羅瑞克：弗里德曼的偉大思想

學校的某位老師寄了一封信，跟我分享哈佛國際政經教授羅瑞克(Dani Rodrik)的一篇文章〈羅瑞克：弗里德曼的偉大思想〉，底下我會附全文，先說一下我讀完後的想法。

我以為Dani Rodrik對自由市場擁護者的批評僅對了某部分，首先我從自由市場與價格體系說起，談談自己對此的理解。

價格體系最大的好處就是傳達過量與短缺的訊息，量多降價，量少漲價，而體系的完善需要仰賴貨幣、產權制度，當然還有政府的壟斷性暴力。可是價格體系有個先天的缺陷存在，就是並非每件事物都可以輕易地換算成金錢。我們無法衡量世界上所有事物的價格，有些事情我們不會拿到市場上交易，例如愛情、親情，或者一些交易時會讓別人感到不安的商品，如器官、人、性等等。




此外，價格體系也不是一直運作在我們社會每個角落，有些時候我們習慣用其他體系運作。例如周杰倫要辦一場演唱會，買票的人肯定大排常龍，或者需要一大早起床到電腦前搶票。這樣的行為都讓租值消散，最好的方法是用個競標系統，讓價高的人去坐最好的位置，然而真要這麼做，恐怕會先惹來一陣非議。我不是說價格體系不好，事實上價格體系是目前所知最容易傳達訊息的系統，然而並非每個人都有辦法在價格體系上佔優勢，有人若臉孔姣好，很可能就想利用自己的優勢走另一條路。



自由市場藉由價格體系來運作，說穿了就是競爭，能使資源獲得最有效的分配必須讓眾人在市場上出價較勁。然而它的缺點也在競爭，自由市場不僅是價高者得，在市場上落敗的人，輕則破財、重則人亡。我們明瞭這個社會本來就是弱肉強食的世界，可是我相信大部分的人都不願意看到有人因為貧困，無法就醫而去世。

拉哩拉雜地講一堆不清楚的話，不如讓我引張五常在經濟解釋一段話，「另一方面，因為競爭準則對人的收入、享受有決定性的作用，所以在不同的準則下，人的行為就不同。以價高者得為例吧。一個人要在市場中得益，就要努力生產，或發明新的產品，或創造有效率的經營方法，或找尋可以節省費用的訊息，等等。但若物品沒有市價，以配給的方法分配，那麼競爭者就會選擇「走後門」之路，或運用政治手法，爭取一官半職，等等。」

我以為問題就出在這裡，不是所有商品都可以藉由價格體系運作，人類也無法忍受有人因為競爭不利得到徹底的失敗。這個就是自由市場的缺陷。

別誤會，我不是想為政府干涉的行為塗脂抹粉，而是我一直在想，政府的行為除了壟斷暴力、提供司法制度，完善產權制度，是不是還得做其他事？例如協調農民種植、都市更新等等。這問題我沒有答案，因此我以為Rodrik的說法我可以接受某部分。

不能接受的部分比較簡單，他說了Milton Friedman以鉛筆為例來頌揚自由市場的故事。但是他指出，現在都是中國人在製造鉛筆，他們的技術也沒有很好，又有一堆國營企業，政府干預市場很嚴重，勞工也沒便宜到哪裡去。因此中國經濟的成功，不能否認是中國政府工業化政策的貢獻。

這樣的分析有點單薄，缺乏時間的視野。中國鉛筆業的發達，或許歸功於中國政府的大力推動，可是誰知道這是不是挖東牆補西牆？進一步當然需要調查研究，只是他的說法讓人懷疑。美國在十九世紀時幾乎都閉關鎖國，採貿易封閉政策，經濟卻大幅成長，可是同時他們也不斷地向西部擴張。難道我們只看他的保護主義，不理會美國擴張的事實？




原文：

Dani Rodrik: Milton Friedman's Magical Thinking


CAMBRIDGE - Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman's birth. Friedman was one of the twentieth century's leading economists, a Nobel Prize winner who made notable contributions to monetary policy and consumption theory. But he will be remembered primarily as the visionary who provided the intellectual firepower for free-market enthusiasts during the second half of the century, and as the eminence grise behind the dramatic shift in the economic policies that took place after 1980.

