How big tech is dragging us towards the next financial crash
科技巨头将把我们拖入下一场金融崩溃
原文：The Guardian https://tinyurl.com/y65thsma
作者：Rana Foroohar
中译：察网http://www.cwzg.cn/theory/201912/53740.html
In every major economic downturn in US history, the ‘villains’ have been
the ‘heroes’ during the preceding boom,” said the late, great management
guru Peter Drucker. I cannot help but wonder if that might be the case over
the next few years, as the United States (and possibly the world) heads
toward its next big slowdown. Downturns historically come about once every
decade, and it has been more than that since the 2008 financial crisis. Back
then, banks were the “too-big-to-fail” institutions responsible for our
falling stock portfolios, home prices and salaries. Technology companies, by
contrast, have led the market upswing over the past decade. But this time
around, it is the big tech firms that could play the spoiler role.
当代管理学教父彼得‧德鲁克（Peter Drucker）曾说过：“在美国历史上任何一个重大
经济危机里，‘罪魁祸首’们也往往是之前经济盛世中的‘英雄’。”我不禁猜想：在美
国（或许世界范围内）经济疲软的背景下，下一场经济危机是否也出现同样的情况？历史
上经济低迷总是每十年出现一次，而自2008年金融危机后其出现次数更加频繁。回过头看
，银行要为我们下跌的股票投资组合、家用开支以及工薪负责，因而其“大而不倒”。与
此相对，尽管科技公司也在过去十余年引领经济增长，但时移世异，这一次科技公司或许
会成为破坏者。
You wouldn’t think it could be so when you look at the biggest and richest
tech firms today. Take Apple. Warren Buffett says he wished he owned even
more Apple stock. (His Berkshire Hathaway has a 5% stake in the company.)
Goldman Sachs is launching a new credit card with the tech titan, which
became the world’s first $1tn market-cap company in 2018. But hidden within
these bullish headlines are a number of disturbing economic trends, of which
Apple is already an exemplar. Study this one company and you begin to
understand how big tech companies – the new too-big-to-fail institutions –
could indeed sow the seeds of the next crisis.
当然，现下看这些规模庞大、资金充裕的科技公司，你可能不会作此猜想。以苹果公司为
例，其在2018年成为世界首个市值1兆美元的公司。沃伦‧巴菲特（Warren Buffett）曾
说他希望有更多苹果公司的股票（其创建的伯克希尔‧哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway
）已经持有苹果公司5%的股份）。高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）也正与这个科技巨头合作
筹备推出一种新型信用卡。但在这些一片大好的新闻头条下却暗藏令人不安的经济趋势，
苹果公司也不能幸免。深入研究这个公司就会开始理解：这些科技巨头公司（新的“大而
不倒”机构）是怎样为下一场经济危机埋下种子。
No matter what the Silicon Valley giants might argue, ultimately, size is a
problem, just as it was for the banks. This is not because bigger is
inherently bad, but because the complexity of these organisations makes them
so difficult to police. Like the big banks, big tech uses its lobbying muscle
to try to avoid regulation. And like the banks, it tries to sell us on the
idea that it deserves to play by different rules.
不论那些硅谷巨头们如何争论，正如当初的银行一样，规模始终是一个问题。这并非指越
大越坏，而是因为这些机构的复杂性使得其难以被监管。与大型银行相似，大型科技公司
也竭力避免被规制，并试图使人们相信：它应当适用不同的规则。
Consider the financial engineering done by such firms. Like most of the
largest and most profitable multinational companies, Apple has loads of cash
– around $210bn at last count – as well as plenty of debt (close to
$110bn). That is because – like nearly every other large, rich company – it
has parked most of its spare cash in offshore bond portfolios over the past
10 years. This is part of a Kafkaesque financial shell game that has played
out since the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, interest rates were lowered
and central bankers flooded the economy with easy money to try to engineer a
recovery. But the main beneficiaries were large companies, which issued lots
of cheap debt, and used it to buy back their own shares and pay out
dividends, which bolstered corporate share prices and investors, but not the
real economy. The Trump corporate tax cuts added fuel to this fire. Apple,
for example, was responsible for about a quarter of the $407bn in buy-backs
announced in the six months or so after Trump’s tax law was passed in
December 2017 – the biggest corporate tax cut in US history.
正是这些公司推动着经济发展。与大多数最大、最盈利的跨国公司类似，苹果公司拥有大
量现金储备：最新数据为约2100亿美元；也有巨额债务：近1100亿美元。这是由于其在过
去十年间将大量闲置资金投放于离岸债券投资组合中，该做法与其他大型盈利公司相同。
这是一场卡夫卡式的金融骗局，并且早在2008年金融危机中上演过一次。那时，利率降低
，中央银行家们大量注入低息资金，试图推动经济复苏。但主要受益者却是大公司：它们
借机获取低息资金，用以回购股份，支付红利。该举措刺激股价回升，但却并未真正促进
经济发展。川普的减税政策则进一步推波助澜。在2017年12月川普的税法——美国历史上
力度最大的公司税法通过后的约6个月内，宣布回购的股份已达4070亿美元，其中苹果公
司约占四分之一。
Because of this, the wealth divide has been increased, which many economists
believe is not only the biggest factor in slower-than-historic trend growth,
but is also driving the political populism that threatens the market system
itself.
