Joseph Stiglitz 自由之路 進步資本主義的願景似乎太少、太晚

自由之路，評論——進步資本主義的願景似乎太少、太晚
 
作者：約瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/12/the-road-to-freedom-economics-and-the-good-society-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-review-an- 熱心但有缺陷的進步資本主義防禦#:~:text=

這位諾貝爾獎得主美國經濟學家熱衷於支持政府幹預以消除新自由主義的過度行為，但缺乏說服力

斯圖爾特·傑弗裏斯 斯圖爾特·傑弗裏斯 周日 2024 年 5 月 12 日
2009年，美國政府向埃隆·馬斯克的特斯拉公司提供了近5億美元貸款，以加速電動汽車技術的發展。 它認為自己在玩什麽？ 它不記得羅納德·裏根說過的話嗎？ “英語中最可怕的詞是：‘我來自政府，我來這裏是為了提供幫助，’”這位已故總統在 1986 年的新聞發布會上說道。

對於裏根和他的新自由主義傀儡背後的大腦來說，政府的作用是讓路，讓自私自利的新自由主義經濟生活不受約束的狂歡按照自然的意圖表現出來。 稅收是盜竊，幹預主義的產業政策始終是一個錯誤，除非它涉及救助破產的銀行以獎勵經濟的重挫。

諾貝爾經濟學獎獲得者、比爾·克林頓前助手約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨對此表示反對。 相反，他提出了他所謂的進步資本主義。 我們需要更多的政府，而不是更少。 斯蒂格利茨甚至寫了一句話，可能會促使所有裝備齊全的瑪伽愛好者向痰盂裏吐痰，並用霰彈槍射擊。 “我們需要環境法規、交通法規、分區法規、金融法規，我們需要對經濟的所有組成部分進行監管，”他寫道。

新自由主義必須宣告死亡並被埋葬。 接下來去哪裏？ 約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨

更重要的是，我們需要對瑪格麗特·撒切爾在政府財政和家庭主婦平衡的每周預算之間進行的親切類比提出問題。 斯蒂格利茨表示，大多數公司都是通過負債來實現增長的，但沒有人會隻關注公司資產負債表的負債部分。 “如果我們把錢花在基礎設施、教育或技術上，那麽我們的經濟就會更有生產力，”他寫道。 “當一家公司投資良好時，資產價值的增長超過負債，公司的淨資產也會增加。 對於國家來說也是如此。” 這是基礎經濟學，盡管不是我和其他許多人在 20 世紀 80 年代初在大學裏學到的那種經濟學，當時關於個人經濟理性、完全競爭以及自由企業精神如何不受限製地漫遊的可笑神話被呈現為不可否認的事實 。

但能否相信政府能夠實現電動汽車等社會理想的目標？ 想想 HS2 高速鐵路的崩潰，或者，如果你能忍受的話，想想米歇爾·莫恩 (Michelle Mone) 對公眾對政府信任的影響。 斯蒂格利茨建議，或者考慮一下美國政府在起草與特斯拉的合同時所犯的錯誤。 “它犯了一個錯誤。 它未能堅持分享上漲潛力……例如堅持接受股票。 如果是的話，政府（和美國納稅人）將足以彌補其他技術和投資造成的損失。”

換句話說，政府並不擅長商業。 “總會犯錯誤，”斯蒂格利茨說。 “但發現錯誤並不是......放棄政策的理由。” 他指出，美國前所未有地采取了幹預主義產業政策，以糾正運作不良的市場，特別是自 2008 年銀行業災難以來，因此開發了新冠疫苗並承認對外國製造的微芯片的過度依賴。 也就是說，美國政府的治理已經超出了新自由主義正統觀念所允許的範圍。

斯蒂格利茨認為撒切爾夫人最喜歡的貨幣主義思想家應對人類希望的荒漠化負責

斯蒂格利茨的書的死對頭弗裏德裏希·哈耶克和米爾頓·弗裏德曼提出了極簡政府的主張。 前者是一位維也納經濟學家，其 1944 年出版的著作《通往奴役之路》受到撒切爾夫人的高度評價，她在內閣會議上分發了該書。他堅稱，政府對經濟計劃的控製將導致暴政。 這位經濟學家對大政府的蔑視體現在他的言論中：“如果讓聯邦政府負責撒哈拉沙漠，五年之內就會出現沙子短缺。”