At a time when skepticism about markets ran rampant, Friedman explained in clear, accessible language that private enterprise is the foundation of economic prosperity. All successful economies are built on thrift, hard work, and individual initiative. He railed against government regulations that encumber entrepreneurship and restrict markets. What Adam Smith was to the eighteenth century, Milton Friedman was to the twentieth.

As Friedman's landmark television series 'Free to Choose' was being broadcast in 1980, the world economy stood in the throes of a singular transformation. Inspired by Friedman's ideas, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many other government leaders began to dismantle the government restrictions and regulations that had been built up over the preceding decades.

China moved away from central planning and allowed markets to flourish - first in agricultural products and, eventually, in industrial goods. Latin America sharply reduced its trade barriers and privatised its state-owned firms. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1990, there was no doubt as to which direction the former command economies would take: towards free markets.

But Friedman also produced a less felicitous legacy. In his zeal to promote the power of markets, he drew too sharp a distinction between the market and the state. In effect, he presented government as the enemy of the market. He therefore blinded us to the evident reality that all successful economies are, in fact, mixed.

Unfortunately, the world economy is still contending with that blindness in the aftermath of a financial crisis that resulted, in no small part, from letting financial markets run too free.

The Friedmanite perspective greatly underestimates the institutional prerequisites of markets. Let the government simply enforce property rights and contracts, and - presto! - markets can work their magic.

In fact, the kind of markets that modern economies need are not self-creating, self-regulating, self-stabilising, or self-legitimising. Governments must invest in transport and communication networks; counteract asymmetric information, externalities, and unequal bargaining power; moderate financial panics and recessions; and respond to popular demands for safety nets and social insurance.

Markets are the essence of a market economy in the same sense that lemons are the essence of lemonade. Pure lemon juice is barely drinkable. To make good lemonade, you need to mix it with water and sugar. Of course, if you put too much water in the mix, you ruin the lemonade, just as too much government meddling can make markets dysfunctional. The trick is not to discard the water and the sugar, but to get the proportions right.

Hong Kong, which Friedman held up as the exemplar of a free-market society, remains the exception to the mixed-economy rule - and even there the government has played a large role in providing land for housing.

The image most people will retain of Friedman is the smiling, diminutive, unassuming professor holding up a pencil in front of the cameras in 'Free to Choose' to illustrate the power of markets. It took thousands of people all over the world to make this pencil, Friedman said - to mine the graphite, cut the wood, assemble the components, and market the final product. No single central authority coordinated their actions; that feat was accomplished by the magic of free markets and the price system.

More than 30 years later, there is an interesting coda to the pencil story (which in fact was based on an article by the economist Leonard E. Read). Today, most of the world's pencils are produced in China - an economy that is a peculiar mix of private entrepreneurship and state direction.

A modern-day Friedman might want to ask how China has come to dominate the pencil industry, as it has so many others. There are better sources of graphite in Mexico and South Korea. Forest reserves are more plentiful in Indonesia and Brazil. Germany and the United States have better technology. China has lots of low-cost labour, but so does Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and many other populous low-income countries.

Undoubtedly, most of the credit belongs to the initiative and hard work Chinese entrepreneurs and labourers. But the present-day pencil story would be incomplete without citing China's state-owned firms, which made the initial investments in technology and labour training; lax forest management policies, which kept wood artificially cheap; generous export subsidies; and government intervention in currency markets, which gives Chinese producers a significant cost advantage.

China's government has subsidised, protected, and goaded its firms to ensure rapid industrialisation, thereby altering the global division of labour in its favour.

Friedman himself would have rued these government policies. Yet the tens of thousands of workers that pencil factories in China employ would most likely have remained poor farmers if the government had not given market forces a nudge to get the industry off the ground. Given China's economic success, it is hard to deny the contribution made by the government's industrialisation policies.

Free-market enthusiasts' place in the history of economic thought will remain secure. But thinkers like Friedman leave an ambiguous and puzzling legacy, because it is the interventionists who have succeeded in economic history, where it really matters.

Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University, is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy.