Thinking in Systems: A Primer_【彩云小译】

— FIVE —
ー五ー

System Traps . . .
and Opportunities
系统陷阱和机遇

_____________
是的，是的，是的

Rational elites . . . know everything there is to know about their self-contained technical or scientific worlds, but lack a broader perspective. They range from Marxist cadres to Jesuits, from Harvard MBAs to army staff officers. . . . They have a common underlying concern: how to get their particular system to function. Meanwhile . . . civilization becomes increasingly directionless and incomprehensible.

—John Ralston Saul,^1
1 political scientist

Delays, nonlinearities, lack of firm boundaries, and other properties of systems that surprise us are found in just about any system. Generally, they are not properties that can or should be changed. The world is nonlinear. Trying to make it linear for our mathematical or administrative convenience is not usually a good idea even when feasible, and it is rarely feasible. Boundaries are problem-dependent, evanescent, and messy; they are also necessary for organization and clarity. Being less surprised by complex systems is mainly a matter of learning to expect, appreciate, and use the world’s complexity.
几乎在任何系统中都能发现延迟、非线性、缺乏确定的边界以及系统的其他令我们惊讶的特性。一般来说，它们不是可以或者应该被改变的属性。世界是非线性的。为了我们在数学或行政管理上的便利，试图使它线性化通常不是一个好主意，即使是在可行的情况下，也很少是可行的。边界是依赖于问题的、易逝的和混乱的; 它们对于组织和清晰度也是必要的。对复杂的系统不那么惊讶主要是学会期待、欣赏和使用世界的复杂性。

But some systems are more than surprising. They are perverse. These are the systems that are structured in ways that produce truly problematic behavior; they cause us great trouble. There are many forms of systems trouble, some of them unique, but many strikingly common. We call the system structures that produce such common patterns of problematic behavior archetypes. Some of the behaviors these archetypes manifest are addiction, drift to low performance, and escalation. These are so prevalent I had no problem finding in just one week of the International Herald Tribune enough examples to illustrate each of the archetypes described in this chapter.
但是有些系统更令人惊讶。它们是反常的。这些系统的结构方式会产生真正有问题的行为; 它们给我们带来巨大的麻烦。有许多形式的系统麻烦，其中一些是独特的，但是许多是惊人的常见。我们称之为产生问题行为原型的常见模式的系统结构。这些原型所表现出来的一些行为是成瘾、向低性能漂移和升级。这些是如此普遍，我毫不费力地在《国际先驱论坛报》一周内就找到了足够的例子来说明本章所描述的每一个原型。

Understanding archetypal problem-generating structures is not enough. Putting up with them is impossible. They need to be changed. The destruction they cause is often blamed on particular actors or events, although it is actually a consequence of system structure. Blaming, disciplining, firing, twisting policy levers harder, hoping for a more favorable sequence of driving events, tinkering at the margins—these standard responses will not fix structural problems. That is why I call these archetypes “traps.”
仅仅理解产生问题的原型结构是不够的。忍受它们是不可能的。他们需要改变。它们造成的破坏通常归咎于特定的参与者或事件，尽管它实际上是系统结构的结果。指责、约束、解雇、更加努力地扭曲政策杠杆、希望推动事件发生的顺序更加有利、在边缘修修补补——这些标准回应不会解决结构性问题。这就是为什么我称这些原型为“陷阱”

But system traps can be escaped—by recognizing them in advance and not getting caught in them, or by altering the structure—by reformulating goals, by weakening, strengthening, or altering feedback loops, by adding new feedback loops. That is why I call these archetypes not just traps, but opportunities.
但是，系统陷阱是可以逃脱的——通过提前认识到它们而不被它们所困，或通过改变结构——通过重新制定目标，通过削弱、加强或改变反馈回路，通过添加新的反馈回路。这就是为什么我称这些原型不仅仅是陷阱，而是机会。

Policy Resistance— Fixes that Fail
政策阻力ーー修复失败

I think the investment tax credit has a good history of being an effective economic stimulus,” said Joseph W. Duncan, chief economist for Dun & Bradstreet Corp. . . .

But skeptics abound. They say nobody can prove any benefit to economic growth from investment credits, which have been granted, altered, and repealed again and again in the last 30 years.

—John H. Cushman, Jr., International Herald Tribune, 1992^2
2

As we saw in Chapter Two, the primary symptom of a balancing feedback loop structure is that not much changes, despite outside forces pushing the system. Balancing loops stabilize systems; behavior patterns persist. This is a great structure if you are trying to maintain your body temperature at 37°C (98.6°F), but some behavior patterns that persist over long periods of time are undesirable. Despite efforts to invent technological or policy “fixes,” the system seems to be intractably stuck, producing the same behavior every year. This is the systemic trap of “fixes that fail” or “policy resistance.” You see this when farm programs try year after year to reduce gluts, but there is still overproduction. There are wars on drugs, after which drugs are as prevalent as ever. There is little evidence that investment tax credits and many other policies designed to stimulate investment when the market is not rewarding investment actually work. No single policy yet has been able to bring down health care costs in the United States. Decades of “job creation” have not managed to keep unemployment permanently low. You probably can name a dozen other areas in which energetic efforts consistently produce non-results.
正如我们在第二章中看到的，平衡反馈回路结构的主要症状是，尽管外部力量推动系统，但变化不大。平衡循环稳定系统，行为模式持续存在。这是一个伟大的结构，如果你试图保持你的体温在37摄氏度(98.6华氏度) ，但一些行为模式，持续很长时间是不受欢迎的。尽管努力发明技术或政策“解决方案”，这个系统似乎还是难以解决，每年都会产生相同的行为。这就是“修复失败”或“政策阻力”的系统性陷阱当农业计划年复一年地试图减少过剩时，你会看到这一点，但仍然存在生产过剩。在毒品战争之后，毒品仍然像以往一样流行。几乎没有证据表明，投资税收抵免和许多其他旨在刺激投资的政策在市场不回报投资的情况下确实有效。目前还没有一项政策能够降低美国的医疗保健成本。数十年的“创造就业机会”并没有成功地将失业率永久保持在低位。你也许可以列举出十几个其他领域，在这些领域，积极的努力一直没有结果。

