Chapter 11 Chapter 6 The Amazing World of Trade and Money

disdain for business Not all distaste for the market order arises from questions of epistemology, methodology, rationality, and science.There is also a more obscure antipathy.To understand this phenomenon, we have to step behind these relatively plausible realms and look at something older and even more hidden: socialists discussing—or primitives encountering—business.Some particularly strong attitudes and emotions arise when dealing with trade and financial systems. As we know, trade and commerce often have an important reliance on secrecy, as it does on specialization or personal knowledge, and this is even more true of the financial system.For example, in business activities, in addition to the individual's time and energy risks, special information enables individuals to make judgments about their opportunities and competitive advantages in specific investments.Knowledge of a particular situation is worth pursuing only if the advantages gained from acquiring it outweigh the costs.If every merchant had to make public how and where he could get better or cheaper goods, so that his competitors could imitate him at once, it would hardly be worth it at all—it would be impossible to Increased profits from trade.Furthermore, a great deal of knowledge about specific circumstances is indistinct and difficult to articulate (such as an entrepreneur's hunch that a product may be successful), so it is impossible to "make it public" other than motivational considerations. ".

Acting on information that not everyone already knows and has fully accounted for in advance—what Ernst Mach called "observable and verifiable information"—of course violates the rationalist requirements discussed earlier.In addition, things that are not conclusive are often not believable or even terrible. [By the way, it's not just socialists who fear -- perhaps for different reasons -- the circumstances and conditions of trade.Bernard Mandeville said, "Think of the hardships and accidents in foreign lands, the vast seas we must cross, the different climates we must endure, the peoples we must condescend to turn to, this dreadful prospect ", which made him also "shudder" (1715/1924: I, 356).Realizing that we are so heavily dependent on human endeavors that we cannot understand or control is of course disheartening for those who engage in it or shy away from it. ]

Since time immemorial, in many parts of the world, this worry and fear has led ordinary people, like socialists, to believe that trade itself is not only distinct from material production, not only chaotic and superfluous, not only a methodological error, but also Suspicious, vulgar, dishonest and disgraceful.Throughout history, "the businessman has been the object of universal contempt and moral damnation. ... A man who buys cheap and sells dear is inherently dishonest ... The conduct of the businessman violates the pattern of mutual aid that existed in primitive groups" (Meninell, 1981: 35).I remember Eric Hoffer saying: "The hatred of business men, and especially of historians, is as old as recorded history."

There are many reasons for this attitude and many manifestations.In the early days, merchants were often excluded from the rest of the community.Those who have been treated in this way are not limited to them.Even some craftsmen, especially blacksmiths, were suspected of being wizards by farmers and herdsmen, and they were often kept away from the village.Indeed, isn't it these craftsmen who master "magic" that change the shape of raw materials?Buyers and merchants do much more than that, joining a network that is entirely outside the reach of common sense and comprehension.They are engaged in the invisible transformation of changing the value of goods.The quantity of something has not changed, so how can its ability to meet people's needs change?Buyers or merchants, those who seem to make this change, are outside the visible, recognized, and understood order of the day, and are consequently excluded from the established hierarchy of dignity.Thus even such men as Plato and Aristotle, citizens of a city whose preeminence is thanks to trade, look down on businessmen.Later, in the feudal state, commerce continued to be regarded as inferior, because at least outside a few small towns, merchants and craftsmen depended on those who held swords and were protected by them for the safety of their lives and goods. path of.Trade could develop only under the protection of a military class whose capital was physical strength and whose reward was a pampered life.This attitude, even when things began to change, lingered anywhere that feudalism was maintained, and even the wealthy bourgeoisie in autonomous cities or trading centers were reluctant to oppose it.Thus, even towards the end of the last century, we hear that "the coiners remained an untouchable class" in Japan.

The disdain for businessmen is all the more understandable when you consider the aura of secrecy that often surrounds business. "Secrets of business" meant that some profited from knowledge that others did not, knowledge that was often related to foreign—and perhaps abominable—customs and unknown lands, that is, myths and tales. It is related to the rumored kingdom, which makes it even more mysterious. "Ex Nihilo nihil fit" (Latin: "Nothing can be created out of nothing") may no longer be a scientific term (see Popper, 1977/1984; and Bartley, 1978:675-76), but it still dominates common sense.It seems that they have not engaged in any material creation, but just tossed the existing things to increase the existing wealth by "creating something out of nothing". Such activities exude an evil spirit.

