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全球治理出了问题的地方——以及如何修复它
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/28/global-governance-wto-how-to-fix-it/
国际协议并没有以应有的方式平衡我们的自由。
作者：Joseph E. Stiglitz，2024 年 4 月 28 日上午 6:00
照片插图显示了一个瘪了的塑料地球仪，里面插着一支钢笔。
全球治理从未真正得到解决，最近经历了特别艰难的时期。 每个人都相信基于规则的体系，但每个人都想制定规则，并且不喜欢规则对他们不利，认为它们侵犯了他们的主权和自由。 存在着深刻的不对称，强国不仅制定规则，而且几乎随意打破规则，这提出了一个问题：我们是否有一个基于规则的体系，或者它只是一个门面？ 当然，在这种情况下，那些违反规则的人会说他们这样做只是因为其他人也这样做。
当前时刻就是一个很好的例证。 它是长期信仰和权力关系的产物。 在这种制度下，工业补贴是一种禁忌，不仅是世界贸易组织规则所禁止的（人们是这么认为的），而且也是被认为健全的经济学的规定所禁止的。“健全的经济学”是一套被称为新自由主义经济学的学说，它承诺通过允许所谓的自由企业蓬勃发展来实现经济自由，从而实现增长和繁荣。 新自由主义中的“liberal”代表自由，“neo”代表新，这表明它是19世纪自由主义的不同版本和更新版本。
本文改编自约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨 (Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. 诺顿，384 页，0.99，2024 年 4 月
事实上，它既不是真正的新鲜事，也不是真正的解放者。 诚然，它赋予了企业更多的污染权利，但在这样做的同时，它剥夺了呼吸清洁空气的自由——或者对于哮喘患者来说，有时甚至剥夺了所有自由中最基本的自由，即生活的自由。
“自由”意味着垄断者可以自由地剥削消费者，垄断者（对劳动力拥有市场支配力的大量公司）可以自由地剥削工人，银行可以自由地剥削我们所有人——这导致了世界上最大规模的金融危机。 历史上，纳税人需要支付数万亿美元的救助资金（通常是隐藏的），以确保所谓的自由企业体系能够生存。
这种自由化将带来更快的增长并使所有人受益的承诺从未实现。 根据这些流行了四十多年的学说，大多数发达国家的经济增长实际上已经放缓。 例如，根据圣路易斯联储编制的数据，1960年至1990年人均GDP实际增长率（每年平均增长率）为2.5%，但从1990年至2018年放缓至1.5%。 经济学中，每个人都会受益，我们有涓滴经济学，其中最顶层的 1%，尤其是最顶层的 0.1%，得到了越来越大的蛋糕。
这些都是英国政治理论家以赛亚·柏林的名言“狼的完全自由就是羔羊的死亡”的例证； 或者，正如我有时不那么客气地说的那样，对某些人来说，自由意味着其他人的不自由——他们失去了自由。
正如个人正确地珍惜自己的自由一样，国家也常常以“主权”的名义珍惜自己的自由。 然而，虽然这些话很容易说出来，但很少有人思考它们的深层含义。 约翰·斯图尔特·密尔 (John Stuart Mill) 在 19 世纪的著作《论自由》，以及米尔顿·弗里德曼 (Milton Friedman) 和弗里德里希·哈耶克 (Friedrich Hayek) 在 20 世纪中期的著作 (《资本主义与自由》和《通往奴役之路》)，经济学已经介入了关于自由和主权含义的争论。
但与哈耶克和弗里德曼的主张相反，自由和不受约束的市场并不会带来效率和社会福祉；相反，自由和不受约束的市场并不会带来效率和社会福祉。 这对环顾四周的人来说应该是显而易见的。 想想不平等危机、气候危机、阿片类药物危机、儿童糖尿病危机或 2008 年金融危机。 这些危机是由市场造成的、由市场加剧的，和/或市场未能充分应对的危机。
经济理论家（包括我）已经表明，只要存在不完善的信息或不完善的市场（也就是说，总是），就会有一个假设，即市场是无效的。 即使是很小的缺陷也会产生很大的影响。
问题是大部分全球
近几十年来设计的全球经济架构都是基于新自由主义——哈耶克和弗里德曼提出的那种思想。 必须从根本上重新思考由此演变而来的规则体系。
身穿西装的中年男子唐纳德·特朗普站在一大排长方形桌子旁的椅子后面，向左看。 在背景中，其他桌子周围的人们都处于失焦状态，媒体成员则透过远处的矮墙观看。
美国总统唐纳德·特朗普于 2017 年 7 月 8 日抵达德国汉堡参加 20 国集团经济峰会。SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
从经济学家的角度来看，自由是“做事的自由”，意味着一个人可以做的事情的机会集的大小，或者可以选择的范围。
处于饥饿边缘的人没有真正的自由——她必须做她必须生存的事情。 有钱人显然有更多的选择自由。 当个人受到伤害时，“行动自由”也会受到限制。 显然，如果一个人被枪手或病毒杀死，甚至因 COVID-19 住院，他就失去了有意义的自由，然后我们就可以戏剧性地说明柏林的格言：某些人的自由——携带的自由 持枪，或者不戴口罩，或者不接种疫苗——可能会导致他人大量丧失自由。
同样的原则也适用于国际舞台。 基于规则的贸易体系由一系列规则组成，旨在通过施加限制以有意义的方式扩大所有人的自由。 约束可以被释放的想法虽然看似自相矛盾，但却是显而易见的：红绿灯迫使我们轮流通过十字路口，但如果没有这种表面上的约束，就会出现交通堵塞，没有人能够移动。
所有合同都是关于约束的协议——一方同意做或不做某事，以换取另一方做出其他承诺——并相信这样做会让各方都受益。 当然，如果一方作弊并且不兑现承诺，那么该方就会以牺牲其他方的利益为代价获得收益。 这样做的诱惑总是存在的，这就是为什么我们要求政府执行合同，这样承诺才有意义。 没有政府能够执行所有合同，如果所有参与者都是骗子，所谓的自由市场就会崩溃。
尽管个人层面和国家层面的自由讨论有相似之处，但也存在一些巨大差异。 最重要的是，没有一个全球政府来确保强国遵守协议，正如我们今天在美国工业补贴的例子中所看到的那样。 世界贸易组织 (WTO) 一般禁止此类补贴，尤其不赞成美国国会最近通过的立法（包括《芯片和科学法案》）中的一些条款，例如要求国内制造（“美国制造”）。
Where Global Governance Went Wrong—and How to Fix It
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/28/global-governance-wto-how-to-fix-it/
International agreements have not balanced our freedoms in the way that they should.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz, APRIL 28, 2024, 6:00 AM
A photo illustration shows a deflated plastic globe with a pen speared into it.
Global governance, never really settled, has recently been having an especially hard time. Everyone believes in a rules-based system, but everyone wants to make the rules and dislikes it when the rules work against them, saying that they infringe on their sovereignty and their freedom. There are deep asymmetries, with the powerful countries not only making the rules but also breaking them almost at will, which raises the question: Do we even have a rules-based system, or is it just a facade? Of course, in such circumstances, those who break the rules say they only do so because others are, too.
The current moment is a good illustration. It is the product of longstanding beliefs and power relations. Under this system, industrial subsidies were a no-no, forbidden (so it was thought) not just by World Trade Organization rules, but also by the dictates of what was considered sound economics. “Sound economics” was that set of doctrines known as neoliberal economics, which promised growth and prosperity through, mostly, supposedly freeing the economy by allowing so-called free enterprise to flourish. The “liberal” in neoliberalism stood for freedom and “neo” for new, suggesting that it was a different and updated version of 19th-century liberalism.
In fact, it was neither really new nor really liberating. True, it gave firms more rights to pollute, but in doing so, it took away the freedom to breathe clean air—or in the case of those with asthma, sometimes even the most fundamental of all freedoms, the freedom to live.
“Freedom” meant freedom for the monopolists to exploit consumers, for the monopsonists (the large number of firms that have market power over labor) to exploit workers, and freedom for the banks to exploit all of us—engineering the most massive financial crisis in history, which required taxpayers to fork out trillions of dollars in bailouts, often hidden, to ensure that the so-called free enterprise system could survive.