正基于此，贫富差距更加激化。许多经济学家认为这不仅导致史上最低的经济增速，也诱
发了政治民粹主义（其也威胁著市场本身）。
That phenomenon has been put on steroids by yet another trend epitomised by
Apple: the rise of intangibles such as intellectual property and brands (both
of which the company has in spades) relative to tangible goods as a share of
the global economy. As Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake show in their book
Capitalism Without Capital, this shift became noticeable around 2000, but
really took off after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. The digital
economy has a tendency to create superstars, since software and internet
services are so scalable and enjoy network effects (in essence, they allow a
handful of companies to grow quickly and eat everyone else’s lunch). But
according to Haskel and Westlake, it also seems to reduce investment across
the economy as a whole. This is not only because banks are reluctant to lend
to businesses whose intangible assets may simply disappear if they go
belly-up, but also because of the winner-takes-all effect that a handful of
companies, including Apple (and Amazon and Google), enjoy.
在以苹果公司为例的科技主导下，与有形商品相比，无形资产（如知识产权和商标）在全
球经济的份额上升。在此趋势下，贫富差距愈演愈烈，财富分配差距愈来愈大。正如乔纳
森‧哈斯克尔（Jonathan Haskel）和斯蒂安‧韦斯特莱克（Stian Westlake）在《没有
资本的资本主义》（Capitalism Without Capital）一书中写道：该转变在2000年前后显
露，但真正发迹则始于2007年苹果手机上市。软件和网络服务应用广泛，并享受着互联网
红利（实际上，其促使许多公司快速成长，并在竞争中抢占其他公司的“蛋糕”），因而
数字经济总是会有领头人出现。但依据哈斯克尔和韦斯特莱克的观点，这似乎也将导致经
济投资整体减少。这不仅由于银行不愿贷款给这些企业（一旦其破产，这些无形资产将化
为乌有），也受到“赢者通吃”规则的影响（苹果、亚马逊以及谷歌等许多公司均在其中
）。
This is likely a key reason for the dearth of startups, declining job
creation, falling demand and other disturbing trends in our bifurcated
economy. Concentration of power of the sort that Apple and Amazon enjoy is a
key reason for record levels of mergers and acquisitions. In telecoms and
media especially, many companies have taken on significant amounts of debt in
order to bulk up and compete in this new environment of streaming video and
digital media.
当下，创业减少、就业困难、市场需求下降以及经济分化下其他种种态势令人担忧，而导
致这一经济现象的重要原因或许正是数字经济。苹果与亚马逊的权力集中是并购达到峰值
的关键因素。在流媒体和数字媒体时代，许多公司大肆举债以扩大规模，增强竞争力，其
中以电信和媒体行业为甚。
Some of that debt is now looking shaky, which underscores that the next big
crisis probably won’t emanate from banks, but from the corporate sector.
Rapid growth in debt levels is historically the best predictor of a crisis.
And for the past several years, the corporate bond market has been on a tear,
with companies in advanced economies issuing a record amount of debt; the
market grew 70% over the past decade, to reach $10.17tn in 2018. Even
mediocre companies have benefited from easy money.
但现下其中一些债务似乎摇摇欲坠，这凸显出下一场大危机可能从这些公司中爆发，而非
银行。从历史上看，负债水平的快速增长往往预示了危机的到来。近年来，公司债务市场
一直处于涨势，属于先进经济体系的公司债券发行也创下了纪录；过去十年来市场增长
70%，2018年已达10.17兆美元。即便是普通公司也能从中获益。
But as the interest rate environment changes, perhaps more quickly than was
anticipated, many could be vulnerable. The Bank for International Settlements
– the international body that monitors the global financial system – has
warned that the long period of low rates has cooked up a larger than usual
number of “zombie” companies, which will not have enough profits to make
their debt payments if interest rates rise. When rates eventually do rise,
warns the BIS, losses and ripple effects may be more severe than usual.
但随着利率环境变化（或许比预期更快），许多债务将会变得不堪一击。监管全球金融体
系的机构——国际清算银行（The Bank for International Settlements）已发出警告称
：长期低利率催生了比原来更多的“僵尸”公司，如果利率升高，这些公司将没有足够的
盈利抵债。国际清算银行进一步强调：当利率上升时，破坏力与连锁效应或许比以往更甚
。
Of course, if and when the next crisis is upon us, the deflationary power of
technology (meaning the way in which it drives down prices), exemplified by
companies like Apple, could make it more difficult to manage. That is the
final trend worth considering. Technology firms drive down the prices of lots
of things, and tech-related deflation is a big part of what has kept interest
rates so low for so long; it has not only constrained prices, but wages, too.
The fact that interest rates are so low, in part thanks to that tech-driven
deflation, means that central bankers will have much less room to navigate
through any upcoming crisis. Apple and the other purveyors of intangibles
have benefited more than other companies from this environment of low rates,
cheap debt, and high stock prices over the past 10 years. But their power has
also sowed the seeds of what could be the next big swing in the markets.
当然，如果新危机真的来临，以苹果为例的科技力量所导致的通货紧缩（其以压低价格的
方式）可能会更加难以应对。这是值得考虑的最后一个趋势。科技公司压低产品价格，而
与科技相关的通货紧缩则是长期低利率的重要原因；其压低的不仅仅是价格，还有工资。
同时，这也意味着中央银行在应对将来的危机中会更加捉襟见肘。过去十年，相比其他公
司，苹果公司以及其他无形资产的公司在低利率、高负债、高股价的环境中获益更多。但
这也为下一场市场大波动埋下了种子。
A few years ago, I had a fascinating conversation with an economist at the US
Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, a small but important body that was
created following the 2008 financial crisis to study market trouble, and
which has since seen its funding slashed by Trump. I was trawling for
information about financial risk and where it might be held, and the
economist told me to look at the debt offerings and corporate bond purchases
being made by the largest, richest corporations in the world, such as Apple
or Google, whose market value now dwarfed that of the biggest banks and
investment firms.
几年前，我与美国财政部金融研究办公室（US Treasury’s Office of Financial
Research）（该机构成立于2008年经济危机之后，旨在研究市场问题，但川普上任后削减
了其资金）的一位经济学家对此进行讨论。我曾试图蒐集有关金融危机以及其爆发地点的
信息，但这位经济学家建议关注世界规模最大、资金最为雄厚的公司，如苹果和谷歌，要
去研究其债券发行以及债券购买情况。这些公司的市值已超过最大的银行和投资公司了。
In a low interest rate environment, with billions of dollars in yearly
earnings, these high-grade firms were issuing their own cheap debt and using
it to buy up the higher-yielding corporate debt of other firms. In the search
for both higher returns and for something to do with all their money, they
were, in a way, acting like banks, taking large anchor positions in new
corporate debt offerings and essentially underwriting them the way that JP
Morgan or Goldman Sachs might. But, it is worth noting, since such companies
are not regulated like banks, it is difficult to track exactly what they are
buying, how much they are buying and what the market implications might be.
There simply is not a paper trail the way there is in finance. Still, the
idea that cash-rich tech companies might be the new systemically important
institutions was compelling.
在低利率的环境下，这些上游公司每年有数十亿美元的收入，发行廉价债券并买入其他公
司的高收益债券。为了获取高回报与利益，其倣傚银行，很大程度上支撑了新公司债券发
行，并且实质上像摩根大通银行（JP Morgan）和高盛（Goldman Sachs）那样为公司投资
保驾护航。但这类公司始终并非像银行一样运作，这一举措的意义不大，其难以准确追踪
其投资对象的动向、投资方式以及市场变化。金融业不是纸上谈兵。尽管如此，资金充裕
的科技公司也极有可能成为规范的重要金融机构。
I began digging for more on the topic, and about two years later, in 2018, I
came across a stunning Credit Suisse report that both confirmed and
quantified the idea. The economist who wrote it, Zoltan Pozsar, forensically
analysed the $1tn in corporate savings parked in offshore accounts, mostly by
big tech firms. The largest and most intellectual-property-rich 10% of
companies – Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and Alphabet (Google’s parent
company) among them – controlled 80% of this hoard.
因此，我开始关注这个话题。大约2年后，也就是2018年一份瑞士信贷报告证实了该想法
。该报告的撰写人佐尔坦‧鲍兹（Zoltan Pozsar）精确地分析：离岸账户中存储的1兆美
元公司资本，大部分来自于科技公司。而其中80%集中在10%的公司手中，苹果、微软、思
科、甲骨文以及谷歌母公司（Alphabet）就在其间。它们拥有最大的规模与最多的知识产
权。
According to Pozsar’s calculations, most of that money was held not in cash
but in bonds – half of it in corporate bonds. The much-lauded overseas “cash
” pile held by the richest American companies, a treasure that Republicans
under Trump had cited as the key reason they passed their ill-advised tax “
reform” plan, was actually a giant bond portfolio. And it was owned not by
banks or mutual funds, which typically have such large financial holdings,
but by the world’s biggest technology firms. In addition to being the most
profitable and least regulated industry on the planet, the Silicon Valley
giants had also become systemically crucial within the marketplace, holding
assets that – if sold or downgraded – could topple the markets themselves.
Hiding in plain sight was an amazing new discovery: big tech, not big banks,
was the new too-big-to-fail industry.
根据鲍兹的统计，这些资本大部分并不是现金，而是债券，并且其中一半是公司债券。基
于此，以川普为首的共和党认为这些美国最富有的公司拥有着巨大的“现金”储备，并通
过备受诟病的税收“改革”计画。但其实质上是庞大的债券投资组合。其所有者既非银行
也非共同基金（译注：共同基金为投资公司或投资银行一方面以发行股票的形式从基金股
东处筹集投资资金，然后投资于各种股票、债券、期权契约、商品和货币管理市场。），
而是全球最大的科技公司。此外，硅谷除了是赚钱最多，规制最少的行业，还对市场至关
重要，其资产若售出或贬值，则会动摇市场自身。显而易见，科技巨头才是新的“大而不
倒”机构，而非银行巨鳄。
As I began to think about the comparison, I found more and more parallels.
Some of them were attitudinal. It was fascinating, for example, to see how
much the technology industry’s response to the 2016 election crisis mirrored
the banking industry’s behaviour in the wake of the financial crisis of
2008. Just as Wall Street had obfuscated as much as possible about what it
was doing before and after the crisis, every bit of useful information about
election meddling had to be clawed away from the titans of big tech.
当有意识地进行比较时，就会发现二者更多的相似之处。其中一些是态度上的问题。例如
科技行业对2016年选举危机的应对简直是银行业在2008年金融危机后做法的翻版。正如华
尔街极力混淆其在危机前后的所作所为，这些科技巨头也竭力清除任何关于选举干预的蛛
丝马迹。
First, they insisted that they had done nothing wrong, and that anyone who
thought they had simply did not understand the technology industry. It was
under extreme pressure from both press and regulators that Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg finally turned over 3,000 Russia-linked adverts to Congress.
Google and others were only marginally less evasive. Similar to Wall Street
financiers at the time of the US sub-prime crisis, the tech titans have
remained, years after the 2016 election, in a largely reactive posture,
parting with as few details as possible, attempting to keep the asymmetric
information advantages of their business model that, as in the banking
industry, help generate outsized profit margins. It is a “deny and deflect”
attitude similar to what we saw from financiers in 2008, and has resulted in
deservedly terrible PR.
首先，它们坚称自己没有做错过任何事，并且认为那些对它们的批评都是由于对科技行业
的一无所知。而在来自媒体与监管机构的巨大压力下，脸书创始人马克‧扎克伯格（
Mark Zuckerberg）终于向国会提交了3000条与俄罗斯有关的广告。谷歌与其他公司也只
是没有那么明显地避讳。与美国次贷危机时华尔街金融家们的做法类似，在2016年大选后
，科技巨头们纷纷出手，尽可能少透露细节，试图利用其商业模式下的信息不对等以获取
优势，当然这也产生了巨额利润。其“不承认不合作”态度与2008年金融家的做法别无二
致，这也相应导致了糟糕的公关效果。
But there are more substantive similarities as well. At a meta level, I see
four major likenesses in big finance and big tech: corporate mythology,
opacity, complexity and size. In terms of mythology, Wall Street before 2008
sold the idea that what was good for the financial sector was good for the
economy. Until quite recently, big tech tried to convince us of the same. But
there are two sides to the story, and neither industry is quick to
acknowledge or take responsibility for the downsides of “innovation”.
此外，还有更多实体上的相似之处。根本而言，我认为金融巨鳄与科技巨头有四大相似之
处：公司至上论、封密性、复杂性以及规模化。就公司至上论而言，2008年之前华尔街灌
输这样一种观念：有利于金融行业的才是有利于经济的。而最近，科技巨头们也同样试图
说服我们。但这个套路还有另一面：这两个行业都不会承认，更不会为所谓的“创新”失
败买单。
A raft of research shows us that trust in liberal democracy, government,
media and nongovernmental organisations declines as social media usage rises.
In Myanmar, Facebook has been leveraged to support genocide. In China, Apple
and Google have bowed to government demands for censorship. In the US, of
course, personal data is being collected, monetised and weaponised in ways
that we are only just beginning to understand, and monopolies are squashing
job creation and innovation. At this point, it is harder and harder to argue
that the benefits of platform technology vastly outweigh the costs.
大量研究表明：随着社交媒体兴起，公众对自由民主、政府、媒体以及非政府组织的信赖
度下降。在缅甸，脸书被用来支持种族灭绝。在中国，苹果和谷歌需要应对政府审查。而
在美国，个人数据正在已各种方式被收集、交易以及用于攻击，而我们意识到的仅仅是冰
山一角。此外，垄断还会导致挤压就业机会，遏制创新。就此而言，我们难以得出科技平
台的利大于弊的结论。
Big tech and big banks are also similar in the opacity and complexity of
their operations. The algorithmic use of data is like the complex
securitisation done by the world’s too-big-to-fail banks in the sub-prime
era. Both are understood largely by industry experts who can use information
asymmetry to hide risks and the nefarious things that companies profit from,
such as dubious political ads.
科技巨头与金融巨鳄在公司运行上都具有封密性与复杂性。数据的运算就如同次贷时期那
些“大而不倒”的银行所发行的证券一样复杂。二者都同样具有专业要求，而行业专家们
则可利用信息不对等的优势以隐瞒风险和公司从中获益的其他恶性事件（如可疑的政治广
告）。
Yet that complexity can backfire. Just as many big-bank risk managers had no
idea what was going in to and coming out of the black box before 2008, big
tech executives themselves can be thrown off balance by the ways in which
their technology can be misused. Consider, for example, the New York Times
investigation in 2018 that revealed that Facebook had allowed a number of
other big tech companies, including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, to tap
sensitive user data even as it was promising to protect privacy.