Material effort, physical activity, and "sweat on the brow" must also play an overlooked role in reinforcing this prejudice.Physical fitness, common everyday tools and weapons, are both visible and tangible, and there is nothing "mysterious" about them, even to those who do not themselves have them.Physical exertion and ability in this respect are in themselves praiseworthy and respectable—a belief that hardly had to wait until the advent of feudal times.It is part of the hereditary instincts of small groups, and has been preserved among farmers, crop farmers, herdsmen, warriors, and even small homeowners and artisans.One can see how the farmer or artisan increases the total number of useful things—and explains differences in wealth and power from visible causes.

Therefore, competition in physical strength appeared and was appreciated very early, and primitive people gradually became familiar with various ways of testing the pros and cons of external physical strength when they competed for leadership positions and skill competitions (see Supplement E).But as knowledge, knowledge that the other players do not have, and many of them are unlikely to have—that is not “public” or visible—becomes a competing factor, so the familiar and The sense of fairness is gone.This rivalry threatens the state of solidarity and the pursuit of common goals.From the point of view of the extended order, of course, this reaction appears terribly selfish, or a peculiar form of small-group selfishness in which group solidarity trumps individual happiness.

This sentiment was still very strong in the nineteenth century.So when Thomas Carlyle, a writer who influenced men of letters in the last century, swore that "labor alone is noble" (1909:160), he clearly meant manual labor, even heavy physical labor.Like Karl Marx, he believed that labor was the real source of wealth.This particular emotion may be waning today.Instinctively, we still attach great importance to the physical strength of human beings, but the relationship between it and productivity has played a smaller role in human activities. The ability shown here often no longer refers to physical strength, but means a legal right.Of course, we still have some very strong individuals, but they are becoming part of a growing class of members of various shrinking professional groups.Only among primitive people, well-developed limbs can still have the final say.

In any case, activities such as the exchange and exchange of goods, more complex forms of trade, the organization and direction of activities, and the transfer of existing goods for profit by selling them are still not always regarded as genuine labor.Many still have difficulty agreeing that the increase in the existing supply of material means of life and enjoyment depends more on flows of goods that change their relative quantities and values ​​than on the transformation of one tangible substance into another. substance.That is to say, although the market process deals with things, it only makes them circulate and does not increase (whatever it is or is) their external quantity.The crucial role played by the market in transmitting information about them, rather than producing them, is out of the purview of those who are governed by the habits of mechanism or scientism, who recognize only factual information pertaining to tangible objects, It does not take into account the role played by the relative scarcity of different goods in determining value.

Here's the funny thing: there are people who don't think about economic affairs in terms of superficial materialism—that is, in terms of the physical quantity of things—but are guided by a calculation of value, that is, What they consider is the need for these items, especially the cost-price difference, that is, profit.It is precisely these people who are traditionally dismissed as materialistic people.Yet it is the quest for profit that causes the man who does such a thing to consider not the material quantity of the particular needs of the individuals he knows, but the best way in which they can contribute to the total output, which is It is the result of the separate efforts of countless individuals who have never met before.

