1 导读 鼎力支持特朗普赢得美国总统大选后,马斯克的职位正式官宣了。特朗普在一份声明中宣布,马斯克将与维韦克·拉马斯瓦米将在他就任总统后共同领导拟成立的一个名为“政府效率部”(DOGE)的计划。马斯克则在声明中表示:“这将给现有官僚系统带来冲击波,任何涉及政府冗余的人,这是很多人!”另外,马斯克在职位宣布后表示,“政府效率部门”的所有行动都将在网上公布。值得一提的是,DOGE项目以马斯克大力推崇的加密货币狗狗币命名。特朗普当选后,比特币等加密货币全线高涨,狗狗币更是涨幅突出,最近七日涨近122%。马斯克在削减企业支出方面拥有丰富的经验。他在2022年收购Twitter后将其员工削减了80%,并透露这一举措有效避免了30亿美元的资金缺口。不过也有人指出,马斯克似乎并不关心削减计划之后会发生什么,他承认削减开支“必然会带来一些暂时的困难”。在马斯克接管后,Twitter收入急剧下降,广告商纷纷撤资。尽管马斯克经营着多家公司,但他在管理政府部门方面经验不足。相比企业雇员,联邦政府雇员享有强有力的就业保护,这将阻碍马斯克削减成本的“大刀阔斧”的做法,甚至可能使他无法做到这一点。 2 |精读|翻译| The opportunities—and dangers—for Trump’s
disrupter-in-chief 节选自经济学人 Leaders | On another planet In 2017 Elon Musk branded Donald Trump a “con
man” and “one of the world’s best bullshitters”. Now he is known at Mar-a-Lago
as Uncle Elon and is in the president-elect’s inner circle. This week they
watched a rocket launch together. The alliance of the world’s leading
politician and its richest man creates a concentration of power both want to
use to explosive effect: to slash bureaucracy, detonate liberal orthodoxies and
deregulate in the name of growth. 2017年,埃隆·马斯克称唐纳德·特朗普为“骗子”和“世界上最会吹牛的人”。而如今,他在海湖庄园被称为“埃隆叔叔”,并且进入了这位候任总统的核心圈。本周,他们还一起观看了火箭发射。这位全球最有影响力的政治家和世界最富有的人之间的联盟,汇聚成了一股他们希望能产生巨大影响的权力来削减官僚体系,颠覆自由主义正统观念,并以促进经济增长为名放松监管 Weeks after helping Mr Trump win the election Mr
Musk has climbed to the apex of power. The president-elect has appointed him to
a new advisory body, called doge, tasked with slashing spending. Mr Musk is
already in touch with foreign leaders and lobbying for cabinet appointments. It
is hardly the first time a tycoon has had extraordinary influence in America.
In the 19th century robber barons such as John D. Rockefeller dominated the
economy. In the early 20th century, when there was no Federal Reserve, John
Pierpont Morgan acted as a one-man central bank 帮助特朗普赢得大选的几周后,马斯克已经登上了权力的顶峰。特朗普任命他加入一个名为“DOGE”的新顾问机构,负责削减政府开支。马斯克已经开始与外国领导人建立联系,并为内阁任命积极游说。这并不是第一次有巨头在美国拥有如此大的影响力。19世纪时,像约翰·D·洛克菲勒这样的“强盗大亨”就主导了经济。而在20世纪初,联邦储备系统尚未建立,约翰·皮尔庞特·摩根曾一度充当“个人央行”的角色。 Mr Musk’s firms are more global than the big
19th- and 20th-century monopolies, and smaller if measured by profits to GDP.
