolution: Why Short Presidents Have Vanished 当民主遭遇进化的幽灵：矮个总统为何不再有 作者:Lixing Sun @ 2016-03-02 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:明珠(@老茄爱天一爱亨亨更爱楚楚) 来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/article/when-democracy-meets-the-ghost-of-evolution-why-short-presidents-have-vanished/ Size matters in politics: America hasn’t seen a president shorter than 5’7” since William McKinley. A main culprit, unbeknownst to many, comes from voters’ cognitive biases—the work of evolution. And the conundrum took a theatrical turn early this year when Marco Rubio, a Republican presidential hopeful, was spotted wearing a pair of new boots. 身高在政治中很重要。自威廉·麦金利以后，美国已经没有出现过身高低于5英尺7英寸的总统了。一个不为许多人所知的主要原因是选民的认知偏差——这是进化的产物。本年初，这个谜案出现了一个戏剧性转变：来自共和党的总统强力候选人马克·卢比奥穿出了一双新靴子。 “Marco Rubio’s Republican rivals literally are hot on his heels,” opened a New York Post news article on January 6. Speculations followed as to how expensive the boots were. The Rubio camp wasted no time to clarify that they were nothing more than Men’s Florsheim, costing about $100. “卢比奥的党内对手的热情名副其实地只落后他一个脚跟”，1月6日的《纽约邮报》新闻报道如此开头。随后就有人开始猜测这双靴子有多贵。卢比奥的竞选团队即刻澄清说那只是一双富乐绅男款鞋，价格约100美元。 But the core of Rubio’s “bootgate” brouhaha wasn’t about luxury; it was about the heels—a whole two inches high. “A vote for Marco Rubio” tweeted Rick Tyler, Ted Cruz’s commuatsnications director, “is a vote for Men’s High-Heeled Booties.” 但卢比奥“靴子门”事件喧闹的核心不在于它是不是奢侈品，而在于它的鞋跟——厚达2英寸。“投票支持卢比奥”，泰德·克鲁兹的公关联络主管Rick Tyler在Twitter上说，“就是投票支持男式高跟靴子。” Why would Rubio sport a pair of, as Rand Paul teased, “cute new boots”? As far as we know, tall men have scores of advantages in life, work, and romance. Among CEOs, for example, 90% are taller than the average man, and only 3% are below 5’7”. In fact, for every inch added to their height, men can get an extra 1.8% (about $800) in wages, an amount duly dubbed by economists as a“height premium.” 为什么卢比奥会穿着一双如兰德·保罗所戏称的“可爱小靴靴”出来卖弄呢？据我们所知，高个子男人在生活、工作和爱情方面都有优势。比如，CEO中90%身高高于男性平均水平，只有3%身高不到5英尺7英寸。事实上，身高每增加1英寸，男性可以多拿1.8%的工资（约800美元），经济学家恰如其分地把这个增加额称为“身高溢价”。 Rubio may be aware that since the beginning of the last century, nearly 70% of the presidential campaigns between the two major parties have been won by the taller candidate. This wasn’t always the case, though. In fact, of the presidents elected before 1900, eleven were shorter than 5’9”, and only nine were taller (see the chart). 卢比奥可能意识到，自上个世纪初以来，两大党之间70%的总统竞选最终是身材更高的候选人获胜。但是，情况并非从来如此。实际上，在1900年以前获选的总统中，11人身高低于5英尺9英寸，只有9人身材比这高（见下图）。   After that, however, all short candidates have lost to their tall rivals—James M. Cox (5’6”) to Warren G. Harding (6’0”) in 1920, Thomas Dewey (5’8”) to FDR (6’2”) in 1944, then to Harry S. Truman (5’9”) in 1948, and Michael Dukakis (5’8”) to George H. W. Bush (6’2”) in 1988. 但是，自那以后，所有矮个候选人都输给了他们的高个子对手：1920年，詹姆斯·M·考克斯（5英尺6英寸）输给了沃伦·G·哈丁（6英尺）；1944年，托马斯·杜威（5英尺8英寸）输给了F·D·罗斯福（6英尺2英寸），1948年他又输给了哈里·S·杜鲁门（5英尺9英寸）；1988年，迈克尔·杜卡基斯（5英尺8英寸）输给了老布什（6英尺2英寸）。 At 5’10”, Rubio is taller than the average American man. Still, he is 5” shorter than the front-runner Donald Trump, a difference you can easily see on the screen during Republican primary debates. By adding two inches to his stature, he hoped to up his chance—if only his rivals weren’t paying attention. 