但这种复杂性也可能会适得其反。正如2008年前，许多大银行的风险经理对该“黑箱”的
风险以及所将要引发的危机一无所知，大型科技公司的高管们也可能会因科技滥用而对其
失去控制。例如2018年《纽约时报》（New York Times）的调查显示：尽管脸书承诺保护
隐私，但仍允许许多大型科技公司（如苹果、亚马逊以及微软）利用用户敏感数据。
Facebook entered into the data-sharing deals – which are a win-win for the
big tech firms in general, to the extent that they increase traffic between
the various platforms and bring more and more users to them – between 2010
and 2017 to grow its social network as fast as possible. But neither Facebook
nor the other companies involved could keep track of all the implications of
the arrangements for user privacy. Apple claimed to not even know it was in
such a deal with Facebook, a rather stunning admission given the way in which
Apple has marketed itself as a protector of user privacy. At Facebook, “some
engineers and executives … considered the privacy reviews an impediment to
quick innovation and growth”, read a telling line in the Times piece. And
grow it has: Facebook took in more than $40bn in revenue in 2017, more than
double the $17.9bn it reported for 2015.
脸书加入了数据共享协议。这对大型科技公司一般来说是双赢的，其一定程度上增加了不
同平台的流量，为其带来越来越多的用户。2010年至2017年间，社交网络获得迅速发展。
但不论是脸书还是其他相关公司都无法保障用户隐私安全。苹果公司甚至称其根本不知道
自己与脸书存在这样的交易，且其竟然将自己定位为用户隐私的保护者，这实在令人震惊
。《纽约时报》上的一篇文章很能说明这个问题：在脸书中，“一些工程师和高管……认
为隐私审查阻碍了创新和发展”。随后文章指出：2017年脸书收入超过400亿美元，是
2015年179亿美元的两倍多。
Facebook’s prioritisation of growth over governance is egregious but not
unique. The tendency to look myopically at share price as the one and only
indicator of value is something fostered by Wall Street, but by no means
limited to it. The obliviousness of the tech executives who cut these deals
reminds me of bank executives who had no understanding of the risks built
into their balance sheets until markets started to blow up during the 2008
financial crisis.
脸书重发展轻规制的立场显然欠妥，但却并不只此一家。将股价视作价值的唯一标准是华
尔街的短视。但无独有偶，达成这些协议的科技公司高管们是健忘的：他们忘记了2008年
金融危机前的银行高管们，也是在危机爆发之前对其资产负债表上的风险一无所知。
Companies tend to prioritise what can be quantified, such as earnings per
share and the ratio of the stock price to earnings, and ignore (until it is
too late) the harder-to-measure business risks.
公司总是倾向于优先考虑那些可以被量化的事项，如每股股利及股价与收益之比，并且忽
视那些难以测算的商业风险，而等其意识到之时，则为时已晚。
It is no accident that most of the wealth in our world is being held by a
smaller and smaller number of rich individuals and corporations who use
financial wizardry such as tax offshoring and buy-backs to ensure that they
keep it out of the hands of national governments. It is what we have been
taught to think of as normal, thanks to the ideological triumph of the
Chicago School of economic thought, which has, for the past five decades or
so, preached, among other things, that the only purpose of corporations
should be to maximise profits.
世界绝大部分财富集中在越来越少的富人与公司手中，这绝非偶然。这些富人与公司使用
离岸税收和回购等金融手段以规避政府干预，确保财富不落入政府手中。这也正是芝加哥
经济学派所提倡的：公司应以利润最大化为唯一目的。而该思想在过去五十多年中一直被
奉为圭臬。
The notion of “shareholder value” is shorthand for this idea. The
maximisation of shareholder value is part of the larger process of “
financialisation”. It is a process that has risen, in tandem with the
Chicago School of thinking, since the 1980s, and has created a situation in
which markets have become not a conduit for supporting the real economy, as
Adam Smith would have said they should be, but rather, the tail that wags the
dog.
该思想的关键词是“股东利益”。股东利益最大化是金融化进程的重要组成部分。自二十
世纪八十年代，该进程与芝加哥学派一同兴起，并使得市场不再如亚当‧斯密（Adam
Smith）口中的那样：应当为实体经济提供渠道支撑；现在则与之相反，本末倒置了。
“Consumer welfare,” rather than citizen welfare, is our primary concern. We
assume that rising share prices signify something good for the economy as a
whole, as opposed to merely increasing wealth for those who own them. In this
process, we have moved from being a market economy to being what Harvard law
professor Michael Sandel would call a “market society”, obsessed with
profit maximisation in every aspect of our lives. Our access to the basics –
healthcare, education, justice – is determined by wealth. Our experiences
of ourselves and those around us are thought of in transactional terms,
something that is reflected in the language of the day (we “maximise” time
and “monetise” relationships).
“消费者福利”成为我们的首要考虑，而非公民福利。我们认为股价上升对经济整体而言
有利，但不能仅仅增加了股票持有者的财富。在这一进程中，我们已经由“市场经济”转
为哈佛大学法学院教授迈克尔‧桑德尔（Michael Sandel）所称的“市场社会”——利益
最大化充斥在我们生活的方方面面。医疗、教育、公正等基本生活需要的获得均由财富决
定。社会交往是交易性的，这也体现在当今的用语表达中：我们最大限度利用时间，用金
钱衡量社会关系。
Now, with the rise of the surveillance capitalism practised by big tech, we
ourselves are maximised for profit. Remember that our personal data is, for
these companies and the others that harvest it, the main business input. As
Larry Page himself once said when asked “What is Google?”: “If we did have
a category, it would be personal information … the places you’ve seen.
Communications … Sensors are really cheap … Storage is cheap. Cameras are
cheap. People will generate enormous amounts of data … Everything you’ve
ever heard or seen or experienced will become searchable. Your whole life
will be searchable.”
当下，随着科技巨头引发的监控资本主义（surveillance capitalism）兴起，我们自身
也成为利益最大化的对象了。请牢记这些公司和其他获取信息的公司所收集的个人信息主
要用于商业用途。正如拉里‧佩奇（Larry Page）在被问到“什么是谷歌”时的回答：如
果真的要把我们做一个归类的话，那应该就是个人信息…你所看到的景象以及交流通信…
传感器真的很便宜…存储很便宜，摄像头也很便宜。人们会产生大量的数据…人们所听、
所看、所感知到的一切都将被搜索到。你的整个生活将会是可以搜索的。”
Think about that. You are the raw material used to make the product that
sells you to advertisers.
设想一下，你既是广告制作的原材料，又是广告推送的接收者。
Financial markets have facilitated the shift toward this invasive,
short-term, selfish capitalism, which has run in tandem with both
globalisation and technological advancement, creating a loop in which we are
constantly competing with greater numbers of people, in shorter amounts of
time, for more and more consumer goods that may be cheaper thanks in part to
the deflationary effects of both outsourcing and tech-based disruption, but
that cannot compensate for our stagnant incomes and stressed-out lives.
随着经济全球化和技术进步，金融市场为这种扩散式、短期、利己的资本主义大开方便之
门。我们陷入了循环之中：在更短的时间中，我们不断与更多对手竞争，以获取更多商品
。由于离岸外包与科技所导致的经济下滑，这些商品或许更加便宜，但这并不能弥补我们
停滞不前的收入和不堪重负的生活。
But you could argue that, in a deeper way, Silicon Valley – not the old
Valley that was full of garage startups and true innovators, but the
financially driven Silicon Valley of today – represents the apex of the
shift toward financialisation. Today the large tech companies are run by a
generation of business leaders who came of age and started their firms at a
time when government was viewed as the enemy, and profit maximisation was
universally seen as the best way to advance the economy, and indeed society.
Regulation or limits on corporate behaviour have been viewed as tyrannical or
even authoritarian. “Self-regulation” has become the norm. “Consumers”
have replaced citizens. All of it is reflected in the Valley’s “move fast
and break things” mentality, which the tech titans view as a fait accompli.
As Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen wrote in an afterword to the paperback
edition of their book, The New Digital Age: “Bemoaning the inevitable
increase in the size and reach of the technology sector distracts us from the
real question … Many of the changes that we discuss are inevitable. They’re
coming.”
但你可以认为，从更深层的角度来看，硅谷不再是之前那个满是车库创业者和真正创新者
的硅谷了，而今天这个受金融驱动的硅谷代表了其金融化转变的顶点。在与政府对立，追
求利益最大化的时代，如今大型科技公司的掌权者创建了他们的公司。在那个时代，尊重
市场被视为是促进经济，乃至社会发展的最佳途径。对公司行为的规制和限制都被认为是
专制乃至独裁。“自我监管”才是王道。“消费者”取代了公民。这些科技巨头对此深以
为然，而这在硅谷“雷厉风行”的态度中体现得淋漓尽致。正如埃里克‧施密特（Eric
Schmidt）与杰瑞德‧科恩（Jared Cohen）在其平装本后记中写道：“哀叹科技行业不可
避免地壮大，会分散我们对真正问题的注意力…我们所讨论的许多改变无法避免，它们真
的来了。”
Perhaps. But the idea that this should preclude any discussion of the effects
of the technology sector on the public at large is simply arrogant. There is
a huge cost to this line of thinking. Consider the $1tn in wealth that has
been parked offshore by the US’s largest, most IP-rich firms. A trillion is
no small sum: that is an 18th of the US’s annual GDP, much of which was
garnered from products and services made possible by core government-funded
research and innovators. Yet US citizens have not got their fair share of
that investment because of tax offshoring. It is worth noting that while the
US corporate tax rate was recently lowered from 35% to 21%, most big
companies have for years paid only about 20% of their income, thanks to
various loopholes. The tech industry pays even less – roughly 11-15% – for
this same reason: data and IP can be offshored while a factory or grocery
store cannot. This points to yet another neoliberal myth – the idea that if
we simply cut US tax rates, then these “American” companies will bring all
their money home and invest it in job-creating goods and services in the US.
But the nation’s biggest and richest companies have been at the forefront of
globalisation since the 1980s. Despite small decreases in overseas revenues
for the past couple of years, nearly half of all sales from S&P 500 companies
come from abroad.