There is another error in economics here—a view even preached by Carl Menger's brother Anton, that the "total product of labor" comes primarily from material effort; although this is an ancient error, John S. Tuart Muller is presumably as well as anyone responsible for spreading this error.Mill wrote in his Principles of Political Economy (1848, "On Property", Vol. II, Chapter 1, Section 1; Collected Works, II: 260), that "the laws and conditions of the production of wealth bring Characterized by material reality”, distribution is “merely a matter of individual human institutions. Once things are there, human beings, individually and collectively, can dispose of them as they like”, he concludes from this, “social can make this distribution subject to whatever principle it can conceive".Mill here considers the scale of production as a purely technical problem independent of distribution, thus ignoring that scale depends on the exploitation of existing opportunities, which is an economic rather than a technical problem.We believe that the output can reach such a large amount because of the "distribution" method, that is, the decisive role of price.What can be distributed depends on the principles by which production is organized—that is, in a market economy, on the price mechanism and distribution.It is simply false to assert that "once things are there," we are free to dispose of them however we like, because unless individuals are confident that they will get their share of the total, thereby providing price information, things will not there. There is one more bug.Like Marx, Mill sees value solely as an effect rather than a cause of human decision-making.We shall see how absurd this view is when we discuss the doctrine of marginal utility in detail below—and Mill's "concerning the law of value, there is no longer a question to be clarified by present or future writers; How wrong it is to say that it is completed" (1848: III, I, section one, see "Complete Works", II: 199-200). Trade, whether it is regarded as real labor or not, by the effort of the mind rather than the movement of the muscles, brings wealth not only to the individual but to the collective.Merely exchanging items can bring value benefits to all participants, and this does not necessarily mean gaining benefits at the expense of others (or what people call "exploitation"), which is not clear in the past and present things.The example of Henry Ford is often used to allay doubts about how the pursuit of profit benefits the masses.This example is of course vivid, for it is easy to see how an industrialist can aim himself at directly satisfying the needs of many, and indeed succeed with great success in his efforts in raising their standard of living.This example is flawed, however, because in most cases the productivity-enhancing effect is so indirect that its process cannot be seen so clearly.Improvements in the production of metal screws, string, window panes, or paper, for example, have benefited so widely that it is difficult to perceive their origins and effects in detail. As a result of all this, many people continue to find that trade-related skills are easily belittled by people even if they do not classify it as witchcraft; Deception or cunning.Wealth thus obtained is not even as good as the luck of the hunter or fisherman, and has little to do with obvious merit, such as that which depends on physical exertion. However, if it is said that this kind of "upside-down" wealth is despised by honest people, the activities of businessmen looking for information really arouse great suspicion.Transportation involved in trade, at least after patient explanation and argumentation, usually enables the public to understand its productive role in part.For example, the view that trade merely diverts what is already available can be corrected by pointing out that many things can only be made by bringing together widely distributed things.The relative value of these items does not depend on the properties of the individual material components they contain, but on the relative quantities of all available at the point of need.Trade in raw materials and semi-manufactured goods is therefore a prerequisite for increasing the quantity of many end products that can be manufactured thanks to the availability of raw materials (presumably in small quantities) from far away.The amount of a specific product that can be produced from resources that can be found in one place may