風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
全球治理出了問題的地方——以及如何修複它
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/28/global-governance-wto-how-to-fix-it/
國際協議並沒有以應有的方式平衡我們的自由。
作者：Joseph E. Stiglitz，2024 年 4 月 28 日上午 6:00
照片插圖顯示了一個癟了的塑料地球儀，裏麵插著一支鋼筆。
全球治理從未真正得到解決，最近經曆了特別艱難的時期。 每個人都相信基於規則的體係，但每個人都想製定規則，並且不喜歡規則對他們不利，認為它們侵犯了他們的主權和自由。 存在著深刻的不對稱，強國不僅製定規則，而且幾乎隨意打破規則，這提出了一個問題：我們是否有一個基於規則的體係，或者它隻是一個門麵？ 當然，在這種情況下，那些違反規則的人會說他們這樣做隻是因為其他人也這樣做。
當前時刻就是一個很好的例證。 它是長期信仰和權力關係的產物。 在這種製度下，工業補貼是一種禁忌，不僅是世界貿易組織規則所禁止的（人們是這麽認為的），而且也是被認為健全的經濟學的規定所禁止的。“健全的經濟學”是一套被稱為新自由主義經濟學的學說，它承諾通過允許所謂的自由企業蓬勃發展來實現經濟自由，從而實現增長和繁榮。 新自由主義中的“liberal”代表自由，“neo”代表新，這表明它是19世紀自由主義的不同版本和更新版本。
本文改編自約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨 (Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. 諾頓，384 頁，0.99，2024 年 4 月
事實上，它既不是真正的新鮮事，也不是真正的解放者。 誠然，它賦予了企業更多的汙染權利，但在這樣做的同時，它剝奪了呼吸清潔空氣的自由——或者對於哮喘患者來說，有時甚至剝奪了所有自由中最基本的自由，即生活的自由。
“自由”意味著壟斷者可以自由地剝削消費者，壟斷者（對勞動力擁有市場支配力的大量公司）可以自由地剝削工人，銀行可以自由地剝削我們所有人——這導致了世界上最大規模的金融危機。 曆史上，納稅人需要支付數萬億美元的救助資金（通常是隱藏的），以確保所謂的自由企業體係能夠生存。
這種自由化將帶來更快的增長並使所有人受益的承諾從未實現。 根據這些流行了四十多年的學說，大多數發達國家的經濟增長實際上已經放緩。 例如，根據聖路易斯聯儲編製的數據，1960年至1990年人均GDP實際增長率（每年平均增長率）為2.5%，但從1990年至2018年放緩至1.5%。 經濟學中，每個人都會受益，我們有涓滴經濟學，其中最頂層的 1%，尤其是最頂層的 0.1%，得到了越來越大的蛋糕。
這些都是英國政治理論家以賽亞·柏林的名言“狼的完全自由就是羔羊的死亡”的例證； 或者，正如我有時不那麽客氣地說的那樣，對某些人來說，自由意味著其他人的不自由——他們失去了自由。
正如個人正確地珍惜自己的自由一樣，國家也常常以“主權”的名義珍惜自己的自由。 然而，雖然這些話很容易說出來，但很少有人思考它們的深層含義。 約翰·斯圖爾特·密爾 (John Stuart Mill) 在 19 世紀的著作《論自由》，以及米爾頓·弗裏德曼 (Milton Friedman) 和弗裏德裏希·哈耶克 (Friedrich Hayek) 在 20 世紀中期的著作 (《資本主義與自由》和《通往奴役之路》)，經濟學已經介入了關於自由和主權含義的爭論。
但與哈耶克和弗裏德曼的主張相反，自由和不受約束的市場並不會帶來效率和社會福祉；相反，自由和不受約束的市場並不會帶來效率和社會福祉。 這對環顧四周的人來說應該是顯而易見的。 想想不平等危機、氣候危機、阿片類藥物危機、兒童糖尿病危機或 2008 年金融危機。 這些危機是由市場造成的、由市場加劇的，和/或市場未能充分應對的危機。
經濟理論家（包括我）已經表明，隻要存在不完善的信息或不完善的市場（也就是說，總是），就會有一個假設，即市場是無效的。 即使是很小的缺陷也會產生很大的影響。
問題是大部分全球
近幾十年來設計的全球經濟架構都是基於新自由主義——哈耶克和弗裏德曼提出的那種思想。 必須從根本上重新思考由此演變而來的規則體係。
身穿西裝的中年男子唐納德·特朗普站在一大排長方形桌子旁的椅子後麵，向左看。 在背景中，其他桌子周圍的人們都處於失焦狀態，媒體成員則透過遠處的矮牆觀看。
美國總統唐納德·特朗普於 2017 年 7 月 8 日抵達德國漢堡參加 20 國集團經濟峰會。SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
從經濟學家的角度來看，自由是“做事的自由”，意味著一個人可以做的事情的機會集的大小，或者可以選擇的範圍。
處於饑餓邊緣的人沒有真正的自由——她必須做她必須生存的事情。 有錢人顯然有更多的選擇自由。 當個人受到傷害時，“行動自由”也會受到限製。 顯然，如果一個人被槍手或病毒殺死，甚至因 COVID-19 住院，他就失去了有意義的自由，然後我們就可以戲劇性地說明柏林的格言：某些人的自由——攜帶的自由 持槍，或者不戴口罩，或者不接種疫苗——可能會導致他人大量喪失自由。
同樣的原則也適用於國際舞台。 基於規則的貿易體係由一係列規則組成，旨在通過施加限製以有意義的方式擴大所有人的自由。 約束可以被釋放的想法雖然看似自相矛盾，但卻是顯而易見的：紅綠燈迫使我們輪流通過十字路口，但如果沒有這種表麵上的約束，就會出現交通堵塞，沒有人能夠移動。
所有合同都是關於約束的協議——一方同意做或不做某事，以換取另一方做出其他承諾——並相信這樣做會讓各方都受益。 當然，如果一方作弊並且不兌現承諾，那麽該方就會以犧牲其他方的利益為代價獲得收益。 這樣做的誘惑總是存在的，這就是為什麽我們要求政府執行合同，這樣承諾才有意義。 沒有政府能夠執行所有合同，如果所有參與者都是騙子，所謂的自由市場就會崩潰。
盡管個人層麵和國家層麵的自由討論有相似之處，但也存在一些巨大差異。 最重要的是，沒有一個全球政府來確保強國遵守協議，正如我們今天在美國工業補貼的例子中所看到的那樣。 世界貿易組織 (WTO) 一般禁止此類補貼，尤其不讚成美國國會最近通過的立法（包括《芯片和科學法案》）中的一些條款，例如要求國內製造（“美國製造”）。
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.
