共享經濟和新農奴制風險

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been pitching at voters their plans to revitalise the American economy. The proposals from Mr Trump, the Republican nominee, come with the usual dose of cognitive dissonance; he claims to be a fan of fiscal stimulus yet his new economic advisory committee consists of what seem to be the last surviving “supply-siders”, proponents of Reagan-era trickle down theory. Mrs Clinton’s plans have more intellectual coherence — the Democratic nominee is promising big investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy, intended to create better paying jobs. But neither candidate has fully addressed the most important trend in labour markets — the gig economy.

希拉里•克林頓(Hillary Clinton)和唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)一直在向選民兜售各自的美國經濟振興計劃。共和黨總統候選人特朗普的提議帶着慣有的認知失調。他宣稱自己是財政刺激政策的擁躉，但他的新成立的經濟顧問委員會卻由似乎是最後倖存的“供給派”組成。供給派是里根時代“涓滴理論”的倡導者。希拉里的計劃更具有思想上的連貫性：這位民主黨總統候選人承諾大舉投資於基礎設施、製造業和清潔能源，希望創造薪資更高的就業機會。但兩位候選人的方案都沒有充分觸及當前勞動力市場上最重要的趨勢——“零工經濟”(gig economy)。

A spate of research by everyone from high-profile academics to McKinsey consultants points to the idea that in the next 10-20 years, the number of people working as freelancers, independent contractors or for multiple employers will increase dramatically. In the US, 35 per cent of workers are working in this way. So the sharing economy, made up of both lower-level gig workers and higher-end professionals with “portfolio” careers, is the future. The question is whether it will be an economy that creates more sustainable, robust growth.

從知名學者到麥肯錫(McKinsey)的諮詢師們，所有人進行的一系列研究表明，在未來10至20年，自由職業者、獨立承包人或者爲多個僱主工作的人的數量將會顯著增加。在美國，35%的勞動者正在以這種方式工作。因此，共享經濟——由低技能的零工勞動者和有着“組合”職業的更高端專業人士組成——代表着未來發展方向。問題在於，這種經濟是否會創造更加可持續、更強勁的增長。

There are two paths this new economy might take. One, more widely covered, is Darwinian. People at all ends of the socio-economic spectrum become Uberised, as both blue- and white-collar jobs are handed out piecemeal to the lowest bidder. Already, eastern European designers and Indian radiologists are undercutting their full-time peers in more developed countries this way. The labour markets starts to resemble, as Adair Turner, chairman of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Thinking once put it to me, “a feudal marketplace in which the lord shows up each day and says, ‘I’ll take you, and you, and you’.” The labour share of the pie, which has been shrinking across the developed world for the past four decades, continues to decrease. Stagnant growth and polarised politics continue.

這種新經濟有兩條路可走。一條是被較爲廣泛提及的達爾文主義。各個社會經濟階層的人們走向“優步化”，藍領和白領工作全都被分散交給報價最低的勞動者。東歐的設計師和印度的放射師已經在採用這種方式，使得服務價格低於較發達國家中的全職同行們。勞動力市場開始變得就像一個封建社會的市場，就像紐約新經濟思維研究所(Institute for New Economic Thinking)所長阿戴爾•特納(Adair Turner)曾經和我說的那樣：“領主每天出現在封建社會的市場中，說道：‘我將帶走你、你，還有你’。”勞動者所分到的蛋糕——過去四十年裏在整個發達世界經濟中一直在縮減——繼續縮減。增長停滯和兩極分化的政治持續。

But there is another possibility. Platform technologies used by companies such as Uber could, with a few crucial tweaks, enable a return to a more be-nign, pre-industrial form of capitalism.

但還有一種可能性。經過一些關鍵的調整，優步(Uber)等公司使用的平臺技術能夠使我們迴歸到工業時代前的那種更爲溫和的資本主義。

As Arun Sundararajan, a New York University academic, notes in his new book, The Sharing Economy, the percentage of self-employed workers in 1900 in the US was three times as high as it is today. Rather than working for huge corporations that take the majority of the pie — corporate profit share has reached record levels in the past couple of years — the farmers, artisans and small merchants that made up the majority of the 19th-century labour force were self-employed, selling goods and labour directly into the marketplace to myriad customers. The gig economy, it turns out, is not new; peer to peer commerce has just reinvigorated an old model.