depend on the availability of another raw material (such as mercury, phosphorous powder or even some catalyst).It can be seen that trade creates great possibilities for material production. This productivity, and even this process of bringing supplies together, rests on the continued success of finding information that is widely dispersed and constantly changing—a view that is more difficult to grasp, but essential to understanding this process. For those of us who live in the United States, it is obvious that trade creates and directs material production through this process, since it is information about the relative scarcity of different goods in different places that orients production. Perhaps the main reason behind this persistent distaste for business activity is simply ignorance and conceptual blockage.Yet it is also connected with an instinctive fear of the strange: the fear of witchcraft and the unnatural, even of knowledge itself, which goes back to our origins, the indelible memory of the first chapters of Genesis— The story of mankind being expelled from the Garden of Eden.All superstitions, including socialism, encourage this fear. Marginal Utility and Macroeconomics This fear may be strong, yet it is unfounded.These activities are certainly not really incomprehensible.As we have seen in previous chapters, economics and biological sciences now explain self-organizing processes well, and we have, in Chapters 2 and 3, part of their history and the The beneficial role played by extension roughly outlines a partial rational reconstruction (see also Hayek, 1973). Exchange is a productive activity, and it does make existing resources more satisfying to human needs.Civilization is so complex—trade is so efficient—because the subjective worlds of the individuals who live in it are so different.Although superficially inexplicable, the diversity of personal goals does lead to a greater ability to meet various needs than is the case with indifference, indifference, and regulation.It is also puzzling that this is the case because diversity enables people to grasp and use more information.Only a clear analysis of the market process can unravel these puzzling aspects. An increase in value—which is the key to exchange and trade—is of course different from an increase in quantity that we can perceive.The laws governing the material world, at least those in the materialist and mechanistic models, do not play a role in the phenomenon of increase in value.Value expresses the potential capacity of a good or action to satisfy human needs, and can only be determined in mutual adjustment through the exchange rates of relative (marginal) substitutes or equivalents of different goods or services for different individuals.Value is not an attribute or material property of objects in themselves that does not relate to their relationship to people, but rather is an aspect of those relationships that enables people to take into account other Some people may find better opportunities for their use.The increase in value seems to be related only to human goals, and only makes sense when these goals are taken into account.Menger articulates this clearly (1871/1981: 121): value "is the judgment made by economic agents of the importance of the goods at their disposal in order to maintain their own life and happiness."Economic value expresses the varying degree of an item's ability to satisfy some diverse individual purpose. Everyone has a special order for sorting the various goals they pursue.These personal rankings are rarely known to outsiders, and it is difficult even for him to fully understand them.Thousands of individuals with different situations, different endowments, different desires, different information about the means, little knowledge of each other's specific needs, and different spheres of aim, make their individual efforts Cooperating with each other depends on the exchange system.As individuals cooperate with each other, an undesigned system of higher-level complex order emerges, and a continuous flow of goods and services is created that enables the dominant expectations and interactions of the enormous number of individuals involved. Values ​​are met. The different rankings of different goals, and their diversity, establish a common and unified value scale that plays a mediating or reflecting role for the material means that these goals strive for.Since most material means are available for many ends of varying