Policy resistance comes from the bounded rationalities of the actors in a system, each with his or her (or “its” in the case of an institution) own goals. Each actor monitors the state of the system with regard to some important variable—income or prices or housing or drugs or investment—and compares that state with his, her, or its goal. If there is a discrepancy, each actor does something to correct the situation. Usually the greater the discrepancy between the goal and the actual situation, the more emphatic the action will be.
政策阻力来自于系统中行为者的有限理性，每个行为者都有自己的目标。每个参与者监测系统中某些重要变量的状态——收入、价格、住房、药品或投资——并将这种状态与他的、她的或其目标进行比较。如果存在差异，每个参与者都会采取措施纠正这种情况。通常情况下，目标和实际情况之间的差异越大，行动就越有力。

Such resistance to change arises when goals of subsystems are different from and inconsistent with each other. Picture a single-system stock—drug supply on the city streets, for example—with various actors trying to pull that stock in different directions. Addicts want to keep it high, enforcement agencies want to keep it low, pushers want to keep it right in the middle so prices don’t get either too high or too low. The average citizen really just wants to be safe from robberies by addicts trying to get money to buy drugs. All the actors work hard to achieve their different goals.
当子系统的目标彼此不同或不一致时，就会出现这种对变更的抵制。想象一下一个单一的系统库存——例如，城市街道上的毒品供应——不同的参与者试图将这些库存拉向不同的方向。瘾君子希望保持高价，执法机构希望保持低价，毒品贩子希望保持中等价位，这样价格就不会太高或太低。普通市民真正想要的只是安全，不被那些试图赚钱买毒品的瘾君子抢劫。所有的演员都在努力实现他们不同的目标。

If any one actor gains an advantage and moves the system stock (drug supply) in one direction (enforcement agencies manage to cut drug imports at the border), the others double their efforts to pull it back (street prices go up, addicts have to commit more crimes to buy their daily fixes, higher prices bring more profits, suppliers use the profits to buy planes and boats to evade the border patrols). Together, the countermoves produce a standoff, the stock is not much different from before, and that is not what anybody wants.
如果任何一个行为者获得了优势，将系统库存(毒品供应)转移到一个方向(执法机构设法减少边境的毒品进口) ，其他行为者则加倍努力将其拉回(街头价格上涨，瘾君子不得不犯更多的罪来购买他们的日常毒品，价格上涨带来更多的利润，供应商利用利润购买飞机和船只来逃避边境巡逻)。总之，这些对策造成了僵局，毒品库存和以前没有太大的不同，这不是任何人想要的。

In a policy-resistant system with actors pulling in different directions, everyone has to put great effort into keeping the system where no one wants it to be. If any single actor lets up, the others will drag the system closer to their goals, and farther from the goal of the one who let go. In fact, this system structure can operate in a ratchet mode: Intensification of anyone’s effort leads to intensification of everyone else’s. It’s hard to reduce intensification. It takes a lot of mutual trust to say, OK, why don’t we all just back off for a while?
在一个政策阻力巨大的体系中，每个人都不得不付出巨大的努力来维持这个体系，而没有人希望它成为这样一个体系。如果任何一个参与者松懈了，其他人就会把这个体系拖向他们的目标，而远离那个放手的人的目标。事实上，这种系统结构可以在棘轮模式下运作: 任何人的努力都会导致其他人的努力也会加强。很难减少强化。我们需要相互信任才能说，“好吧，为什么我们不都暂时退一步呢?”？

The results of policy resistance can be tragic. In 1967, the Romanian government decided that Romania needed more people and that the way to get them was to make abortions for women under age forty-five illegal. Abortions were abruptly banned. Shortly thereafter, the birth rate tripled. Then the policy resistance of the Romanian people set in.
政策阻力的结果可能是悲剧性的。1967年，罗马尼亚政府决定罗马尼亚需要更多的人口，而获得这些人口的方法就是使45岁以下的妇女堕胎成为非法。堕胎突然被禁止。此后不久，出生率翻了三倍。然后罗马尼亚人民的政策开始抵制。

Although contraceptives and abortions remained illegal, the birth rate slowly came back down nearly to its previous level. This result was achieved primarily though dangerous, illegal abortions, which tripled the maternal mortality rate. In addition, many of the unwanted children that had been born when abortions were illegal were abandoned to orphanages. Romanian families were too poor to raise the many children their government desired decently, and they knew it. So, they resisted the government’s pull toward larger family size, at great cost to themselves and to the generation of children who grew up in orphanages.
尽管避孕药具和堕胎仍然是非法的，但出生率慢慢地回落到接近以前的水平。这一结果主要是通过危险的非法堕胎实现的，这使得孕产妇死亡率增加了三倍。此外，许多在非法堕胎时出生的不想要的孩子被遗弃在孤儿院。罗马尼亚的家庭太穷，无法抚养政府想要的孩子，他们知道这一点。所以，他们抵制政府对于扩大家庭规模的吸引力，这对他们自己和在孤儿院长大的一代孩子来说都是巨大的代价。

One way to deal with policy resistance is to try to overpower it. If you wield enough power and can keep wielding it, the power approach can work, at the cost of monumental resentment and the possibility of explosive consequences if the power is ever let up. This is what happened with the formulator of the Romanian population policy, dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who tried long and hard to overpower the resistance to his policy. When his government was overturned, he was executed, along with his family. The first law the new government repealed was the ban on abortion and contraception.
应对政策阻力的方法之一，就是试图压制它。如果你掌握了足够的权力，并且能够继续使用它，那么权力方法可以奏效，代价是巨大的怨恨，以及如果权力被放松，可能产生爆炸性后果的可能性。这就是罗马尼亚人口政策的制定者，独裁者尼古拉 · 齐奥塞斯库的遭遇，他长期以来一直努力克服对他政策的抵制。当他的政府被推翻时，他和他的家人被处决了。新政府废除的第一条法律是禁止堕胎和避孕。

The alternative to overpowering policy resistance is so counterintuitive that it’s usually unthinkable. Let go. Give up ineffective policies. Let the resources and energy spent on both enforcing and resisting be used for more constructive purposes. You won’t get your way with the system, but it won’t go as far in a bad direction as you think, because much of the action you were trying to correct was in response to your own action. If you calm down, those who are pulling against you will calm down too. This is what happened in 1933 when Prohibition ended in the United States; the alcohol- driven chaos also largely ended.
压倒性政策阻力的替代方案是如此违反直觉，以至于通常是不可想象的。放手。放弃无效的政策。让用于执行和抵制的资源和精力用于更具建设性的目的。你不会得到你的方式与系统，但它不会走到一个坏的方向，因为大多数行动，你试图纠正是在回应你自己的行动。如果你冷静下来，那些反对你的人也会冷静下来。这就是1933年禁酒令在美国结束时发生的事情; 酒精驱动的混乱也基本结束了。

That calming down may provide the opportunity to look more closely at the feedbacks within the system, to understand the bounded rationality behind them, and to find a way to meet the goals of the participants in the system while moving the state of the system in a better direction.
冷静下来可以提供一个机会，更仔细地审视系统内的反馈，了解反馈背后的有限理性，并找到一种方法来满足系统参与者的目标，同时使系统状态朝着更好的方向发展。

For example, a nation wanting to increase its birth rate might ask why families are having few children and discover that it isn’t because they don’t like children. Perhaps they haven’t the resources, the living space, the time, or the security to have more. Hungary, at the same time Romania was banning abortions, also was worried about its low birth rate—fearing an economic downturn could result from fewer people in the workforce. The Hungarian government discovered that cramped housing was one reason for small family size. The government devised a policy that rewarded larger families with more living space. This policy was only partially successful, because housing was not the only problem. But it was far more successful than Romania’s policy and it avoided Romania’s disastrous results.³
例如，一个想要提高出生率的国家可能会问为什么家庭很少有孩子，然后发现并不是因为他们不喜欢孩子。也许他们没有资源，没有生活空间，没有时间，也没有安全感去生更多的孩子。匈牙利在罗马尼亚禁止堕胎的同时，也担心其低出生率——担心劳动力减少可能导致经济衰退。匈牙利政府发现，拥挤的住房是家庭规模小的原因之一。政府制定了一项政策，奖励大家庭更多的生活空间。这项政策只取得了部分成功，因为住房并不是唯一的问题。但它远比罗马尼亚的政策成功，避免了罗马尼亚的灾难性后果

The most effective way of dealing with policy resistance is to find a way of aligning the various goals of the subsystems, usually by providing an overarching goal that allows all actors to break out of their bounded rationality. If everyone can work harmoniously toward the same outcome (if all feedback loops are serving the same goal), the results can be amazing. The most familiar examples of this harmonization of goals are mobilizations of economies during wartime, or recovery after war or natural disaster.
处理政策阻力的最有效方法是找到一种方法来调整子系统的各种目标，通常是通过提供一个总体目标，允许所有参与者打破他们的有限理性。如果每个人都能朝着相同的目标和谐地工作(如果所有的反馈回路都服务于相同的目标) ，那么结果可能是惊人的。这种目标协调的最常见的例子是战时的经济动员，或者战后或自然灾害后的恢复。

Another example was Sweden’s population policy. During the 1930s, Sweden’s birth rate dropped precipitously, and, like the governments of Romania and Hungary, the Swedish government worried about that. Unlike Romania and Hungary, the Swedish government assessed its goals and those of the population and decided that there was a basis of agreement, not on the size of the family, but on the quality of child care. Every child should be wanted and nurtured. No child should be in material need. Every child should have access to excellent education and health care. These were goals around which the government and the people could align themselves.
另一个例子是瑞典的人口政策。在20世纪30年代，瑞典的出生率急剧下降，像罗马尼亚和匈牙利政府一样，瑞典政府对此感到担忧。与罗马尼亚和匈牙利不同，瑞典政府评估了自己的目标和人口目标，并决定不是根据家庭规模，而是根据儿童保育的质量达成协议。每个孩子都应该被需要和培养。没有一个孩子需要物质上的帮助。每个孩子都应该有机会接受良好的教育和医疗保健。这些都是政府和人民可以团结起来的目标。

The resulting policy looked strange during a time of low birth rate, because it included free contraceptives and abortion—because of the principle that every child should be wanted. The policy also included widespread sex education, easier divorce laws, free obstetrical care, support for families in need, and greatly increased investment in education and health care.⁴ Since then, the Swedish birth rate has gone up and down several times without causing panic in either direction, because the nation is focused on a far more important goal than the number of Swedes.
由此产生的政策在低出生率时期看起来很奇怪，因为它包括免费避孕和堕胎——因为每个孩子都应该被要求的原则。这项政策还包括广泛的性教育、更为宽松的离婚法、免费的产科护理、对有需要的家庭的支持，以及大幅增加对教育和医疗保健的投资。4. 自那时以来，瑞典的出生率数次上升和下降，但没有在两个方向引起恐慌，因为国家关注的目标远比瑞典人口的数量重要得多。

Harmonization of goals in a system is not always possible, but it’s an worth looking for. It can be found only by letting go of more narrow goals and considering the long term welfare of the entire system.
在一个系统中协调目标并不总是可能的，但是它是值得寻找的。只有放弃更狭隘的目标，并考虑整个系统的长期福利，才能找到它。

THE TRAP: POLICY RESISTANCE

When various actors try to pull a system stock toward various goals, the result can be policy resistance. Any new policy, especially if it’s effective, just pulls the stock farther from the goals of other actors and produces additional resistance, with a result that no one likes, but that everyone expends considerable effort in maintaining.

THE WAY OUT

Let go. Bring in all the actors and use the energy formerly expended on resistance to seek out mutually satisfactory ways for all goals to be realized—or redefinitions of larger and more important goals that everyone can pull toward together.

The Tragedy of the Commons
公地悲剧

Leaders of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition, led by the Christian Democratic Union, agreed last week with the opposition Social Democrats, after months of bickering, to turn back a flood of economic migrants by tightening conditions for claiming asylum.

—International Herald Tribune, 1992^5
5

The trap called the tragedy of the commons comes about when there is escalation, or just simple growth, in a commonly shared, erodable environment.
这种被称为公地悲剧的陷阱是在一个共享的、可侵蚀的环境中出现升级，或者仅仅是简单的增长时产生的。

Ecologist Garrett Hardin described the commons system in a classic article in 1968. Hardin used as his opening example a common grazing land:
生态学家 Garrett Hardin 在1968年的一篇经典文章中描述了公地系统。哈丁用公共牧场作为开篇的例子:

Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. . . . Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?”. . .

Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1. . . . Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all, . . . the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of –1. . . .

The rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each . . . is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all . . . rush, each pursuing his own best interest.^6
6

Bounded rationality in a nutshell!
简而言之就是有限理性！

In any commons system there is, first of all, a resource that is commonly shared (the pasture). For the system to be subject to tragedy, the resource must be not only limited, but erodable when overused. That is, beyond some threshold, the less resource there is, the less it is able to regenerate itself, or the more likely it is to be destroyed. As there is less grass on the pasture, the cows eat even the base of the stems from which the new grass grows. The roots no longer hold the soil from washing away in the rains. With less soil, the grass grows more poorly. And so forth. Another reinforcing feedback loop running downhill.
在任何公共系统中，首先都有一个共享的资源(牧场)。为了使这个系统遭受悲剧，资源不仅必须是有限的，而且在过度使用时是可以被侵蚀的。也就是说，超过某个临界值，资源越少，它自我再生的能力就越小，或者它被破坏的可能性就越大。由于牧场上的草越来越少，牛甚至会吃掉新草生长的茎的根部。根部不再能保持土壤不被雨水冲走。土壤越少，草长得越差。诸如此类。另一个强化的反馈循环正在下滑。

A commons system also needs users of the resource (the cows and their owners), which have good reason to increase, and which increase at a rate that is not influenced by the condition of the commons. The individual herdsman has no reason, no incentive, no strong feedback, to let the possibility of overgrazing stop him from adding another cow to the common pasture. To the contrary, he or she has everything to gain.
公共资源系统还需要资源的用户(奶牛及其所有者) ，这些用户有充分的理由增加，而且增加的速度不受公共资源状况的影响。单个的牧民没有理由，没有动机，没有强烈的反馈，让过度放牧的可能性阻止他把另一头牛添加到公共牧场。相反，他或她可以从中获得一切。

The hopeful immigrant to Germany expects nothing but benefit from that country’s generous asylum laws, and has no reason to take into consideration the fact that too many immigrants will inevitably force Germany to toughen those laws. In fact, the knowledge that Germany is discussing that possibility is all the more reason to hurry to Germany!
希望移民到德国的人只希望从该国慷慨的庇护法中获益，没有理由去考虑这样一个事实: 太多的移民将不可避免地迫使德国加强这些法律。事实上，知道德国正在讨论这种可能性就更有理由赶紧去德国！

The tragedy of the commons arises from missing (or too long delayed) feedback from the resource to the growth of the users of that resource.
公地悲剧是由于缺少(或延迟太久)资源对该资源使用者成长的反馈而引起的。

The more users there are, the more resource is used. The more resource is used, the less there is per user. If the users follow the bounded rationality of the commons (“There’s no reason for me to be the one to limit my cows!”), there is no reason for any of them to decrease their use. Eventually, then, the harvest rate will exceed the capacity of the resource to bear the harvest. Because there is no feedback to the user, overharvesting will continue. The resource will decline. Finally, the erosion loop will kick in, the resource will be destroyed, and all the users will be ruined.
用户越多，使用的资源就越多。使用的资源越多，每个用户拥有的资源就越少。如果用户遵循公共资源的有限理性(“我没有理由限制我的奶牛!”)那么他们中的任何一个都没有理由减少他们的使用。最终，收获率将超过资源承受收获的能力。因为没有反馈给用户，过度收获将会继续。资源将会减少。最后，侵蚀循环将开始，资源将被破坏，所有的用户将被毁灭。

Surely, you’d think, no group of people would be so shortsighted as to destroy their commons. But consider just a few commonplace examples of commons that are being driven, or have been driven, to disaster:
当然，你可能会认为，没有一群人会如此目光短浅，以至于破坏他们的公共资源。但是想想一些普通的例子，公地正在被驱使，或者已经被驱使，走向灾难:

• Uncontrolled access to a popular national park can bring in such crowds that the park’s natural beauties are destroyed.

• It is to everyone’s immediate advantage to go on using fossil fuels, although carbon dioxide from these fuels is a greenhouse gas that is causing global climate change.

• If every family can have any number of children it wants, but society as a whole has to support the cost of education, health care, and environmental protection for all children, the number of children born can exceed the capacity of the society to support them all. (This is the example that caused Hardin to write his article.)

These examples have to do with overexploitation of renewable resources—a structure you have seen already in the systems zoo. Tragedy can lurk not only in the use of common resources, but also in the use of common sinks, shared places where pollution can be dumped. A family, company, or nation can reduce its costs, increase its profits, or grow faster if it can get the entire community to absorb or handle its wastes. It reaps a large gain, while itself having to live with only a fraction of its own pollution (or none, if it can dump downstream or downwind). There is no rational reason why a polluter should desist. In these cases, the feedback influencing the rate of use of the common resource—whether it is a source or a sink—is weak.
这些例子与可再生资源的过度开采有关——你已经在系统动物园中看到了这种结构。悲剧不仅潜伏在公共资源的使用中，也潜伏在公共水池的使用中，公共水池是可以倾倒污染的共享场所。如果一个家庭、公司或国家能够让整个社区吸收或处理它的废物，它就能够降低成本，增加利润，或者发展得更快。它获得了巨大的收益，而它自己却只能忍受自身污染的一小部分(如果它可以向下游或顺风处倾倒的话，甚至一点污染也没有)。没有理性的理由说明为什么污染者应该停止污染。在这些情况下，影响公共资源使用率的反馈——无论是源还是汇——是微弱的。

If you think that the reasoning of an exploiter of the commons is hard to understand, ask yourself how willing you are to carpool in order to reduce air pollution, or to clean up after yourself whenever you make a mess. The structure of a commons system makes selfish behavior much more convenient and profitable than behavior that is responsible to the whole community and to the future.
如果你认为剥削公地的人的理由很难理解，问问你自己，为了减少空气污染，你有多愿意拼车，或者当你弄得一团糟的时候，你有多愿意清理你自己。公地系统的结构使得自私的行为比对整个社区和未来负责的行为更加方便和有利可图。

There are three ways to avoid the tragedy of the commons.
有三种方法可以避免公地悲剧的发生。

• Educate and exhort. Help people to see the consequences of unrestrained use of the commons. Appeal to their morality. Persuade them to be temperate. Threaten transgressors with social disapproval or eternal hellfire.

• Privatize the commons. Divide it up, so that each person reaps the consequences of his or her own actions. If some people lack the self-control to stay below the carrying capacity of their own private resource, those people will harm only themselves and not others.

• Regulate the commons. Garrett Hardin calls this option, bluntly, “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.” Regulation can take many forms, from outright bans on certain behaviors to quotas, permits, taxes, incentives. To be effective, regulation must be enforced by policing and penalties.

