【2021-03-05】 给定逐利动机和风险偏好在人群中的分布不变，监管者把一种资产的风险弄低了，就必定会把一部分钱从这种资产推挤到另一种风险更高的资产上，从存款，国债，企业债，股票，期权……一级级撸上去，要是都变得不够刺激了，总归还有赛马，六合彩，GameStop，Tesla 和 Bitcoin了吧？ ​​​​ 【2022-02-20】 @whigzhou: 感觉这个话题还可以深入一下 @whigzhou: 许多管制都是针对个人在市场活动中所面临风险的，问题是，管制的目标是什么？ 是： 1）让个人免于遭受超出某一程度的风险？ 还是： 2）让个人充分知晓他正要冒的风险？ 假如当局将目标设定为（1），那么，给定个人风险偏好和逐利动机不变，剔除某类市场活动中的风险，将不可避免的将他们推向有着足够高风险的其他类别的市场活动， 存款保险制度把个人储蓄存款的风险降到很低，相应的，存款利率当然也会降低，于是许多人会转向债券和各种理财产品， 于是当局又开始管制债券和理财产品，以及其他…… 顺着这个逻辑，所有市场投资品都会被管起来， 可是金融活动只是个人市场活动的一角， 所有市场化的投资品都被管起来之后，结果这些投资品要么收益太低，要么个人根本不让玩（投资银行和商业银行的分业意思就是不让你们个人小毛孩玩）， 可是其他冒险逐利的机会多的是，彩票，赌场，赌球，收藏品，xx币，庞氏局，老鼠会，还有各种民间泡沫…… 当然这些也都可以被管起来， 可是我总还可以把钱借给表弟去倒腾煤炭生意吧？或者自己撸起袖子上？我总还可以找人打麻将，玩21点吧？如果上述种种都没得玩了，那些更传统的私人投机冒险活动自然会大量增加， 40岁以上的人可能都记得，80-90年代有个流行词，倒爷，倒腾各种东西，煤炭，钢材，车皮……，后来这个词不流行了，既是因为市场化消除了许多价格差，也是因为市场创造了大批其他冒险逐利的机会， 让我再举个远一点的例子，看看户外运动，每当一种运动变得足够安全之后，就会有一批人离开，去寻找风险更高的运动， 原本登山也算是冒险了，可是随着器具改进，技术和知识的积累，普通的登山变得越来越安全，于是有了攀岩，当攀岩也变得足够安全时，又有了 free solo... 重点是，在监管者眼里，安全问题是关乎某类活动的，金融监管者盯着金融产品，药物监管者盯着药品，所以，当监管者发现自己把一些风险从他关注的那类活动中驱逐出去了，就感觉自己成功了，管制是有效的，可是对于个体，他的选择可不受这种类别限制，某个类别被管起来了，大可以到其他类别试试手气，找找刺激，他眼中或许压根没有这种类别划分的概念，为什么要有呢？毕竟他面对的是整个世界！ 所以，合乎逻辑的发展是，假如监管者果真要把冒险者从危险中拯救出来，那他就不得不同样突破类别限制，把监管不断扩展到一个又一个新领域，而假如其权力之手的挥舞空间不受限制，那么他很可能真的会这么做， 这将是通往奴役的另一条道路， 由此得出的结论是，即便我们相信管制在帮助个人避免风险上应该扮演某种角色，也应将管制目标限制在第二种，  

【2020-10-05】 @迢书 假如非要用一个指标衡量出版自由，不能用出版了多少书，而要用禁止出版了多少书。其他自由同理。 @whigzhou: 不对吧，北高丽这个指标好像是零。 @一步逃离危墙: [允悲]例外，例外 @whigzhou: 是基础假设不对，不是例外，和用『报纸天窗率』评估新闻自由度犯了同样错误 @whigzhou: 实在要设计一个单一量化指标，我看还是用『加权平均的书号成本/定价比』比较好，书号成本包括所有enabling costs，加权系数是同类渍油市场的各类别销售份额，若不可能出版，则enabling cost视为与定价相等 @whigzhou: 不少libertarian在评价管制的问题上也犯过同样的错误，比如以管制法规的篇幅来衡量管制严厉程度，他们难道就没想过，『一律禁止』的篇幅只有四个字啊。 ​​​​  

【2018-07-19】 像谷歌最近被布鲁塞尔黑帮大块割肉这种事情，放在十年前我会同情甚至愤怒，现在越来越觉得他们活该，在抵制日益膨胀的管制国家的抗争中，这些大企业不仅越来越缺乏道德勇气，向主流舆论献媚，附和反市场价值观，总是选择退让屈服，和解消灾，乃至认罪，还常常利用管制与干预打击排挤竞争对手（谷歌在这一点上也不清白），他们从自由市场获益无数，却将捍卫自由与市场的责任全然推却，和他们相比，镀金时代的强盗资本家高出一万倍。 从好的一面看，布鲁塞尔为美国大公司提供了一个品尝国家主义铁拳，体验什么是真正社会主义的场所，这或许可以帮助他们别在黑路上走的太远。  

在墨尔本，要想预防你家房子未来被council列入历史遗产名单，最好把它盖的无比平庸……一栋二十年历史估价一千万的房子最近在拍卖前两天被列入名单，比轰炸惨多了，不少city有1/5到1/4的房子已被列入名单，将来打起仗来估计大家都翘首期盼炸弹落到自家屋顶上，呵呵 ​​​​

MINIMUM WAGE AND DISCRIMINATION 最低工资与歧视 A look at the racist history of the minimum wage. 最低工资中的种族歧视历史一瞥 作者:Walter Williams @ 2017-02-08 译者:龟海海 校对:龙泉 来源:Frontpage Mag,http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265734/minimum-wage-and-discrimination-walter-williams There is little question in most academic research that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in unemployment. The debatable issue is the magnitude of the increase. An issue not often included in minimum wage debates is the substitution effects of minimum wage increases. The substitution effect might explain why Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a national network of business owners and executives, argues for higher minimum wages. Let's look at substitution effects in general. 提高最低工资会引起失业率上升，这一观点在大多数学术研究中都没多大争议。争议在于提高最低工资所能引起的失业率增加的幅度。一项最低工资辩论中不怎么讨论的议题是其增长所引发的“替代效应”。“替代效应”解释了为什么“商界支持合理最低工资”这个全国性企业主和管理者网站，也会主张更高的最低工资。那我们今天就讲一讲什么是“替代效应”。 When the price of anything rises, people seek substitutes and measures to economize. When gasoline prices rise, people seek to economize on the usage of gas by buying smaller cars. If the price of sugar rises, people seek cheaper sugar substitutes. If prices of goods in one store rise, people search for other stores. This last example helps explain why some businessmen support higher minimum wages. If they could impose higher labor costs on their less efficient competition, it might help drive them out of business. That would enable firms that survive to charge higher prices and earn greater profits. 当任何东西的价格上涨时，人们会寻求其他更实惠的替代品。当汽油价格上涨时，人们通过购买小型汽车（小排量）来节省油耗。如果一种糖的价格上涨，人们寻求更便宜的糖来替代。如果一家商店的商品价格上涨，人们寻找其他商店。最后一个例子有助于解释为什么有些商人支持更高的最低工资。如果可以对低效率的竞争对手施以更高的劳动力成本，这就可能使这些企业歇业。之后存活下来的公司可以提高产品价格并赚得更多利润。 There's a more insidious substitution effect of higher minimum wages. You see it by putting yourself in the place of a businessman who has to pay at least the minimum wage to anyone he hires. Say that you are hiring typists. There are some who can type 40 words per minute and others, equal in every other respect, who can type 80 words per minute. Whom would you hire? I'm guessing you'd hire the more highly skilled. 更高的最低工资线还有隐蔽的“替代效应”。你从商人的角度就不难看出，无论如何他必须支付最低工资给所有他雇用的人。假如：你正在招聘打字员。有些人可以每分钟输入40个单词，在其他方面条件相同的情况下，有人每分钟可以输入80个单词。你会雇佣谁？ 我猜你会雇佣技艺精湛的那个。 Thus, one effect of the minimum wage is discrimination against the employment of lower-skilled workers. In some places, the minimum wage is $15 an hour. But if a lower-skilled worker could offer to work for, say, $8 an hour, you might hire him. In addition to discrimination against lower-skilled workers, the minimum wage denies them the chance of sharpening their skills and ultimately earning higher wages. The most effective form of training for most of us is on-the-job training. 因此，最低工资的影响之一是对低技能工人的歧视。在某些地方，最低工资是每小时15美元。但是，例如一个低技能工人愿意以每小时8美元为你工作，你可能会雇用他。除了对低技能工人的歧视外，最低工资阻碍了他们提升自己的技能并最终获得更高的工资的机会。对我们大多数人来说，最有效的培训形式是在工作中学习。 An even more insidious substitution effect of minimum wages can be seen from a few quotations. During South Africa's apartheid era, racist unions, which would never accept a black member, were the major supporters of minimum wages for blacks. In 1925, the South African Economic and Wage Commission said, "The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an occupation or craft so high that no Native would be likely to be employed." 最低工资更隐蔽的“替代效应”可以从几个引证中看出。在南非的种族隔离时代，种族主义者的工会绝对不会接受黑人成员，而这些人正是黑人最低工资的主要支持者。在1925年，南非经济和工资委员会说，“该方法将为某些职业（低技能）固定最低工资，技艺精湛者工资非常高，以至于土著几乎找不到工作。” Gert Beetge, secretary of the racist Building Workers' Union, complained, "There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances, I support the rate for the job (minimum wage) as the second-best way of protecting our white artisans." "Equal pay for equal work" became the rallying slogan of the South African white labor movement. These laborers knew that if employers were forced to pay black workers the same wages as white workers, there'd be reduced incentive to hire blacks. 种族主义的建筑工人联盟秘书Gert Beetge抱怨：“建筑业没有工作职位空缺，在这种情况下，我支持建筑业施行（最低工资），作为对白人工匠们最好的保护措施。“同工同酬”成为南非白人工人运动的口号。这些工人知道，如果雇主被迫向黑人工匠支付与白人工匠相同的工资，那么就会减少雇用黑人的动机。 South Africans were not alone in their minimum wage conspiracy against blacks. After a bitter 1909 strike by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen in the U.S., an arbitration board decreed that blacks and whites were to be paid equal wages. Union members expressed their delight, saying, "If this course of action is followed by the company and the incentive for employing the Negro thus removed, the strike will not have been in vain." 南非人用最低工资对付黑人的阴谋并非孤例。在经历了美国火车司炉工与引擎师兄弟会1909年一次罢工所带来的痛苦之后，仲裁委员会颁布仲裁令：黑人和白人应支付同等水平工资。工会成员表达了他们的喜悦，说：“如果公司遵循这一仲裁令，并且雇用黑人的动机便不复存在，罢工就没有白费。” Our nation's first minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, had racist motivation. During its legislative debate, its congressional supporters made such statements as, "That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." During hearings, American Federation of Labor President William Green complained, "Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates." 我国第一个最低工资法，1931年《戴維斯-培根法》，也有种族主义动机。在其立法辩论期间，国会中的支持者发表了如下声明：“承包商运送廉价的有色人种劳动力，把他们安置在小棚屋里，正是这类劳动力在与全国各地的白人劳动者竞争。”在听证会上，美国劳工联合会主席威廉·格林抱怨说：“有色人种的劳动力正在谋求将工资率拉低到令人沮丧的水平。” Today's stated intentions behind the support of minimum wages are nothing like yesteryear's. However, intentions are irrelevant. In the name of decency, we must examine the effects. 如今的支持最低工资背后的意图与往昔截然不同。 然而，意图是无关紧要的。为体面起见，我们必须仔细考虑其影响。 （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——

Is the FDA Too Conservative or Too Aggressive? FDA，过于保守还是过于激进？ 作者:Alex Tabarrok @ 2015-08-26 译者:小聂(@PuppetMaster) 校对:babyface_claire (@许你疯不许你傻) 来源:Marginal Revolution,http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/is-the-fda-too-conservative-or-too-aggressive.html I have long argued that the FDA has an incentive to delay the introduction of new drugs because approving a bad drug (Type I error) has more severe consequences for the FDA than does failing to approve a good drug (Type II error). In the former case at least some victims are identifiable and the New York Times writes stories about them and how they died because the FDA failed. In the latter case, when the FDA fails to approve a good drug, people die but the bodies are buried in an invisible graveyard. 我一直认为，FDA有充分的动机来延迟新药审批，因为对于FDA来说，批准一种不合格的药（第一型错误）比拒绝一种合格的药（第二型错误）后果要严重得多。在前一种情况下，至少某些受害人的身份是可以被证实的，《纽约时报》会报道他们的故事，和他们是怎么因为FDA的失败而死亡的。而在后一种情况下，FDA没能批准合格的药品，虽然导致死亡，但是受害者藉藉无名，只会被人们忘记。 In an excellent new paper (SSRN also here) Vahid Montazerhodjat and Andrew Lo use a Bayesian analysis to model the optimal tradeoff in clinical trials between sample size, Type I and Type II error. Failing to approve a good drug is more costly, for example, the more severe the disease. Thus, for a very serious disease, we might be willing to accept a greater Type I error in return for a lower Type II error. The number of people with the disease also matters. Holding severity constant, for example, the more people with the disease the more you want to increase sample size to reduce Type I error. All of these variables interact. 在一篇杰出的新论文中，Vahid Montazerhodjat和Andrew Lo使用了贝叶斯分析来为临床试验中的病人数量、第一型错误和第二型错误之间的取舍进行了建模。举个例子来说，疾病越严重，不批准一种优秀药品所造成的损失就越大。因此，对于非常严重的疾病，人们可能会愿意接受更大的犯第一型错误的可能，来换取较小的犯第二型错误的几率。患有疾病的人群数量也很关键。比如说在建模中控制疾病的严重性为常量之后，患病的人群数量越大，就越需要在临床试验中招募更多的病人，以此来降低犯第一型错误的可能性。以上提到的这些变量都是互相影响的。 In an innovation the authors use the U.S. Burden of Disease Study to find the number of deaths and the disability severity caused by each major disease. Using this data they estimate the costs of failing to approve a good drug. Similarly, using data on the costs of adverse medical treatment they estimate the cost of approving a bad drug. 作者创新性的使用了美国疾病负担研究结果中所有主要疾病所导致的死亡和残疾的数据。他们利用这些数据估算未批准一种合格药品所造成的损失。同样，他们也使用了药物不良反应带来的成本，以此来估算批准一种不合格药品所造成的损失。 Putting all this together the authors find that the FDA is often dramatically too conservative: 综上所述，作者发现FDA在新药审批方面通常是极为保守的：

“…we show that the current standards of drug-approval are weighted more on avoiding a Type I error (approving ineffective therapies) rather than a Type II error (rejecting effective therapies). For example, the standard Type I error of 2.5% is too conservative for clinical trials of therapies for pancreatic cancer—a disease with a 5-year survival rate of 1% for stage IV patients (American Cancer Society estimate, last updated 3 February 2013). The BDA-optimal size for these clinical trials is 27.9%, reflecting the fact that, for these desperate patients, the cost of trying an ineffective drug is considerably less than the cost of not trying an effective one.” “……我们的结果显示，现有的药品审批标准更偏向于避免第一型错误（批准无效的疗法）而不是避免第二型错误（拒绝有效的疗法）。譬如，对于胰腺癌——一种四期病人五年内存活率仅有1%的疾病（美国癌症协会预测，最后更新于2013年2月3日）——标准的2.5%第一型错误率实在是太过保守。这些临床试验经过贝叶斯决策分析优化过的容错标准为27.9%，这表明对于这些绝望的患者们，试用一种无效药物的成本大大低于不尝试一种有效药物的成本。”

(The authors also find that the FDA is occasionally a little too aggressive but these errors are much smaller, for example, the authors find that for prostate cancer therapies the optimal significance level is 1.2% compared to a standard rule of 2.5%.) （作者还发现FDA偶尔也会过于激进，但是偏离的程度小得多。例如，前列腺癌治疗的最优显著率是1.2%，而不是标准的2.5%。） The result is important especially because in a number of respects, Montazerhodjat and Lo underestimate the costs of FDA conservatism. Most importantly, the authors are optimizing at the clinical trial stage assuming that the supply of drugs available to be tested is fixed. Larger trials, however, are more expensive and the greater the expense of FDA trials the fewer new drugs will be developed. Thus, a conservative FDA reduces the flow of new drugs to be tested. 该结果十分重要，尤其因为在很多方面，Montazerhodjat和Lo低估了FDA坚持保守标准的成本。最关键的一点在于，作者们假定了待评估药物的供给是恒定的，并在此基础之上来优化临床试验阶段的容错标准。然而大型临床试验往往花费更高，这又导致新药研发的萎缩。因此，保守的FDA会降低新药研发的数量。 In a sense, failing to approve a good drug has two costs, the opportunity cost of lives that could have been saved and the cost of reducing the incentive to invest in R&D. In contrast, approving a bad drug while still an error at least has the advantage of helping to incentivize R&D (similarly, a subsidy to R&D incentivizes R&D in a sense mostly by covering the costs of failed ventures). 从某种意义上说，错误的拒绝一种好的药品有两种成本，一是没能拯救那些本来可以被拯救的病人的机会成本，二是减少了对新药研发做投资的激励所带来的成本。与之相对的是，批准一种不合格的药品，尽管仍旧是个错误，但是至少可以给新药研发带来正面的激励（类似的，对研发进行补贴的一个主要形式就是支付那些失败的研发项目经费，以此来激励更多的新药研发）。 The Montazerhodjat and Lo framework is also static, there is one test and then the story ends. In reality, drug approval has an interesting asymmetric dynamic. When a drug is approved for sale, testing doesn’t stop but moves into another stage, a combination of observational testing and sometimes more RCTs–this, after all, is how adverse events are discovered. Thus, Type I errors are corrected. On the other hand, for a drug that isn’t approved the story does end. With rare exceptions, Type II errors are never corrected. 而且，Montazerhodjat和Lo的分析框架是静态的，一个试验完了，故事就结束了。可实际上，药物审批流程有个独特的非对称机制。当药物被批准上市之后，测试并非就此结束，而是进入下一个阶段，往往由一系列观测性的测试，有时甚至是随机临床试验构成——毕竟，这是发现不良反应的方式。因此，第一型错误往往得到纠正。另一方面，对于一种不被批准的药物，故事到这里就结束了。第二型错误几乎没有被纠正过。 The Montazerhodjat and Lo framework could be interpreted as the reduced form of this dynamic process but it’s better to think about the dynamism explicitly because it suggests that approval can come in a range–for example, approval with a black label warning, approval with evidence grading and so forth. As these procedures tend to reduce the costs of Type I error they tend to increase the costs of FDA conservatism. Montazerhodjat和Lo的框架可以被视为这个机制的一个简化版本，但最好还是能具体的思考一下这个机制，因为这暗示了对于新药的审批结果其实可以是一个范围——比如说，批准（但是带有一个黑色警示标签），或是带有证据强度分级的批准，等等。因为这些举措可以有效降低第一型错误的成本，它们倾向于使FDA在过于保守时受到惩罚。 Montazerhodjat and Lo also don’t examine the implications of heterogeneity of preferences or of disease morbidity and mortality. Some people, for example, are severely disabled by diseases that on average aren’t very severe–the optimal tradeoff for these patients will be different than for the average patient. One size doesn’t fit all. In the standard framework it’s tough luck for these patients. Montazerhodjat 和Lo也并没有检验新药特征的不均一性所带来的影响，这些不均一性主要体现于病人对于治疗结果的偏好或是疾病的发病率和死亡率。例如，有些病人被那些平均而言并不太严重的疾病弄成了严重残疾，对这些病人来说，最优的取舍显然不同于一般的病人。同一个标准并不适用于所有的情况。所以在标准的优化框架里面，这些病人就被忽略了。 But if the non-FDA reviewing apparatus (patients/physicians/hospitals/HMOs/USP/Consumer Reports and so forth) works relatively well, and this is debatable but my work on off-label prescribing suggests that it does, this weighs heavily in favor of relatively large samples but low thresholds for approval. What the FDA is really providing is information and we don’t need product bans to convey information. Thus, heterogeneity plus a reasonable effective post-testing choice process, mediates in favor of a Consumer Reports model for the FDA. 而如果非FDA的评价机构（包括病人、医生、医院、卫生保健组织、美国药典、消费者报告，等等）相对来说起作用的话——这个观点虽然有待商榷，但我给病人开非处方药的经验表明它们是起作用的——这些评价机构就更适合于那些需要大量病人但是批准门槛较低的药。FDA真正提供的是信息，而我们没法从一刀切的禁令中获取有效信息。因此，不均一性，加上一个合理有效的试验后选择机制，间接的指向一个更好的消费者报告式的FDA模式。 The bottom line, however, is that even without taking into account these further points, Montazerhodjat and Lo find that the FDA is far too conservative especially for severe diseases. FDA regulations may appear to be creating safe and effective drugs but they are also creating a deadly caution. 就算不考虑以上这些引申观点，最起码，Montazerhodjat 和 Lo的研究表明，FDA在新药的审批上，尤其是针对特别严重的疾病时，显得过于保守了。FDA的监管或许给我们带来了安全和有效的药品，但是同时也带来了致命的谨慎。 （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 Case against Child Labor Prohibitions 对禁用童工的一个反对意见 作者:Benjamin Powell @ 2014-07-29 译者:Eartha(@王小贰_Eartha) 校对:辉格(@whigzhou) 来源:Cato Institute,http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/case-against-child-labor-prohibitions Halima is an 11-year-old girl who clips loose threads off of Hanes underwear in a Bangladeshi factory.1 She works about eight hours a day, six days per week. She has to process 150 pairs of underwear an hour. At work she feels “very tired and exhausted,” and sometimes falls asleep standing up. She makes 53 cents a day for her efforts. Make no mistake, it is a rough life. 哈丽玛是个十一岁的小女孩，在孟加拉的工厂里给Hanes牌内衣修线头，每天工作八小时，每周六天。① 她每小时需要处理150套内衣，工作时觉得“非常劳累”，有时站着就睡着了。而这样的努力工作每天能换来53美分。毫无疑问，这种生活非常艰苦。 Any decent person’s heart would go out to Halima and other child employees like her. Unfortunately, all too often, people’s emotional reaction lead them to advocate policies that will harm the very children they intend to help. Provisions against child labor are part of the International Labor Organization’s core labor standards. Anti-sweatshop groups almost universally condemn child labor and call for laws prohibiting child employment or boycotting products made with child labor. 任何一个正派人的内心都会对像哈丽玛这样的童工充满同情。但遗憾的是，人们的情绪化反应常常指引他们支持错误的政策，这反而会伤害那些他们原本想帮助的孩子。禁用童工条款是国际劳工组织的核心劳工标准的一部分。反对血汗工厂的团体几乎一致谴责使用童工的行为，呼吁通过禁止雇佣童工的法律或是抵制使用童工生产的商品。 In my recent book, Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, I argue that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement agitates for would harm workers and that the process of economic development, in which sweatshops play an important role, is the best way to raise wages and improve working conditions. Child labor, although the most emotionally charged aspect of sweatshops, is not an exception to this analysis. 在我的新书《走出贫困：全球经济中的血汗工厂》中，我认为反血汗工厂运动的许多诉求将会损害工人们的利益，经济发展才是提高工资与改善工作环境的最好办法，而血汗工厂在其中发挥着重要作用。虽然在情感上，雇佣童工是血汗工厂最受世人谴责的方面，但它在上述分析中也不例外。 We should desire to see an end to child labor, but it has to come through a process that generates better opportunities for the children—not from legislative mandates that prevent children and their families from taking the best option available to them. Children work because their families are desperately poor, and the meager addition to the family income they can contribute is often necessary for survival. Banning child labor through trade regulations or governmental prohibitions often simply forces the children into less-desirable alternatives. When U.S. activists started pressuring Bangladesh into eliminating child labor, the results were disastrous. 我们期望看到童工的终结，但是这需要一个过程，要能为孩子们提供更好的机会，而不是通过法令阻止儿童和他们的家庭做出最佳的可行选择。儿童去工作是因为他们的家庭陷入了极度贫困，尽管收入微薄，但这对于整个家庭的生存来说通常是必要的。通过商业法规或政府管制来禁止雇佣童工常常只是在逼迫儿童们进入更糟糕的环境。美国的活动家们开始对孟加拉施压要求消除童工之后，显现的结果是灾难性的。 Effects of Child Labor Bans 童工禁令的效果 In 1993 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have banned imports from countries employing children. In response, that fall Bangladeshi garment companies let go approximately 50,000 children. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “It is widely thought that most of them have found employment in other garment factories, in smaller, unregistered subcontracting garment workshops, or in other sectors.”2 1993年，爱荷华州的民主党参议员汤姆·哈金提出了《童工慑止法》（the Child Labor Deterrence Act），意在禁止从雇佣童工的国家进口商品。那年秋天，孟加拉服装制造业对此作出反应，解雇了约50,000名童工。据美国劳工部的信息，“普遍认为，这些被解雇的儿童大部分在其他服装工厂，更小的、未经注册的转包作坊或是其他行业里找到了工作。”② That makes the introduction of the bill seem simply ineffective. The Department of Labor is sugarcoating the situation. Paul Krugman summarizes what happened more bluntly: “The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.”3 提出这部法案看起来毫无作用。劳工部的说法是在粉饰现实。保罗·克鲁格曼作了更直白的总结：“直接结果是孟加拉的纺织工厂停止了雇佣童工，但是这些孩子就此回到学校了吗？他们回到快乐的家里了吗？至少根据乐施会的资料，并没有。他们发现这些被解雇的童工最终找了更加糟糕的工作，或是流落街头——其中相当多的孩子被迫出卖身体。”③ Based on the information they have, families tend to choose the best available job for their children. Taking that option away does not eliminate the necessity of work; it forces them to take a less-desirable job. As repulsive as a child working in a sweatshop may be, it is not nearly as repulsive as a child forced into prostitution through the actions of unthinking Western activists. 基于所拥有的信息，每个家庭都想为自己的孩子在可选职业中挑出最好的。剥夺了那个选项并不等于消除了工作的需求，反而逼迫他们选择一个没那么好的工作。一个儿童在血汗工厂里工作，这确实让人反感，但这远远比不上看着一个孩子因为不动脑子的西方活动家而被迫出卖身体来的让人厌恶。 The Bangladesh story is a dramatic one, but it illustrates the general point that when children lose factory jobs they find less desirable jobs to replace the jobs they lost. In countries where sweatshops locate, child labor is often the norm, and most of the children work in less remunerative sectors with fewer opportunities for advancement than manufacturing, such as agriculture or domestic services. 孟加拉的故事有些极端，但它展示了一个要点：当儿童们失去了工厂里的工作之后，他们会寻找稍次的工作作为替代。在那些血汗工厂所处的国家里，雇佣童工是个惯例，并且大部分儿童工作的行业，如农业与国内服务业，酬劳没有制造业那么多，晋升机会也比较少。 In 2003 the World Bank measured the percentage of children aged 10 to 14 that were working in most countries.4 As Table 1 shows, child labor is not uncommon. Rates of child labor range from a high of nearly 27 percent of children in Bangladesh to a low of 3.3 percent in Costa Rica.5 2003年，世界银行调查了大部分国家中10至14岁儿童中童工的比例。④如表一所示，童工并不罕见，比例高可至孟加拉的几近27%，低的如哥斯达黎加的3.3%。⑤ The World Bank also collects data on the economic sectors in which children are employed. Figure 1 presents the distribution of employment of economically active children between the ages of 7 and 14 by sector.6 世界银行也从雇佣童工的各个经济部门收集数据。表一依照经济部门展示了7-14岁年龄段中参与经济活动的儿童在各行业中的分布情况。⑥ In seven of the nine countries for which data exists, most children were employed in agriculture, often by a wide margin.7 In the two exceptions, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, the leading sector employing children was service. India had the highest proportion of children employed in manufacturing, and there it was a little over 14 percent. 有数据可查的九个国家中，七个国家的大部分儿童受雇于农业部门，远超其他行业。⑦ 哥斯达黎加与多米尼加共和国是两个例外，雇佣童工最多的是服务业。印度制造业雇佣童工的比例在各国中最高，略超过14%。 Protests against sweatshops that use child labor implicitly assume that ending child labor in sweatshops by taking away the option to work in a factory will, on net, reduce child labor. Evidence on child labor in countries that have sweatshops indicates that is wrong. It is not a few “bad apple” firms exploiting children in factories. Child labor is common. Employment in agriculture is not necessarily safer, either. A 1997 child labor survey showed that 12 percent of children working in agriculture reported injuries, compared with 9 percent of those who worked in manufacturing.8 对雇佣童工的血汗工厂进行抗议，这种行为暗含了一种预设，即通过除去儿童在工厂工作的选择从而终结血汗工厂里的童工现象，童工数量就会出现净减少。从拥有血汗工厂的国家所获取的证据显示，这是错的。真相并不是个别“害群之马”在工厂里剥削儿童。雇佣童工的现象是普遍的。而且，在农地里工作也并不必然更加安全。一份1997年的童工调查显示，农业部门有12%的童工曾遭伤害，制造业则是9%。⑧ Child Labor and Economic Development 童工与经济发展 The thought of Third World children toiling in factories to produce garments for us in the developed world to wear is appalling, at least in part because child labor is virtually nonexistent in the United States and the rest of the more developed world.9 Virtually nowhere in the developed world do kids toil long hours every week in a factory in a manner that prevents them from obtaining schooling. 第三世界的儿童们在工厂里辛苦劳动，为我们这些发达地区的人生产服装——这种念头让人惊骇，至少部分原因在于童工事实上并不存在于美国及其他发达地区。⑨ 事实上，没有发达国家会允许儿童们每周长时间地在工厂里辛苦工作，以至于无法接受学校教育。 Children typically worked throughout human history, either long hours in agriculture or in factories once the industrial revolution emerged. The question is, why don’t kids work today? Rich countries do have laws against child labor, but so do many poor countries. In Costa Rica the legal working age is 15, but an ILO survey found 43 percent of working children were under the legal age.10 纵观人类历史，儿童其实一直都在工作，不管是长时间在农地里劳作，还是工业革命之后进入工厂工作。真正该问的问题是：为何今天儿童不工作了？富裕国家确实有禁止童工的法律，但是很多贫穷的国家也有。哥斯达黎加的法定工作年龄是15岁，但是国际劳工组织的一项调查发现有43%的童工低于法定年龄。⑩ Similarly, in the United States, Massachusetts passed the first restriction on child labor in 1842. However, that law and other states’ laws affected child labor nationally very little.11 By one estimate, more than 25 percent of males between the ages of 10 and 15 participated in the labor force in 1900.12 Another study of both boys and girls in that age group estimated that more than 18 percent of them were employed in 1900.13 Economist Carolyn Moehling also found little evidence that minimum-age laws for manufacturing implemented between 1880 and 1910 contributed to the decline in child labor.14 同样，在美国，马萨诸塞州在1842年最先对童工加以限制。然而，那部法律连同其他州的法律对于全国范围内的童工情况影响甚微。⑾ 有人估算过，1900年10-15岁的男性中超过25%的人参与工作.⑿ 另一项研究将同年龄段的女性也纳入了估算范围，结果发现1900年有超过18%的儿童参与了工作。⒀ 经济学家卡洛琳·莫和林也找不到证据证明1880至1910年间针对制造业实施的最低工资法起到了减少童工的作用。⒁ Similarly, economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz examined the period between 1910 and 1939 and found that child labor laws and compulsory school-attendance laws could explain at most 5 percent of the increase in high school enrollment.15 The United States did not enact a national law limiting child labor until the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938. By that time, the U.S. average per capita income was more than $10,200 (in 2010 dollars). 经济学家克劳迪亚·戈尔丁与拉里·卡茨仔细调查了1910至1939年间的情况，发现童工相关的法律与强制入学的法律最多只能解释5%的高中入学率增长幅度。⒂ 直到1938年《公平劳动标准法》通过，美国才有了全国性的限制童工的法律。在那时，美国人均收入已超过10,200美元（以2010年美元计算）。 Furthermore, child labor was defined much more narrowly when today’s wealthy countries first prohibited it. Massachusetts’s law limited children who were under 12 years old to no more than 10 hours of work per day. Belgium (1886) and France (1847) prohibited only children under the age of 12 from working. Germany (1891) set the minimum working age at 13.16 此外，如今的富裕国家当年第一次出台法律禁止童工时，其定义要比现在狭窄的多。马萨诸塞州法禁止12岁以下儿童每天工作超过10小时。比利时（1886年）与法国（1847年）只禁止12岁以下儿童工作。德国（1891年）将最低工作年龄限定在13岁。⒃ England, which passed its first enforceable child labor law in 1833, merely set the minimum age for textile work at nine years old. When these countries were developing, they simply did not put in place the type of restrictions on child labor that activists demand for Third World countries today. Binding legal restrictions came only after child labor had mostly disappeared. 英格兰在1833年通过了第一部童工法，将纺织业的最低工作年龄仅仅设在9岁。当这些国家处于发展阶段，他们通过的限制标准可比不上今天这些活动家对第三世界国家所要求的。有效的法律约束只有在童工几近消失之后才会到来。 The main reason children do not work in wealthy countries is precisely because they are wealthy. The relationship between child labor and income is striking. Using the same World Bank data on child labor participation rates we can observe how child labor varies with per capita income. Figure 2 divides countries into five groups based on their level of per capita income adjusted for purchasing power parity. In the richest two fifths of countries, all of whose incomes exceed $12,000 in 2010 dollars, child labor is virtually nonexistent. 富裕国家的儿童不工作的主要原因就是他们比较富有。童工比例与收入之间的相关性是显著的。通过前文提到的世界银行关于童工比例的数据，我们可以观察到童工比例是如何随人均收入的变化而改变的。经购买力平价调整后，图2按照人均收入水平将各国分成五组。最富有的两组国家人均收入超过12，000美元（以2010年美元计算），童工几乎不存在。 It is only when countries have an income less than $11,000 per year that we start to observe children in the labor force. But even here, rates of child labor remain relatively low through both the third and fourth quintiles. It is the poorest countries where rates of child labor explode. More than 30 percent of children work in the fifth of countries with incomes ranging from $600 to $2,000 per year. Economists Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik econometrically estimate that 73 percent of the variation of child labor rates can be explained by variation in GDP per capita.17 只有当一个国家的人均年收入低于11,000美元时，我们才开始观察到童工。即便如此，在第三与第四组国家中，中等及中等偏上收入家庭的童工比例相对来说也很低。而在穷国，童工比例暴增。最为贫穷的那组国家中，人均年收入在600美元到2，000美元之间，童工比例超过了30%。经济学家Eric Edmonds 与 Nina Pavcnik 运用计量经济学测算，认为童工比例差异中的73%可由人均GDP差异来解释。⒄ Of course, correlation is not causation. But in the case of child labor and wealth, the most intuitive interpretation is that increased wealth leads to reduced child labor. After all, all countries were once poor; in the countries that became rich, child labor disappeared. Few would contend that child labor disappeared in the United States or Great Britain prior to economic growth taking place—children populated their factories much as they do in the Third World today. 当然，有相关性不代表存在因果关系。但是当我们思考童工与财富之间的关系时，最符合直觉的解读就是财富的增长减少了童工。毕竟，所有国家都有过贫穷的阶段；在那些富裕起来的国家里，童工就消失了。鲜有人认为美国或者英国的童工在经济发展之前就已经消失了——就像今日的第三世界，工厂里到处都是儿童。 A little introspection, or for that matter our moral indignation at Third World child labor, reveals that most of us desire that children, especially our own, do not work. Thus, as we become richer and can afford to allow children to have leisure and education, we choose to. 我们对历史所做的一些反省，抑或出于对第三世界童工现象的道德愤慨，这些其实都反映了我们中的大部分人不希望孩子们去工作，尤其是自己的孩子。因此，当我们变得有钱，能够为孩子们提供闲暇的生活与教育之时，我们就这样做了。 Conclusion 结论 The thought of children laboring in sweatshops is repulsive. But that does not mean we can simply think with our hearts and not our heads. Families who send their children to work in sweatshops do so because they are poor and it is the best available alternative open to them. The vast majority of children employed in countries with sweatshops work in lower-productivity sectors than manufacturing. 让儿童在血汗工厂里工作的想法令人厌恶，但这不意味着我们就该简单地让同情心泛滥，而舍弃大脑的思考。家长把孩子送去血汗工厂里工作，是因为他们太穷了，而这已是可选的选项中最好的选择。在有着血汗工厂的国家里，大多数童工所在行业的生产能力比制造业更低。 Passing trade sanctions or other laws that take away the option of children working in sweatshops only limits their options further and throws them into worse alternatives. Luckily, as families escape poverty, child labor declines. As countries become rich, child labor virtually disappears. The answer for how to cure child labor lies in the process of economic growth—a process in which sweatshops play an important role. 出台贸易制裁措施或其他法律，将这些儿童的工作机会夺走，这只会进一步限制他们的选择，陷他们于更糟糕的境地之中。值得庆幸的是，当这些家庭脱离贫困之后，童工就减少了。随着国家慢慢富裕起来，童工在事实上就会消失。如何解决童工问题的答案就在经济发展的过程之中，而血汗工厂则在其中扮演了重要角色。 Notes 注记