importance, and the different means are often capable of substituting for each other, the ultimate value of these ends is gradually reflected in a single measure of the value of the means, the price, which determines this Price is the relative scarcity of the means, and the possibility of exchange among their owners. Since the ever-changing actual environment requires continuous adjustment of specific goals, and in order to provide services for these goals, specific means must be arranged.These two sets of scales of value are therefore bound to change in different ways and at different rates.The various rankings of personal highest goals, although different, will show a certain stability.And the relative value of the means with which individuals devote themselves to production is subject to bewildering constant changes, unpredictable and for reasons beyond most people's comprehension. Hierarchies of ends may be relatively stable (reflecting what many see as long-term or "enduring" values), while hierarchies of means are fickle, leading many idealists to praise the former and despise the latter .Of course, struggling for ever-changing scales of value also seems tiresome.It may perhaps be at the root of the cause of those who are most concerned with ultimate ends, that they are so frequently opposed to their ends, and strenuously opposed to the means by which they can best carry them out.Most men, in order to attain their ends, must pursue what to themselves or to others are mere means.That is to say, they must join at a certain point many interlocking activities, which, after passing through many intermediate links with different goals, will finally satisfy some unknown, distant from him in time and space. very far in demand.In most cases, the symbol that the market process assigns to the current product is the only thing that the individual can know.For example, no one who works in a certain link in the production of metal screws can reasonably be sure that a certain screw he manufactured will or should be made when, where and in what way to meet human needs. contribute.Nor do statistics help him to ascertain which of the many potential uses by which a screw (or any other similar part) could be put to use should and should not be satisfied. But the measure of value of the means, that is, the price, feels common or vulgar, obviously because it treats all people equally, while the measure of the end is unique and different from each other.We demonstrate our individuality by proclaiming our particular tastes, or through a more critical appreciation of qualities.Yet it is only because of the information conveyed through prices about the relative scarcity of different means that we achieve as much of our goals as possible. The conflict between these two ways of grading values ​​becomes particularly striking in the extended order, where most people earn their living by providing means to strangers who likewise learn from other strangers. people to obtain the means they need to achieve their ends.In this way, the only common measure of value is the measure of value of means whose importance does not depend primarily on the effect felt by the person who uses a particular item, but on the fact that they can be substituted for each other at any time.Because millions of individuals have a variety of goals and needs, it is impossible to know what other people want a specific item for (and thus the value others assign to it).The abstraction of the instrumental value of the means also makes people feel that their value is "artificial" or "unnatural", so they despise it. An adequate explanation for this puzzling and even frightening phenomenon was loomed over 100 years ago, thanks to the work of William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger and Leon Walrat, especially It was the Austrian school, after Menger, who developed what became known as the "subjectivist" or "marginal utility" revolution in economic theory and thus allowed it to spread.If the above sections feel foreign or even incomprehensible, it can only mean that the most fundamental and important discoveries of this revolution have not yet been popularized.The discovery that economic events cannot be explained by past events as a cause led these revolutionary thinkers to integrate economic theory into a coherent system.Although classical economics, or "classical political economy," as it is often called, has analyzed the ways in which the process of competition, and