The first of these solutions, exhortation, tries to keep use of the commons low enough through moral pressure that the resource is not threatened. The second, privatization, makes a direct feedback link from the condition of the resource to those who use it, by making sure that gains and losses fall on the same decision maker. The owner still may abuse the resource, but now it takes ignorance or irrationality to do so. The third solution, regulation, makes an indirect feedback link from the condition of the resource through regulators to users. For this feedback to work, the regulators must have the expertise to monitor and interpret correctly the condition of the commons, they must have effective means of deterrence, and they must have the good of the whole community at heart. (They cannot be uninformed or weak or corrupt.)
这些解决方案中的第一个，劝告，试图通过道德压力使公地的使用保持在足够低的水平，以免资源受到威胁。第二种是私有化，通过确保利益和损失落在同一个决策者的头上，使资源的状况与使用者之间建立了直接的反馈联系。所有者仍然可能滥用资源，但现在这样做需要无知或非理性。第三种解决方案，监管，通过监管者将资源状况与用户之间的间接反馈联系起来。要使这种反馈发挥作用，监管机构必须具备监测和正确解释公地状况的专门知识，必须拥有有效的威慑手段，必须将整个社会的利益放在心上。(他们不能无知、软弱或腐败

Some “primitive” cultures have managed common resources effectively for generations through education and exhortation. Garrett Hardin does not believe that option is dependable, however. Common resources protected only by tradition or an “honor system” may attract those who do not respect the tradition or who have no honor.
一些”原始”文化通过教育和劝诫，世世代代有效地管理着公共资源。然而，Garrett Hardin 并不认为这种选择是可靠的。只受传统或“荣誉系统”保护的公共资源可能会吸引那些不尊重传统或没有荣誉感的人。

Privatization works more reliably than exhortation, if society is willing to let some individuals learn the hard way. But many resources, such as the atmosphere and the fish of the sea, simply cannot be privatized. That leaves only the option of “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.”
如果社会愿意让一些个人以艰难的方式学习，私有化比劝诫更有效。但是许多资源，比如大气层和海洋中的鱼类，根本不可能被私有化。那就只剩下“相互胁迫，相互同意”的选择了

Life is full of mutual-coercion arrangements, most of them so ordinary you hardly stop to think about them. Every one of them limits the freedom to abuse a commons, while preserving the freedom to use it. For example:
生活中充满了相互胁迫的安排，其中大多数如此普通，以至于你几乎不会停下来去想它们。它们中的每一个都限制了滥用公地的自由，同时保留了使用公地的自由。例如:

• The common space in the center of a busy intersection is regulated by traffic lights. You can’t drive through whenever you want to. When it is your turn, however, you can pass through more safely than would be possible if there were an unregulated free-for-all.

• Use of common parking spaces in downtown areas are parceled out by meters, which charge for a space and limit the time it can be occupied. You are not free to park wherever you want for as long as you want, but you have a higher chance of finding a parking space than you would if the meters weren’t there.

• You may not help yourself to the money in a bank, however advantageous it might be for you to do so. Protective devices such as strongboxes and safes, reinforced by police and jails, prevent you from treating a bank as a commons. In return, your own money in the bank is protected.

• You may not broadcast at will over the wavelengths that carry radio or television signals. You must obtain a permit from a regulatory agency. If your freedom to broadcast were not limited, the airwaves would be a chaos of overlapping signals.

• Many municipal garbage systems have become so expensive that households are now charged for garbage disposal depending on the amount of garbage they generate—transforming the previous commons to a regulated pay-as-you-go system.

Notice from these examples how many different forms “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” can take. The traffic light doles out access to the commons on a “take your turn” basis. The meters charge for use of the parking commons. The bank uses physical barriers and strong penal ties. Permits to use broadcasting frequencies are issued to applicants by a government agency. And garbage fees directly restore the missing feedback, letting each household feel the economic impact of its own use of the commons.
从这些例子中可以看出“相互强制，相互同意”可以采取多少种不同的形式。交通信号灯在“轮流”的基础上向公共区域发放信息。停车场使用收费表。银行使用物理屏障和强大的刑罚关系。使用广播频率的许可证由政府机构发放给申请人。垃圾收费可以直接恢复丢失的反馈信息，让每个家庭都能感受到自己使用公共资源的经济影响。

Most people comply with regulatory systems most of the time, as long as they are mutually agreed upon and their purpose is understood. But all regulatory systems must use police power and penalties for the occasional noncooperator.
大多数人在大多数情况下都遵守监管制度，只要这些制度是双方同意的，而且其目的是理解的。但是所有的监管系统都必须使用警察的权力和对偶尔不合作者的惩罚。

THE TRAP: TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS

When there is a commonly shared resource, every user benefits directly from its use, but shares the costs of its abuse with everyone else. Therefore, there is very weak feedback from the condition of the resource to the decisions of the resource users. The consequence is overuse of the resource, eroding it until it becomes unavailable to anyone.

THE WAY OUT

Educate and exhort the users, so they understand the consequences of abusing the resource. And also restore or strengthen the missing feedback link, either by privatizing the resource so each user feels the direct consequences of its abuse or (since many resources cannot be privatized) by regulating the access of all users to the resource.

Drift to Low Performance
漂移到低性能

In this recession, the British have discovered that . . . the economy is just as downwardly mobile as ever. Even national disasters are now seized on as portents of further decline. The Independent on Sunday carried a front-page article on “the ominous feeling that the Windsor fire is symptomatic of the country at large, that it stems from the new national characteristic of ineptitude. . . .”

Insisted Lord Peston, Labor’s trade and industry spokesman, “We know what we ought to do, for some reason we just don’t do it.”

Politicians, businessmen, and economists fault the country as a place where the young receive substandard education, where both labor and management are underskilled, where investment is skimped, and where politicians mismanage the economy.

—Erik Ipsen, International Herald Tribune, 1992 ^7
7 Erik Ipsen,

Some systems not only resist policy and stay in a normal bad state, they keep getting worse. One name for this archetype is “drift to low performance.” Examples include falling market share in a business, eroding quality of service at a hospital, continuously dirtier rivers or air, increased fat in spite of periodic diets, the state of America’s public schools—or my onetime jogging program, which somehow just faded away.
一些系统不仅抵制政策，处于正常的糟糕状态，而且还在不断恶化。这种原型的一个名称是“向低性能漂移”这方面的例子包括: 企业市场份额下降，医院服务质量下降，河流或空气持续污染，尽管定期节食，但脂肪增加，美国公立学校的状况，或者我曾经的慢跑计划，不知怎么就消失了。

The actor in this feedback loop (British government, business, hospital, fat person, school administrator, jogger) has, as usual, a performance goal or desired system state that is compared to the actual state. If there is a discrepancy, action is taken. So far, that is an ordinary balancing feedback loop that should keep performance at the desired level.
这个反馈回路中的参与者(英国政府、商业、医院、肥胖者、学校管理人员、慢跑者)像往常一样，有一个与实际状态相比较的绩效目标或期望的系统状态。如果存在差异，就采取行动。到目前为止，这是一个普通的平衡反馈回路，应该保持性能在期望的水平。

But in this system, there is a distinction between the actual system state and the perceived state. The actor tends to believe bad news more than good news. As actual performance varies, the best results are dismissed as aberrations, the worst results stay in the memory. The actor thinks things are worse than they really are.
但是在这个系统中，实际的系统状态和感知的状态是有区别的。演员更倾向于相信坏消息而不是好消息。由于实际表演的不同，最好的结果被认为是偏差，最坏的结果留在记忆中。演员认为事情比实际情况更糟糕。

And to complete this tragic archetype, the desired state of the system is influenced by the perceived state. Standards aren’t absolute. When perceived performance slips, the goal is allowed to slip. “Well, that’s about all you can expect.” “Well, we’re not doing much worse than we were last year.” “Well, look around, everybody else is having trouble too.”
为了完成这个悲剧原型，系统的期望状态受到感知状态的影响。标准不是绝对的。当感知表现下滑时，目标就会下滑。这就是你所能期待的。”“嗯，我们并没有比去年糟糕多少。”“看看周围，大家都有麻烦了。”

The balancing feedback loop that should keep the system state at an acceptable level is overwhelmed by a reinforcing feedback loop heading downhill. The lower the perceived system state, the lower the desired state. The lower the desired state, the less discrepancy, and the less corrective action is taken. The less corrective action, the lower the system state. If this loop is allowed to run unchecked, it can lead to a continuous degradation in the system’s performance.
应该保持系统状态在可接受水平的平衡反馈回路被不断下降的强化反馈回路所淹没。感知到的系统状态越低，期望的状态越低。期望状态越低，差异越小，采取的纠正措施越少。纠正行动越少，系统状态越低。如果允许这个循环不加检查地运行，它会导致系统性能的持续下降。

Another name for this system trap is “eroding goals.” It is also called the “boiled frog syndrome,” from the old story (I don’t know whether it is true) that a frog put suddenly in hot water will jump right out, but if it is put into cold water that is gradually heated up, the frog will stay there happily until it boils. “Seems to be getting a little warm in here. Well, but then it’s not so much warmer than it was a while ago.” Drift to low performance is a gradual process. If the system state plunged quickly, there would be an agitated corrective process. But if it drifts down slowly enough to erase the memory of (or belief in) how much better things used to be, everyone is lulled into lower and lower expectations, lower effort, lower performance.
这个系统陷阱的另一个名字是“侵蚀目标”它也被称为“煮青蛙综合症”，来自一个古老的故事(我不知道是否正确) ，一只青蛙突然放在热水中会跳出来，但如果它被放在冷水中逐渐加热，青蛙会高兴地呆在那里，直到它沸腾。看起来这里有点热了。好吧，但是现在也没有刚才那么暖和了。”漂移到低性能是一个渐进的过程。如果系统状态迅速下降，就会有一个激烈的纠正过程。但是，如果它慢慢下降，足以抹去记忆(或相信)多少更好的东西曾经是，每个人都被哄骗到越来越低的期望，更低的努力，更低的表现。

There are two antidotes to eroding goals. One is to keep standards absolute, regardless of performance. Another is to make goals sensitive to the best performances of the past, instead of the worst. If perceived performance has an upbeat bias instead of a downbeat one, if one takes the best results as a standard, and the worst results only as a temporary setback, then the same system structure can pull the system up to better and better performance. The reinforcing loop going downward, which said “the worse things get, the worse I’m going to let them get,” becomes a reinforcing loop going upward: “The better things get, the harder I’m going to work to make them even better.”
有两种方法可以解决目标被削弱的问题。一个是保持绝对的标准，不管业绩如何。另一个是让目标敏感于过去最好的表现，而不是最差的表现。如果感知到的绩效有一个乐观的偏见而不是悲观的，如果一个人把最好的结果作为一个标准，而最坏的结果只是一个暂时的挫折，那么同样的系统结构可以把系统拉到更好和更好的绩效。向下的强化循环说“事情变得越糟糕，我就会让它变得越糟糕”，变成了向上的强化循环: “事情变得越好，我就越努力让它变得更好。”

If I had applied that lesson to my jogging, I’d be running marathons by now.
如果我把这个教训用在慢跑上，我现在就已经跑马拉松了。

THE TRAP: DRIFT TO LOW PERFORMANCE

Allowing performance standards to be influenced by past performance, especially if there is a negative bias in perceiving past performance, sets up a reinforcing feedback loop of eroding goals that sets a system drifting toward low performance.

THE WAY OUT

Keep performance standards absolute. Even better, let standards be enhanced by the best actual performances instead of being discouraged by the worst. Use the same structure to set up a drift toward high performance!

Escalation
升级

Islamic militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier Sunday and threatened to kill him unless the army quickly releases the imprisoned founder of a dominant Muslim group in the Gaza Strip. . . . The kidnapping . . . came in a wave of intense violence, . . . with the shooting of three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier who . . . was gunned down from a passing vehicle while he was on patrol in a jeep. In addition Gaza was buffeted by repeated clashes between stone-throwing demonstrators and Israeli troops, who opened fire with live ammunition and rubber bullets, wounding at least 120 people.

—Clyde Haberman, International Herald Tribune, 1992^8
8

I already mentioned one example of escalation early in this book; the system of kids fighting. You hit me, so I hit you back a little harder, so you hit me back a little harder, and pretty soon we have a real fight going.
在这本书的早期，我已经提到了一个升级的例子: 孩子们打架的系统。你打我，我就更狠地还手，你也更狠地还手，很快我们就真的打起来了。

“I’ll raise you one” is the decision rule that leads to escalation. Escalation comes from a reinforcing loop set up by competing actors trying to get ahead of each other. The goal of one part of the system or one actor is not absolute, like the temperature of a room thermostat being set at 18°C (65°F), but is related to the state of another part of the system, another actor. Like many of the other system traps, escalation is not necessarily a bad thing. If the competition is about some desirable goal, like a more efficient computer or a cure for AIDS, it can hasten the whole system toward the goal. But when it is escalating hostility, weaponry, noise, or irritation, this is an insidious trap indeed. The most common and awful examples are arms races and those places on earth where implacable enemies live constantly on the edge of self-reinforcing violence.
“我给你加一个”是导致事态升级的决策规则。升级来自于一个强化的循环，这个循环是由相互竞争的参与者设置的，他们试图抢在对方前面。系统的一个部分或一个参与者的目标不是绝对的，就像室内恒温器的温度设定在18摄氏度(65华氏度) ，而是与系统的另一个参与者的状态有关。像许多其他的系统陷阱一样，升级不一定是件坏事。如果竞争是为了某个理想的目标，比如更高效的计算机或者治愈艾滋病的方法，它可以加速整个系统朝着这个目标前进。但是，当敌意、武器、噪音或愤怒不断升级时，这确实是一个阴险的陷阱。最常见和最可怕的例子是军备竞赛和地球上那些顽固的敌人不断生活在自我强化的暴力边缘的地方。

Each actor takes its desired state from the other’s perceived system state—and ups it! Escalation is not just keeping up with the Joneses, but keeping slightly ahead of the Joneses. The United States and the Soviet Union for years exaggerated their reports of each other’s armaments in order to justify more armaments of their own. Each weapons increase on one side caused a scramble to surpass it on the other side. Although each side blamed the other for the escalation, it would be more systematic to say that each side was escalating itself—its own weapons development started a process that was sure to require still more weapons development in the future. This system caused trillions of dollars of expense, the degradation of the economies of two superpowers, and the evolution of unimaginably destructive weapons, which still threaten the world.
每个参与者都从对方感知到的系统状态中获取自己想要的状态——并将其提升！间谍大邻演不仅要跟上邻居的步伐，还要略微领先于邻居。多年来，美国和苏联夸大了他们对彼此军备的报告，以证明他们拥有更多的军备是合理的。每一次武器的增加都会导致一方争相超越另一方。虽然双方都指责对方造成了事态升级，但更系统的说法是，双方都在升级自己的武器——它自己的武器发展开始了一个进程，今后肯定还需要更多的武器发展。这一体系造成了数万亿美元的开支，两个超级大国的经济恶化，以及难以想象的破坏性武器的演变，这些武器仍然威胁着世界。

Negative campaigning is another perverse example of escalation. One candidate smears another, so the other smears back, and so forth, until the voters have no idea that their candidates have any positive features, and the whole democratic process is demeaned.
负面竞选活动是另一个反常的升级例子。一个候选人抹黑另一个候选人，另一个候选人抹黑另一个候选人，以此类推，直到选民不知道他们的候选人有任何积极的特点，整个民主进程被贬低。

Then there are price wars, with one economic competitor underpricing another, which causes the other to cut prices more, which causes the first to cut prices yet again, until both sides are losing money, but neither side can easily back out. This kind of escalation can end with the bankruptcy of one of the competitors.
然后是价格战，一个经济竞争对手压低另一个经济竞争对手的价格，导致另一个经济竞争对手进一步降价，导致第一个经济竞争对手再次降价，直到双方都出现亏损，但双方都不能轻易退出。这种升级可以以其中一个竞争对手的破产告终。

Advertising companies escalate their bids for the attention of the consumer. One company does something bright and loud and arresting. Its competitor does something louder, bigger, brasher. The first company outdoes that. Advertising becomes ever more present in the environment (in the mail, on the telephone), more garish, more noisy, more intrusive, until the consumer’s senses are dulled to the point at which almost no advertiser’s message can penetrate.
广告公司为了吸引消费者的注意力，不断提高报价。一家公司做了一些明亮、响亮和引人注目的事情。它的竞争对手做了一些更响亮，更大，更无耻的事情。第一家公司超越了它。广告变得越来越出现在环境中(邮件，电话) ，越来越花哨，越来越吵闹，越来越侵入，直到消费者的感觉迟钝到几乎没有广告商的信息能够穿透的地步。

The escalation system also produces the increasing loudness of conversation at cocktail parties, the increasing length of limousines, and the increasing raunchiness of rock bands.
升级系统也产生了鸡尾酒会上越来越大的谈话声，越来越长的豪华轿车，以及越来越多的粗俗摇滚乐队。

Escalation also could be about peacefulness, civility, efficiency, subtlety, quality. But even escalating in a good direction can be a problem, because it isn’t easy to stop. Each hospital trying to outdo the others in up-to-date, powerful, expensive diagnostic machines can lead to out-of-sight health care costs. Escalation in morality can lead to holier-than-thou sanctimoniousness. Escalation in art can lead from baroque to rococo to kitsch.
升级也可以是关于和平，礼貌，效率，微妙，质量。但即使是朝着好的方向升级也可能是个问题，因为它不容易停止。每家医院都试图在最新的、功能强大的、昂贵的诊断机器方面超越其他医院，这可能导致看不见的医疗保健费用。道德的升级可能导致虚伪的道貌岸然。艺术的升级可以导致从巴洛克到洛可可再到媚俗。

Escalation in environmentally responsible lifestyles can lead to rigid and unnecessary puritanism.
对环境负责的生活方式的升级会导致僵化和不必要的生态智慧。

Escalation, being a reinforcing feedback loop, builds exponentially. Therefore, it can carry a competition to extremes faster than anyone would believe possible. If nothing is done to break the loop, the process usually ends with one or both of the competitors breaking down.
升级，作为一个强化的反馈回路，以指数形式建立。因此，它可以比任何人想象的更快地将竞争推向极端。如果不采取任何措施打破循环，这个过程通常以一个或两个竞争者的崩溃而告终。

One way out of the escalation trap is unilateral disarmament—deliberately reducing your own system state to induce reductions in your state. Within the logic of the system, this option is almost unthinkable. But it actually can work, if one does it with determination, and if one can survive the short-term advantage of the competitor.
走出升级陷阱的一种方法是单方面解除武装——故意减少你自己的系统状态，以诱导你的状态减少。在系统的逻辑中，这种选择几乎是不可想象的。但是，如果一个人下定决心这么做，并且能够在竞争对手的短期优势下生存下来，这种方法实际上是可行的。

The only other graceful way out of the escalation system is to negotiate a disarmament. That’s a structural change, an exercise in system design. It creates a new set of balancing controlling loops to keep the competition in bounds (parental pressure to stop the kids’ fight; regulations on the size and placement of advertisements; peace-keeping troops in violence-prone areas). Disarmament agreements in escalation systems are not usually easy to get, and are never very pleasing to the parties involved, but they are much better than staying in the race.
唯一另一个走出升级制度的体面方式就是通过谈判解除武装。这是一个结构性的改变，一个系统设计的练习。它创造了一套新的平衡控制循环，以保持竞争的范围(家长的压力，以停止孩子的斗争; 规定的规模和广告的位置; 维持和平部队在暴力高发地区)。在升级制度中达成裁军协议通常并不容易，也从来不会让有关各方感到非常满意，但这比继续参加竞选要好得多。

THE TRAP: ESCALATION

When the state of one stock is determined by trying to surpass the state of another stock—and vice versa—then there is a reinforcing feedback loop carrying the system into an arms race, a wealth race, a smear campaign, escalating loudness, escalating violence. The escalation is exponential and can lead to extremes surprisingly quickly. If nothing is done, the spiral will be stopped by someone’s collapse—because exponential growth cannot go on forever.