卢比奥身高5英尺10英寸，高于美国男性平均水平。但是，他还是比领跑者唐纳德·特朗普矮5英寸。这一差别在共和党初选辩论的屏幕上看得很清楚。他想通过给自己身高增加2英寸来提高机会——只盼对手不要注意。 Do tall men make good leaders—presidents in particular? I pulled out data from Wikipedia.com and did some statistics (such as the Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis). And I found no relationship whatsoever between height and performance ranking for all elected presidents before 1900. (Obviously, I can’t do so for the period after 1900 because no short presidents have been elected.) 高个子就能当好领袖吗？特别是，高个子就能当好总统吗？我从维基百科上找数据做了一些统计工作 （比如曼—惠特尼U检验、斯皮尔曼等级相关分析）。我发现，1900年前获选上任的所有总统的身高和他们的任职表现排名之间找不出任何关系。（1900年以后显然无法做这种分析，因为这段时间没有矮个总统获选。） Why have short American presidents suddenly vanished since 1900? 为什么美国在1900年后突然就没有矮个总统了呢？ The answer, apparently, lies in the use of images in the media. In fact, the advent of the televised debate in 1960 has ushered in even more public scrutiny on candidates’ looks. As a result, no short or bald candidates have made it into the White House since Dwight Eisenhower. (Perhaps, that’s why Trump is careful about his hair—in case people think he is bald.) 答案显然在于媒体对照片的大量使用。实际上，1960年出现的电视辩论使公众对候选人的外貌审查进一步增加。于是，自艾森豪威尔以来，再没有任何矮个或秃顶候选人入主白宫了。（这也许就是特朗普特别在意发型的缘故，他担心人们以为他秃顶。） How can a candidate’s physical appearance hold such a strong sway on voters’ choices? Psychologists and behavioral economists will point to the halo effect, where a perceived strength—here, the height of a candidate—eclipses all weaknesses. Why, then, are our cognitive systems so naïve as to swoon for something utterly irrelevant (namely, the body size) of a potential leader? 为什么候选人的身体外形如此强烈地左右选民的选择呢？心理学家和行为经济学家可能会说这是因为存在光环效应：人们感知到的某一力量（此处就是候选人的身高）会遮蔽所有弱点。那么，我们的认知系统为什么如此幼稚，竟会被准领导人完全无关的某些特征（即体型大小）迷住心神呢？ The answer lies in our evolutionary past. Research shows that in a vast number of animals, from insects to mammals, body size can robustly predict winners when resources and mates are at stake. In primates, alpha males are usually large and assuming. (That’s why, even for a novice, it often takes just a glance to spot them in a bunch.) Not only do they win more fights, but females also fall for them. 答案就是我们的进化史。研究表明，对于从昆虫到哺乳类的大量动物而言，在资源和配偶成问题的情况下，体型大小能牢靠的预测谁会胜出。灵长类的雄性领袖通常都高大专横。（因此即便是新手也能从一群动物中一眼认出它们。）它们不但能赢取更多战斗，而且能收获雌性的喜爱。 This process favoring large body size is known as sexual selection, and apparently, it also worked for our Stone-Age ancestors. Even in modern tribal societies, from the Amazons to Papua New Guinea, tall, husky men are still widely preferred as chiefs—or “Big Men,” in Polynesia and other Pacific islands. No wonder our cognitive systems are tuned to looking for tall guys as leaders or mates—the hunks, in our colloquial lingo. 这一偏爱大块头体格的进程叫作性选择，我们石器时代的祖先们显然也受到了影响。即便在现存的部落社会中，从亚马逊丛林到巴布亚新几内亚，人们依然普遍更喜欢接受高大魁梧的男性当首领——或者“大人”，波利尼西亚和其他太平洋岛屿上就用这种称呼。因此，我们的认知系统会调整到找高个男人（——就是俗话说的hunk）做领袖或配偶，这毫不奇怪。 Since 1900, apparently, our liking for hunks hadn’t hit a major hitch until Harding was elected. In appearance, Harding was tall, virile, and gracious with thick eyebrows, wide shoulders, and a deep voice—features that can provoke a feeling of being macho, resolute, and competent. 显然自1900年以来，我们对大个头肌肉男的喜爱直到哈丁当选都没有遭遇什么大挫败。哈丁眉毛浓密、肩膀宽阔、声音低沉，身材高大雄壮且和蔼可亲。这些特征让人觉得他富于男性气概、做事果断干练。 Indeed, he rose from being a small town newspaper editor to an Ohio state senator, a US senator, and finally the president. But just after two years in the Oval Office, Harding’s impressive suite of manly features turned out to be all fake. They did nothing but make him a womanizer. 实际上，他最早只是一个小镇的报纸编辑，后来当上俄亥俄州参议员，然后是国会参议员，最后成为总统。但入主白宫椭圆办公室才2年，哈丁那些令人印象深刻的全套男性气质完全变成了假相。它们没有什么用处，只是让他风流成性而已。 He is called, according to the U.S. News, “an ineffectual leader who played poker while his friends plundered the U.S. treasury.” Even Harding himself confessed, “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.” When he died, rumors had it that his wife had poisoned him, not out of jealousy but to salvage his reputation from the charges of corruption in his administration. 据《美国新闻杂志》，他被称为“当同伙们洗劫美国国库时还在玩扑克牌的无能领袖。”连哈丁本人都承认，“我不适合这个职位，一开始就不应该到这来。”他死后，有传言说他是被妻子毒害的，原因不是嫉妒，而是为了补救他被控任内腐败的名声。 As the ghost of our evolutionary past lingers on, there is no reason why hunks with Harding’s physique won’t be elected again. If you have any doubt, think about Arnold Schwarzenegger. How much of a halo did he draw from his muscles as a body builder and his fame as an action movie star to win the Californian gubernatorial race in 2002? 进化史的幽灵一直在徘徊，因此没有理由认为拥有哈丁那种体格的大个头肌肉男不会再次被选上。如果你有任何疑虑，想想阿诺德·施瓦辛格。他那身健身运动员的肌肉和作为动作电影巨星的名气到底为他赢得2002年加州州长竞选贡献了多少光环？ It’s disconcerting for all concerned citizens to realize that in our age of television and the Internet, presidential elections share much with pageants for Mr. America. If our guts are all we rely on in the process, even the 5’7” John Adams or the 5’4” James Madison may not stand a chance to be elected today. 在电视和互联网时代，总统选举和美国先生选美有很多共同点。所有关心公共事务的公民因意识到这一点而心神不安。如果我们只依赖本能的话，那么5英尺7英寸的约翰·亚当斯或者5英尺4英寸的詹姆斯·麦迪逊今天若参选可能就没有机会胜出。 By forgoing a vast pool of talents from women, short men, and minority citizens (except Obama), how can we find the most capable person to lead our nation? In this sense, putting a woman in the White House will mark a new milestone in American democracy: it can break the entrenched spell—our cognitive biases for hunks—imposed by the ghost of evolution. 把妇女、矮个子、少数族裔（奥巴马除外）中的大量天才排除在考虑之外，我们怎么找出最有能力领导我们国家的人呢？从这个角度来说，选出一位女性入主白宫将成为美国民主新的里程碑：它将破除进化幽灵加在我们身上根深蒂固的魔咒，即我们钟情大个头肌肉男的认知偏差。 （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——

Political Animals by Rick Shenkman: why we shoot our democracies in the foot Rick Shenkman新书《政治动物》：为什么我们会搬起石头砸民主的脚 作者:Olivia Archdeacon @ 2016-01-22 译者:babyface_claire(@许你疯不许你傻) 校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 来源:CapX,http://capx.co/political-animals/ Best-selling historian and Emmy award-winning investigative reporter Rick Shenkman is back. He explains in the latest of his seven books, Political Animals – How our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics, that despite our species’ pride of rational thinking, our world is anything but rational. 畅销历史书作家和艾美奖调查记者获得者Rick Shenkman回来了。他在最新的第七本书《政治动物：石器时代的大脑如何妨碍政治精明》里解释到，尽管我们人类以理性思考为傲，但是世界却一点也不合理。 Like economists, political scientists base their models on rational choice, and do not want to think that a one off event like a shark attack can have a significant effect on voting. Yet it has been proven time and again that when times are bad, people vote against the incumbents. If a meteor hit Arizona, they’d vote against the incumbents. Extraneous forces have political consequences. Unfortunately for politicians, this is especially the case when the effect is negative. 像经济学者一样，政治学者以理性选择为基础建构其模型，并且不愿意认为一件像鲨鱼攻击这样的一次性事件可以对投票结果产生重大影响。然而事实一次又一次证明，一旦碰上光景不好，人们就会投票反对当权者。如果有陨石击中亚利桑那州，他们会投票反对当权者。外来力量能够造成政治后果。 不幸的是，对政治家而言，如果这种影响是负面的，情况更是如此。 Readers of Shenkman’s previous book, ‘Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the truth about the American voter’ may be reluctant to pick up another anthology of painfully embarrassing truths about the general public of the world’s most powerful economy. But they should be reassured that Political Animals is a forgiving, empathetic and motivational read. 读过Shenkman上本书《我们是多么愚蠢？正视美国选民的真相》的人，可能不愿再读一本关于世界最大经济体的一般公众的痛苦尴尬真相的汇编。但是我可以向他们保证，《政治动物》是一本宽容、体贴且激励人心的读物。 It is tough love, however. Shenkman points out that despite the human brain being packed with eighty-six billion neurons – making human beings smarter than the smartest computer that ever existed (yet) – when it comes to politics, the public is very easily fooled. What is more alarming is that we’re fooling ourselves. We cannot blame the politicians or the Illuminati. 然而，这是严厉的爱。Shenkman指出，尽管人类的大脑挤满了860亿个神经细胞（使人类比迄今为止最聪明的电脑更加聪明），可是一旦涉及政治，公众却非常容易被欺骗。更令人担忧的是，是我们自己在欺骗自己。我们不能把责任推给政治家或“光照派”。 “We often lie about out reasons for doing what we do in politics. We don’t just lie to others, we lie to ourselves. Therefore we can only detect what people are thinking when we study patterns of behaviour in groups.” “我们经常会在我们政治行为的缘由方面撒谎。我们不止对别人撒谎，我们对自己也撒谎。因此，我们只能通过研究群体的行为模式来检测人们在想什么。” Shenkman’s genuine passion for his subject matter shines through. As much as we rationalise our actions in hindsight, we’re not in a position to truly know ourselves seeing as so much of what happens in our brain happens outside of conscious awareness. So attempting to understand why people vote the way they do simply by asking them will get us nowhere. We need science. Shenkman 对他的研究主题闪耀着真正的热情。我们会在事后尽力合理化自己的行为，鉴于大脑中发生的大量事情处于我们的自觉意识之外，我们就处在一个不能真正了解自己的境地。所以，只是追问人们为什么如此这般投票，对我们理解这一问题毫无益处。我们需要科学。 Political Animals does this. It uses breakthroughs in neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, behavioural economics, political science, political psychology and game theory to give new insights into political behaviour. 《政治动物》要做的就是这件事。它利用了神经科学、遗传学、进化心理学、人类学、行为经济学、政治科学、政治心理学和博弈论等学科的新突破，寻求对于政治行为的新见解。 The basic premise of the book is that our brain evolved roughly 1.8 million years ago and so the instincts that were baked into human DNA then are now often not the most appropriate or efficient response to our environment: “In politics, [instincts] often don’t work: they malfunction, misfire and lead us astray.” Shenkman even goes as far as to argue that “when it comes to politics, the times when we can unquestioningly go with our instincts is almost nil.” 这本书的基本前提是：我们的大脑大约在180万年前进化形成，因此那些整合到人类DNA中的本能通常并非我们对环境所能做出的最合适或最有效反应。“在政治中，[直觉]通常不可行，他们会失灵，无法奏效，还会带我们误入歧途。” Shenkman走得很远，他甚至认为，“当谈到政治时，我们可以毫无疑问的跟随直觉走的时候基本为零”。 In essence: we frequently sabotage ourselves, upending democracy in ways none of us intended. 从本质上说，我们经常会在没有人刻意如此的情况下伤害自己、颠覆民主。 Shenkman focuses on four problems that we continually make: political apathy; failure to correctly size up our political leaders; a habit of punishing politicians who tell us the hard truths we don’t want to hear; and our failure to show empathy in situations that clearly demand it. Shenkman关注我们经常犯的四个错误：政治冷漠，不能正确地认识政治领袖，习惯性地惩罚跟我们讲述我们不愿意听的残酷事实的政治家，在明确需要的情况下不能表示同情。 Hearing all of this, it is sorely tempting to conclude that democracy is hopeless. But all is not lost. 听到这一切，让人很容易得出结论，民主是无望的。但这并不意味着一切。 Throughout the book we are reminded that the way our brain is constructed does not mean we are fated to behave as cavemen, even though we might be inclined to think that based on the morning’s headlines. He shows us with numerous thought experiments (that readers can conduct on themselves) that is better to think of our brains as being pre-wired rather than hard-wired. We have certain innate traits but whether they determine how we behave in a particular situation depends on a range of factors. This shouldn’t be so surprising – think how easily and dramatically our energy levels can affect our decision making and self-control. 这本书从头到尾一直在提醒我们，我们的大脑如此构造，并不意味着我们注定要像穴居人那样行动，尽管根据早上的头条新闻我们可能倾向于这样认为。他通过许多思想实验（读者可以自己进行）向我们表明，我们最好将大脑看作是预设的而并非是固设的。我们有某些天生的特质, 但这些特质是否会决定我们在特定情况下的行为则取决于一系列因素。这并不应该让人感到惊讶——想想我们的精力水平能如何容易、如何显著地影响我们的决策和自控能力吧。 What is more controversial is Shenkman’s challenge to the convention that the main political problem society faces is a lack of information: “Modern Platos raise a huge cry over the problem ignorance poses to democracy, turning alarmism about ignorance into a virtual cottage industry” 更有争议的是Shenkman对社会面临的主要政治问题乃是缺乏信息这一传统观念的挑战，“现代柏拉图们大声疾呼，宣称无知威胁民主。他们已经把对无知的担忧警惕几乎变成了一种祖传家酿。” And he’s right – critics have been beating the same horse for generations, crying ‘mass man is ignorant!’ After the Second World War and the rise of Nazism, university professors became consumed with the problem of public ignorance. It is not that simple, unfortunately. Proving that unknowledgeable voters can be turned into knowledgeable ones doesn’t prove much we didn’t already know. We send children to school because we believe they can learn. The truth is more unsettling: it is not an intelligence or information problem. It’s a motivation, environment, social and, above all else, a human being problem. The problem is that voters on their own don’t try to learn. 他是对的——评论家们世世代代都在鞭打同一具尸体，喊叫“大众是无知的！”第二次世界大战和纳粹主义兴起之后，大学教授们开始全心关注公众无知的问题。不幸的是，这不是那么简单。证明了无知的选民可以转变为有知的选民，这并不能证明多少我们事先就不知道的事情。我们送孩子去学校是因为我们相信他们有学习的能力。真相是更让人不安的：这不是一个智力或者信息问题。这是激励、环境、社会的问题，最重要的是，这是人性问题。问题在于选民们自己不尝试去学习。 Perhaps voters need to be motivated, probably financially. But no government has tried this (directly) because voters would find it insulting – anyone who dared suggest that voters need to be paid because they are citizen delinquents would instantly be branded as elitist. 或许选民需要刺激，比如经济刺激。但是没有任何政府（直接地）试图这么做，因为选民们会感到这是侮辱——任何人若胆敢建议给选民支付费用【编注：从上下文看，意思好像是付费让选民接受公民培训，但也可能是指为投票行为付费。】，而且给出的理由是因为他们是公民群氓，那他立马就会被贴上“精英主义”的标签。 