凯因斯错了，青年世代过超惨
苦劳网
https://www.coolloud.org.tw/node/93974
译者 /张宗坤 政大劳工所硕士生
【编按】1930年，英国经济学家凯因斯写下〈我们后代的经济前景〉，他预言资本主义在
发展100年后，将很有可能解决人类的经济问题，带领人们走向物质丰裕和闲暇的时代。
但正如本文作者指出，凯因斯的预言未曾实现，新世代的青年反而持续苦于工资停滞、生
态危机等资本主义制度造成的深层问题，而渐渐倾向于左翼社会主义。
原文标题"Keynes was wrong. Gen Z will have it worse."，刊载于《麻省理工科技评
论》（MIT Technology Review）。
网页： https://tinyurl.com/sjjayxy
The founder of macroeconomics predicted that capitalism would last for
approximately 450 years. That’s the length of time between 1580, when Queen
Elizabeth invested Spanish gold stolen by Francis Drake, and 2030, the year
by which John Maynard Keynes assumed humanity would have solved the problem
of our needs and moved on to higher concerns.
宏观经济学的创始人凯因斯曾预测，资本主义大概可以存在450年左右。这个时间大概介
于1580和2030年间，也就是从伊莉莎白女皇投资了航海家德瑞克（Francis Drake）偷走
的西班牙黄金，直到凯因斯预言人类将能够满足我们自身的需求，并将视野投向更高层次
的年代。
It’s true that today the system seems on the edge of transformation, but not
in the way Keynes hoped. Gen Z’s fate was supposed to be to relax into a
life of leisure and creativity. Instead it is bracing for stagnant wages and
ecological crisis.
确实，资本主义这个系统看似正处在转型的边缘，但却不是朝凯因斯所希望的方向转变。
Z世代的命运，原本应该是能够在休闲娱乐和创造力的生命得到放松，但如今却必须为工
资停滞和生态危机做准备。
In a famous essay from the early 1930s called “Economic Possibilities for
Our Grandchildren,” Keynes imagined the world 100 years in the future. He
spotted phenomena like job automation (which he called “technological
unemployment”) coming, but those changes, he believed, augured progress:
progress toward a better society, progress toward collective liberation from
work. He was worried that the transition to this world without toil might be
psychologically difficult, and so he suggested that three-hour workdays could
serve as a transitional program, allowing us to put off the profound question
of what to do when there’s nothing left to do.
早在凯因斯1930年代早期的名篇，〈我们后代的经济前景〉（Economic Possibilities
for Our Grandchildren）一文中，他就已预言了百年后的世界样貌。凯因斯点出了某些
现象，如工作自动化（他称之为“技术性失业”）的到来，但他相信这些转变是进步的预
告：朝着更好的社会进步，朝着人类集体从工作中被解放出来的方向进步。因为担心这个
不需辛劳工作就能得来的转变，将会造成心理上的负担，他建议可以把每天工作三小时当
作过渡方案，让我们可以放下“没别的事可做时该做什么”的严重问题。
Well, we know the grandchildren in the title of Keynes’s essay: they’re the
kids and younger adults of today. The prime-age workforce of 2030 was born
between 1976 and 2005. And though the precise predictions he made about the
rate of economic growth and accumulation were strikingly accurate, what they
mean for this generation is very different from what he imagined.
我们其实认识凯因斯文章标题里头的“后代”是谁：他们就是今天的孩子和年轻人们。
2030年的成年劳动力，是在1976年到2005年间出生的。尽管他针对经济成长率与经济积累
做出的精确预测惊人地可靠，这些数值对于这个世代的意义，已远不同于他所想像。
Instead of progress toward a labor-free utopia, America has experienced
disappearing jobs as a kind of economic climate change. Apocalyptic forecasts
loom while poor and working-class communities take the brunt of the early
impacts: wage stagnation, deregulated and unsafe workplaces, an epidemic of
opioid addiction. The increasingly profligate wealth on the other end of
society is no less disturbing.
与其说是朝向不需劳动的乌托邦的方向进步，美国反倒正体会到对工作的失望，犹如某种
经济上的气候变迁。预言中的灾难不断逼近，穷人与劳动阶级首当其冲：工资停滞、工作
场所不受管制且变得危险，还有成瘾物质像瘟疫地流行。社会另一端不断成长、恣意挥霍
的财富，也同样让人感到不安。
What the hell happened? To figure out why Generation Z isn’t going to be
Generation EZ, we have to ask some fundamental questions about economics,
technology, and progress. After we assumed for a century that a better world
would appear on top of our accumulated stuff, the assumptions appear
unfounded. Things are getting worse.