自從 20 世紀 60 年代弗裏德曼在芝加哥大學發生衝突以來，斯蒂格利茨就與弗裏德曼發生了爭執。斯蒂格利茨認為，撒切爾最喜歡的貨幣主義思想家因對股東資本主義的準宗教信仰而對人類希望荒漠化負有責任。 公司管理者的目標是股東價值最大化。 斯蒂格利茨堅稱，弗裏德曼讓一代戈登·蓋科斯憑借“貪婪是好事”的哲學，走上了經濟強國的道路。 更糟糕的是，追求共享

古老的貪婪鼓勵公司管理者忽視經濟學家所說的外部性——例如水務組織向英國河流注入排泄物、製藥公司通過使美國人沉迷於阿片類藥物而殺害美國人或為了私人利益而掠奪地球。

約瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨：更多的政府，而不是更少。 攝影：雅克

斯蒂格利茨案件的大部分繁重工作是由美國政治哲學家約翰·羅爾斯完成的，他在 1971 年出版的著作《正義論》中提出了一項至今仍引起共鳴的思想實驗。 想象一下，我們每個人都暫時處於無知的麵紗後麵，對自己的才能、收入和財富，甚至核心價值觀一無所知。 在這種“原始狀態”下，我們將製定哪些正義原則來確保我們生活的社會是一個良好的社會？ 斯蒂格利茨認為，今天在美國和英國等國家盛行的做法並非如此。 相反，他認為這將產生他在書中所捍衛的進步資本主義原則——包括更多的政府幹預和改革新自由主義的過度行為，這些都體現在以賽亞·柏林的一句令人振奮的真理中：“狼的自由往往意味著羊的死亡。”

我不確定。 他對進步資本主義的願景似乎太少、太遲了——在新自由主義數十年之後，它不足以創建平等主義社會； 為避免氣候災難為時已晚。 我希望斯蒂格利茨能夠借鑒羅爾斯思想的另一個要素——就像英國哲學家丹尼爾·錢德勒去年在一本同樣旨在放鬆新自由主義束縛的書中所做的那樣。 他的原則斷言，社會中的任何不平等隻有在使最弱勢群體受益的情況下才是合理的。 但我懷疑，對於這位諾貝爾獎獲得者來說，這帶有太多的社會主義色彩。 斯蒂格利茨的信念——雖然表達得熱烈，但大多不令人信服——是資本主義讓我們陷入了困境，也能讓我們擺脫困境。

  約瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨的《自由之路：經濟學與美好社會》由艾倫·萊恩出版（25英鎊）。 為了支持《衛報》和《觀察家報》，請在 Guardianbookshop.com 上訂購您的副本。 可能需要支付運費

The Road to Freedom, review – a vision of progressive capitalism seems too little, too late

by Joseph E Stiglitz 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/12/the-road-to-freedom-economics-and-the-good-society-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-review-an-ardent-but-flawed-defence-of-progressive-capitalism#:~:text= 

The Nobel-winning US economist’s championing of government intervention to nullify neoliberal excesses is ardently expressed but unconvincing

 Stuart Jeffries Sun 12 May 2024 

In 2009, the American government loaned almost half a billion dollars to Elon Musk’s Tesla corporation to hasten the development of electric car technology. What did it think it was playing at? Didn’t it remember what Ronald Reagan said? “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” the late president told a 1986 press conference.

For Reagan and the brains behind his neoliberal puppet, the role of government is to get out of the way and let the unfettered orgy of self-interested neoliberal economic life express itself as nature intended. Taxation is theft and interventionist industrial policy always a mistake, except when it involves bailing out failing banks in reward for tanking the economy.

Nobel-winning economist and former Bill Clinton aide Joseph Stiglitz demurs. He proposes, instead, what he calls progressive capitalism. We need more government, not less. Stiglitz even writes a sentence that may induce any tooled-up Maga enthusiasts to expectorate into their spittoons and pump their shotguns. “We need environmental regulations, traffic regulations, zoning regulation, financial regulations, we need regulations in all the constituents of our economy,” he writes.

Neoliberalism must be pronounced dead and buried. Where next? Joseph Stiglitz

We need, what’s more, to problematise Margaret Thatcher’s homey analogy between government finance and a housewife’s balanced weekly budgeting. Stiglitz says most companies grow by incurring debts, but no one would just look at the liability side of a firm’s balance sheet. “If we spend the money on infrastructure, education or technology, then we have a more productive economy,” he writes. “When a firm invests well, the value of the assets increases more than the liabilities, and the firm’s net worth is enhanced. The same for countries.” This is basic economics, though not of the kind that I and many others were taught at university in the early 1980s, when laughable myths about individual economic rationality, perfect competition and how the spirit of free enterprise needed to roam unchecked were presented as undeniable facts.

But can governments be trusted to deliver socially desirable goals such as electric cars? Consider the HS2 high-speed railway debacle or, if you can bear to, Michelle Mone’s impact on public trust in government. Or consider, Stiglitz suggests, the errors that the US government made in drawing up its contract with Tesla. “It made a mistake. It failed to insist on a share of the upside potential … by insisting on receiving shares, for instance. If it had, the government (and American taxpayers) would have more than made up for the losses incurred in other technology and investments.”

To put it another way, governments aren’t very good at business. “Mistakes will be made,” says Stiglitz. “But the discovery of a mistake is no … reason to abandon a policy.” He notes that the US has embraced interventionist industrial policies as never before to provide correctives to badly functioning markets, especially since the 2008 banking disaster – hence the development of Covid vaccines and recognition of excessive dependence on foreign-made microchips. The US government, that is to say, is already doing more governing than neoliberal orthodoxy allows.

Stiglitz thinks Thatcher’s favourite monetarist thinker is responsible for a desertification of human hope

The case for minimal government was made by the nemeses of Stiglitz’s book, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The former, a Viennese economist whose 1944 book The Road to Serfdom was so prized by Thatcher she handed out copies at cabinet meetings, insisted that tyranny would result from government control of economic planning. The latter economist’s scorn for big government was typified by his remark: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

Stiglitz, who has had beef with Friedman ever since the pair clashed at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, thinks Thatcher’s favourite monetarist thinker is responsible for a desertification of human hope thanks to his quasi-religious faith in shareholder capitalism, in which the only goal for managers of companies is to maximise shareholder value. Friedman, Stiglitz insists, unleashed a generation of Gordon Gekkos to slime their way to economic power with their “greed is good” philosophy. Worse, the pursuit of shareholder greed encouraged company managers to ignore what economists call externalities – such as water organisations filling British rivers with excrement, drug companies killing Americans by addicting them to opioids or the rape of the Earth for private gain.

Joseph E Stiglitz: more government, not less. Photograph: Jacques 

Much heavy lifting for Stiglitz’s case is done by the American political philosopher John Rawls, whose 1971 book A Theory of Justice proposed a still resonant thought experiment. Imagine that each of us is temporarily behind a veil of ignorance knowing nothing of our talents, income and wealth, or indeed core values. In this “original position”, what principles of justice would we devise to ensure the society we lived in was a good one? Not, suggests Stiglitz, those that prevail today in countries such as the US and UK. Instead, he thinks it would yield the principles of progressive capitalism he spends the book defending – involving more government intervention and reforming neoliberalism’s excesses captured in the bracing truth of Isaiah Berlin’s remark “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”

I’m not so sure. His vision of progressive capitalism seems too little, too late – too little to create egalitarian societies after decades of neoliberalism; too late to stave off climate disaster. I wish Stiglitz had drawn – as the British philosopher Daniel Chandler did last year in a book similarly aimed at loosening neoliberalism’s chokehold – on another element of Rawls’s thinking. His principle asserts that any inequality in society can be justified only to the extent that it benefits the worst off. But that, I suspect, smacks too much of socialism for the Nobel laureate. Stiglitz’s conviction – ardently expressed, mostly unconvincing – is that capitalism got us into this mess and can get us out of it too.

 The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society by Joseph E Stiglitz is published by Allen Lane (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply