资本主义产生了两种主要的组织机制：市场与公司。这两种机制背后的理念可谓背道而驰。市场要求不同参与者之间的独立交易；公司则提倡团队间的合作。但有些奇怪的是，这两种相互矛盾的机制现在同时受到了攻击。只要攻击者稍事停顿，注意到这个讽刺，他们或许就会冷静下来。
由于金融危机，对市场的抨击尤其猛烈。既然复杂的证券化似乎已失去信誉，人们就更难对将独立交易作为一种资本配置方式抱有信心。债务抵押债券(CDO)、信用违约互换(CDS)乃至所有可交易的金融合约都受到了质疑。一些批评人士似乎相信，要是衍生品市场受到了监管，世界就不会遭遇本次金融危机。
如果说市场已经过时，但另一种组织机制——公司——同样受到了攻击。翻阅一下管理期刊，你很快就会发现，将资本与人才限制在大型组织内部，已经是一种过时的做事方式，它使得原本具有创新精神的人才受到了官僚主义的钳制。对公司持批评态度的人士指出，现代生活快速的技术转变，一次又一次让大型公司措手不及。管理者未能预见到Facebook与Twitter的出现；在随时可下载家庭影片的时代，他们却支持电影院。尽管拥有优秀的MBA与花哨的电子表格，但公司老板并不总是会把资源配置到回报最高的领域。
每个批评流派提出的解决方案，都会受到其他流派的冷嘲热讽，但双方都没有注意到这个事实。对市场持怀疑态度的金融评论人士往往希望公司能够吸收风险，而公司正是管理评论人士所鄙视的实体。批评人士希望，贷款能由金融公司发放并保留在它们的账目上，而不是对信贷进行证券化。他们的理由是：银行或汽车金融公司的风险管理部门对风险的评估比市场交易员更准确。他们还希望，银行能以账面价值持有贷款，直到明智的管理团队认定应该减记时为止。按市价对贷款计值的做法让他们深感恐惧。
与此同时，对公司持怀疑态度的人士提出了相反的论调。他们对官僚管理者没有什么好印象，希望资本能以更加市场化的方式进行配置。与其让公司投资委员会笨拙地在庞大的机构内部分配资源，何不解散公司，释放创新性人才，让风险资本家决定支持谁？经济学家科斯(Ronald Coase)在1937年对该问题作出了回答。他指出，公司将创意、资本与人员汇聚在一起，降低了集合这三项要素的交易成本。但公司的批评者反驳称，现代通讯已经将交易成本降低至只有以前水平的一小部分，使得科斯的公司合理化理论成为了过去时。受到大肆宣传的《维基经济学》(Wikinomics)甚至指出，大规模协作(mass collaboration)可能会成为公司的替代品。该书作者毫不谦逊地宣称：“这或许是一个新时代的诞生，甚至是一个黄金时代，堪比意大利的文艺复兴与雅典民主的崛起。”
问题不在于市场或公司不应该受到批评。两者的缺陷得到了普遍认可，尤其是在本领域工作的有见地人士。对有效市场理论最赤裸裸的藐视，往往来自市场从业者：著名的对冲基金投机者乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)就是投机活动的主要批评者；如果相信市场非常完美，无需进行揣度，那么专业投资者就不必一大早就起床。同样，对官僚公司最严厉的批评来自公司老板。杰克•韦尔奇(Jack Welch)无情地解雇了大批通用电气(GE)职员。郭士纳(Lou Gerstner)像摇铃鼓一样，对IBM进行了改造，然后给洋洋自得的自传取名为《谁说大象不能跳舞？》(Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?)。
相反，关键在于，市场的批评者与公司的批评者应该给予对方更多的关注。金融评论人士不应只谴责证券化，而不承认管理评论人士眼中显而易见的事实：官僚风险控制也存在缺陷。管理评论人士不应把公司贬得一文不值，而不承认金融评论人士眼中显而易见的事实：另一种选择——彼此独立、基于市场的协作，充满了信息不对称、不是很理性的投资者的跟风行为，以及欺诈。
对市场与公司的温和批评完全合理。“二次合成债务抵押债券(CDO squared）”，的确已经让金融创新变得不着边际；公司改革者确实应该对令人窒息的官僚作风发起挑战，推出收集客户意见的网站，为公司资源的配置建立“内部市场”。但当市场与公司同时受到全面攻击，理性的人应当记住：两种攻击中必然有一种是错误的。
本文作者是美国外交关系委员会(Council on Foreign Relations)高级研究员，著有《富比上帝：对冲基金与新精英的形成》(More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite)。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035230
Capitalism has spawned two great organising mechanisms: markets and firms. The ideas behind these mechanisms are opposed to one another. Markets involve arms-length transactions among disparate actors; the company promotes linked-arm collaboration among teams. But, somewhat curiously, these contradictory approaches are under attack simultaneously. If the assailants would only pause to note this irony, they might perhaps calm down.
The assault on markets has been especially loud, thanks to the financial bust. Now that complex securitisation appears to have been discredited, it is harder to have faith in arms-length transactions as a way of allocating capital. Collateralised debt obligations, credit default swaps and the whole paraphernalia of tradable financial promises have been called into question. Some critics appear to believe that, if only markets in derivatives had been regulated, the world would have been spared the bust.
But if markets are out of fashion, the alternative organising mechanism – the company – is equally under fire. Leaf through the management journals and you will soon learn that imprisoning capital and talent inside large organisations is an outdated way of doing things, forcing otherwise creative people into a bureaucratic arm-lock. Critics of the company complain that, time and again, incumbent corporations are caught flat-footed by the rapid technological shifts of modern life. Managers fail to anticipate Facebook and Twitter; they back cinemas in the age of the downloadable home movie. For all their fancy MBAs and spreadsheets, company bosses don’t always allocate resources where the pay-off will be highest.
Each school of criticism advances solutions that the other ridicules, though neither side appears to notice this fact. Financial commentators who are sceptical of markets tend to wish that risk could be absorbed instead by companies – precisely the entities that management commentators despise. In place of securitised credit, the critics want loans to be originated by financial companies and retained on their books, on the theory that the risk-management department of a bank or auto-finance outfit will assess risk better than market traders. Similarly, the critics want banks to hold loans at face value until wise teams of managers judge that it is time to write them down. They shudder at the alternative of marking loans to their market price.
Meanwhile sceptics of the company advance the opposite critique. Unimpressed by bureaucratic managers, they wish that capital could be allocated in a more market-driven fashion. In place of company investment committees that parcel out resources clumsily within a lumbering behemoth, why not unbundle the company, free its creative people, and let competing venture capitalists decide whom to back? The economist Ronald Coase answered this question in 1937, observing that by pooling ideas, capital and workers, the company reduces the transaction costs of bringing all three together. But the critics of the company retort that modern communications have reduced transaction costs to a fraction of their former level, rendering Coase’s rationalisation of the company anachronistic. A much-hyped book called Wikinomics even suggests mass collaboration can be an alternative to the firm. “This may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian Renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy,” the author immodestly proclaims.
The point is not that markets or the company are above criticism. The shortcomings of both are widely recognised, not least by the thoughtful people who work in them. The most dripping contempt for efficient market theory tends to come from market practitioners: George Soros, the celebrated hedge-fund speculator, is a leading critic of speculation; and professional investors would not get up in the morning if they believed that markets were too perfect to second guess. Likewise, the most scathing attacks on the bureaucratic corporation come from corporate bosses. Jack Welsh mercilessly fired legions of GE salarymen. Lou Gerstner shook IBM like a toy tambourine, then entitled his self-congratulatory memoir, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?.
Rather, the point is that critics of markets and critics of the company should pay more attention to each other. Financial commentators should not denounce securitisation without acknowledging the point that is obvious to management commentators: bureaucratic risk controls are also flawed. Management commentators should not write off the company without acknowledging the point that is obvious to financial commentators: the alternative of arms-length, market-based co-ordination is fraught with asymmetries of information, herding by not-quite-rational investors, and fraud.
Moderate criticisms of markets and the company are entirely justified. The “CDO squared” really did push financial innovation beyond the point of absurdity; and corporate reformers are right to challenge deadening bureaucracy with websites that harvest customer suggestions and “internal markets” for allocating company resources. But when markets and the company are attacked simultaneously and sweepingly, reasonable people should remember: both assaults cannot be right.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