到底发生了什么鸟事？为了找出新世代（Z Generation）没有变成轻松世代（EZ
Generation）的原因，我们必须质问一些关于经济、科技与进步的根本问题。我们假设在
我们累积的成果之上将出现一个更好的社会，已经假设了一个世纪，但这个假设似乎没有
根据。事情变得越来越糟。
//////
As recently as the first web boom two decades ago, it was still possible to
talk about technological development and economic expansion as being good for
everybody. Take Webvan, the early (and subsequently much derided) grocery
delivery startup. The company planned to combine the efficiencies of the
internet and other advances in information and logistics to provide
better-quality products at lower prices, delivered directly to consumers by
higher-paid and better-trained workers. It’s a univocal, Keynesian vision of
development: not only do all involved benefit individually as consumers,
employees, or capitalists, but society itself steps together up the mountain
toward the elimination of necessity and a higher plane of being.
二十年前最近一波的网络爆发，那时还大致可以说，技术发展与经济扩张对大家都好。以
早期（后来更多是嘲讽的语气）的杂货新创电商Webvan为例，这家公司规划结合网络及其
他资讯与物流科技的优势，以更便宜的价格提供品质更好的商品，透过良好训练的高薪员
工，直接送到消费者手中。这是个非常凯因斯式的发展观点：这不只对所有个别参与其中
的消费者、受雇者和资本家有利，对整个社会来说，也是齐心协力解决需求，朝着更高层
次的生存方向高升。
When Webvan went belly-up, analysts assumed it meant the core idea was
hopelessly wrong: it just doesn’t make sense to use human capacity to bring
individual people their supermarket orders. Harvard Business School professor
John Deighton, when asked about the future of the industry in 2001, said, “
Home-delivered groceries? Never.” Yet less than 20 years later I can have
one of the world’s few trillion-dollar companies (Amazon) deliver my order
via its grocery brand (Whole Foods) in an hour. And if that’s not fast
enough, there are various platform services (Instacart, Postmates, and
others) through which I can hire someone to go pick my order up and bring it
to me immediately. Buzzing clouds of freelance servants, always in motion.
Webvan倒闭时，分析家们认为这代表上述的核心理念无可救药地错了：透过人力满足所有
的超市个人订单，似乎是不可能的。哈佛经济学院的教授John Deighton在被问到2001年
的未来经济图景时说道，“杂货送到家？没门的事。”然而，不到二十年内，我可以透过
世上少数数兆规模的公司（Amazon），借由它们的杂货品牌（Whole Foods），将我的订
单在数小时内送达。如果我觉得这还不够快，还有好几间不同的平台服务商（Instacart
、Postmates或者其他公司），我可以透过它们麻烦某人帮我取件，再马上带来给我。一
群闹哄哄的打工族仆人，随时等候差遣。
For consumers, these services have made life more convenient. For owners,
stock prices and corporate profits have been cruising higher and higher for
decades. But as workers, we have suffered. Gone is the Webvan vision of
highly trained, highly paid, upwardly mobile, stock-holding delivery drivers.
Amazon’s treatment of its workers at all levels is so intensely exploitative
that former employees have created their own form of writing: the “
report-back,” an essay that exposes the particular, common hardships of
working at the firm. It’s one part worker’s inquiry, one part trauma diary.
对消费者来说，这些服务让生活变得更便利。对老板来说，股票价格和公司利润在过去数
十年内稳定增长。但作为劳工，他们却吃足了苦头。类似Webvan这样，希望送货员能高度
熟练、领高薪、向上移动，甚至可以持股的看法，已经一去不复返。在任何程度上，
Amazon高压地剥削著所有层级的员工，导致某些前员工甚至开始形成了独特的写作文类：
“回馈报告”（report-back），这些文章揭露了公司工作上常见的特定困难。这些文章
既反映工人们的疑惑，也是某种疗伤日记。
Here’s how one warehouse employee described the workflow:
以下是某位仓库员工描述的工作流程：
“The AI is your boss, your boss’s boss, and your boss’s boss’s boss: it
sets the target productivity rates, the shift quotas, and the division of
labor on the floor ... Ultimately what this means to you is that you’ll
rarely work with the same people twice, you’ll be isolated, put on random
tasks from shift to shift, slog for stowing or sorting or picking or packing
rates well exceeding your average—because your supervisor told you so, and
the program told him before that.”