in particular international trade, brings together domestic and international cooperative orders, only marginal utility theory has really An understanding of how supply and demand are determined, and how quantities adapted to demand to adjust to each other to induce scarcity, guides the individual.The whole market process is thus understood as a process of information transmission, which enables people to utilize more information and skills than individual contacts can. The fact that the utility of a good or action, usually defined as its ability to satisfy a human need, varies from person to person seems so obvious today that it is difficult to understand why serious scientists keep referring to utility as An objective, universal, and even measurable attribute of an item.The fact that distinctions can be made about the relative utility of different goods to different people does not provide the least basis for comparing their absolute quantities.Even if people agree on how much they personally intend to pay for different utilities, "collective utility" does not represent a discoverable item: it is as ethereal as collective consciousness, a symbol at best.The fact that we often conclude that a thing is more or less important to others than it is to us does not provide any reason to believe that utility is objectively comparable between people. In a certain sense, of course, the activities that economics seeks to explain involve not natural phenomena but human beings.The value of economics is that it accounts for material facts in terms of the suitability of objects to satisfy needs in specific circumstances.It can thus be said that economics (which I now prefer to call "commutative studies"; see Hayek, 1973) is a meta-theory about the ways in which different means are discovered and used most effectively for different ends. theory of theory.In this case it is not surprising that natural scientists often find themselves in strange territory when confronted with such arguments, or that the economists who so often surprise them appear more like philosophers than scientists. Although a fundamental advance, the theory of marginal utility was initially hidden.The most visible early formulation of this idea in the English-speaking world was that of Jevons, after his untimely death, as Alfred Marshall, the dominant academic authority, was unwilling to break away from Mill It is also due to the non-academic position of Jevons' only outstanding follower, Wickstead, that this idea has been ignored.The theory's co-discoverer in Austria, Karl Menger, was lucky enough to find two extremely talented students (Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser) to continue his research And formed a tradition, and finally made this modern economic theory gradually recognized by the title of "Austrian School".It emphasizes what it calls the "subjective" nature of economic value, thereby providing an explanatory paradigm for structures that arise undesignedly from human interactions.But its contribution has been overshadowed in the past 40 years by the rise of "macroeconomics," which seeks causal relationships among things or statistics that are supposed to be calculable.I admit that these causal relations may sometimes point to some vague probability, but they certainly cannot explain the process which gave rise to this probability. However, because of this fallacy that macroeconomics is both possible and useful (it uses a lot of mathematics, and thus is sure to impress politicians who know nothing about mathematics), it is also really the most similar to the magic show that occurs among professional economists. which also encourages that fallacy), so much of the opinion that governs present government and politics is still based on a naive interpretation of economic phenomena such as value and price, which tries in vain to put They are treated as "objective" phenomena independent of human knowledge and goals.It fails to account for the role that trade and markets play in coordinating the productive efforts of large numbers of people, or to properly appreciate its indispensability. Habits acquired in the mathematical analysis of the market process often disorient even trained economists.For example, like to refer to the "existing state of knowledge", like to refer to the information available to those who act in the market process as "data" or "existing" (even using the phrase "existing data"), this is This practice often