1. National Labor Committee, “Child Labor: 11 year-old Halima Sews Clothing for Hanes,” 2006. A video of this interview with Halima is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTIfY9SmJdA.
2. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 1994 Child Labor Report, Bangladesh, http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/sweat/bangladesh.htm
3. Paul Krugman, “Reckonings; Hearts and Heads,” New York Times (April 22, 2001), p. 17. Similarly, UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/, reports that many of these children turned to prostitution.
4. World Bank, World Development Indicators, CD-ROM (Washington: World Bank, 2005).
5. Mauritius is excluded from Table 1 because it is an outlier that is not representative of the general situation as I explain in Out of Poverty.
6. For each country, an average was taken for all years between 2000 and 2009 for which data are available.
7. The World Bank database does not include data for Vietnam, but Eric V. Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik, “Child Labor in the Global Economy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 204, report that 92 percent of children working in Vietnam in 1998 worked in agriculture.
8. Kebebew Asshagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child Labour in Brief, Geneva: International Labor Organization (1997).
9. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 18 percent of children aged 5 to 14 are economically active worldwide. Of these, it estimates that 94 percent of them are in low-income countries, and only 2 percent are in what it classifies as developed countries. ILO, Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour, Geneva: ILO (2002).
10. International Labor Organization, Summary of the Results of the Child and Adolescent Labour Survey in Costa Rica, Geneva: ILO (2002), http://www.ilo.org/ipec/ChildlabourstatisticsSIMPOC/Questionnairessurveysandreports/lang—en/index.htm.
11. The remainder of this paragraph and the next draws on research found in Joshua C. Hall and Peter T. Leeson, “Good for the Goose, Bad for the Gander: International Labor Standards and Comparative Development,” Journal of Labor Research 28, no. 4 (September 2007): 658–76.
12. Robert Whaples, “Child Labor in the United States,” in EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. R. Whaples, retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.childlabor.
13. Samuel Lindsay, “Child Labor in the United States,” American Economic Association 8, (February 1907): 256–259.
14. Carolyn Moehling, “State Child Labor Laws and the Decline in Child Labor,” Explorations in Economic History 36, no. 1 (1999): 72–105.
15. Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, “Mass Secondary Schooling and the State: The Role of State Compulsion and the High School Movement,” NBER Working Paper No. 10075 (2003).
16. France and Prussia both had earlier laws prohibiting child labor, but they were not enforceable. See Hall and Leeson (2007).
17. Edmonds and Pavcnik, (2005): 210.

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The Misogynist Origins of American Labor Law 美国劳动法的仇女起源 作者:Jeffrey Tucker @ 2016-02-17 译者:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值) 校对:鳗鱼禅(@鳗鱼禅) 来源:FEE,https://fee.org/articles/government-s-war-on-women-1900-1920/ Many now credit government for past progress in gender equality, mostly because of late 20th-century legislation that appeared to benefit women in the workplace. This is a distorted view. Few know that government at all levels actually sought to prevent that progress. 如今许多人把过去在性别平等上的进步归功于政府，主要是因为二十世纪后期的立法看似让职业女性受益。然而这个观点与现实不符。鲜为人知的是，各个层级的政府都曾企图阻挠这种进步。 A century ago, just as markets were attracting women to professional life, government regulation in the United States specifically targeted women to restrict their professional choices. The regulations were designed to drive them out of offices and factories and back into their homes — for their own good and the good of their families, their communities, and the future of the race. 一个世纪前，正当市场吸引女性进入职场之际，美国的政府管制刻意将女性作为目标人群，限制她们的职业选择。这些管制措施的目的是把女性从办公室和工厂驱赶回家中——为了女性和她们家庭、社区，以及民族的未来。 The new controls — the first round of a century of interventions in the free labor market — were designed to curb the sweeping changes in economics and demographics that were taking place due to material advances in the last quarter of the 19th century. The regulations limited women’s choices so they would stop making what elites considered the wrong decisions. 这些新的控制措施——是整整一个世纪对自由劳动力市场的干涉浪潮的第一波——意在阻止由于十九世纪最后二十五年物质进步所带来的经济和人口统计上的巨大变化。管制措施限制了女性的选择，这样她们就无法做出当时社会精英眼中的“错误”决定。 The real story, which is only beginning to emerge within the academic literature, is striking. It upends prevailing narratives about the relationship between government and women’s rights. Many cornerstones of the early welfare and regulatory state were designed to hobble women’s personal liberty and economic advancement. They were not progressive but reactionary, an attempt to turn back the clock. Women’s Work Is Not New 女性工作不是什么新鲜事 It was the freedom and opportunity realized in the latter period of the 19th century that changed everything for women workers, opening up new lines of employment. The growth of industrial capitalism meant that women could leave the farm and move to the city. They could choose to leave home without having married — and even stay in the workforce as married women. They enjoyed more choice in education and professional life than ever before. New clerical jobs, unknown a century earlier, were everywhere to be had. Women’s wages were rising quickly, by an impressive 16 percent from 1890 through 1920. Nor were women working at “exploitative” wages. A Rand corporation study of wage differentials discovered an interesting fact: women’s wages relative to men’s were higher in 1920 than they were in 1980. 新的文书类工作在那之前一个世纪还不存在，而此时已经到处都是。从1890年至1920年女性的工资快速上升，涨幅高达16%。女性的工资并非是“剥削性”的。兰德公司一项关于工资差异的研究揭示了一个有趣的事实：1920年女性工资相对于男性工资的比率要高于1980年。 The Law Intervenes 法律介入 And yet, these were also the years in which we first saw government intervention in the labor market, much of it specifically targeting women. As historian Thomas Leonard argues in his spectacular book Illiberal Reformers (2016), an entire generation of intellectuals and politicians panicked about what this could mean for the future of humanity. 然而，在那些年政府首次开始介入劳动力市场，明确针对的目标主要是女性。正如历史学家Thomas Leonard在其力作《非自由的改革者（Illiberal Reformers）》中指出的，整整一代的知识分子和政治家恐慌于女性工资上升会给人类未来带来的影响。 Society must control reproduction and therefore what women do with their lives. So said the prevailing ideology of the age. We couldn’t have a situation in which markets enticed women to leave the control of their families and move to the city. 社会必须控制生育，因而也就必须控制女性的人生。那个时代盛行的意识形态如是说。市场引诱女性离开家庭的控制搬迁到城市，这种情况让人无法接受。 Though they are called Progressives, the reformers’ rhetoric had more in common with the “family values” movement of the 1970s and ‘80s — with pseudoscientific race paranoia playing the role that religion would later play. In many ways, they were the ultimate conservatives, attempting to roll back the tide of history made possible by the advance of the capitalist economy. 尽管他们被称为进步主义者，这些改革者的话语倒跟1970和80年代的“家庭价值观”运动有更多共同点——也包括日后宗教也运用的伪科学种族妄想狂那一套。在许多方面，这些人是终极的保守主义者，他们企图使资本经济的进步带来的历史浪潮倒流。 They were incredibly successful. Over a 10-year period between 1909 and 1919, 40 states restricted the number of hours that women employees could work. Fifteen states passed new minimum wage laws to limit entry-level jobs. Most states created stipends for single-parent families, specifically to incentivize women to reject commercial life, return to protected domesticity, and stop competing with men for wages. 他们大获全胜。1909年至1919年的十年间，40个州限制了女性雇员可以工作的小时数。15个州通过了新的最低工资法来限制初级工作职位。大多数州制定了对单职工家庭的津贴，特意激励女性抵制商业生活回归被保护的家庭生活，同时不再与男人在职场上竞争。 Such laws were completely new in American history (and in almost all of modern history) because they intervened so fundamentally in the right of workers and employers to make any sort of contract. The Progressive agenda involved government deeply in issues that directly affected people’s ability to provide for themselves. It also created unprecedented impositions on both employees and their employers. Such laws would have been inconceivable even 50 years earlier. 这些法律在美国历史上（同时也在几乎整个现代历史上）没有先例。原因在于它们如此根本性地介入了工人和雇主订立任意契约的权利。在一些直接影响人们自给自足能力的议题上，进步主义的议程和政府关联极深。同时进步主义创立了前所未有的税项，同时向雇主和雇员征收。这样的法律即使在五十年前也是不可想象的。 How did all this happen so fast, and why? 政府的干预如何迅速实施？为何能得逞？ The Inferiority of Women 女性的劣势 Richard T. Ely, the hugely influential founder of the American Economic Association and the godfather of progressive economics, explained the issue clearly, laying the groundwork for the laws that followed. His 1894 book Socialism and Social Reform expressed a panic about women’s entry into the workforce: Richard T. Ely 是美国经济协会极具影响力的创建者，也是进步主义经济学的教父。他曾清楚地阐述了这个问题，为之后产生的法律打下了基石。他在1894年发表的著作《社会主义与社会改革》中对女性加入劳动力大军表达了恐慌：

Restrictions should be thrown about the employment of married women, and their employment for a considerable period before and after child-birth should be prohibited under any circumstances. There should also be a restriction of the work-day, as in England, for children and young persons under eighteen, and for women. Such a limitation having beneficial effect upon the health of the community…. Night work should be prohibited for women and persons under eighteen years of age and, in particular, all work injurious to the female organism should be forbidden to women. 应该限制雇用已婚女性，在任何情形下，都应该禁止雇用处于分娩期前后的女性，禁止雇用期应该相当长。我们应该仿效英格兰，限制儿童、十八岁以下的年轻人和女性的工作时长。这种限制利于社会健康发展。……应该禁止女性和不满十八岁者上夜班，尤其应该禁止女性从事那些损害女性生理机体的工作。