“人工智能是你的老板，也是你老板的老板，还是你老板的老板的老板：它决定了目标产
率、轮班份额，以及这一层楼的工作分工……这对你而言的最终意义是，你很少跟相同人共事两次以上，你将被孤立，在这个班、
到那个班，被布置随机的任务，忙着堆放或是分类或者拣选或者包装，频率远超出你平均
所能——因为你的主管要你这么做，在这之前程式又要他对你这么做。”
Rather than relieving workers from toil, improvements in technology grind out
their efficiencies by molding laborers into unreasonable shapes. Across
departments, Amazon workers report being forced by the circumstances of their
jobs to urinate in bottles and trash cans. Using layers of subcontracting
agreements, the largest firms insulate themselves from responsibility to and
for their lowest-wage workers. Recent investigations into Amazon’s last-mile
shipping reveal exhausted drivers whose required carelessness has,
predictably, been known to kill people. The company remains, as far as the
business community is concerned, exemplary.
比起将劳工从辛劳的工作中解放出来，技术的进步反倒将劳动者形塑成不合理的样貌，摧
毁了他们的效率。Amazon不同部门的工人曾回报过，他们为工作环境所迫，不得不尿在瓶
子或是垃圾桶里。透过采用一层层的外包合约，这间最大的公司免于为这些最低薪的工人
负起任何一点责任。近来针对Amazon最后一哩运程（last-mile shipping）的调查显示，
精疲力竭的司机，很可能将因他们的粗心造成伤亡。然而就整个企业界而言，这间公司仍
是榜样。
Everywhere, the idea of liberation from work seems like a dream. Workers
making parts for iPhones have been exposed to toxic chemicals; Taiwanese
manufacturing giant Foxconn is regularly under the microscope for poor labor
conditions. Instacart delivery workers went on strike to complain about
changes that led to fewer tips; two days later the company cut their bonuses
(Instacart says the two events are unrelated). Gig workers on the audio
platform Rev.com recently discovered an overnight pay cut that meant Rev now
takes 70 cents of every dollar a customer spends on getting audio
transcribed, and they get a mere 30.
不论在何处，自工作中解放出来的念头，似乎就像一场梦。制作iPhone组件的工人暴露在
有毒化学物质之下，台湾的制造业龙头富士康常常因为低劣的劳动条件而受到检视。
Instacart的货运员发起罢工，抨击那些导致小费减少的改变，两天后，公司砍掉了他们
的红利奖金（Instacart表示这两件事情毫无关系）。影音平台Rev.com的零工劳工，近来
发现过夜津贴被砍掉了，这代表Rev从消费者花掉用来取得影音拷贝档案的每1美元中拿走
了70美分，而他们只能拿到30美分。
Young Americans are reaching prime working age in the Amazon economy, not the
Webvan one. According to the Economic Policy Institute, while worker
productivity increased 69.6% between 1979 and 2019, hourly pay has risen a
measly 11.6%. “The income, wages, and wealth generated over the last four
decades have failed to ‘trickle down’ to the vast majority largely because
policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and
power have exacerbated inequality,” the EPI says. The difference between
productivity and pay is an increase in exploitation: workers doing more and
getting less. That was not the plan.
年轻的美国人在Amazon经济中达到工作年龄，而非Webvan的那个年代。根据经济政策研究
所（Economic Policy Institute，EPI）的说法，在1979年到2019年，劳工生产力成长
69.6％的同时，每小时薪资仅少得可怜地成长了11.6％。EPI指出，“过去四十年来产生
的收入、工资和财富，显然未能‘涓滴’及于绝大多数人，主因是代表那些收入、工资和
财富最著者所作出的政策选择，加剧了不平等。”生产力与薪资间的差距，代表剥削程度
的提升：工人做的越多但拿的越少。这不在规划之中。
//////
Keynes and his policy vision fell out of fashion when the laissez-faire
fundamentalism championed by Milton Friedman carried Reagan and Thatcher into
global power. The old view of the future yielded to an era of deregulation
and privatization. This was the “End of History,” with the free market as
the proper—perhaps even inevitable—vehicle for human nature.
在傅利曼（Milton Friedman）倡导的自由放任基本教义派推动雷根和柴契尔掌握全球大
权之时，凯因斯和他的政策观点落伍了。关于未来的旧观点，让位给去管制化和私有化的
纪元。这就是“历史的终结”（the End of History）：自由市场就是人性的适当载体（
甚至可说是不可避免的载体）。
Here all pursue their individual interests, and together that adds up to the
best of all possible worlds—at least as long as the government stays out of
the way. We were taught as fact, for example, that rent