leads economists to assume that not only does this knowledge exist in a dispersed state, but that its sum is available to a single mind.This masks the fact that competition is a process of discovery.What is presented as a "problem" to be solved in some accounts of the market order is in fact no one's problem in the market at all, because in this order the market depends on the decisive actual environment, which no one can understand. Knowing, the question is not how to make use of existing knowledge as a whole, but how to make knowledge, which is neither known nor known by any single mind, available in its scattered form to many interacting individuals— — This is not a question of the actors, but of the theorists who try to explain these actions. The creation of wealth is not merely a material process, nor can it be explained by a causal chain.What determines this activity is not objective natural facts that any mind can grasp, but millions of scattered and different information, which crystallize into prices and guide people to make further decisions.When the market tells an entrepreneur that in a certain way more profit can be made, he can both serve his own interest and contribute more to the total (in the same units of calculation that most others use) than he does. Greater contributions could be made in other ways.Because these prices reveal to market participants the crucial stochastic condition on which the entire division of labor depends: the actual transferability (or "substitutable") rate.In this regard, the quantities available to humanity as a whole are meaningless.Such "macroeconomic" knowledge of the available quantities of different goods is neither possible nor necessary, nor even useful.Any idea of ​​measuring the total output of a large number of different commodities in various combinations is wrong: their equivalent to human goals depends on human knowledge, and only if we convert physical quantities into economic quantities Only then can we proceed to assess these issues. What determines the amount of output, and what determines the production of a given amount, is how millions of individuals with separate knowledge of specific resources, at different places and times, by making decisions among possibilities Choose, combine these resources—none of these possibilities can be called the most efficient in itself without knowledge of the relative scarcity of the different elements revealed by prices. A key step in understanding the decisive role of relative prices in the optimal use of resources is the comparative cost principle discovered by Ricardo.Regarding this principle, Ludwig von Mises rightly said that it should be called the "Ricardian law of association" (1949: 159-64).The price relationship tells the entrepreneur where benefits exceed costs and therefore it is profitable to invest limited capital in specific projects.These signals lead him to an invisible goal, the satisfaction of the consumer of the final product unknown in the distance. Intellectual ignorance of economics An understanding of trade and the marginal utility explanation for determining relative prices is key to understanding the order by which the existing population is fed.Every educated soul should understand these matters.This understanding is hindered by the general intellectual disdain for the issue.Because the fact clarified by the theory of marginal utility—that each person, using his own knowledge and skills, contributes through his choices, can make satisfying the needs of the community a unique task for each of them—both primitive minds and The pervasiveness of constructivism is also alien to explicit socialism. It is not an exaggeration to say that this view marks personal liberation.The development of the spirit of individualism is due to the differentiation of skills, knowledge, and labor (see Chapters 2 and 3 above), on which advanced civilizations are built.Contemporary economic historians such as Braudel (1981-1984) have come to understand that the despised middlemen who make profits are the ones who make possible the modern extended order, modern technology, and our present population size.The ability to be guided by one's own knowledge and decisions without being at the mercy of the spirit of the herd, like the freedom to do so, is a result of the development of reason, and our emotions still do not fully conform to that reason.Though the members of a primitive group are ready to admit the superiority of a