经济学人下载:IT革命已毫无动力?新型经济该何去何从

Mr Gordon is right that the second industrial revolution involved never-to-be-repeated changes.
正如戈登所言，第二次工业革命带来的改变无法复制。

But that does not mean that driverless cars count for nothing.
但这并不意味着无人驾驶车就一文不值。

Messrs Erixon and Weigel are also right to worry about the West’s dismal recent record in producing new companies.
诚然，埃克里松和恩格尔的担忧也非无稽之谈，西方世界近年在培养新公司方面的确不容乐观。

But many old firms are not run by bureaucrats and have reinvented themselves many times over: General Electric must be on at least its ninth life.
但许多老牌公司也非由官僚把控，且已经多次进行自我革新，比如通用电气就至少革新了9次。

And the impact of giant new firms born in the past 20 years such as Uber, Google and Facebook should not be underestimated: they have all the Schumpeterian characteristics the authors admire.
我们同样不应该小瞧那些在过去20年诞生的“新巨头”（如优步、谷歌和脸书）所带来的冲击，因为他们拥有埃克里松和恩格尔所推崇的“熊彼特式”特征。

On the pessimists’ side the strongest argument relies not on closely watching corporate and investor behaviour but rather on macro-level statistics on productivity.
就“悲观”阵营而言，他们最有力的观点基于生产率的宏观统计数据而非对公司策略和投资者行为的近距离观察。

The figures from recent years are truly dismal.
而近年的宏观统计数据的确糟糕。

Karim Foda, of the Brookings Institution, calculates that labour productivity in the rich world is growing at its slowest rate since 1950.
经济分析机构卡里姆·仸达指出，发达国家的劳动生产率正以自1950年以来最低的速率增长。

Total factor productivity (which tries to measure innovation) has grown at just 0.1% in advanced economies since 2004, well below its historical average.
用来衡量创新能力的总生产率在发达经济体增长仅为0.1%，远低于历史均值。

Optimists have two retorts.
而“乐观”阵营也有两个理由来反驳。

The first is that there must be something wrong with the figures.
首先，这些数据肯定出错了。

One possibility is that they fail to count the huge consumer surplus given away free of charge on the internet.
原因可能是互联网低廉甚至免费的服务导致了严重的消费者过剩，这部分并未计算在内。

But this is unconvincing.
然而，这难以令人信服。

The official figures may well be understating the impact of the internet revolution, just as they downplayed the impact of electricity and cars in the past, but they are not understating it enough to explain the recent decline in productivity growth.
因为官方数据可能像以前看轻汽车和电力一样，淡化了互联网革命的影响。但这种“轻描淡写”也未严重到足以给生产率增长的近期下降作借口。

Another, second line of argument—that the productivity revolution has only just begun—is more persuasive.
乐观阵营有另一个更令人信服的观点——生产率革命还在萌芽阶段呢。

Over the past decade many IT companiesmay have focused on things that were more “fun than fundamental” in Paul Krugman’s phrase.
过去数十年，许多IT公司可能都只专注于那些保罗·克鲁格曼称为“娱乐性大于实用性”的东西。

But Silicon Valley’s best companies are certainly focusing on things that change the material world.
然而，硅谷的顶尖公司正专注于如何能给世界带来实际的变化。

Uberand Airbnb are bringing dramatic improvements to two large industries that have been more or less stuck for decades.
运输业与酒店业在过去数十年多少陷入了停滞，而优步和空中食宿正给它们带来翻天覆地的变化。

Morgan Stanley estimates that driverless cars could result in $507 billion a year of productivity gains in America, mainly from people being able to stare at their laptops instead of at the road.
摩根士·坦利估计，在美国，无人驾驶汽车一年能带来5，070亿美元的收益，主要用户是那些把更多精力放在电脑上，而不是路上的人。

The real question is not whether the IT revolution has run out of steam or whether creative destruction is grinding to a halt.
所以真正的问题并非是IT革命是否已毫无动力，或是创造性破坏是否已陷入停滞。

In fact, the IT revolution is probably gathering pace and Google and Amazon are two of the most innovative firms to emerge in the past 50 years.
事实上，IT革命可能正蓄势待发，正如谷歌和亚马逊乃过去50年来最具创新性的公司。

Rather it is whether the new economy can counteract the forces ranged against it: ageing populations; a political class responding to populism by restricting trade and by over-regulating business; and education systems that in many places are failing.
人口老龄化，政治阶层采取限制贸易与过度约束公司来应对民粹主义，许多地区的教育系统崩坏，新型经济该如何应对这些影响才是真正的问题。

The big danger is that, while optimists and pessimists battle it out, the world becomes ever more divided between islands of high productivity surrounded by a vast ocean of stagnation.
真正危险的是，当两大阵营酣战正烈时，世界却已变得更加四分五裂——一望无际的“停滞之海”包围着硕果仅存的高生产率岛屿。