或许真是如此。但若认为这将排除对科技行业影响的讨论，则不免有妄下断言之嫌。并且
有这种想法是要付出巨大的代价。美国最大、拥有最多知识产权的公司将1兆美元留置海
外。1兆美元可谓不小的数目：这是美国年度国内生产总值的十八分之一，其中很大一部
分或许来自于政府资助的核心调查与创新者研发的产品与服务。但由于离岸税收，美国公
民并未获得与其投资相称的收益。近来美国公司税由35%降到21%的意义不大：因为得益于
各种漏洞，大多数公司早已只缴纳其收入20%的税收。不同于工厂和商店，数据和知识产
权可以离岸，因而科技行业纳税数额甚至更少：约11%至15%。这引出了另一个新自由主义
疑问：仅靠降低美国税率，就能让这些“美国”公司转回资金，并用于提升商品和服务吗
？但这些国家的龙头企业早在二十世纪八十年代就走在了全球化的前列。尽管近年来海外
收入略有下降，但标普500指数的公司近一半的销售额仍来自海外。
How, then, can such companies be perceived as being “totally committed” to
the US, or, indeed, to any particular country? Their commitment, at least the
way American capitalism is practised today, is to customers and investors,
and when both of them are increasingly global, then it is hard to argue for
any sort of special consideration for American workers or communities in the
boardroom.
那么又怎么能说这些公司“完全属于”美国或其他任何一个国家呢？不过从美国资本运行
方式来看，它们至少归属于消费者和投资者。当二者全球化程度持续深入时，美国工人或
团体在董事会中则更难有一席之地了。
Tech firms are more able than any other type of company to move business
abroad, because most of their wealth is not in “fixed assets” but in data,
human capital, patents and software, which are not tied to physical locations
(such as factories or retail stores) but can move anywhere. And as we have
already learned, while those things do represent wealth, they do not create
broad-based demand growth in the economy like the investments of a previous
era.
相比其他类型的公司，科技公司更有能力将业务转移到海外。这是因为其大部分财富并非
“固定资产”，而是数据、人才资本、专利和软件。这些都无需特定地点（而工厂和零售
商店则需要），可以随意移动。如前所述，尽管这些确实代表了财富，但其本身却无法像
前一个时代的投资那样，拉动广泛的经济需求增长。
“If Apple acquires a licence to a technology for a phone it manufactures in
China, it does not create employment in the US, beyond the creator of the
licensed technology if they are in the US,” says Daniel Alpert, a financier
and a professor at Cornell University studying the effects of this shift in
investment. “Apps, Netflix and Amazon movies don’t create jobs the way a
new plant would.” Or, as my Financial Times colleague Martin Wolf has put
it, “[Apple] is now an investment fund attached to an innovation machine and
so a black hole for aggregate demand. The idea that a lower corporate tax
rate would raise investment in such businesses is ludicrous.” In short,
cash-rich corporations – especially tech firms – have become the financial
engineers of our day.
康奈尔大学教授，金融学家丹尼尔‧阿尔珀特（Daniel Alpert）致力于研究该投资转变
的影响。其认为：“如果苹果公司获得了一项手机技术许可，但却是在中国生产，显然该
许可并不会增加任何就业，当然，如果该技术的发明者在美国的话除外。应用软件、网飞
（Netflix）和亚马逊的电影也不会像一个新工厂那样创造就业机会。” 或者正如我《金
融时报》（Financial Times）的同事马丁‧沃尔夫（Martin Wolf）所说：苹果公司现在
是依附于技术创新的投资基金，其背后利益纠葛复杂，利益需求巨大。国家试图通过降低
公司税来提高这类企业的投资，无异于痴人说梦。” 总而言之，资金充裕的公司，尤其
是科技公司，已成为当下金融行业的重要一员。"
There are the ways in which big tech is driving the mega-trends in global
markets, as we have just explored. Then, there are the ways tech companies
are playing in those markets that grant them an unfair advantage over
consumers. For example, Google, Facebook and, increasingly, Amazon now own
the digital advertising market, and can set whatever terms they like for
customers. The opacity of their algorithms coupled with their dominance of
their respective markets makes it impossible for customers to have an even
playing field. This can lead to exploitative pricing and/or behaviours that
put our privacy at risk. Consider also the way Uber uses “surge pricing” to
set rates based on customers’ willingness to pay. Or the “shadow profiles”
that Facebook compiles on users. Or the way in which Google and Mastercard
teamed up to track whether online ads led to physical store sales, without
letting Mastercard holders know they were being tracked.
如前所述，科技巨头以各种方式推动全球市场迅猛增长。而科技公司也有各种方式在市场
中获取不对等的优势地位。例如，谷歌、脸书以及最近的亚马逊均用于数字广告市场，可
随意投放任意广告。其算法的封密性以及其在各自市场的主导地位，使得用户无从比较，
无法选择。此外，这也会导致垄断价格或者（以及）用户隐私危机。这并非危言耸听：优
步采用“峰时价格”（动态价格），以用户支付意愿设定价格；脸书制作用户“影子档案
”（shadow profiles）；在用户不知情的情况下，谷歌与万事达信用卡联手追踪网上广
告是否促进实体销售。
Or the way Amazon secured an unusual procurement deal with local governments
in the US. It was, as of 2018, allowed to purchase all the office and
classroom supplies for 1,500 public agencies, including local governments and
schools, around the country, without guaranteeing them fixed prices for the
goods. The purchasing would be done through “dynamic pricing” –
essentially another form of surge pricing, whereby the prices reflect
whatever the market will withstand – with the final charges depending on
bids put forward by suppliers on Amazon’s platform. It was a stunning
corporate jiu-jitsu, given that the whole point of a bulk-purchasing contract
is to guarantee the public sector competitive prices by bundling together
demand. For all the hype about Amazon’s discounts, a study conducted by the
nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance concluded that one California
school district would have paid 10-12% more if it had bought from Amazon. And
cities that wanted to keep on using existing suppliers that did not do
business on the retail giant’s platform would be forced to move that
business (and those suppliers) to Amazon because of the way that deal was
structured.