The promise that this liberalization would lead to faster growth from which all would benefit never materialized. Under these doctrines that have prevailed for more than four decades, growth has actually slowed in most advanced countries. For instance, real growth in GDP per capita (average percent increase per annum) according to data compiled by the St. Louis Fed, was 2.5% from 1960 to 1990, but slowed to 1.5% from 1990 to 2018. Instead of trickle-down economics, where everyone would benefit, we had trickle-up economics, where the top 1 percent and especially the top 0.1 percent, got a larger and larger slice of the pie.
These are illustrations of British political theorist Isaiah Berlin’s dictum that “total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs”; or, as I have sometimes put it less gracefully, freedom for some has meant the unfreedom of others—their loss of freedom.
Just as individuals rightly cherish their freedom, countries do, too, often under the name “sovereignty.” But while these words are easily uttered, there is too little thought about their deeper meanings. Economics has weighed into the debate about what freedom and sovereignty mean, with John Stuart Mill’s contribution in the 19th century (On Liberty), and Milton Friedman’s and Friedrich Hayek’s works in the mid-20th (Capitalism and Freedom and The Road to Serfdom).
But contrary to what Hayek and Friedman asserted, free and unfettered markets do not lead to efficiency and the well-being of society; that should be obvious to anyone looking around. Just think of the inequality crisis, the climate crisis, the opioid crisis, the childhood diabetes crisis, or the 2008 financial crisis. These are crises created by the market, exacerbated by the market, and/or crises which the market hasn’t been able to deal with adequately.
Economic theorists (including me) have shown that whenever there is imperfect information or imperfect markets (that is to say, always), there is a presumption that markets are not efficient. Even a very little bit of imperfection can have big effects.
The problem is that much of the global economic architecture designed over recent decades has been based on neoliberalism—the kinds of ideas that Hayek and Friedman put forward. The system of rules that evolved from there must be fundamentally rethought.
Donald Trump, a middle-aged man in a suit, looks to the left as he stands behind a chair at a large rectangular array of tables. In the background, people are seen out of focus around the other tables, with members of the media looking on over a low wall in the distance.
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at the G-20 economic summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 8, 2017.SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
From an economist’s perspective, freedom is the “freedom to do,” meaning the size of the opportunity set of what a person can do, or the range of the choices that are available.
Someone on the verge of starvation has no real freedom—she does what she must to survive. A rich person obviously has more freedom to choose. “Freedom to do” is also constrained when an individual is harmed. Obviously, if an individual is killed by a gunman or a virus, or even hospitalized by COVID-19, he has lost freedom in a meaningful sense, and we then have a dramatic illustration of Berlin’s dictum: Freedom for some—the freedom to carry guns, or to not be masked, or to be unvaccinated—may entail a large loss of freedom for others.
The same principle applies to the international arena. The rules-based trade system consists of a set of rules intended to expand the freedoms of all in a meaningful way by imposing constraints. The idea that constraints can be freeing, while seemingly self-contradictory, is obvious: Stoplights force us to take turns going through intersections, but without this seeming constraint, there would be gridlock and no one would be able to move.
All contracts are agreements about constraints—with one party agreeing to do or not do something in return for another person making other promises—with the belief that in doing so, all parties will be better off. Of course, if one party cheats and doesn’t deliver on its promise, then that party gains at the expense of others. And there is always the temptation to do so, which is why we require governments to enforce contracts, so that promises mean something. No government could enforce all contracts, and the so-called free market would crash if all participants were grifters.
But while there are similarities between discussions of freedom at the individual level and the country level, there are also a couple of big differences. Most importantly, there is no global government to ensure that the powerful countries obey an agreement, as we are seeing today in the case of U.S. industrial subsidies. The World Trade Organization (WTO) generally forbids such subsidies and especially disapproves of some of the provisions—such as requiring domestic manufacturing (“Made in America”)—in legislation passed recently by the U.S. Congress, including the CHIPS and Science Act.
