双语阅读｜机械先进的时代，还记得曾经的马拉车吗？
IN THE early 20th century the future seemed bright for horse employment. Within 50 years cars and tractors made short work of equine livelihoods. Some futurists see a cautionary tale for humanity in the fate of the horse: it was economically indispensable until it wasn’t. The common retort to such concerns is that humans are far more cognitively adaptable than beasts of burden. Yet as robots grow more nimble, humans look increasingly vulnerable. A new working paper concludes that, between 1990 and 2007, each industrial robot added per thousand workers reduced employment in America by nearly six workers. Humanity may not be sent out to pasture, but the parallel with horses is still uncomfortably close.
20世纪初期，马匹的用途十分广泛，其“就业”前景可谓一片大好。可就在短短的50年间，汽车、拖拉机的广泛应用导致不少马匹、骡子纷纷“失业”。马匹的命运令不少未来学家感到唏嘘的同时，也让他们对人类的未来感到担忧：从经济学的角度来说，马曾经发挥着不可替代的作用；可后来，一切都发生了变化。针对这样的担忧，有人通常会反驳道，人类远比牛马这类牲畜认知水平高，适应能力强。然而，随着机器人变得越来越聪明，人类显得愈加“无用”。美国国家经济研究局的最新工作报告分析表明，1990年至2007年间，平均一个机器人可导致美国国内每千名工人就业人数减少近6人。虽然人类不会全部都“回家养老”，可是离沦落到马匹的境地也不远了。
Robots are just one small part of the technological wave squeezing people. The International Federation of Robotics defines industrial robots as machines that are automatically controlled and re-programmable; single-purpose equipment does not count. The worldwide population of such creatures is below 2m; America has slightly fewer than two robots per 1,000 workers (Europe has a bit more than two). But their numbers are growing, as is the range of tasks they can tackle, so findings of robot-driven job loss are worth taking seriously.
在技术革命浪潮的进程中，机器人只是给人带来小小的压力。国际机器人联合会（International Federation of Robotics）对工业机器人的定义是：工业机器人是一种可以自动控制和重新编程的操作机器，能完成各种作业；只具有单一功能的设备不能算作工业机器人。全球工业机器人的数量不足200万；美国工人与工业机器人的比例不到1000：2（欧洲刚好超过1000：2）。可是，随着工业机器人能够完成的工作越来越多，它们的数量正在迅速增长。因此，机器人造成的失业的调查研究值得我们认真看待。
The paper’s authors, Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit) and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, are careful to exclude confounding causes as best they can. Their results are not driven by a few robot-intensive regions or industries, and are distinct from the effect of trade with China, or offshoring in general. Increased robot density does not seem to raise employment among any group of workers, even those with university education. Since relatively few industrial robots are in use in the American economy, the total job loss from robotisation has been modest: between 360,000 and 670,000. By comparison, analysis published in 2016 found that trade with China between 1999 and 2011 may have left America with 2m fewer jobs than it would otherwise have had.
这份研究报告是麻省理工学院的Daron Acemoglu和波士顿大学的Pascual Restrepo合作完成。他们尽力排除了一切可能影响结果的因素，比如，不同产业或地区机器人使用的密集程度，以及对华贸易带来的影响，或者更笼统地讲，排除了离岸外包对美国就业的影响。他们发现，机器人使用密集程度加大似乎对不同教育背景的工人就业都有一定的消极影响，包括接受过大学高等教育的工人。当前，工业机器人使用率在美国相对较低，因此，十几年来，美国劳动力市场因机器人出现而减少的工作岗位总量不算太高，差不多在36万到67万个之间。与此相比，2016年发布的有关分析报告显示，1999年到2011年间，对华贸易导致美国流失的工作机会总量高达200万个。
Economically speaking, this should not be a problem. Automation should yield savings to firms or consumers which can be spent on other goods or services. Labour liberated by technology should gravitate toward tasks and jobs in which humans retain an advantage. Yet that should also have been true of horses. The use of tractors in agriculture rose sharply from the 1910s to the 1950s, and horses were displaced in vast numbers. But some useful horse-work remained (as indeed it does today). The difficulty facing horses was in reallocating the huge numbers displaced by technology to places where they could still be of use.
从经济的角度来看，机器人的应用本不是问题。自动化为企业和消费者节约了大量资金，可用于购买其它商品和服务。因技术而解放的劳动力应该流向其他机器人暂时无法替代的领域。对马的利用也是这样。上世纪初期到50年代，拖拉机在农业领域的发展相当迅速，代替了大量马匹的工作，但是，仍有一些马的工作是拖拉机无法替代的（现在也一样）。因此，马所面临的难题是进行“劳动力”的重新分配，由于科技发展而多余出的“劳动力”应该再分配到技术无法替代的其他领域。
The market worked to ease the transition. As demand for traditional horse-work fell, so did horse prices, by about 80% between 1910 and 1950. This drop slowed the pace of mechanisation in agriculture, but only by a little. Even at lower costs, too few new niches appeared to absorb the workless ungulates. Lower prices eventually made it uneconomical for many owners to keep them. Horses, so to speak, left the labour force, in some cases through sale to meat or glue factories. As the numbers of working horses and mules in America fell from about 21m in 1918 to only 3m or so in 1960, the decline was mirrored in the overall horse population.
在这一再分配的转型过程中，市场也具有一定的缓和作用。随着对马匹的传统工作需求削减，马的价格随之下降，1910年到1950年间，马匹的价格下降了差不多八成。这一趋势减缓了农业机械化发展速度，却也只是在一定程度上。即使价格下降，适合马匹的新工作依旧凤毛麟角。此外，过低的价格让饲养者感到养马太不划算，因此，不少马被制成肉制品或用于制胶。1918年到1960年间，美国用于农业生产的马匹和骡子的数量从2100万锐减至300万。这也反应出马匹整体数量在大幅度减少。
The analogy with horses can clearly be taken too far. Yet the experience is instructive. Automation is reducing human wages; Messrs Acemoglu and Restrepo reckon that one additional industrial robot per thousand workers reduces wages across the economy by 0.5%. Real wage growth in many rich economies has been disappointing for much of the past two decades. Low wages are enabling some reallocation of workers. An overwhelming share of the growth in employment in rich economies over the past few decades has been in services, nearly half in low-paying fields like retailing and hospitality. Employment in such areas has been able to grow, in part, because of an abundance of cheap labour.
把人类与马相比是有些夸张，可是，马的命运确实对我们具有一定启示作用。Acemoglu和Restrepo在上述报告中承认，自动化会使工人工资减少，在每千名劳工中每增加一个机器人，劳工平均工资下降0.5%。在过去的二十年里，不少发达经济体的实际工资涨幅并不乐观，低薪将促使工人转行。在过去几十年里，发达经济体的新增就业主要发生在服务业，尤其是报酬低廉的领域，如零售业和服务招待，几乎占据半壁江山。这些领域的就业率之所以增加，一部分原因就是低廉劳动力相当充足。
Yet low pay leads to policies that complicate the labour-market adjustment. Instead of bumping off excess labour, rich economies provide some social support: unemployment benefits, social security or disability payments, and assistance with housing and food. When the jobs on offer are poor, that cushion, though meagre, can be enough to draw people out of the labour force into indolence—particularly if families offer extra help.
但是，低薪促使不少相关政策措施出台，反而使劳动力市场的重新调整更加复杂。针对剩余劳动力，发达经济体并未提供新的工作机会，而是提供了一系列社会福利保障，如：失业津贴，政府的公共福利计划或伤残补助金，食宿补助等。纵使可供选择的就业岗位稀少，不过，政府提供的基本福利足够维持基本生活，再加上家里父母的额外补贴，许多人虽过不了锦衣玉食的生活，却完全可以懒散着不用工作。
The horses of instruction
马的命运带给人类的启示
Horses might have fared better had savings from mechanisation stayed in rural areas. Instead, soaring agricultural productivity led to falling food prices. Today’s horses are not entirely without work. Some still find gainful employment; a few are very valuable indeed. For people to fare better, and retain more than a rump of work reserved for those of exceptional ability, they must prove a better match for clever machines than horses were for mechanical equipment. And societies should perhaps respond with more determination and care than horse-owners did a century ago.
如果农业没有机械化，马也许不至于会被卖掉，制成肉制品，或用于制胶。但是，农业生产力的高速发展导致粮食价格下跌。如今，马匹并非完全在农业生产过程中失去了市场，有一些马仍具有重要作用。如果想要生活得更好，想要获得不错的工作，那么人就必须要优于机器，正如马如果还想继续干活儿，就必须比机械设备更好。面对如今人机竞争的时代，社会相应地也应展现出更多的决心和信心，给予人们更多的关怀和照顾；而不是像100年前，机器一出现，马就迅速遭到了淘汰和抛弃。
译者： 朱桀
审核： 吴越
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人