抑或是亚马逊与美国地方政府达成了一项不同寻常的采购协议。截止至2018年，全国1500
个公共机构（包括当地政府和学校）的办公物资与教学用具均在非固定价格下购买。该购
买通过“动态定价”完成，其实质是另一种形式的峰时定价：价格反映市场，最后定价取
决于亚马逊平台供应商的报价。批量采购合同的意义在于通过捆绑需求使得公共部门获得
优惠价格，但亚马逊在交易中明显处于上风，这实在令人震惊。而关于亚马逊折扣的炒作
，一个非营利组织——地方自立协会（Institute for Local Self-Reliance）调查发现
：若加州的一个学区从亚马逊购买的话，将会多支付10%至12%。一些城市想要延续现有供
应商，而未与这个零售巨头交易（包括其供应商）。但由于交易结构的原因，这些城市（
包括供应商）也将会被迫将这些业务转移至亚马逊。
It is hard to ignore the parallels in Amazon’s behaviour to the lending
practices of some financial groups before the 2008 crash. They, too, used
dynamic pricing, in the form of variable rate sub-prime mortgage loans, and
they, too, exploited huge information asymmetries in their sale of
mortgage-backed securities and complex debt deals to unwary investors, not
only to individuals, but also to cities such as Detroit. Amazon, for its
part, has vastly more market data than the suppliers and public sector
purchasers it plans to link.
显然，亚马逊的行为与2008年经济危机之前一些金融机构的放贷行为有相似之处。该金融
机构也以浮动利率的次贷形式，使用动态定价；其在与不谨慎的投资者交易时，也利用信
息不对等优势，销售抵押担保证券与交易复杂债务（包括个人与城市，如底特律）。就亚
马逊而言，其所掌握的市场数据远远超过其计画联系的供应商与公共部门购买者。
As in any transaction, the party that knows the most can make the smartest
deal. The bottom line is that both big-platform tech players and large
financial institutions sit in the centre of an hourglass of information and
commerce, taking a cut of whatever passes through. They are the house, and
the house always wins.
在任何交易中，知道最多的一方获益最多。最重要的是，不论是科技巨头还是金融巨鳄，
其好似稳占信息与商业的必经之路，不论中间通过了什么，总能分一杯羹。它们就是庄家
，而庄家总是赢家。
As with the banks, systemic regulation may well be the only way to prevent
big tech companies from unfairly capitalising on those advantages.
与银行一样，系统性规制很可能是防止大型科技公司滥用其优势地位获取资本的唯一途径
。
There are questions of whether Amazon or Facebook could leverage their
existing positions in e-commerce or social media to unfair advantage in
finance, using what they already know about our shopping and buying patterns
to push us into buying the products they want us to in ways that are either
a) anticompetitive, or b) predatory. There are also questions about whether
they might cut and run at the first sign of market trouble, destabilising the
credit markets in the process.
有人质疑亚马逊或脸书是否真的能够利用其在电商或社交媒体的地位获取金融优势：不论
是垄断式还是掠夺式，利用其掌握的用户购物信息以促进消费？也有人质疑它们是否会在
市场出现问题后一走了之，破坏信贷市场的稳定？
“Big-tech lending does not involve human intervention of a long-term
relationship with the client,” said Agustín Carstens, the general manager
of the Bank for International Settlements. “These loans are strictly
transactional, typically short-term credit lines that can be automatically
cut if a firm’s condition deteriorates. This means that, in a downturn,
there could be a large drop in credit to [small and middle-sized companies]
and large social costs.” If you think that sounds a lot like the situation
that we were in back in 2008, you would be right.
国际清算银行总经理奥古斯丁‧卡斯滕斯（Agustín Carstens）认为：“大型科技公司
借贷并不会影响与客户的长期关系。严格意义上来说，这些贷款是交易性质的，通常为短
期信用额度。而一旦公司状况恶化，则会自导削减额度。这意味着，在经济危机中，对中
小型企业的贷款会大幅下降，而社会成本则将大大增加。”这无疑与2008年的那场经济危
机如出一撤。
Treating the industry like any other would undoubtedly require a significant
shift in the big-tech business model, one with potential profit and share
price implications. The extraordinary valuations of the big tech firms are
due in part to the market’s expectations that they will remain lightly
regulated, lightly taxed monopoly powers. But that is not guaranteed to be
the case in the future. Antitrust and monopoly issues are fast gaining
attention in Washington, where the titans of big tech may soon have a
reckoning.
毫无疑问，若对科技行业进行与其他行业作同等对待：进行政府规制，则要求科技行业经
营模式的巨大转变。而这则会对利润与股价产生潜在影响。科技巨头的巨大估值一定程度
上是由于对其宽松监管、较低税收的垄断权力的市场预期。但凡事无绝对。国家很快地意
识到反垄断与垄断问题，或许也会很快与这些科技巨头有个了断。