If the reference to the “female organism” sounds strange, remember that this generation of intellectuals believed in eugenics — using state force to plan the emergence of the model race — and hence saw women mainly as propagators of the race, not human individuals with the right to choose. 如果书中所谓的“女性生理机体”听着别扭，请记住那一代知识分子相信优生学——即使用国家的力量来制定生产模范种族的计划，因此他们将女性主要看成生育者，而非拥有选择权利的个人。 For anyone who believed that government had a responsibility to plan human production (and most intellectuals at the time did believe this), the role of women was critical. They couldn’t be allowed to do what they wanted, go where they wanted, or make lives for themselves. This was the normal thought pattern for the generation that gave the United States unprecedented legal restrictions on the labor market. 对于任何相信政府有责任对人类生育做规划的人（当时大多数知识分子确实相信）来说，女性的角色至关重要。女性不能被允许做自己想做的事，去她们想去的地方，或过她们自己想要的生活。这就是当时一代人通常的思维模式，而正是这种思维模式让美国政府对劳动力市场进行前所未有的法律限制。 The Supreme Court Weighs In 最高法院的介入 Consider the Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon, which considered state legislation on maximum working hours and decided in favor of the state. Oregon was hardly unusual; it was typical of the 20 states that had already passed such laws directed at women’s freedom to choose employment. From the text of Colorado’s law passed in 1903: “No woman” shall “work or labor for a greater number than eight hours in the twenty-four hour day … where such labor, work, or occupation by its nature, requires the woman to stand or be upon her feet.” 看一下Muller诉俄勒冈州这个最高法院案例，最高法院认可对最大工作小时数的州立法，并做了对州政府有利的判决。俄勒冈州并非特别，它只是已经通过此类针对女性选择工作自由的法律的二十个州的典型。在1903年通过的科罗拉多州的法律这样写道：“没有女性”应该“在一天的24小时中进行8小时以上的工作或劳动……这里指的是需要女性站立完成的工作、劳动或职业。” The decision in Muller v. Oregon, then, ratified such laws all over the country. Today, this case is widely considered the foundation of progressive labor law. What’s not well known is that the brief that settled the case was a remarkable piece of pseudoscience that argued for the inferiority of women and hence their need for special protections from the demands of commercial enterprise. That brief was filed by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. 于是，最高法院对Muller诉俄勒冈州案的判决正式批准了全国范围内此类法律。今天，该诉讼被普遍认为是进步主义劳动法的基础。而不为人所周知的是，终结该诉讼的那份简报是一篇令人称奇的伪科学文章，该简报论述了女性的劣势，认为女性需要特殊的保护使她们免受商业公司侵害。这份简报正是后来成为最高法院法官的Louis Brandeis提交的。 The Weird and Awful “Brandeis Brief” 奇怪又糟糕的“Brandeis简报” The “Brandeis Brief” argued that the law had to stop the massive influx of women into the workplace because women have “special susceptibility to fatigue and disease,” because female blood has more water in it than men’s blood. Their blood composition also accounts for why women have less focus, energy, and strength generally, according to the brief. “Brandeis简报”认为法律必须制止大量女性流入劳动力大军，因为女性“特别容易疲劳和生病”，原因是与男性相比，女性血液中含有更高比例的水分。按照这份简报的说法，女性的血液成分比例也解释了为何女性通常在注意力、精力和体力上逊于男性。。 “Physicians are agreed that women are fundamentally weaker than men in all that makes for endurance: in muscular strength, in nervous energy, in the powers of persistent attention and application.” “医生们认同女性在一切和耐力有关的方面从根本上弱于男性的观点：这些方面包括肌肉力量，神经系统的能量，持续保持注意力和坚持的能力。” Moreover, “In strength as well as in rapidity and precision of movement women are inferior to men. This is not a conclusion that has ever been contested.” 此外，“不仅在力量上，在速度和动作的精确度上，女性都劣于男性。这一结论从未受到过质疑。” Long hours are “more disastrous to the health of women than to men,” the brief explained. Government therefore needed to regulate work hours for the “health, safety, morals, and general welfare of women.” 长时间工作“对女性健康的损害要大于对男性，”该简报这样解释道。因此政府需要为了“女性的健康、安全、道德，以及生活幸福”对工作时长进行管制。 Restrictions on work hours were therefore essential. “It is of great hygienic importance on account of the more delicate physical organization of woman,” the brief said, “and will contribute much toward the better care of children and the maintenance of a regular family life.” 因此限制工作时间就至关重要。“考虑到女性生理组织更脆弱，（限制工作时间长度）在卫生上具有重大意义”，该简报这样写道，“这对关爱儿童和维持正常家庭生活都非常有益。” This brief is also notable for being the first to combine science, however bogus, and public policy in an appeal to the Supreme Court. 这份简报另一个闻名于世的原因，是它首次在向最高法院的上诉中将科学——尽管是冒牌货——与公共政策结合在一起。 Florence Kelley’s Dream of Nonworking Women Florence Kelley的女性不工作梦想 One might suspect that the entire effort was a male-driven one to stop female progress, but that’s not the case. A leader in the campaign for such labor interventions was writer and activist Florence Kelley. Modern progressives celebrate her activism for maximum work hours, the 10-hour workday, minimum wages, and children’s rights. Indeed, she is considered a great hero by the sanitized version of history that progressives tell each other. 现在可能有人会怀疑这整个事情都是男性驱使的，意在阻止女性进步，但事实并非如此。支持政府介入劳动力市场的运动的一位领导者Florence Kelley是一名作家兼激进分子。现代进步主义者颂扬了她在最大工作时长、十小时工作制、最低工资和儿童权益上的激进主义。没错，在进步主义者相互传颂的历史洁本中，她是一位伟大的英雄。 Before we cheer her accomplishments, however, we should look at Kelley’s driving motivation. Writing in the American Journal of Sociology, she explained that she wanted a minimum wage as a wage floor to stop manufacturing plants and retail outlets from employing women for less than they could otherwise employ men. 但在为她的成就欢呼之前，我们应该看看Kelley的动机。在发表于《美国社会学杂志》的文章上，她解释道，她支持最低工资标准是因为最低工资相当于工资门槛，可以不让工厂和零售商店以低于男性工资的标准雇佣女性。 Retail stores, she wrote, tend to “minimize the employment of men, substituting them for women, girls, and boys, employed largely at less than living wages.” It was precisely such competition from women and children that Kelley intended to stop, so that men could earn higher wages and women could return to traditional roles. 她写道，零售商店倾向于“将雇佣的男性数量最小化，取而代之的是以低于基本生活工资的薪酬雇佣女性，女孩和男孩。”Kelley希望制止的正是这些来自于女性和儿童的就业竞争，这样男性就可以赚更多工资，而女性则可以回归她们的传统角色。 In her book Some Ethical Gains through Legislation (1905), Kelley said that long working hours had to be ended for women because commercial life was introducing “vice” into communities (“vice” for this generation was the preferred euphemism for every manner of sexual sin). Worse, women were choosing commercial life over home “on their own initiative.” 在出版于1905年的《一些通过立法获得的伦理好处》一书中，Kelley认为女性长时间工作必须被阻止，因为商业化生活正在将“恶习”带入社区（那一代人更喜欢用“恶习”这一委婉说法来指代任何与性相关的罪孽 ）。而更糟的是，女性在商业化生活和家庭二者间选择了前者，完全是“自己主动的”。 Kelley considered it necessary to restrict women’s rights for their own “health and morality,” she said, and also to boost men’s wages so women would stay home under the care of their mothers, fathers, suitors, and husbands. Kelley认为有必要为了女性的“健康和道德”限制女性权利。在书中她写道，限制女性权利也是为了推动男性工资的增长，从而使得女性可以留在家中受她们的父母、求婚者和丈夫们的照顾。 Moreover, to make such work illegal would make “righteous living” more practical for women. If they stopped being rewarded in wages, they would return to domestic life. Kelley even regretted the invention of electricity because it allowed women to work late at factories, when they should be at home reading to children by firelight. 此外，将女性长时间工作定为非法会使得“正直的生活”对女性来说更为实际可行。如果女性不再受工资回报的奖励，她们就会回归家庭生活。Kelley甚至还为电的发明感到遗憾，因为是电让女性可以夜晚在工厂工作，而此时她们本应在家中的炉火旁给孩子们讲故事。 In Kelley’s view, the ideal role of women with children is not to enter commercial life at all: “Family life in the home is sapped in its foundation when mothers of young children work for wages.” It’s an opinion with which some may still sympathize, but should such an opinion be imposed on working families by coercive legislation? For this paragon of progressive social reform, it was clear that lawmakers had to force women back into the home. 在Kelley看来，女性面对孩子的理想角色是完全不进入商业化生活：“当小孩的母亲们为工资工作时，家庭生活的基础被削弱了。”现在有些人依然支持这样的观点，但这样的观点应该通过强制性立法被强加于双职工家庭吗？按照这种进步主义社会改革的范式，立法者必须强迫女性回家。 Florence Kelley and the movement she represented sought to disemploy women and get everyone back to a premodern form of domestic living. She wanted not more rights for women but fewer. The workplace was properly for men, who were to get paid high wages sufficient for the whole family. That was the basis for her support of a range of legislation to drive women out of the workforce and put an end to the new range of options available to them, options that many women were happy to choose. Florence Kelley与她代表的运动，追求的是女性不被雇佣以及所有人都回归现代之前的家庭生活。她要的不是女性拥有更多权利，而是更少。工作场所适合男性，因为他们在那里能获得高薪酬，足够养活全家人。就是基于这样的理念，她支持通过广泛的立法将女性从工作场所驱逐出去，使女性不再有一系列新的选项——很多女性乐于选择的选项。 Fear the Women of East Prussia 对东普鲁士女性的恐惧 All this scholarship and activism is one thing, but what about the popular press? 这些学术研究和激进主义是一回事，那大众传媒又怎么样呢？ Professor Edward A. Ross, author of Sin and Society, spoke out in the New York Times on May 3, 1908. In an article titled “The Price Woman Pays to Industrial Progress,” Ross warned that America’s “fine feminine form” was endangered by commercial society. Edward A. Ross教授是《罪与社会》一书的作者。他在1908年3月3日纽约时报上一篇题为《女性为产业进步所付出的代价》文章中警告了“精致的女性气质”正在被商业化社会所危害。 If women were permitted to work, an evolutionary selection process would govern their reproduction to the detriment of the human race. The graceful women who would otherwise bear beautiful children would be pushed out of the gene pool and replaced by “squat, splay-footed, wide-backed, flat-breasted, broad-faced, short-necked — a type that lacks every grace that we associate with women.” 如果允许女性工作，进化选择过程会主宰她们的生育，危害人类。本来会生养漂亮孩子的优雅女性会被挤出基因池，取而代之的将是“矮胖、八字脚、宽背、平胸、脸蛋平庸、脖子短的女性——这种类型的女性在任何方面都不能让我们把女性优雅与之相联系。” Ross’s example: “the women of East Prussia,” who “bear a child in the morning” and “are out in the field in the afternoon.” Ross举的例子是“东普鲁士女人”，她们“在早晨刚生完孩子”，“下午就下地”。 The professor explained that women who had worked in factories would not make suitable bearers of children. “Think of the discouraging situation of the young man who after he has been married two or three years finds he has a wife who at the age of 28 or 30 has collapsed, become a miserable invalid, suffering aches and pains all the time.” Why, she might find herself “unable to keep the home attractive.” And all of this “because of just a few extra dollars added to the profits of the employer or a few extra dollars saved to the consumer.” 该教授解释说，在工厂工作的女性不会是合适的生养者。“试想一下这样令人沮丧的情况：一个年轻男人在和他妻子结婚两三年后发现她在28或30岁的年纪垮掉了，终日一身病痛。”这样的妻子可能会发现自己“无法把家里弄得漂亮”。而这一切“仅仅是为了让雇主多赚几美元，或是让消费者多省几美元”。 Because of the dangerous combination of employment and natural selection, Ross contended, the government had to extend a hand to help these women by limiting working hours and establishing a high bar to enter the workforce: minimum wages. 由于雇佣劳动和自然选择的危险结合，Ross主张政府必须通过限制工作时长，并对进入劳动力市场设置高门槛——即最低工资——向女性伸出援手。 Only through such enlightened interventions could government save women from the workplace, so that they could return to the maternal duties of rearing “girls who have the qualities of fineness — grace and charm.” 政府只有通过这样高明的干预才能将女性从工作场所中拯救出来，这样女性才能回归母亲的角色，抚养“具有优雅和美丽这些优秀特质的女孩”。 Is This Satire? 讽刺否？ If this reads like satire, sadly it is not. Nor were such views unusual in a generation of ruling-class intellectuals, politicians, and activists that embraced eugenics and rejected capitalism as too random, too chaotic, too liberating. Their plan was to reestablish and entrench by law the family and marital structure they believed in, which absolutely precluded a generation of women making individual choices over their own lives. Every trend panicked the eugenic generation. They fretted about the falling birth rate among those who should be reproducing and the rising birth rate among those who shouldn’t be. They worried about morals, about competition, about health, about culture. Most of all, they regretted the change that a dynamic economy was bringing about. 所有的时代趋向都让相信优生学的一代人恐慌。他们担心本应生养的群体的生育率在下降，而那些本不应生育的群体的生育率却在上升。他们忧虑于道德、竞争、健康和文化。所有问题中他们最担心的是充满活力的经济即将带来的改变。 Thus, from 1900 through 1920, a period that set the stage for a century of interventions in the labor market, hundreds of laws stifling women were passed in every state and at the federal level, too. None dared call it misogyny, but this is real history, however rarely it is told. 因此，1900至1920年间，政府为干预劳动力市场打好了舞台，这种干预持续了一个世纪。数以百计窒息女性的法律在所有州以及联邦层面上通过。没人敢称之为厌女，但这是真实的历史，尽管很少被说起。 Feminists against Regulation 对抗管控的女权主义 Laws that disemployed thousands of women nationwide led to vast protests. The Equal Opportunity League, an early feminist organization in New York, lobbied the state legislature to repeal the bans on work. And it received quite the press coverage. 使全国范围内成千上万的女性失去工作的法律导致了大范围的抗议。机会平等联盟是一个位于纽约的早期女权组织，它游说州立法机构废除对女性工作的禁令，得到了相当多的媒体报道。 “So-called ‘welfare’ legislation is not asked for or wanted by real working women,” the league said. “These ‘welfare’ bills are drafted by self-styled social uplifters who assert that working women do not know enough to protect themselves.” “所谓的“福利”立法不是真正在工作的女性要求或内心想要的，”该联盟如是说。“这些“福利”法案由自封的社会提升者起草，他们认为工作的女性不知如何保护自己。” “Are women people? Women are no longer the wards of the State and a law that is unconstitutional for a man voter is equally unconstitutional for a woman voter.” “女性也是人吧？女性不再是州政府的被监护人，对男性投票人来说违宪的法律对女性投票人来说一样违宪。” “Working at night is not more injurious than working in the daytime,” the league argued. “Many women prefer to work at night because the wage is higher, opportunities for advancement greater, and women with children can enjoy being with their child after school hours in the day time.” “在晚上工作不比在白天工作更有害”，该联盟这样认为。“许多女性喜欢在晚上工作是因为工资更高，升职的机会更大，而且有孩子的女性可以在白天孩子放学后和孩子在一起。” In fact, the phrase “equal pay for equal work” was not created to mandate higher wages for women. It was a league slogan invoked to argue against laws that made it “a crime to employ women even five minutes after the eight-hour day.” The phrase emerged as a preferred slogan to protest in favor of free markets, not against them. 事实上，“同工同酬”这一警句的出现并非为了强制提高女性工资。它是联盟的一句口号，用来反对那些认定“8小时工作时间之外即使多雇佣女性5分钟也是犯罪”的法律。这一广受欢迎警句的是作为亲市场而非反对自由市场的口号而提出的。 The Equal Opportunity League also passionately opposed the minimum wage law. Such laws, it argued, “while purporting to be for [women’s] benefit, would really be a serious handicap to them in competing with men workers for desirable positions.” 平等机会联盟也积极地反对最低工资法。联盟认为这样的法律“尽管本意是为了照顾（女性）利益，实质上却让女性在与男性工人竞争好职位时受到严重妨碍”。 In short, the conclusion of the League is that these proposed bills and laws, ostensibly intended to protect and shield the woman worker, will, if permitted to stand, unquestionably work her industrial ruin and throw her back into the slough of drudgery out of which she is just emerging after centuries of painful, laborious effort to better her condition. ("Women’s Work Limited by Law," New York Times, January 18, 1920) 简单来说，联盟的结论是这些提议中的法案和法律表面上意在保护女性工人，实际上一旦通过则毫无疑问会毁坏女性的职业生涯，将女性赶回家务重活的泥沼。而女性在经历数个世纪痛苦艰难的努力后才刚刚脱离这一泥沼而改善了自己的状况。（《女性的工作被法律所限》，《纽约时报》1920年1月18日。） Restriction Becomes Liberation? 限制变成了解放？ The fairy tale version of history says that during the 20th century, government freed women to become newly empowered in the workplace. The reality is exactly the opposite. Just as the market was granting women more choices, government swept in to limit them in the name of health, purity, family values, and social uplift. Such laws and regulations are still around today, though they have been recharacterized in a completely different way. As Orwell might say, somewhere along the way, restriction became liberation. 历史的童话版本说，在20世纪政府给予了女性自由，让女性在工作场所拥有了权利。真相恰好相反。市场给予女性更多的选择，而政府却插手进来以健康、纯洁、家庭价值观和社会地位提升等名义限制女性的选择。这类法律和法规在今天仍然存在，虽然它们以完全不同的方式被重新描绘。正如奥威尔所说，在通往动物庄园路途中，不知从何处起，限制变成了解放。 (Author’s note: I’m grateful to Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers for providing the footnotes I followed to write this piece. Also, much more rethinking of Progressive Era politics and its impact on the family is discussed in Steven Horwitz’s Hayek’s Modern Family, newly published by Palgrave.) （作者附言：非常感激Thomas Leonard的《非自由的改革者》，循着该书提供的脚注，我写下了此文。另外，对进步时代的政治及其对家庭之影响的更多再思考，在Steven Horwitz所著的由Palgrave最新出版的《哈耶克的现代家庭》一书中有更多讨论。） （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——