venerable leader, they will resent the superiority of their fellows who know a way of obtaining without apparent effort what others can obtain only by hard work. of the place.Withholding and exploiting favorable information for personal or private gain is considered dishonorable, or at least unfriendly.The days when specialization was the only way to utilize a wide variety of information sources are long gone, and these primitive responses remain the same. This reaction continues today to shape political opinion and behaviour, hinder the development of the most efficient organization of production, and encourage false hopes of socialism.Trade contributes no less than production in providing the means of subsistence for human beings, and the belief that human beings should favor the one over the other has created a situation that is not only unhelpful, but distorts political attitudes. 对贸易作用的无知，最初是导致惧怕，在中世纪导致了不明真相的管制，在相对较晚的时代，它在更好的理解面前做了些让步，而现在这种管制却又以一种新的伪科学形式被复活了。它试图用这种形式为技术官僚操纵经济提供借口，而当它不可避免地失败之后，又助长了对“资本主义”的现代形式的猜疑。不过，当我们把注意力转向更深入的秩序形成过程时，事情似乎变得更糟了，因为这些过程，即支配着货币和金融的过程，比贸易更难以理解。 对货币和金融的怀疑 当面对发达文明中为贸易提供了基础的最抽象的制度时，因为不相信神秘现象而产生的偏见，达到了一个更高的境界。这些制度对个人行为起着最一般、最间接、最遥远和最不易察觉的调节作用，它们虽然是形成扩展秩序不可缺少的，然而却倾向于隐匿自己的引导机制不被人察觉：即货币以及建立在货币上的金融制度。以货易货一旦被间接的货币交换所取代，易于理解的事情便消失了，由此开始了一个人与人之间的抽象过程，它大大超出了最聪明的个人的认知能力范围。 货币，即日常交往中的“金钱”，在不被人理解的事物中莫此为甚，大概也和性一样，是最严重的非理性奇思怪想的主题。它同时既让人想入非非和困惑不解，又令人深恶痛绝。涉及到它的文献，很可能比讨论任何其他一个主题的都多；浏览这些文献，不免使人与那些作家产生共鸣，他们在很久以前便宣布，若论让人发疯，以这个主题为最，虽爱情也不能相比。《圣经》上说，“贪财是万恶之根”（《提摩太前书》，6：10）。不过有关它的矛盾心态大概更为常见：钱同时既表现为自由最强大的工具，又表现为最邪恶的镇压手段。这个得到最广泛接受的交换媒介，唤起了人们无法理解的过程给他们带来的一切不安，他们爱恨交加，热切向往它的某些作用，却又憎恶另一些与前者密不可分的作用。 但是，货币和信用制度的运行，同语言和道德规则一样，是最抵制充分理论解释的自发秩序之一，并且仍然是专家中意见严重分歧的来源。甚至一些专业研究人士也不愿屈从于这样的见解：细节肯定会逃脱知觉的范围，整体的复杂性使人不得不满足于对自发形成的抽象模式的说明，这种说明不管多有启发性，也无力预见任何具体结果。 货币和金融不只让研究者心烦。就像贸易一样，并且是出于同样的原因，它们仍然不断地让道学家们疑窦重重。这种普遍有效的工具，具有以最隐蔽的方式达到和操纵最大数量的各种目标的威力，道学家对它疑虑重重，自有其若干理由。首先，人们随时都可以看到许多财富在得到利用，而货币的用途对某个人自身或别人所产生的具体或特定的作用，常常是难以察觉的。其二，即便它的一些作用是可以察觉的，它也是既有可能用于行善，也有可能用来作恶。因此，它这种超乎寻常的用途多样性，使它对自己的主人非常有用，也使道学家对它生出更多的疑心。最后，运用钱财的技巧，以及由此带来的巨大收益，就像商业一样，好像脱离了体力劳动或公认的功绩，它甚至无须和任何物质基础打交道——例如“纯粹纸上交易”的情况。如果说，手艺人和工匠令人惧怕，是因为他们改变了物质的形状，生意人让人害怕，是因为他们把一些看不见摸不着的属性变成了价值，那么钱商对一切经济制度中最抽象、最非物质的东西所做的改变，岂能不让人对他们产生更强烈的惧怕？这样我们就到达了一个过程的至高点，在这个过程中，可感知的和具体的事物日益被形成行为规则的抽象观念所取代：货币及其制度似乎是处在值得称赞的和可理解的创造性体力劳动的疆界之外，在这个王国里，对具体事物的理解力失效了，定规矩的是不可理解的抽象因素。 因此这个问题既让专业人士困惑，也冒犯了道学家：他们都惊恐地发现，整个事情异乎寻常地膨胀，超出了我们所依靠的观察和控制事件过程的能力范围。好像一切都已失去控制，或者像德国人更为生动的说法，ist uns uber den Kopf gewachsen（脑袋不管用了）。这句和钱有关的话如此鲜活甚至夸张，这没有什么好奇怪的。大概仍然有不少人相信，就像西塞罗在说到老卡托时（DE OFFOCIIS，Ⅱ：89）告诉我们的，放债如同杀人一样可恶。斯多噶学派的罗马追随者，如西塞罗本人和塞内加，对这些事情的确表现出更多的理解，但是对于由市场决定的贷款利息的流行看法，却很难说更令人满意，尽管这种利息在把资本引向最有生产力的用途上是如此重要。于是我们仍然听到“金钱关系”、“不义之财”、“贪得无厌的本能”以及“商贩”行为，等等（对所有这些现象的解释，见布罗代尔，1982b）。 但问题并没有因为这些粗俗的诨名而消失。就像道德、法律、语言以及生物有机体一样，货币制度也是自发秩序的产物——并且同样易于受到变异和自然选择的影响。不过，在所有自发生长的形态中，货币制度的发展也是最不令人满意的。例如，几乎没有人敢说在过去70年左右的时间里，它们的功能已经有所改善，因为，一种一直建立在金本位上的、本质上自动运行的机制，在专家们的指导下，已经被任意的国内“货币政策”所取代。不错，人类从货币中得到的经验，为对它表示不信任提供了很好的理由，但这并不是因为普遍相信的理由。这样说吧，选择过程在这里受到的干涉，比任何其他地方都多：进化选择被政府垄断所阻碍，它使相互竞争的实验失去了可能。 在政府的庇护下，货币体系已发展得十分复杂，但是在各种不同的手段中，几乎没有私人实验和选择得到允许，因此我们依然不十分清楚好货币应是什么样子——或它能好到什么程度。这种干涉和垄断也不是新近的发明：它的出现几乎和钱币被用作普遍接受的交换媒介一样古老。货币虽然是自由的人民相互合作的广泛秩序中不可缺少的要件，但几乎从它诞生之日起，政府就在十分无耻地滥用它，从而使它成了人类合作的扩展秩序中一切自我调整过程遭到扭曲的首要根源。政府管理货币的历史，除了少数短暂的幸运时期外，历来就是一部不断欺诈行骗的历史。在这方面，同在竞争中供应各自货币的任何私人机构所能做出的事情相比，政府一直表现得更加不道德。我在别处曾经建议——因此不打算在这里再做说明——假如取消政府对货币的垄断，市场经济也许会更能发挥它的潜力（哈耶克，1976/1978，1986：8－10）。 不管情况如何，我们这里的主要问题，即对“钱上的考虑”不竭的反感，是建立在对货币作用的无知上，而正是这种作用，使人类合作的扩展秩序和市场价值的一般计算成为可能。要想让相互合作扩展到人的知觉范围以外，从而扩展到可确认的、能够当即视为机会扩大的现象范围之外，货币是不可缺少的。 对利润的指责和对贸易的轻蔑 我们这个时代的beau esprits（才子们）——即我们一再提到的、在前面几章已打过交道的知识分子——提出的反对，与原始群体中的成员的反对并没有什么不同。有鉴于此，我倾向于把他们的要求和愿望称为“返祖现象”。深陷在建构主义偏见中的知识分子，他们在市场秩序、贸易和货币中发现最该加以反对的事情是，那些生产者、商人和金融家，他们所关心的不是相识者的具体需求，而是对成本和利润的抽象计算。然而他们忘了——或是没有学过——我们刚才一再阐述的那些论证。正是对利润的关心，使资源有可能得到更有效的利用。它使能够从其他商业活动中获得的各种潜力有了最具生产力的用途。境界甚高的社会主义口号是：“为用途而生产，不为利润而生产”，从亚里士多德到伯特兰·罗素，从艾尔伯特·爱因斯坦到巴西大主教卡玛拉，我们发现它以不同的形式存在着（自从亚里士多德以来，还常常对此有所补充：这些利润是“以他人为代价”得到的）。这个口号暴露出一种无知，它不知道生产能力是如何由不同的个人使其成倍地增加，因为他们能够接触到不同的知识，而这些知识的总和是他们中间任何一个人也无法集中到一起的。企业家如果是在提供生产另一些工具的工具，而这些工具又会为另一些人提供服务，如此等等——也就是说，如果他是在服务于多种多样的最终目的，他在自己的活动中就必须超越已知的用途和目的。大多数生产者为了更有效地给他们不认识的人的需求提供服务，需要的只是价格和利润。它们是搜索工具，就像望远镜是军人、猎人、水手或飞行员扩大视野的工具一样。市场过程为大多数人提供着物质和信息资源，为了得到他们想得到的东西，他们需要这些资源。因此，那些在找出以尽量少牺牲其他目标的方式达到特定结果方面一窍不通的知识分子，却嘲笑别人对成本的关心，比这更不负责任的事实在不多见。获得巨大收益的重要机会和具体情况下需要付出的努力不成比例，知识分子被这种现象气得两眼发黑，其实只是因为有此机会，才使这种实验的努力成为可能。 因此很难相信，凡是对市场有正确了解的人，会诚心谴责对利润的追求。鄙视利润是因为无知，是因为这样一种态度，如果我们愿意，我们可以赞赏禁欲主义者有这种态度，这世界的财富中微小的一点便可以让他们心满意足，但是如果以限制别人利润的方式来落实这种态度，却是一种自私的行为，因为这等于把禁欲主义强加于人，当然也是对一切人的剥夺。