ジャンル: ビジネス・経済
英語難易度: ★☆☆
オススメ度: ★★★☆☆
なんでしょうかね、この長い邦題は。 経済の話を10代の娘に分かりやすく語りかけるという本作の主旨は伝わるのですが、大袈裟な邦題にはちょっと、ついていけません。「美しく、深く、壮大で」の部分、いるかなあ。 シンプル・イズ・ベスト。
著者は経済学者であり、国家経済が破綻したギリシャの財務大臣を務めたこともある人だそうです。 冒頭の人類の発展についての記述はジャレド・ダイヤモンドの「銃・病原菌・鉄」(31冊目)のように、歴史と地政学に渡って展開しており、かなり読みやすく面白かったですよ。 経済にまつわる軽い読み物としてはオススメです。
(2013年発刊)
メモポイント
・ バーチャル通貨は何も現代になって始まったわけではない。とうの昔から、金属の貨幣が発行されていなくても、記帳することによって概念としての通貨は流通していたのだ。
the most interesting discovery has to do with the first appearance of metal currency. Most people believe it was invented to be used in transactions, but this wasn’t the case. In Mesopotamia, at least, metal currency that didn’t physically exist was used in written accounts to express how much farm workers were owed. For example, the accounting log would note, “Mr. Nabuk has received grain valued at three metal coins,” even though those metal coins had not been minted yet and might not be for many, many years. In a sense, this imagined form of money, used to facilitate real exchanges, was a virtual currency. So when people tell you that today’s economy is very different from the economy of the past, citing the virtual payments made possible by digital technologies, tell them that is nothing new, that virtual money has existed ever since the economy was invented, following the agricultural revolution twelve thousand years ago and the creation of the first surplus.
・ ハラリの「ホモ・デウス」にも同様の記述あり。「どうして人類だけが選ばれた種だと断定できるのか。 周りの環境に合わせることなく増殖を繰り返すウィルスのように、人類とは地球にとっての癌であるかもしれない」
“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not … There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are the cure.”
Judging from the three great monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—we humans think very highly of ourselves. We like to think that we’ve been fashioned in the image and likeness of God, of that which is perfect and unique. As the only mammal endowed with the gifts of speech and reason, we consider ourselves to be demigods, masters of the Earth, and to have the ability to adapt our environment to our desires instead of our having to adapt to it. That’s why we get flustered by the thought of a machine—one of our creations—turning around and speaking to us as Agent Smith speaks to Morpheus. Worst of all, deep down, we’re afraid that Agent Smith is right.
・ 地球環境を守る議論についての面白い考え方。
「滅びゆく地球を救うにはどうすればいい？」
「もっと市場経済を導入すべきだ! 海や山や土地、すべての自然資源に個人(または法人)の所有権を認めること。そうなると所有者はその資産を守るため最大限の努力をするはず。 皆の財産である共有資産は結局誰のものでもない。共同で資産を守ろうとするモチベーションが働かない。 例えば、漁師は魚が枯渇しようがどうしようが、日々の暮らしを支えるために魚を獲れるだけ獲るだろう。しかし、海に所有権を認めれば所有者は個人の資産を守るために稚魚を獲らないようにするだろう」
If you were then to ask, “So how do you suggest we save the planet?” his answer would most probably be as follows.
“More markets, please!”
In order to defend their right to own land, machines, and resources, defenders of the status quo would say something like: “Sure, you are right. The reason market society fails to manage the planet’s natural resources properly is that these resources have experiential value but no exchange value. The solution is to give them exchange value. Take the beautiful forest that is now in flames, causing you such sorrow. Since it belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. The reason our market society does not value it as much as it should is because nobody can gain exchange value from it. The same goes for the trout in the river. They don’t belong to anyone until they are caught, and that’s why each fisherman catches as many as he pleases, the result being that the trout disappear and the fishermen look stupid. The same is true for the atmosphere: it doesn’t belong to anyone, and as a result each one of us exploits it until it becomes poisoned. Since cooperative control is unworkable and governmental control is inefficient, biased, and authoritarian, I’d suggest the following solution: give all these precious but unpriced natural resources to someone who can make them profitable—me, for example—and then they will certainly be looked after.”
しかし、著者はこの考え方は危険だと主張する。自然資源の個人所有を唱える人は基本的に政府は信用できないという考えを持っているが、所有権を持った個人が好きなように行動した場合はどうするのか。そもそものCO2の排出量の基準を決めるのは誰か。制限以上に漁獲した場合に誰がペナルティを課すのか。 制御する役割を担えるのは政府しかない。
But pay attention to the irony: the only reason to adopt a market solution such as this is because government can’t be trusted, and yet this solution depends entirely on the government for it to work. Who decides what the original quota of pollution will be? Who monitors each farmer, fisherman, factory, train, or car’s emissions? Who fines them if they exceed their quotas? The government, of course. Only the state has the ability to create this artificial market because only the state has the power to regulate each and every company.
The reason the rich and powerful, along with their intellectual and ideological supporters, recommend the complete privatization of our environment is not that they are opposed to government; they’re just opposed to government interventions that undermine their property rights and threaten to democratize processes that they now control. And if, in the process, they get to own planet Earth, that’s OK by them too!
著者は市場経済の自由に任せると、ごく少数の持てる物に富が集中し、自然資源を守ろうとするルールを歪めてしまい崩壊に向かうと考えている。 それでは解決策はどこにある？ 著者は、それは一人が一つずつ権利を持つ民主主義にかけるべきと主張する。チャーチルは唱えた。「民主主義は完璧ではなく欠点も多いが、まだ他の方法よりマシな方策であるから。」
I concluded that the only solution was to democratize the process by which monetary decisions are made. And at the end of the chapter before that, do you remember asking what can be done in the face of the fierce opposition of the small but powerful minority who own all the machines if we are ever to escape becoming the slaves of our creations? The answer was similar: democratize technology by making all humans the robots’ part owners.
Now, in this chapter, I am taking the same line further by arguing that a decent, rational society must democratize not only the management of money and technology but the management of the planet’s resources and ecosystems as well. Why so much emphasis on democracy? Because, to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s tongue-in-cheek remark, democracy may be a terrible, terrible form of government—as flawed, fallible, inefficient, and corrupt as the people who participate in it—but it’s better than any of the alternatives.
経済学とは「なんちゃって科学」なのか。「数式を使うからと言って経済学は科学と言えるのか。占星術者だってコンピュータやグラフを使うよ。だからと言って占星術者は天文学者と同様の科学者と言えるかい？」 著者自ら多くの経済学者を敵に回すような記述もありました。 自身も含めた経済学者という人々をさめた目で俯瞰できる人のようです。本作を読んで誠実な人であるとの感想を持ちました。