Equally, the Scandinavian experience shows culture can be just as effective (75% of Swedes participate in adult civics-study circles at some point in their lives having retained an interest in politics from school-age). But why should it take either money or culture to get people to perform their civic responsibilities? Shouldn’t people want to be involved? 同样的，北欧的经验表明文化同样奏效 （瑞典人中凡是曾在生活中某一时间参与过成人公民学习圈的，有75%都保留了从学生时代起培养出的政治兴趣）。但是为什么需要钱或者文化的驱使才能让人们履行公民责任呢？难道人们不想参与吗？ So this is not a guidebook for how to be the perfect citizen. Shenkman is far from being an idealist. Instead, he offers un-patronising, concrete steps to ‘do politics’ better: don’t place a lot of confidence in your natural curiosity; don’t delude yourself into believing you can read politics; whenever possible, try to put yourself in a position where you can experience politics directly. 所以这不是一本怎样成为完美公民的指南。Shenkman远非一个理想主义者。相反，他提出的是并不高高在上的、具体的步骤，来更好地“做政治”：不要过分信赖你天生的好奇心上；不要欺骗自己说你可以读懂政治；有可能的话，尝试坐到某个位置上，直接体验政治。 In this engaging, illuminating and often humourous portrait of our political culture, Shenkman probes the depths of the human mind to reveal what we must do to fix our floundering democracy, and to become more political, less animal. 在这幅引人入胜、发人深省且常常带些幽默的政治文化肖像中, Shenkman窥探到人类心灵的深处，告诉我们必须做什么来修复我们挣扎的民主，多一些政治性, 少一些动物性。 Political Animals was first published on the 21st January 2016 by Basic Books, £17.99 RRP, hardback. 《政治动物》由基本图书公司在2016年1月21日首次出版，精装版标价£17.99 。 （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——

【2016-09-14】 @whigzhou: 有些历史学家（特别是历史决定论者）喜欢用个体生命周期类比文明和国家的兴衰存亡，类似的，组织理论里也有『制度疲劳』的说法，对这种拟人化说辞总是要严加警惕，不过有些类比也并非毫无道理，比如『年轻』『成熟』『衰老』这组概念，确可运用于政权，至少适用于我们见过的政权类型中的大多数。 ​​​​ @whigzhou: 容易想到的几种导致政体衰老的机制：1）委托代理关系中的军备竞赛，多层级组织总是面临委托代理问题，层级越多越严重，一个成功的新政权必定找出了某些办法控制这个问题不严重到拖垮整个体制，问题是，委托代理双方的营私/反营私斗争是一场逐步升级的军备竞赛，新制度起初运行良好，但针对它的营私策略逐渐被开发出来之后，便日益朽坏，一个显著的例子是官僚系统的腐败 @whigzhou: 2）激励资源耗尽，新政权的领导者手里有着大量资源用于奖励下属和盟友，但这些资源通常两代之内就耗尽了，要维持最初激励效果，要么持续扩张，要么定期清洗 @whigzhou: 3）禀赋稀释，第一代掌权者总是有某些过人之处，否则就不会上台了，这些禀赋随着代际更替会逐渐稀释，无论何种更替制度，这种稀释总会发生，世袭制下，强人的儿子未必是强人，指定继任制，蒙择的可能是马屁精，考试选拔制，胜出的可能是无能学霸，竞争制，上位的是赢不了外敌的内斗高手…… @whigzhou: 4）团队松散化，这是代际更替导致的另一个问题，统治团队的前几代成员之间往往有很近的血缘、姻亲、战友、恩荫关系，除非定期清洗，否则这些关系必定岁代际更替逐渐疏远，从而弱化团队合作 @whigzhou: 5）和平化，长期和平化无论在个体还是组织层面，都将削弱战斗禀赋和战争能力，最终无法抵御外敌 @whigzhou: 6）人口压力，社会剩余率降低，政权可支配资源减少，  

好莱坞的误导历史 Hollywood’s misleading history 作者:Peter J. Wallison @ 2016-2-29 译者:Luis Rightcon(@Rightcon) 校对:Tankman 来源:American Enterprise Institute,http://www.aei.org/publication/hollywoods-misleading-history/ The film called The Big Short differs in a significant way from the book of the same name on which it is based, and this difference reveals how the film-makers made it more politically charged in order to blame Wall Street for the financial crisis. 《大空头》这部电影与其同名报告文学在历史叙事上有着很明显的不同，而且这一差异揭示了电影制作者是如何使这部影片更充满政治意味，从而把金融危机归咎于华尔街。 In the book, the Wall Street experts who were approached to bet against the housing market almost all refused. 在那本书中，几乎所有被问及是否做空房产市场的华尔街专家们都给出了否定答案。 This showed something that was true, and for that reason interesting: that even people on Wall Street, always on the lookout for a money-making opportunity, could not believe the housing market was in any danger of collapse. In the film, this was demonstrated by the skepticism of the FrontPoint group that was initially approached as investors, as well as the eagerness of the financial firms such as Goldman Sachs and others to take the other side of the bet against the housing market. 