Musk Inc is worth the equivalent of just 2% of America’s stockmarket. Its main
units are Tesla, an electric-car firm; SpaceX, his satellite-communications and
rocket business; X, formerly Twitter; and xAI, an artificial-intelligence
startup that was valued at $50bn in a deal this week. These mostly have market
shares below 30% and face real competition. The Economist reckons that 10% of
Mr Musk’s $360bn personal fortune is derived from contracts and freebies from
Uncle Sam, and 15% from the Chinese market, with the rest split between
domestic and international customers. 马斯克的公司相比19世纪和20世纪的大型垄断企业更加全球化,但若以利润占GDP的比例来衡量,规模则相对较小。马斯克旗下公司(Musk Inc)的市值仅相当于美国股市的2%。其主要业务包括特斯拉,(一家电动车公司);SpaceX,(卫星通信和火箭业务)X,(原为Twitter);以及XAI,(一家在本周交易中估值达500亿美元的人工智能初创公司)。这些公司大多数的市场份额不到30%,并且面临着激烈的竞争。《经济学人》估算,马斯克的3600亿美元财富中,10%来自美国政府的合同和补贴,15%来自中国市场,其余则由国内和国际客户共同贡献。 Mr Musk is also different because he is a
disrupter. Rather than exploiting monopolies to raise prices, or creating a
stable banking system as the foundation for finance, most of Musk Inc uses
technology to slash costs in competitive markets. This disruption is central to
Mr Musk’s messianic ideology, in which innovation conquers humanity’s
intractable challenges from climate change to colonising Mars. Realising these
distant goals depends on a genius for constantly rethinking industrial
processes. His desire for freer action helps explain his contempt for
orthodoxies, including what he regards as woke conformism. From the bureaucrats
who allowed the American government’s space-launch market to be rigged by
defence firms to the Californian box-tickers who regulate Tesla’s factories, he
views the state as an impediment to growth. 马斯克与众不同之处在于他是一个颠覆者。他不是通过垄断来抬高价格,也不是建立一个稳定的银行体系作为金融基础,而是通过他旗下的大多数企业,利用技术在竞争激烈的市场中降低成本。这种颠覆是马斯克自带救世主色彩理念的核心,在他的思想中,创新可以解决人类面临的一切难题,从应对气候变化到实现火星移民。要想实现这些远大的目标,关键在于他要不断重新思考和改进工业生产的流程。他对行动自由的追求也解释了他为何蔑视传统观念,包括他所认为的“觉醒文化”式的盲目从众。从那些允许美国政府太空发射市场被国防公司垄断的官僚,到加州负责监管特斯拉工厂的“形式主义者”,在他眼中,美国政府是经济增长的阻碍。 觉醒文化:最初指对社会不平等问题的高度关注,尤其是种族、性别、环境等方面的不公。它强调对历史和社会问题的觉醒和敏感。然而,马斯克所指的“盲从”,是批评某些人在支持这些理念时没有深入思考,而是机械地、被动地去认同这些观点,甚至表现出不容许不同意见的态度。这种“盲从”容易导致行为形式化、过度政治正确,以及缺乏对具体情境的独立判断。 Both Mr Trump and Mr Musk want to disrupt the
entire federal government. Mr Musk has said DOGE may aim to cut as much as
$2trn from the $7trn annual federal budget and abolish many agencies. It is
easy to ridicule such goals as naive—$2trn is more than the government’s entire
discretionary spending. But with a budget deficit of 6% of GDP and debt of
almost 100%, reform is needed. The creaking Pentagon machine is struggling to
adapt to the age of drones and AI. Lobbying by incumbent firms helps explain
why federal regulations have reached 90,000 pages, near an all-time high. Even
if Mr Musk achieved only a fraction of his liberalisation, America could have
much to gain 特朗普和马斯克都想对联邦政府进行彻底改革。马斯克曾表示,DOGE的目标是从每年7万亿美元的联邦预算中削减高达2万亿美元的开支,并废除许多政府机构。这样大的目标很容易被嘲笑为天真,因为削减2万亿美元意味着已经超过了政府所有的可自由支配支出但是,当预算赤字占到GDP的6%,债务几乎达到100%的时候,改革是迫在眉睫的。腐朽的五角大楼体系正在艰难地适应无人机和人工智能的时代。现有公司的游说也解释了为何联邦法规如今达到9万页,接近历史新高。即便马斯克只实现了其中一部分自由化,美国也会从中受益匪浅。 公司游说:是指公司或利益团体通过各种方式试图影响政府立法或政策决策,以保护自身的利益。在这种情况下,现有公司的游说可能会导致政府制定更多法规和限制,使得市场进入门槛提高,间接保护这些大公司免受新兴竞争者的威胁,因此法规变得更加庞杂和繁琐。 If Mr Musk’s political career proves to be brief,
it could still have two lasting, pernicious effects. One would be to turn
politicians away from reforming government. With his appointment, that goal has
received more attention than ever. But if he mounts a half-baked programme that
ends in spectacular failure, the ambition to tackle spending will be set back
for years. 如果马斯克的政治生涯非常短暂,仍可能带来两个持久且有害的影响。第一是让政治家们放弃改革政府的努力.随着对马斯克的任命,这一目标得到了前所未有的关注。然而,如果推出一个不成熟的计划并以惨败告终,那么削减开支的愿望可能会被搁置数年之久。 The other effect would be to normalise collusion
between politicians and tycoons. As the state expands into trade, industrial
policy and technology, the incentives for state capture are growing. At the
same time, Mr Trump’s method involves weakening institutions and practices
supposed to guard against conflicts of interest. America is a long way from
behaving like an emerging market. But if oligarchic business titans habitually
worked with dominant politicians, it would suffer great harm. That used to be
unthinkable; no longer. 第二个影响是让政客与商业巨头之间的勾结变得常态化。随着国家在贸易、产业政策和技术领域的影响力不断扩大,国家被利益集团操控的诱因也在增加。同时,特朗普的做法是削弱那些本应防范利益冲突的制度和惯例。虽然美国离变成一个新兴市场国家的行为模式还有很远的距离,但如果寡头商界巨头习惯性地与掌权的政客合作,美国将受到巨大的伤害。这种情况在过去是不可想象的,但现在已经成为可能。 |