正如紐約大學(New York University)學者阿倫•孫達拉賈(Arun Sundararajan)在其新書《共享經濟》(The Sharing Economy)中指出的那樣，1900年，美國自我僱傭工人的比例是如今的3倍。在19世紀勞動力大軍中佔據絕大多數比例的農民、工匠和小商販是自我僱傭的，直接進入市場向各種各樣的客戶出售商品和勞動力，而不是爲分走絕大部分蛋糕的大企業工作——企業利潤在近幾年達到了創紀錄的水平。事實證明，零工經濟並非新生事物；個人對個人(P2P)商務只是讓一種舊模式煥發了生機。

The trick for the next US president will be to craft policies that ensure the 21st-century sharing economy is more conducive to enterprise than to feudalism. That will include making sure labour can grab a larger chunk of the profit. Policymakers might take a lesson from existing co-operatives, in which workers already own the means of production. This type of business, with roots in the 19th century, is widespread in the US agricultural industry. Big brands such as Ocean Spray, Welch’s, Land O’Lakes, Sunkist are owned by individual farmers who can use economies of scale to secure prices above market average for their products.

對於下任美國總統來說，關鍵將是設計政策，確保21世紀的共享經濟更有利於企業而非封建主義。這將包括確保勞動力可以獲得更大份額的利潤。政策制定者可以向現有的合作社學習經驗——在這些合作社，勞動者佔有生產資料。目前，這種源於19世紀的企業普遍存在於美國農業領域。Ocean Spray、Welch’s、Land O’Lakes和Sunkist等大品牌均由農民所有，這些農民可以利用規模經濟，確保自己的產品價格高於市場平均水平。

Digital platforms make it possible to spread this model to fast-growing hands on sectors such as healthcare and education. In the US, the Bronx-based Cooperative Home Care Associates employs 2,000 workers in jobs with above-average wages and more favourable scheduling standards and benefits. Swift, a new Uber-like taxi app, is run and owned by drivers themselves. New York recently launched a $2m fund to help develop digital co-operatives among companies such as print shops, neighbourhood cafés and artisan makers of high-end goods.

數字平臺讓這種模式有可能推廣至醫療、教育等領域快速增長的人手。在美國，總部位於紐約布朗克斯(Bronx)的合作家庭護理協會(Cooperative Home Care Associates)僱傭了2000人，這些人有高於平均水平的工資以及更爲有利的日程標準和福利。一個與優步類似的叫車應用Swift由司機自己運營和所有。紐約最近發行了一隻200萬美元的基金，旨在幫助印刷店、社區咖啡館和高端商品手工店等公司開發數字合作機構。

Increasing the scale of such a model requires state intervention. Current laws mean it is much easier for businesses to register as limited liability companies than as co-ops, for example. Labour laws, which assume there is an imbalance between individuals and large institutions, will need to be rethought, as will regulation. Already, there have been wrangles over legal compensation for things that go wrong in, for example, an Airbnb, and how that differs from a similar situation in a hotel. Portable benefits, an idea supported by many tech titans, would help provide a basic safety net for workers in the US sharing economy, allowing them to be more entrepreneurial. This is vital at a time when start-ups per head have been falling for at least four decades.

擴大此類模式的規模需要政府幹預。例如，從現行法律可以看出，企業註冊爲有限責任公司比註冊爲合作社容易得多。我們需要反思假定個人與大企業實力不對等的勞動法，監管也是如此。人們已經圍繞Airbnb之類平臺出錯的法律賠償以及如何將之與酒店類似情況區分開產生了爭議。“便攜式福利”——許多科技界巨頭支持這一想法——將爲美國共享經濟的勞動者提供基本的社會保障，使得他們更具創業精神。在人均初創企業數量至少40年來一直在下降的情況下，這一點至關重要。