Warning: Labels 警示：此处有警示标签！ 作者:John Stossel @ 2016-06-22 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:Reason,http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/22/warning-labels Warning labels are a product of a litigious society that drive prices up. 警示标签是全社会热衷诉讼的产物，它们抬高了商品价格。 When you use a coffeepot, do you need a warning label to tell you: "Do not hold over people"? 使用一只咖啡壶时，你是否觉得它有必要附上一个警示标签，告诉你“不要端到别人头上去”？ Must a bicycle bell be sold with the warning: "Should be installed and serviced by a professional mechanic"? Of course not. Yet that bell also carries the warning: "Failure to heed any of these warnings may result in serious injury or death." 出售单车铃铛时，是否必须附带一个警示：“须由专业技工安装维修”？当然不会。可实际上，这只铃铛上不光有这条警示，还附带这样一条：“不听从上述警示可能会导致严重受伤或死亡。” This is nuts. It's a bell. 神经病。那不过是只铃铛！ The blizzard of warning labels means we often won't read ones we should, like the Clorox label that warns, do not use bleach "with other product... hazardous gasses may result." No kidding. Mixing bleach and ammonia creates gasses that can kill people. 警示标签狂轰滥炸的后果是，那些真正需要我们阅读的内容，我们倒经常不去读了。比如“高乐氏”的标签上说，不要将漂白剂“和其他产品”混用，“以免产生危险气体”。这不是开玩笑。漂白剂和氨混合会产生能够致命的气体。 But I rarely bother to read warning labels anymore, because manufacturers put them on everything. 但我现在很少阅读任何警示标签了，因为制造商已经在任何东西上面贴满了标签。 A utility knife bears the warning: "Blades are sharp." 比如，工具刀被贴的标签是，“刀刃锋利”。 I know about such dumb labels because Bob Dorigo Jones, author of Remove Child Before Folding, asks his readers and radio listeners to send in ridiculous labels for his "Wacky Warning Label" contest. 我之所以知道这些愚蠢标签的故事，是因为《折叠童车前请抱出孩子》一书作者Bob Dorigo Jones向读者和广播听众征集荒唐标签，参加他搞的“最雷人警示标签”竞赛。 "We do this to point out how the rules that legislatures and Congress make favor litigation," says Dorigo Jones. "We are the most litigious society on Earth. If the level of litigation in the United States was simply at the level of countries that we compete with for jobs in Asia and in Europe, we could save $589 billion a year." “我们这样做是想指出，立法机关和国会制定的法规会如何刺激诉讼，”Dorigo Jones说，“我们是全球最爱打官司的国家。只要美国的年诉讼量跟那些和我们争夺工作岗位的亚欧国家持平，我们每年就能节省5890亿美元。” America has more silly warnings mainly because, unlike the rest of the world, we don't have the "loser pays" rule in courts. That rule means that whoever wins a court battle is compensated by the loser. It creates an incentive not to bring frivolous cases. 美国的傻帽警示尤其多，主要是因为，与世界其他国家不同，我们的法院不实行“败诉者付费”这一规则，也就是说，不管谁赢了官司，都能得到败诉一方的补偿。它会鼓励人们不要为鸡毛蒜皮的事打官司。 In the U.S., the incentive is to try even dubious legal arguments and hope you'll hit the jackpot. Or maybe your enemy will pay you to avoid the bigger cost of hiring lawyers to continue the fight. 而在美国鼓励的则是，就算法律论证把握不大也要尝试一下，并指望中个头奖。要不然就是，你的对手也许因为不想花更多钱雇律师跟你长期纠缠而给你一笔钱了事。 More lawsuits mean more frightened corporate lawyers smearing labels on everything, just in case "lack of warning" is an issue in a lawsuit. 官司越多，意味着公司的律师们愈发胆战心惊，给万事万物都贴上标签，以免“没有警示”成为诉讼的一个争论点。 That's probably why a toy Star Wars lightsaber comes with the label, "Not to Be Used as a Battle Device." Why would they bother to say that? Did someone sue, claiming they thought a lightsaber would do what it does in Star Wars movies? I don't know. The company never responded to our questions. 这大概就是为何星战玩具光剑被贴上“不能用作战斗工具”标签的原因了。他们为什么自找麻烦说这些？是不是有人以为光剑玩具应该有电影《星球大战》里的效果，并（在期望落空后）起诉过他们呢？我不知道。我们问过他们，但该公司没有回应。 Some dumb labels are brought to us by dumb politicians. California requires warnings that something may be "toxic" or cause cancer on everything from foods to theme parks: "Disneyland Resort contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." Gee thanks, California, but it would probably be better to warn kids about alligators over in Florida. 某些愚蠢标签是愚蠢政客导致的。加州要求从食品到主题乐园的所有东西都贴上标签，明确其是否“有毒”或是否致癌。比如，“加州政府了解，迪士尼乐园有导致癌症、出生缺陷或其他生殖系统损害的化学品，”。谢了，加州，如果佛罗里达能提醒孩子们小心鳄鱼，那也许更好。 Dorigo Jones offers a prize to whomever submits the wackiest label. The lightsaber label won this year, earning Susannah Peat of Carmel, Indiana, a thousand dollars. You can submit your choices to try to win next year's prize. Dorigo Jones设立了一个奖项征集最雷人标签。本年度获奖的就是光剑玩具上的标签，来自印第安纳州卡梅尔市的Susannah Peat获得了1000美元奖金。你可以提交你的选择，去竞争来年的奖励。 Please do. It's important to make fun of lawyer-driven stupidity that distracts us from more important risks. 请务必提交噢。由律师们搞出来的这种蠢事让我们忽视了更为重大的风险，有必要嘲笑一下他们。 I suppose I shouldn't really blame companies. They've been sued successfully so many times for not having labels that they feel they must try to protect themselves. Injuries aren't the real danger here. Lawyers and politicians are. 我觉得我真不应该谴责这类公司。他们因为没贴标签已经被多次起诉成功，以至于认为必须自保。在这类问题上，伤害并非真正的危险，律师和政客才是。 When companies get sued, they end up charging higher prices to cover the cost of the lawyers. So those warning labels not only distract us but also are part of a process that makes us all poorer. 公司一旦被起诉，最终会通过抬高商品价格弥补雇佣律师的成本。所以，这类警示标签不但扰乱了我们的注意力，而且是造成我们变穷的部分原因。 I worry that they also make us stupider. 我担心它们还使我们变蠢。 Economists say that when people assume that government protects us from all possible harm, we acquire a false sense of security. We stop looking out for ourselves. 经济学家说，如果假定政府能保护我们免受任何可能的伤害，那么我们就会获得一种虚假的安全感，便不再自己小心留神。 Those warning labels give us the impression that the law has assessed every possible risk—if something were seriously dangerous, government wouldn't allow it. 这类警示标签给我们一种印象，以为法律评估过所有可能的风险——如果某件事物很危险，政府不会放过它。 Lawyers and legislators' insistence that most every action be bound by written rules makes many of us forget to use own own brains. 律师和立法者坚持要求几乎所有的事都必须受到成文规则的约束，这让许多人忘记了自己还会动脑子。 （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 Surprising Failure Of Food Labeling 食品标签的意外失败 作者:Omri Ben-Shahar @ 2016-06-28 译者:Shawn Lai(@NiGuoNiGuoNi) 校对:王涵秋 来源:promarket.org,https://promarket.org/surprising-failure-food-labeling/ If lawmakers want to improve the dietary choices of Americans, the first thing they need to recognize is that the problem is not information. 如果法律制定者想要改善美国人的膳食选择，他们首先要意识到问题不是出在信息上。 Food labeling is one of the least objectionable types of regulation bursting into the scene in recent decades. It is also one of the least successful.  It is also one of the least successful. 食品标签是近几十年来闯入市场的管制政策中争议最少的一种，同时也是最失败的一种。 The ongoing explosive debate about labeling foods produced from genetically engineered crops, known as GMOs, is a testament to how important food labeling is perceived. Congress is currently in the midst of tight legislative battle on the enactment of a national GMO labeling bill, to override state labeling laws. But GMO labeling is only one front in the food labeling agenda. 最近的关于标签转基因食品（也就是GMO）的火热争论证实了食品标签多么被看重。为了取代各州原有的标签法案，国会目前正处于一场关于制定全国性转基因标签法案的激烈立法战争之中。但是转基因标签只是食品标签议程表的一个方面。 “Labelists” (folks who embrace mandated labeling as an effective form of regulation) have successfully pushed for an assortment of food labels over the past two decades. Obamacare, for example, requires (as do many local laws) the prominent posting of calories in restaurants. “标签主义者”（那些认为强制性标签是一种有效管制的人）已经在过去二十年中成功推进了各种食物的标签立法。举例来说，奥巴马医改要求（很多地方法律也是如此）将食品的卡路里张贴在餐馆的显眼处。 First Lady Michelle Obama, a well-intentioned food labelist, is promoting what she regards as a labeling success—the “Nutrition Facts” chart found on every packaged food. Many cities in the U.S. have adopted a new hygiene labeling  for restaurants—mandatory signs displaying a sanitation grade of A, B, or C. 作为一个出于好意的食品标签主义者，第一夫人米歇尔·奥巴马正在推动一项她所认为的标签事业胜利的项目——在所有包装食品上标注“营养价值”表。很多美国城市都为餐馆采用了一种卫生标签——强制性地将卫生情况分为A, B, C。 And numerous other labels are mandated or proposed: country of origin labels, safe-handling labels, food justice, even “activity equivalent” labels that would tell consumers the number of minutes they would have to jog to burn the calories eaten! 除此之外，还有大量其他标签是强制性的或建议性的：原产地标签，安全使用标签，食品正义性标签【译注：证明食品的生产过程中不涉及不平等或违反人权的情况】，甚至还有告诉消费者需要慢跑多少分钟来消耗他们所摄入卡路里的“同等运动量”标签！ Big Hopes For Labels 寄托于标签的希望 There is a widespread belief that food labeling would do social good. The First Lady predicts that nutrition labeling will “make a big difference for families all across this country” and “help solve the problem of child obesity.” The NYC Commissioner of Health is confident that restaurant hygiene labels “gives restaurants the incentive to maintain the highest food safety practices.” And the Royal Society for Public Health in England claims that the activity-equivalent labels would “prompt people to be more mindful of the energy they consume” and “encourage them to be more physically active.” 很多人认为食品标签对社会有益。第一夫人预言营养标签会“对全国各地的家庭产生重大影响”并且“帮助解决儿童肥胖问题”。纽约市的卫生局局长确信餐馆的卫生标签“激励了餐馆保持最高的食品安全水平”。英国皇家公共卫生协会宣称“活动等同量”标签会“激励人们更多地关注他们所摄入的能量”并且“鼓励他们去更多地活动身体”。 It is easy to see why labelists hang such high hopes on labels. People are motivated to eat well, so if they make poor food choices it must be because they have poor information. The solution seems obvious: deliver simple information. This would offset the half-truths and misleading messages that food advertising and front-of-the-package claims make. Indeed, when surveyed, consumers often nod in agreement and support more labels and more information, further kindling labelists’ conviction in the value of their enterprise. 很容易看出为什么标签主义者在标签上寄托了那么多的希望。人们都想吃的好，所以如果他们在食品方面选择不当一定是因为他们得到的信息不到位。如此一来解决方案显而易见：传递全面的信息。这些会抵消食品广告和包装封面上的宣传所带来的误导。事实上，调查显示消费者通常也认同更多的标签和更多的信息，这进一步助长了标签主义者对他们事业的自信。 Disappointing Reality 令人失望的现实 But in reality there is little to celebrate: food labels don’t work! Study after study shows that labels have failed to promote even modest dietary improvements. Perhaps most surprising is the failure of calorie labeling. When fast food chains were ordered to post calorie counts, everyone expected a drop in calories consumed and in serving sizes. 但是事实上却没有什么好高兴的：食品标签根本没有用！大量研究显示标签根本没能推动哪怕一点膳食方面的进步。也许最让人吃惊的是卡路里标签的失败：当快餐连锁店被命令标注卡路里数值时，所有人都以为卡路里消费量和食物的大小都会下降。 But no! Research found almost no significant change. Even when minor reduction was spotted, it was not clinically meaningful. A modest exception is Starbucks: with labeling, customers were found to consume 6% fewer calories per transaction (interestingly, the effect is due to food, not beverage choices). 但是并不是这样。研究显示几乎没有显著变化。即使有微量的减少，也不具备任何临床上的意义。有一个不大不小的例外发生在星巴克：当使用标签时，消费者平均每单消费减少了6%的卡路里（有趣的是，这些变化是发生在食物而非饮料的选择上）。 But even such small effect does not carry over beyond the elite food market. Calorie labels have of no effect on low income people or on adolescents. A survey of all the evidence concludes “calorie labeling does not have the intended effect of decreasing calorie purchasing or consumption.” 但是即使是这么小的效果在高端食品市场以外却没有发生。卡路里标签在低收入群体和年轻人身上没有效果。一项证据完备的调查总结道：“卡路里标签没有达成预期的减少卡路里消费或摄入的效果。” Take another example, perhaps the crown jewel of food labelism: the Nutrition Data box on packaged food. It is widely thought successful, because people notice and use these labels to compare food products. It is even regarded a model for labeling reforms in other areas—a template for improved financial or data privacy disclosures. 举另一个也许是食品标签主义最核心的例子：包装食品上的营养数据表。这个标签被广泛认为是成功的，因为人们可以用这些标签去比较不同的食物产品。这甚至被认为是一个其他领域标签改革的模范——一个先进的金融或数据隐私公开的模版。 Unfortunately, despite their prominence, Nutrition Data labels have not delivered the desired effect. People might choose to eat fewer calories per meal, but then remain hungrier for snacks. Indeed, in the past generation—the time during which these labels were perfected—the number of average “eating occasions” per day increased from 3½ to 5, and the overall daily consumption of calories increased by 400. Not exactly a resounding success. 不幸的是，尽管非常出名，营养数据标签并没有起到想要得到的作用。人们可能会选择每餐摄入较少的卡路里，但是因此他们会更饥饿然后去吃零食。实际上，在上一代人中——那是标签最完美的时代——平均每天“进食次数”从3.5次上升到了5次，总计每天卡路里摄入量增加了400，可见这并不是一个令人瞩目的成功。 The disappointing performance of food labels is confirmed in other contexts. Despite early enthusiasm about the perceived success of restaurant hygiene grades in Los Angeles, newer and more comprehensive data collected by Stanford’s Daniel Ho suggests that grades have not made restaurants cleaner or reduced the incidence of foodborne illness. Similarly, the “organic” label had the unintended effect of lowering the quality of organic foods. And the list of failed labels and disclosures extends well beyond the food area, and has been documented thoroughly. 食品标签令人失望的表现也在其他背景下得到了证实。尽管人们对于早期洛杉矶餐馆的卫生评级方面的成功抱有极大的热枕，但由斯坦福大学的Daniel Ho搜集的更新的和更加全面的数据表明，卫生评级并没有让餐馆变得更加干净或是减少食物传播疾病的发生率。无独有偶，“有机”标签起到了降低有机食物质量的反作用。各种失败标签以及其他失败的公开信息的案例远不仅限于食品领域，并且被详细记录。 Beyond Food Labels 食品标签之外 If lawmakers want to improve the dietary choices of Americans, the first thing they need to recognize is that the problem is not information. Unlike choosing mortgages or colleges, choosing healthy food is not complicated. People have enough experience to know that a double cheeseburger with bacon (1400 calories at Hardee’s) is not healthy, even without labels that quantify this intuition. For many, the problem is commitment. Another diet book or better labeling is a superfluous response to what is at core a question of willpower. 如果法律制定者想要改善美国人的膳食选择，他们首先要意识到问题不是出在信息上。不同于选择贷款或大学，选择健康食物并不复杂。人们已经有足够的经验来判断一个夹了培根的双层芝士汉堡（在Hardee’s卖的那种有1400卡路里）并不健康，并不需要标签来量化这个直觉。对于大多数人，问题在于坚持。再多一本关于膳食的书或是更好的标签都是徒劳无功的，因为关键在于一个人的意志力。 Tax on unhealthy food may help, as it did with cigarettes, but also ignite too much political resentment. For consumers in under-served communities where obesity is prevalent, the problem is lack affordable supply of better food. Here, social policy should begin by improving access to grocery choices. 对不健康食物征税可能有用，正如同征税对减少吸烟有用一样，但是这同时引起了很多政治争端。对于那些住在超重问题普遍，生活不便的社区的人们来说，问题是缺少负担得起的健康食物的供应。在这种地方，社会政策应该始于增加购物的渠道。 But access is not enough. Healthy food has to be affordable, suggesting that some type of need-based subsidy is required. Access and subsidies are effective but expensive policies. They require budgets. This explains why labelism is winning the day: for the government, food labels are really cheap. 但是光有渠道不够。健康的食物必须不能太贵，这意味着有些基础需求的补贴是需要的。渠道和补贴确实有效，但是代价高昂，因此需要政府的预算。这解释了为什么现在标签主义占上风：对于政府来说，食品标签实在是太便宜了。 （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——

【2016-06-13】 @海德沙龙 《美国铁路已经落伍了？》 新干线子弹头，欧洲之星，中国高铁……这些耀眼夺目的宏伟工程，在许多人眼里都是现代 工业文明的杰出代表，也是工业党和技术治国论者引为自豪（或艳羡自怜）的对象，即便在美国这个技术治国论素不吃香的地方， 也不乏有人高声质问：我们的高铁在哪里？ @whigzhou: 美国铁路业的活力一度被州际贸易委员会（ICC）的僵硬管制几近扼杀，不过从1970年代中期福特政府所发动的一 系列去管制化改革开始，铁路业又逐渐恢复了活力，此后表现一直不错，只是很少为世人所知。 @whigzhou: 福特是战后历史上被严重低估的一位总统，里根之后的一系列创新浪潮和经济繁荣的制度源头其实都可以追溯到福特 ，他所启动的去管制化改革有幸在卡特、里根和克林顿时期一直得以延续，没有这一系列改革，后来的运输、医疗和互联网发展都 会大打折扣，不过在主流公知叙事中，从来不会有这种人的位置。 @whigzhou: 制度变革与经济/社会表现之间的滞后关系也是现代选举政治所面临的一大困境，碰上那些特别愚蠢的选民时，这问 题就更严重，我敢打赌，今天跺脚痛骂马杜罗的委内瑞拉人里，不少还在怀念查韦斯呢 @PlusKing2022: 福特还是任期太短 没足够时间形成自己的政策 @whigzhou: 但他任内参与谋划经济政策的几员大将政治生命可不短：唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德、迪克·切尼、艾伦·格林斯潘 @whigzhou: 而且福特本人是国会老江湖，纸牌屋游戏高手，政策推动能力强  

Seattle’s Coming $15 Minimum Wage 西雅图即将实施15美元最低工资标准 作者：Clinton Alexander @ 2015-10-28 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值） 来源：The New American，www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/21844-seattles-coming-15-minimum-wage In the city of Seattle, Washington, Joe Salvatore runs The Recycling Depot, a recycling business employing about 20 people. Not far away, Bobby Denovski is eking out a living at Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta with a handful of employees, and Remo Borracchini is busy running an Italian Bakery. The story is the same across Washington State and across the nation: Businesses are fighting every day to service customers, treat employees well, and simply stay open. Joe Salvatore在华盛顿州西雅图市经营一家叫做“回收站”的回收企业，雇佣了大约20人。不远处，Bobby Denovski正惨淡经营着“帕记披萨和意粉”店，雇有少量员工。而Remo Borracchini则在为经营一家名为“意大利烘焙”的小店而上下奔波。这种故事在华盛顿州和整个美国都很普遍：为了服务顾客、善待雇员以及仅仅是保持开业，企业每天都在奋斗。 Unfortunately in the city of Seattle, it is about to get much more difficult for business owners to continue the fight. Pushed forward primarily by socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, the first phase of a new minimum wage law went into effect on April 1, 2015, and the law will eventually bring all businesses to a $15 minimum wage, more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. 不幸地是，在西雅图市，企业主想要继续奋斗下去，将来会变得更加艰难。主要由信奉社会主义的女市议员Kshama Sawant推动的新最低工资法已于2015年4月1日进入第一阶段的实施，并最终将对所有企业实行15美元最低工资标准，相当于将目前时薪7.25美元的联邦最低工资翻了一倍以上。 The law is a graduated system with different pay scales and timelines for businesses above and below 500 employees. For businesses with 501 employees or more, the April 1, 2015 minimum wage was set at $11 an hour. For the next two years, on January 1 of each year, the wage increases, rising from the current $11 per hour to $13, reaching $15 an hour on January 1, 2018. 新法建立的是一个分级制度，对于雇员超过和低于（及等于）500人的企业分别设立了不同的工资标准和时间表。对于雇有501或更多雇员的企业，2015年4月1日开始最低工资是时薪11美元。在接下来的两年内，每年1月1日提一次工资，从现在的时薪11美元提到13美元，到2018年1月1日实现时薪15美元。 For companies paying at least $1.50 per hour toward a silver level medical benefits plan, the minimum wage goes to $12.50 on January 1 of 2016, then $13.50 in 2017, and finally $15 an hour in January of 2018. As stated on Seattle’s website seattle.gov, “Once Seattle’s minimum wage reaches $15.00/hour, payments toward medical benefits no longer impact employees’ minimum wage.” 如果企业每小时至少帮员工支付1.5美元给白银级医疗福利计划，那么它们的最低工资从2016年1月1日开始将是12.5美元，2017年是13.5美元，最终到2018年1月达到15美元。西雅图市的网站seattle.gov上称：“一旦西雅图的最低工资达到15美元每小时，那么医疗福利付费就不会再影响雇员的最低工资标准。” On April 1, 2015, small-business wages were set at $11 an hour as well. For companies at or below the 500-employee mark, the $15 minimum wage is set to be phased in over the course of the next decade. Again, counting medical benefits and other factors such as tips, the total compensation varies. By the year 2021, the minimum wage will be $15 with tips and health insurance factored in, and in 2025, small businesses must meet the $15 minimum wage without credit for tips or insurance. 2015年4月1日起，小企业的工资也被设定为时薪11美元。对于雇员数量在500名或更少的公司，最低工资标准将在接下来的10年内逐步施行。同样，把医疗福利和其他因素如小费算在内，总工资也会不同。到2021年，把小费和健康保险算在内，最低工资将是15美元，而到2025年，小企业必须符合刨除小费或保险后15美元的最低工资标准。 President Obama has repeatedly urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. For this reason it would behoove those across the nation to pay special attention to the city of Seattle. Seattle is tucked away in the northwestern corner of the nation; however, as the city squeezes its businesses for more and more money, it may become ground zero for the minimum wage fight. 奥巴马总统已经反复敦促国会将联邦最低工资从时薪7.25美元提升至时薪10.10美元。因此之故，全美理应特别关注西雅图市。西雅图深藏于美国的西北角落，不过，随着这座城市从其企业身上不断榨取越来越多的钱财，它可能成为最低工资之战的引爆点。 Reasons for the Law 立法理由 Since being first enacted in 1928, the idea of a “minimum wage” has been sold as a law that will benefit the poorest sectors of our society. According to Cornell Law School, “The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.” 自1928年首次创设为法律以来，“最低工资”概念就被作为一种有利于社会中贫困群体的法律向大众兜售。根据康奈尔大学法学院的说法，“设计最低工资是为了制定一种最低生活水平，以保障雇员的健康和福利。” Likewise, from the city of Seattle’s own website we find, “Citywide minimum wage laws offer local governments a powerful tool for helping low-income workers and families in their communities. Such measures also have significant impact on businesses and how they operate.” Minimum wage advocates have held that it is possible to set a minimum pay scale and have no ill effect on jobs. 同样，我们也能从西雅图市自己的网站上看到，“全市范围内的最低工资法，能给地方政府提供一种强大工具，以帮助各自社区中的低收入工人和家庭。这种措施也将对企业及其运营方式产生巨大影响。”最低工资的鼓吹者历来相信，设定一种最低工资标准而不对就业产生任何不良影响是可能的。 Operating under the assumption that simply raising the minimum wage will guarantee said wage, the people pushing for the $15 minimum wage claim that it has the power to lift the poor to that “new standard of living.” Is this true? Will it indeed lift the needy in our communities to another level, or is it a false assumption, one that will cause irreparable damage to business and industry? 依着“简单地将最低工资标准提升一下就能实现这一工资收入”的假定行事，那些争取15美元最低工资的人就此宣称，这一标准有能力将穷人提升到“新的生活水平”。这是真的吗？它真的能将我们社区中的贫困人口提升一个水平？还是说这是个错误的假设，将会对企业和实业造成不可弥补的伤害？ Asking the Businesses 问问企业 Several business owners in Seattle were kind enough to give their own opinions of Seattle’s minimum wage law and explain how it will have a negative impact not only on their businesses, but on those people it was designed to help. 承蒙西雅图一些企业主的好意，向我们表达了他们对西雅图最低工资法的个人看法，并解释了它会如何产生负面影响，而这种负面影响不仅仅会作用于他们自己的企业，而且会作用于立法本来意图帮助的那些人。 Walter McLaughlin has been in Small Business Administration (SBA) lending for 27 years. He won the Washington State Financial Services Champion award in 2005. Concerning the minimum wage law in Seattle, McLaughlin said in an e-mail statement: Walter McLaughlin已在“小企业管理局”（SBA）借贷项目工作了27年。他于2005年获得了“华盛顿州金融服务冠军”的称号。关于西雅图的最低工资法，McLaughlin在一份电邮声明中说：

In economics, there is a principal called “zero sum gain” in which an increase is offset by a loss of equal amount. When a small business (and per the SBA’s size standards, over 99% of U.S. companies qualify as small) sees its operating costs increase, it has three options: 1) absorb the cost, 2) raise prices or 3) lower expenses. Since businesses don’t operate with the intention of losing money, the irony of a drastic increase in the minimum wage is that in order for employers to adjust, the net effect may be higher inflation and unemployment, disproportionately hurting the very same group the $15 minimum wage was intended to help. 在经济学中，有个原理叫做‘零和受益’，其中增加值被等量的损失所抵消。如果一家小企业（按照SBA的规模标准，美国超过99%的公司算小企业）的运营成本上升，它就面临三个选项：1）承担这一成本，2）提高价格，或者3）降低开支。由于企业运营的目的并不是为了损失金钱，所以最低工资急剧提升的反讽在于，雇主为了实现调整，最终净效果可能是通胀升高及失业率升高，这对于15美元最低工资标准意图帮助的那个群体损害相对更大。

McLaughlin lays out three ways in which the new Seattle minimum wage law will play out as it’s implemented: a loss to the business owner (absorb the cost), a cost to the general public (raise prices), or a reduction in expenses (possible job loss). McLaughlin提出了西雅图最低工资新法实施之后最终将走向的三种路径：企业主出现损失（承担成本），一般公众的损失（提高价格），或者削减开支（可能出现工作岗位流失）。 A Loss to the Business Owner 企业主出现损失 For those people who have never run a business, the absorption of the additional cost may seem to be the easiest and most straightforward solution to the requirement to pay employees more. But contrary to what those who have never had the experience of sitting down with a company’s balance sheets might think, all business owners are not jet-setting CEOs with profits just flowing in. 对于从未经营过任何企业的人来说，为了达到支付雇员更高工资的要求，由企业承担额外成本似乎是最简单、最直接的解决办法。但与这些从未看过任何一个公司财务收支表的人所想的相反，并非所有企业主都是乘坐直升机的CEO，利润滚滚而来。 At The Recycling Depot, general manager Joe Salvatore stated, “What these people don’t take into consideration is that when you raise the wage, you’re raising the Labor and Industries Insurance cost because that amount is affected by the wages. I have already talked to several small businesses in the area and there’s not a single one who is making tons and tons of money where they’re just going to be able to absorb these costs.” “回收站”的总经理Joe Salvatore说，“这些人没有考虑到，如果提高工资，你还会提高劳动和工业保险成本，因为后者会受工资影响。我已经和本地区的数家小企业谈过，没有一家是在成吨成吨地赚钱，没有一家能够直接承担这些成本。” In other words, while the absorption of minor costs may be a normal and constant part of running a business, the bottom line is a major factor. At Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta, Bobby Denovski echoed Salvatore’s sentiment: “We aren’t a large company with huge profits. As a small business the cost of labor is one of the main factors. Fifteen dollars an hour, that’s a lot of money to ask from a small business.” 换句话说，尽管运营一家企业时，承受并消化小量的成本可能是个司空见惯、总在发生的事，但盈亏底线是个主要的因素。“帕记披萨和意粉”店的Bobby Denovski呼应了Salvatore的观点：“我们不是那种利润巨大的大公司。对于小企业来说，主要因素之一就是劳工成本。15美元一小时，这种要价对于小企业来说可是一大笔钱。” When asked what effect he could foresee the escalating minimum wage law having on his business, Denovski commented, “It could put us all out looking for jobs. We have a couple more years paying on the loan for our restaurant. If we end up paying this $15 an hour, we are honestly in danger of losing it.” 当被问及不断升级的最低工资法将来会对其生意产生何种影响时，Denovski评论说，“我们可能都会被迫出去找工作了。我们的餐馆还有几年贷款需要还。如果最终我们需要支付15美元的时薪，我们真的可能会失去餐馆。” Likewise, The Recycling Depot, as a metals recycling business, is subject to sometimes-dramatic market fluctuations. Metal values can skyrocket, allowing ample room to treat employees well, and values can plummet, leaving the business struggling to survive. Said Salvatore of the times when the market is up, “We do take care of our employees during those times. We give bonuses and things like that. However what about the lean times? This is going to have a dramatic effect on us during the lean times. You can’t just start taking the pay away.” 同样，从事金属回收生意的“回收站”也承受着市场波动，时不时还非常剧烈。金属价格可能飙升，此时企业就有足够的空间来更好对待员工，但价格也可能跳水，那样企业就只能竭力求生。谈及市场向好的时候，Salvatore说，“那种时候我们确实会照顾自己的员工。我们提供奖金等类似东西。但生意差的时候呢？在生意差的时候，这会给我们造成巨大的影响。减少支出都来不及。” A Cost to the General Public 一般公众的损失 If costs cannot be simply absorbed by the company, another option is to raise the price of the product. Bobby Denovski stated, “The only thing I can do is to raise the prices. I worry that the demand for pizza in the community will not support the prices we will have to go to when the wages go up.” How much is a pizza worth to those in his community? How about a gallon of milk? Those claiming the minimum wage will have no ill effect on the community should be asking themselves these questions, because at some point most small business owners such as Denovski must find a way to recoup these costs. 如果成本不能简单地由企业承担，还有一个选项就是提高产品价格。Bobby Denovski称，“我唯一能做就是提高价格。如果工资上涨，我们就必须抬高价位，我担心我所在社区的披萨需求不足以支持我们的这种要价。”在他的社区，一份披萨应该要价多少？一加仑牛奶呢？那些声称最低工资不会对社区产生不良影响的人应当问问自己这些问题，因为到了某个时候，绝大多数小企业主，如Denovski一样，都会想办法转移这些成本。 Referring again to fluctuating values in the metals market, Salvatore stated, “We’re very dependent on the global prices of metals. When the metal values drop, we’re making less money and our margins shrink. During times like this there are a lot of businesses just trying to stay afloat.” And so he is forced to try to pass on the costs in another manner. Salvatore再一次谈及金属市场的波动价格：“我们对全球金属价格有很大的依赖。金属价格下跌时，我们赚的钱就减少，利润收缩。碰到这种时候，大量的企业只是谋求维持下去。”所以他将被迫以另一种方式把成本传递出去。 As a metals recycling business, The Recycling Depot purchases metals from other businesses and from the general public, then sells those metals based on current market prices. Because Salvatore has no control over the sale price (dictated by global supply and demand), the only thing he can do is to drop the prices he is paying the public for those metals, illustrating the second point (a cost to the public) in another light. 从事金属回收行业的“回收站”从别的企业及一般公众手里收购金属，然后依照当前市场价格将这些金属卖出。由于Salvatore没有办法控制销售价格（它由全球供给和全球需求决定），他唯一能做的就是压低他支付给公众的金属收购价格，这从另一个方面说明了我们提出的第二点（公众的损失）。 Lower Expenses 降低开支 Absent the ability to absorb the higher wages or pass on the costs to someone else, a third way to compensate is to lower expenses. On the surface this sounds harmless enough. However, it often means the disappearance of jobs. 要是没有能力承担更高的工资或将成本传递给其他人，那么还有第三种弥补办法，那就是降低开支。表面看来这种做法相当无害。但是，它通常意味着工作岗位消失。 At Borracchini’s Bakery in Seattle, a business that has been open for 94 years, Remo Borracchini has a long history of hiring youth. “I myself have probably hired 1,500 young people over the years. I have had people come here as teenagers and stay here as much as 25 years, so they came and learned a trade,” said Borracchini. 西雅图的“博记烘焙”是一家已经开业94年的企业，店主Remo Borracchini 历来喜欢雇佣年轻人。“多年以来，我本人可能雇佣了1500个年轻人。我手下有些人，来的时候还是个少年，然后就在这工作了25年。他们来我这里，学会了一门生意”，Borrachini这样说道。 He has brought in high-school students who have never worked a job and started them washing pots and pans, stocking shelves, and mopping floors. While the wages many of these new hires make is not a large sum, Borracchini sees a bigger picture: 他曾招过一些从未干过任何工作的高中生，让他们从刷盘子洗碗、装货架、拖地开始干起。尽管这些新进员工所赚取的工资并不多，Borracchini看到的却是一幅更大的图景：

It’s not that we’re just looking for cheap labor. It’s the understanding that you’re doing something for these young people other than sending them out to wander aimlessly through the neighborhoods. You see, I do believe we have a responsibility to our young people. There used to be internships throughout industry. Now that has changed. 并不是说我们只是为了找些廉价劳工。我们的理解是，你是在帮这些年轻人做点什么事，没有让他们在社区中没头没脑地游窜。跟你说，我确实相信我们对年轻人负有责任。过去，各行各业都有实习。现在事情发生了变化。 They used to go into places like print shops, or bakeries and come to begin learning a trade; that was their reimbursement, they were learning something that would benefit them throughout their life. Now they’ve passed a law saying they have to be paid a wage. So what happens? If you’re going to have to pay someone who doesn’t know anything, you might as well pay someone who already knows something. 过去，他们要去文印店或面包店等类似地方，开始学习一门行当；那相当于他们的回报，他们是在学习某种将会受益终身的东西。现在有人制定一条法律，说是必须给他们支付工资。那会发生什么呢？如果有人啥都不懂，你也必须要支付他工资，那你还不如向那些懂点什么的人支付工资。

Continued Borracchini, Borracchini继续说，

Businesses like McDonald’s, they built their empire not on a philosophy of it being a high paying job, but to take kids who have never worked before, teach them a little bit about work ethic and how to perform, and they move on to better opportunities when they have shown they have a bit of ability. You’ll begin to see the order screens in every type of McDonald’s scenario. Look at the jobs they’re eliminating right there. Kids who would be learning to show up for work on time, learning how to interact with the public, how to have a bit of work ethic. 像麦当劳这种企业帝国，它的建基哲学并不是它之作为一种高薪职位，而是它招募此前从未工作过的人，教给他们一点工作伦理和如何履职，然后当他们表现出具备一定能力时，就能前进一步，迈向更好的机会。以后你会看到各式各样的麦当劳式情景，大家都开始用点菜屏。看看他们正在消灭的工作。孩子们本来可以学会按时上班，学会如何与公众打交道，如何具备一点工作伦理。

Salvatore echoed Borracchini, stating that in order to recoup labor costs, jobs would almost certainly be cut, “at least cutting hours back if not completely doing away with jobs. The well is not bottomless.” Salvatore呼应了Borrachini，并说，为了弥补劳工成本，工作岗位几乎肯定会被削减，“如果不是彻底废除岗位，至少需要减少雇佣时长。井中的水毕竟是有限的。” At Padrino’s, a clearly concerned Denovski stated, “Right now it’s [the minimum wage] at $11 an hour and it is already difficult for me and my partner to keep the bills paid and the employees paid. They’re going to be raising that expense up to $15, but none of our other costs will be going down. I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do.” “帕记”的Denovski明显很是担心，他说，“现在的最低工资是时薪11美元，而我和我的合伙人已经感到难以偿付账单、支付员工工资。他们还要将这一开支提高到15美元，而我们的其他成本都不会降低。我真的不知道我们有什么办法。” Salvatore then commented on a worst-case scenario, “Eventually we have to tighten the ropes, and then what happens when there’s nothing left in the reserve?” Indeed, what does happen? What happens to the low-skill workers looking for a job? Where will the teenager or young adult go for training when McDonald’s has automated order screens? As Borracchini said, “It is the internship and low-skill jobs which will be cut. We will have sent them back out onto the street.” 然后，Salvatore就最坏的情形作了评论，“最终我们必须拉紧裤腰带，如果没有剩下任何储备，那会发生什么呢？”确实，会发生什么呢？对于那些找工作的低技术工人，会发生什么呢？当麦当劳开始用自动点菜屏时，少年或刚刚成年的人们要去哪里接受训练？正如Borracchini所说，“被削减的会是那些实习岗位和低技术岗位。我们将不得不把他们送回街上。” Help or Harm? 帮助还是伤害？ Seattle businesses obviously view the new minimum wage law with quite a bit of trepidation. It is easy to see why. These companies will have to find a way to recuperate the costs one way or another. No matter how it ends up happening, it will be a detriment to the community and the city. 西雅图的企业显然正以相当程度的恐惧看待最低工资新法。很容易发现原因所在。这些公司都必须寻找各种办法来弥补成本。不管最终会发生什么，它对于社区和整个城市都是一种损害。 In “The Tax & Budget Bulletin” by The Cato Institute dated March 2014, Joseph J. Sabia, associate professor of economics at San Diego State University, explains how a minimum wage affects the poor’s standard of living and employment opportunities: 在加图研究所2014年3月的“税收与预算简报”中，圣迭戈州立大学的经济学副教授Joseph J. Sabia就最低工资会如何影响穷人的生活水平和就业机会作出了解释：

The bulletin concludes that minimum wage increases almost always fail to meet proponents’ policy objectives and often hurt precisely the vulnerable populations that advocates wish to help. The weight of the science suggests that policymakers should abandon higher minimum wages as an antiquated anti-poverty tool. Minimum wages deter employment and are poorly targeted to those in need. 简报的结论是，提高最低工资几乎总是不能实现其支持者的政策目标，而且通常都会恰好伤害到鼓吹者们想要帮助的脆弱群体。科学表明，决策者们应当放弃提高最低工资这种早已过时的反贫困工具。最低工资伤害就业，而且对于身处困境的人们来说真是南辕北辙。

His words echo the business owners quoted here. Says Borracchini, “I can sympathize with someone who is trying to raise a family. Fifteen dollars is not a lot of money. It’s very difficult. However, there is an element of society who through laws like this are being denied a great privilege. The opportunity to learn how to work.” 他的言论正与我们此处所引企业主的言论互相呼应。Borracchini说，“有人要努力养活一家人，这我能够同情。15美元并不是很大一笔钱。世事艰难。但是，通过这种法律，社会中有一部分人将无法享有一项重要的权利。那就是学会如何工作的机会。” The bottom line is that the minimum wage law was supposedly created to help the poor and needy in our society. However, it is the low-skill and poor who will feel the effect first and foremost, and who will find it much more difficult to acquire the job skills needed to raise the value of their labor to or above the minimum wage. 这里的底线是，最低工资法的创设，本意是为了帮助我们社会中的穷人和急需帮助的人群。但是，首当其冲感受到其影响的就是低技术人口和贫困人口，他们将发现，要将自己的劳动价值提高到或超过最低工资，就必须获得工作技能，而这将变得比以前更难。 As voices cry ever louder for an increased federal minimum wage, the stories of small businesses across the nation need to be brought into the spotlight — businesses reaching out to unskilled youth willing to put in time training. Companies managing a tight bottom line can’t handle the extra expense of yet another increase in wages. 随着提高联邦最低工资的呼声与日俱增，有必要将全美小企业的故事带到台前——这些企业都在向那些技能不足但愿意花时间接受训练的年轻人敞开双臂。盈亏底线很紧张的公司没有办法应对未来工资再次上涨所带来的额外开支。 The heart of our nation does not lie within the halls of Congress but rather in the bakeries, pizza shops, recycling centers, and myriad other small businesses. It is not in the backroom deals between politicians where the effects of these laws will be felt, but rather in the checking accounts of struggling businesses. 我们民族的心脏并不位于国会的办公大楼里，而是位于各家烘焙店、披萨店、回收中心以及种种其他小企业中。要感受到这些法律的效果，不是去看政客之间的暗箱交易，而需要去看艰难度日的各家企业的存款账户。 （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——

【2016-05-07】 @whigzhou: 从老弗里德曼那辈开始，libertarians总是宣称18/19世纪的英国和美国有多么自由放任，许多追随者也人云亦云，他们的用意很好，但说法是错的，实际上，即便西方世界中最自由的部分，（除了少数袖珍国之外）距离古典自由主义的理想制度始终很遥远，只不过那时候国家干预经济和私人生活的方式不同而已。 @whigzhou: 略举几点：1）自由贸易，古典自由主义时代推动自由贸易的主要方式是破除非关税壁垒，而关税始终很高，各国财政对关税的依赖也比现在高得多，关税大幅下降到个位数水平是二战后的事情，但这并不是说早期的贸易自由化不重要，因为当时关税再高，和运费比还是很低，所以只要拆除壁垒，效果仍很显著。 @whigzhou: 2）管制，随便翻翻经济史就知道，18/19世纪的管制同样多如牛毛，但给人的印象很不一样，我猜这是因为，早先的管制主要以准入限制和特许垄断的方式进行，而较少以行为管控的方式进行，大量限制法规，但较少执行官僚，所以看到国家之手四处挥舞的景象不多见，究其因，当时政府的组织执行力还不行。 @whigzhou: 3）19世纪的美国联邦政府管的事情确实非常少，但州政府和市政府管的可不少，看看产业史，哪个新产业不是从一大堆政府限制法规里挣扎出来的，那时候联邦政府站在自由一边，多数州政府站在另一边，联邦主义者的努力拆除了很多壁垒，由此也可见在此之前的市场并没有那么自由。 @whigzhou: 当然后来局面颠倒了，铁路和电报把北美大陆连接成单一大市场，州政府管的太过分就把人逼跑了，只好偏向自由化，但此时联邦政府开始伸手了 @whigzhou: 4）政府规模，从财政开支和雇员数量看，那时候的政府确实小得多，但政府对市场和私人生活的干预强度不能仅从其有形规模看，也要从它所维护的壁垒、限制性法规和垄断特权看 @whigzhou: 5）福利制度，这是老弗里德曼叙事中唯一完全成立的一点，那时候基本上没有福利制度，济贫法的影响规模不大 @王弼正: 依稀记得宪法中，国会只有针对州际贸易有立法权也许就是这么来的吧。不过沿海州的国际贸易很繁荣啊。 @whigzhou: 没说不繁荣啊，仅仅清除海盗和运费降低这两项即可将潜在贸易量提升两个数量级，何况还有新世界的人口急速增长 @whigzhou: 从现世的污浊泥潭中赢得一点差强人意的自由空间从来都是艰难而侥幸的，所以不要相信什么自由天国，也无须为此一时彼一时的跌宕沦陷而悲观发愁。  

【2016-05-03】 @whigzhou: 乃国医疗管制，简单说就是，1）穷尽一切办法阻止患者掏出的钱落到真正帮助患者的人手里，尽最大可能的让它落进各类中间人——药监局、卫生局、招标办、医院院长、采购科、医药代表……——的腰包；2）穷尽一切办法阻止好医院/好医生赚钱、建立声誉、扩张壮大，从而将病人最大可能的留给骗子和老军医。 @whigzhou: 所以，莆田系和百度当然是管制的受益者。 @whigzhou: 有关医疗广告，转一篇七年前的旧文  

Link Between State Gun Laws and Fatal Shootings Not as Simple as It Seems 各州枪支法与致命枪击案的关系并不像看起来那样简单 作者：Thomas A. Firey @ 2015-10-11 译者：尼克基得慢（@尼克基得慢） 校对：小册子（@昵称被抢的小册子） 来源：Reason，https://reason.com/archives/2015/10/11/about-that-national-journal-gun-chart America has resumed its long-running debate on gun control, following the terrible attack at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, last week and two more shootings Friday, at Northern Arizona University and Texas Southern University. This time around, perhaps nothing has gotten more play than this tablefrom a short column by National Journal graphic artist Libby Isenstein. 在上周俄勒冈州罗斯堡乌姆普夸社区大学的可怕袭击和本周五北亚利桑那大学及德克萨斯南方大学的两起枪击案之后，美国有关枪支管制的长期争论再次开启。这一次，可能没什么比《国家杂志》平面艺术家Libby Isenstein在一篇简短专栏文章里的这张表格更出风头的了。 The chart ranks the states by their rate of "gun-related deaths" and notes whether each state has gun-restricting laws like background checks and waiting periods, or laws that expand gun accessibility and use, like concealed-carry and stand-your-ground rights. The chart’s implication is clear: the more gun restrictions, the fewer horrible crimes. 这张表格将各州按“涉枪死亡”率排名，并且标注了每个州是否有诸如背景审查和等待期这样的枪支管制法律，或者像隐蔽携带和无须退让权【译注："stand-your-ground" law是一种支持强自卫权的法律，允许个人在合理的认为自己身体或生命面临威胁时，不经退让躲避即可使用致命武力实施自卫。】这种扩大枪支获取和使用的法律。这表格的含义很明显：枪支管制越严，恶性犯罪越少。 Isenstein’s chart has since been posted on countless blogs, Twitter feeds, and Facebook pages, with the subtext (and often the explicit text) that if troglodyte gun-rights supporters could appreciate simple statistics, they’d stop impeding common-sense gun controls that would deter terrible crimes like the one in Roseburg. President Obama also made this point explicit last week in a statement about the Roseburg shooting: Isenstein的表格至今已经被无数的博客、推特和Facebook页面转载，潜台词（而且经常是明说）就是，如果赞成持枪权的老顽固们能够领会这简单的数据统计，他们就不会再阻止常识性的枪支管制，像罗斯堡那样的恶性犯罪就不会发生。奥巴马总统上周在关于罗斯堡枪击案的一份声明中也明确表达了这一观点。 States with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens [to obtain guns] and criminals will still get their guns, is not borne out by the evidence. 枪支管控法最多的州往往枪击致死的人数最少。所以认为枪支法不起作用，或者认为它们仅仅使守法公民[获得枪支]更加困难而犯罪分子将仍然得到枪支的看法，是没有证据支持的。 The president’s comment has since received some critical scrutiny  from The Washington Post's "Fact-Checker" Glenn Kessler. And UCLA law professor and Post contributor Eugene Volokh criticized the National Journal table in a recent post  on the lack of a statistical link between gun control and overall homicide rates. 总统的观点已经被《华盛顿邮报》“真相检查者”Glenn Kessler仔细推敲过了。加州大学洛杉矶分校法学教授、《华盛顿邮报》投稿人Eugene Volokh在最近一篇文章中批评《国家杂志》的上述表格缺乏枪支管制和整体谋杀率之间的统计学关联。 Yet the chart continues to bounce around the Internet and the media. Its currency reveals how readily people seize on statistics they don’t really understand but think—in this case, wrongly—support their opinions, claiming the intellectual high ground while dismissing opposing viewpoints as hopelessly  ignorant, biased, and dishonest. 然而这个表格在互联网和媒体上持续发酵。这一趋势反映了人们多么倾向于利用他们并不真正理解但（错误地）认为支持其观点的统计数据，来占领智识高地并将相反观点斥为无可救药的无知、偏颇和不诚实。 First, let’s be clear about what Isenstein’s chart does show: a connection between "gun-related deaths" and certain gun laws. A simple statistical test offers decent evidence of such a relationship. But there’s a problem with using that evidence to conclude that more gun restrictions will reduce the number of fatal shootings. To understand why, consider the following story. 首先，让我们来搞清Isenstein的表格真正表达的是什么：涉枪死亡人数和某些枪支管控法之间的关联。一个简单的统计测试就能提供这种关系的有力证明。但是用这种证据得出加强枪支管制就会减少致命枪击案的结论是有问题的。为了理解当中的原因，请思考下面这个故事。 Suppose there are two towns, Chevyville and Fordburg. Many years ago, General Motors (GM) built a factory in Chevyville and its residents, in loyalty to their town’s largest employer, now all drive Chevrolets. In Fordburg, however, local leaders were so angry with GM for not building the plant there that they passed an ordinance banning Chevrolets. 假设有两个名为Chevyville 和 Fordburg的小镇。很多年前，通用汽车在Chevyville建了一个工厂，该镇的居民都忠于镇上最大的雇主，全都开雪佛兰汽车。然而在Fordburg，当地的领导人因通用不在该镇建厂而愤怒地通过了一条禁止雪佛兰汽车的法令。 Recently, some Chevyvillians noticed that every fatal car crash in town involved a Chevrolet, whereas Fordburg hasn’t had a fatal Chevy crash in years. Those folks assembled a damning chart comparing Chevyville and Fordburg’s Chevrolet-related fatal crashes and began demanding that Chevyville adopt Fordburg’s Chevrolet controls. 最近，一些Chevyville居民注意到镇上每起致命的车祸都与雪佛兰相关，然而Fordburg很多年都没有致命的雪佛兰车祸。于是这些人制作了一份表格，证据确凿地比较Chevyville和Fordburg两镇与雪佛兰相关的致命车祸数，并开始要求Chevyville实行同Fordburg一样的雪佛兰汽车管制。 The Chevyvillians aren’t really upset about Chevrolet-related fatal crashes, but about fatal crashes in general. It’s quite possible that Chevy-free Fordburg has the same rate of fatal crashes as Chevyville, but Fordburg’s crashes involve Fords, Dodges, and Toyotas. That becomes obscured by Chevyvillians’ focus on Chevrolets. If Chevyville’s leaders, persuaded by the chart, were to ban Chevrolets, residents would likely continue suffering the same fatal crashes they do now, just with other car brands. Chevyville居民并不是为与雪佛兰相关的致命车祸感到难过，而是为所有致命车祸感到难过。没有雪佛兰的Fordburg很可能与Chevyville有相同的致命车祸率，只不过Fordburg的车祸涉及福特、道奇和丰田的车子。但这些事实都被Chevyville居民对雪佛兰的关注所掩盖了。如果Chevyville的领导听信表格而禁用雪佛兰汽车，居民们很可能仍然会面对跟现在同样的致命车祸，只不过换了别的汽车品牌而已。 Isenstein (and many others)) makes a similar analytical move as the Chevyvillians: she focuses on gun-related deaths rather than all violent deaths. Her table shows that, in states where it’s easier to buy and carry a gun, violent deaths are more likely to occur from guns—but that doesn’t mean the violent death rate is higher in those states. Isenstein（还有很多其他人）的分析跟Chevyville居民类似：她关注涉枪死亡人数而不是所有的暴力死亡人数。她的表格显示，更容易买到和携带枪支的州更可能发生枪支导致的暴力死亡——但是这并不意味着这些州的暴力死亡比例更高。 Statistical testing 统计检验 The question that lies at the heart of the gun control debate is whether gun restrictions reduce the incidence of murder and other violent crime. To help answer that, we can compare Isenstein’s state law data to murder and violent crime rates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Uniform Crime Reports  (UCR). 枪支管制辩论的核心问题，在于限制枪支是否能减少谋杀和其他暴力犯罪的发生率。为了回答这一问题，我们可将Isenstein的各州法律统计数据与司法统计局统一犯罪报告（UCR）的谋杀和暴力犯罪率相比较。 I did this with UCR data from 2012 (newer data aren’t yet available), resulting in 14 total test results (Isenstein’s seven laws multiplied by the two types of crime). The statistical test, known as a Pearson’s r, returns a value between 1 (indicating perfect positive correlation), 0 (no correlation), and –1 (perfect negative correlation). I arranged the tests so that negative numbers would indicate a relationship between more gun control and less violent crime. 我比较了2012年的统一犯罪报告，得出了总共14项检验结果（Isenstein七个方面的法规状况乘以两种犯罪类型）。这种称为Pearson积矩相关系数的统计检验会得出一个在1（表示完全正相关）、0（没有关联）、和-1（完全负相关）之间的值。在我组织的这个测试里，负数表示更多枪支管控法和较少暴力犯罪之间存在联系。 The results: In half of the 14 tests, the resulting coefficients were positive numbers, meaning that Isenstein’s gun restrictions had no more than a coin-flip chance of yielding the results that gun control supporters expect. Moreover, in all 14 cases, the coefficients were tiny, with nine smaller than +/– 0.1. Those results should make us highly skeptical that the gun laws have any effect—positive or negative—on murder and violent crime. 结果：在14项检验中，有7项得到的系数是正值，说明Isenstein的枪支限制得到枪支管制支持者预期结果的几率不会比抛硬币更高。而且，在全部14项检验中，相关系数都很小，有9项小于+/-0.1。这些结果应让我们高度怀疑，枪支法规是否对谋杀和暴力犯罪有任何影响——无论是正面的还是负面的。 I then slightly altered her law data in light of some peculiar data choices she made. For instance, Isenstein assumed that gun control changes implemented in 2015 affected gun-related deaths in 2013. She also treated states with court-established stand-your-ground (SYG) rights the same as states with no SYG, and different from states with legislatively enacted SYG rights. I used gun law data for 2012 (to match the crime data) and coded legislature-enacted SYG and court-imposed SYG the same. 然后我针对她对数据的一些特殊选择，稍微调整了她的法律统计数据。例如，Isenstein假定枪支管制法规在2015年发生的变更影响了2013年的涉枪死亡人数。她还将法院支持不退让权的州等同于没有不退让权的州，并且与立法确立不退让权的州区别开来。我用了2012年的枪支法规统计（为了匹配犯罪数据），并且将立法实行不退让权和法院承认不退让权等同视之。 I then repeated the statistical tests and the results were much the same as before. This time, nine of the 14 tests yielded positive numbers, indicating a correlation opposite of what gun control advocates expect. (In case you’re wondering about universal background checks, which President Obama is now considering expanding through executive order, both the murder and violent crime coefficients were positive numbers.) And again, all of the coefficients were tiny, with nine smaller than +/-0.1. 然后我再次进行了该统计检验，而结果跟之前相差无几。这一次，14项检验中有9项得到正值，显示与枪支管制支持者所预期的相关性相反。（若你想了解奥巴马总统正考虑通过行政命令来扩大的普遍背景调查的检验结果，我可以告诉你，它与谋杀和暴力犯罪的相关系数都是正值。）所有的系数都还是很小，有9个小于+/-0.1。 Finally, mindful of the possibility that a combination of gun laws could produce a "compounding" effect that alters crime rates but is undetectable when the laws are considered separately, I created an overarching variable intended to distill all of Isenstein’s law data into a single "gun restrictive" measure for each state. For violent crime, the resulting coefficient was 0.093 (again, a positive number, contrary to gun control advocates’ expectation), while murder was –0.012 (a negative number, but extremely tiny even when compared to the other tiny coefficients). 最后，枪支法规组合在一起时可能会产生影响犯罪率的“复合”效应，但在个别考察枪支法规时该效应未必能够被发现。考虑到这种可能性，我创造了一个全局变量，旨在将Isenstein的所有法规统计数据浓缩成每州一个的枪支限制程度值。对于暴力犯罪，得到的系数是0.093（又是正值，与枪支管制支持者预期相反），而谋杀的系数是-0.012（负值，但即使与其他很小的系数相比都极小）。 The results weren’t all bad for gun control. I performed the same statistical tests on 2012 state suicide rates and found that five of the seven coefficients yielded negative numbers, which is what gun control supporters would expect. Two of the cases (handgun registry and open-carry) yielded coefficients as large as –0.267 and –0.254—still pretty small, but much bigger than the crime coefficients. 结果并不是都不利于枪支管制。我对2012年各州自杀率做了同样的统计检验，发现得到的七个系数中有五个都是枪支管制支持者所期望的负值。有两项检验（手枪登记和公开携带）得到的系数较大，分别是-0.267和-0.254——仍然非常小，但比犯罪的系数要大得多。 So maybe gun control does have a small, beneficial effect on suicide. And it’s worth noting that nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides. But currently the argument over gun control isn’t driven by concerns about suicide, but about violent crime. 所以或许枪支管制对减少自杀有微弱的有利影响。值得一提的是，近三分之二的涉枪死亡是自杀。但是如今有关枪支管制的争论并不是因为担心自杀，而是暴力犯罪。 Correlation, causation, and complexity 相关性，因果关系和复杂性 As damning as all this might appear, it shouldn’t be interpreted as proof that gun control (or gun access for that matter) has no effect on violent crime. My analysis suffers two serious shortcomings, which also plague Isenstein and her re-posters. 虽然看起来证据确凿，但上述分析并不应该被视为枪支管制（或者说枪支获取）对暴力犯罪没有影响的证明。我的分析有两个严重的漏洞，Isenstein和她的转发者们也面对同样的问题。 The first is the old dictum that correlation does not prove causation. Assume for a moment that our tests yielded stronger correlation coefficients; we still wouldn’t know whether they indicate that laxer (or tighter) gun controls led to higher murder and violent crime rates, or if the higher crime rates led to laxer (or tighter) gun controls as a result of public demand for different gun laws. Or some other cause could produce both higher murder rates and changes in gun laws. 第一个问题正如那句古老格言所说，相关性并不能证明因果关系。暂时假设我们的检验得出了强相关性，我们仍旧不能确定它们是否就表明更宽松的（或更严格的）枪支管制导致了更高的谋杀和暴力犯罪率，抑或是更高的犯罪率改变了公众对各类枪支管制法规的需求，从而导致了更宽松的（或更严格的）枪支管制。又或者，有一些其他原因能够同时导致更高的犯罪率和枪支法规的改变。 Another problem is that many factors besides gun laws likely affect murder and violent crime rates (and suicides, for that matter—see  Kessler's and Volokh's columns for more on this). Controlling for those factors could reveal different relationships (or non-relationships) than what Isenstein's table and my analysis suggest. 另一个问题是，除了枪支法规外还有很多因素也可能影响谋杀和暴力犯罪率（自杀也同样适用——更多信息请查阅Kessler和 Volokh的专栏）。调控了这些因素后所揭示出的关联性（或者非关联性），也许与Isenstein的表格和我的分析所显示的关联性并不一样。 Advanced statistical methods may be able to overcome those problems, and plenty of trees have been felled to provide paper for such academic analysis of American gun laws. Problem is, there's hardly a consensus among researchers as to whether any causal relationship has been found. (For a sense of the literature, see this.) The United States is hardly alone in this. 高级统计方法或许能克服这些问题，而有关美国枪支法规的这类学术分析已经汗牛充栋了。问题在于研究者对于是否发现了因果关系很难达成一致。（想感受一下相关文献，请看这里。）并不是只有美国面对这一问题。 For instance, though gun control advocates are now lionizing Australia's 1996 National Firearms Agreement restricting the licensing and ownership of different weapons, there appears to be no consensus among researchers as to whether the policy has reduced Australian homicide rates. (There does appear to be consensus that it has reduced suicide rates, though some researchers reach different conclusions.) 例如，虽然枪支管制的倡导者如今将澳大利亚的1996年国家枪支协定奉为杰作，该协定限制各种武器的许可和持有，但是研究者对于该政策是否降低了澳大利亚的谋杀率似乎并未达成共识。（人们在该政策能降低自杀率这点上倒似乎达成了一致，尽管有些研究者得出了不同结论。） The difficulty with this research is that it's hard to compare outcomes in the real world to outcomes in a hypothetical world where different gun laws exist but everything else is the same. Hence researchers' use of advanced mathematics and statistics. The problem is, unless you have a Ph.D. in some statistical science and a good appreciation of the specific issues involved in gun research, you'll be hard pressed to understand the critical points of that research, let alone form a knowledgeable opinion about which analyses are most likely correct. 这项研究的难度在于很难将现实世界的结果与假想世界的结果相比较，在假想世界中除了枪支法规不同外，其他所有条件都一样。然后研究者使用高等数学和统计学进行分析。可问题是，除非你有统计学的博士学位，而且对于涉枪研究的具体问题有深入的认识，否则你很难理解这一研究的关键点，更不用说对哪个分析更可能正确发表真知灼见了。 That brings us to the derisive comments accompanying all those posts of Isenstein's table. We now know the snark is misplaced. So why is the gun control debate, and American politics in general, so rife with such nastiness? 现在我们再来看那些针对转发Isenstein表格的嘲讽评论帖子。我们现在知道这些尖刻评论是不对的。那为什么枪支管制的辩论，以至普遍的美国政治，都有如此之多的龌龊事？ Part of the reason, understandably, is the stakes: gun control and gun rights involve some of the most cherished human values, including public safety, self-preservation, defense of innocents, privacy, and property rights. Part of the reason is simple fear: many people believe their risk of being victimized by violence is increasing (though the  data show the opposite). 有部分原因，可以理解，是利益：枪支管制和持枪权利牵涉到了一些人们最珍视的价值，包括公众安全、自卫权、正当防卫权、隐私权和财产权。有部分原因是仅仅出于恐惧：很多人相信他们被暴力侵害的风险正在提高（虽然数据显示并非如此）。 And part of the reason is the trend in American politics over the last century: government has imposed itself so broadly that many issues are now winner-take-all, and people are desperate to avoid being on the losing side. 还有部分原因是美国在过去一个世纪里的政治潮流：政府管控范围如此之广，以致于很多事情都是赢家通吃，所以人们竭力避免站在输家那一边。 Those factors, along with the muddled complexity of gun research, should encourage more civil, open-minded, and respectful debate about gun laws, not to mention greater modesty about what policy can accomplish. Unfortunately, the opposite is happening. There's a lot of Red team/Blue team, "my side is smart and caring/your side is stupid and cruel" bile. 这些因素加上枪支研究的错综复杂，本应促使有关枪支法规的辩论更文明、更开放、更尊重他人，更不用说对于政策所能达到的效果应持有更谦虚的态度。不幸的是，现在的情况完全相反。到处都是红蓝对决，还有“我方聪明有爱心，你方愚蠢且残忍”的怒气。 Adding further fuel to this angry fire is the simple fact that people who dislike guns usually also dislike—and want to stick it to—people who like guns, and vice versa. And that's a serious threat to American society, too. 一个火上浇油的简单事实是，不喜欢枪的人通常也不喜欢爱枪的人，而且态度坚定，反之亦然。这对美国社会也是一个严重威胁。 （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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