三位大师的讯息经济观（续）——读《经济解释》（两百零四）

再看第二位：

第二篇重要的是哈耶克一九四五年发表的《知识对社会的用途》，是哈氏的代表作。

原文的要点是：

Fundamentally, in a system where the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coordinate the parts of his plan.

The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity - or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc. - brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

张五常老先生怎么解读？

简言之，该文说市场是把所有人的各自所知集中运用，远比计划经济的一小撮策划者知得多。

这是说，市价包含着很多人的知识，以之指导资源的使用会远比政府的策划来得可靠。

总结很到位。作者接着说：

这里有两点哈氏当年没有注意。

哪两个？

其一是因为讯息费用的存在，市价可以误导。

这个并不是完全没有注意，至少提及了价格机制可能僵化 —— 看哈耶克文章的第六部分：

We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function - a function which, of course, it fulfills less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other terms of the contract.)

随后还强调，价格就是信息机制：

It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.

但确实没有显著提及价格会误导、或者欺诈了。

作者接着说：

其二是从中国经济改革的经验看，在某些合约安排下，政府的策划可以节省交易或讯息费用。后者也是卷四的话题。

这个没疑问，确实如此。

基于哈耶克的这篇文章，作者还加上了弗里德曼的补充：

如果在一块石上可以种出美味的水果，假若这块石属公有，没有谁会种植，也不会赶着去通知政府，然而，石块属于私有水果会种出来。

接着推演，其实估计是会有人想办法将石块归为己有了（O(∩_∩)O哈哈~）

作者说什么呢？其实是接着我这个“接着推演”了：

为此我再做补充：不管拥有该石块的人怎样守秘，只要他把美味的水果在市场出售，消息会传出去，石块上可以种出水果珍品的讯息早晚会传遍天下。

然后作者以旧金山开发为例，说明黄金的发现者的炫耀，带来了淘金热 —— 这个故事不赘述了。

然而，这里还可以再接着推演：如果利益足够大，发生什么呢？

事实无需推演，请看瑞士人苏特尔的人生、以及一系列的其他人的历史 —— 很不幸，回到了《资本论》：

“为了100%的利润，它就敢践踏一切人间法律；

有300%的利润，它就敢犯任何罪行，甚至冒绞首的危险。”

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哈耶克文章的中文链接在这里。