这显示了一些有趣的事实，那就是，即使是成天盯着捞钱机会的华尔街精英也无法相信（当时的）房市会有任何崩溃的风险。而在电影中，这被演绎成投资者FrontPoint集团的怀疑立场，以及像高盛集团那样的金融机构们对于做多房地产市场的渴望。 In the book, the tension in the narrative was created when the book’s protagonists — the first people to bet against the housing market — had persuaded their investors to place bets against the housing market many months before the coming failures actually became evident. As a result, in the book their financial backers became impatient. The predictions of a collapse did not happen fast enough, and they sought to withdraw their funds. Some of this impatience was present in the film, but the context was changed. 在书中，整个故事的紧张之处体现在主人公——作为第一个开始做空房地产市场的人——在金融海啸变成现实之前很多个月，就说服了他们的投资者来做空房市。结果，他们的财务支持者们变得不耐烦了，预言中的崩塌没有足够快的发生，于是他们计划撤资。电影中部分展现了这一不耐烦的情节，然而其情境却被改写了。 In the film, the collapse actually occurred, but the there was no movement in the market prices of the privately-issued mortgage-backed securities or the credit default swaps that were used to bet against them. This was attributed in the film to a conspiracy among the big banks on Wall Street: they somehow kept the market from moving against them while they sold off their holdings to less informed buyers. 在影片中，房产市场的崩溃如期发生了，但是私下发行的MBS（住房抵押贷款证券）和用来做空他们的CDS（信用违约掉期）的市场价格并没有变化。这在影片中被归结于华尔街上大银行的共谋：他们以某种方式稳定住了市场，直到把自己持有的资产卖给那些知情较少的买家。 It should be obvious that a conspiracy like this is impossible. There are too many buyers and sellers in the financial markets for something like the price of mortgage-backed securities or credit defaults swaps to be rigged. In reality, as soon as an index of housing defaults began to signal danger, investors fled the market. 显然像这样的阴谋是不可能成功的。在金融市场像CDS和MBS这类金融工具所涉及到的买家和卖家实在是太多了，以至于其价格很难被操纵。事实上，一旦房贷违约的指数开始发出危险信号，投资者马上就逃离了这个市场。 If the film had simply followed the book, it would have been a tale about how some very smart and gutsy traders outwitted Wall Street and faced down investors who had lost faith in them to win big in the end. It could have been an uplifting story that would have shone an unflattering light on the supposedly smart guys on Wall Street. 如果该影片只是简单地遵循同名报告文学的叙事，那将只会是一个某些既聪明绝顶又胆大包天的交易员以其聪明才智胜过华尔街，以及让那些对他们失去信心的投资者羞愧万分，从而在最后赢得巨额回报的故事。这或许会成为一个真实报道华尔街上的聪明伙计的励志故事。 But that was not enough for Hollywood. In Hollywood’s telling, the bad guys had to be villains, not just dumb. So the film-makers concocted a plot in which Wall Street successfully kept the market from moving against them in order to save themselves. 但这对好莱坞来说可远远不够。在好莱坞的通常叙事中，坏家伙们必须是十足的恶棍，而不是随便冒出来的草包。所以电影制作人们编造了一个情节：为了拯救自身，华尔街成功阻止了不利于自身的市场运动。 In reality, of course, Wall Street was not saved. Many of the major firms got into serious trouble when the housing bubble collapsed. Several failed and others suffered major losses. 当然，实际上华尔街并没有被拯救。房产泡沫崩溃时很多主要金融机构陷入了严重的困境。有一些破产了，剩下的也遭受到了极其严重的损失。 The lesson here is to approach Hollywood’s versions of real life events with caution. They can be good entertainment, but badly misleading history. 这里的教训是要对好莱坞版本的现实事件保持警惕。他们可以是很好的娱乐，但同时可能会严重的误导历史。 （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——