THE WAY OUT

The best way out of this trap is to avoid getting in it. If caught in an escalating system, one can refuse to compete (unilaterally disarm), thereby interrupting the reinforcing loop. Or one can negotiate a new system with balancing loops to control the escalation.

Success to the Successful— Competitive Exclusion
成功的成功ー竞争性排斥

Extremely rich people—the top slice of the top 1 percent of taxpayers—have considerable flexibility to expose less of their income to taxation. . . . Those who can have raced to take bonuses now rather than next year [when taxes are expected to be higher], to cash in stock options, . . . and to move income forward in any way possible.

—Sylvia Nasar, International Herald Tribune, 1992^9
9

Using accumulated wealth, privilege, special access, or inside information to create more wealth, privilege, access or information are examples of the archetype called “success to the successful.” This system trap is found whenever the winners of a competition receive, as part of the reward, the means to compete even more effectively in the future. That’s a reinforcing feedback loop, which rapidly divides a system into winners who go on winning, and losers who go on losing.
利用累积的财富、特权、特殊渠道或内部信息来创造更多的财富、特权、渠道或信息，是所谓“成功者的成功”的原型范例这个系统陷阱是每当竞争的胜利者获得，作为奖励的一部分，在未来更有效地竞争的手段被发现。这是一个强化的反馈循环，它迅速地将一个系统划分为继续赢的赢家和继续输的输家。

Anyone who has played the game of Monopoly knows the success-to the-successful system. All players start out equal. The ones who manage to be first at building “hotels” on their property are able to extract “rent” from the other players—which they can then use to buy more hotels. The more hotels you have, the more hotels you can get. The game ends when one player has bought up everything, unless the other players have long ago quit in frustration.
任何玩过“大富翁”游戏的人都知道“大富翁”系统的成功。所有玩家一开始都是平等的。那些成功率先在自己的地产上建造“酒店”的公司，可以从其他公司那里榨取“租金”，然后用这些钱购买更多的酒店。你拥有的酒店越多，你就能得到越多的酒店。当一个玩家买光了所有的东西，游戏就结束了，除非其他玩家很久以前就因为沮丧而退出了。

Once our neighborhood had a contest with a $100 reward for the family that put up the most impressive display of outdoor Christmas lights. The family that won the first year spent the $100 on more Christmas lights. After that family won three years in a row, with their display getting more elaborate every year, the contest was suspended.
曾经有一次，我们的邻居举办了一个比赛，奖金是100美元，用来奖励那个在户外挂出最令人印象深刻的圣诞彩灯的家庭。第一年获胜的家庭将100美元用于购买更多的圣诞彩灯。在这个家庭连续三年获胜之后，他们的展示越来越精致，比赛被暂停。

To him that hath shall be given. The more the winner wins, the more he, she, or it can win in the future. If the winning takes place in a limited environment, such that everything the winner wins is extracted from the losers, the losers are gradually bankrupted, or forced out, or starved.
给那些已经拥有的人。赢家赢得越多，他、她或者它将来能赢得的就越多。如果胜利发生在一个有限的环境中，那么胜利者所赢得的一切都是从失败者那里榨取的，那么失败者就会逐渐破产，或者被迫离开，或者挨饿。

Success to the successful is a well-known concept in the field of ecology, where it is called “the competitive exclusion principle.” This principle says that two different species cannot live in exactly the same ecological niche, competing for exactly the same resources. Because the two species are different, one will necessarily reproduce faster, or be able to use the resource more efficiently than the other. It will win a larger share of the resource, which will give it the ability to multiply more and keep winning. It will not only dominate the niche, it will drive the losing competitor to extinction. That will happen not by direct confrontation usually, but by appropriating all the resource, leaving none for the weaker competitor.
成功到成功在生态学领域是一个著名的概念，在那里它被称为“竞争排除原则”这个原则认为，两个不同的物种不可能生活在完全相同的生态位中，为了完全相同的资源而竞争。因为两个物种是不同的，其中一个必然会繁殖得更快，或者能够比另一个更有效地利用资源。它们将赢得更大的资源份额，这将使它们有能力繁殖更多，并继续获胜。它不仅会主宰利基市场，还会将失败的竞争对手赶尽杀绝。这通常不是通过直接对抗，而是通过占用所有的资源，不给弱者留下任何东西。

Another expression of this trap was part of the critique of capitalism by Karl Marx. Two firms competing in the same market will exhibit the same behavior as two species competing in a niche. One will gain a slight advantage, through greater efficiency or smarter investment or better technology or bigger bribes, or whatever. With that advantage, the firm will have more income to invest in productive facilities or newer technologies or advertising or bribes. Its reinforcing feedback loop of capital accumulation will be able to turn faster than that of the other firm, enabling it to produce still more and earn still more. If there is a finite market and no antitrust law to stop it, one firm will take over everything as long as it chooses to reinvest in and expand its production facilities.
这种陷阱的另一种表现形式是卡尔 · 马克思对资本主义的批判。两个公司在同一个市场上竞争，会表现出与两个物种在同一个利基市场上竞争相同的行为。其中一个会通过更高的效率、更聪明的投资、更好的技术、更多的贿赂或者其他方式获得微弱的优势。有了这些优势，公司就会有更多的收入来投资于生产设施、更新的技术、广告或贿赂。它强化的资本积累反馈回路将能够比其他公司转得更快，使它能够生产更多，赚得更多。如果有一个有限的市场，没有反垄断法来阻止它，一个公司将接管一切，只要它选择再投资和扩大其生产设施。

Some people think the fall of the communist Soviet Union has disproved the theories of Karl Marx, but this particular analysis of his—that market competition systematically eliminates market competition—is demonstrated wherever there is, or used to be, a competitive market. Because of the reinforcing feedback loop of success to the successful, the many automobile companies in the United States were reduced to three (not one, because of antitrust laws). In most major U.S. cities, there is only one newspaper left. In every market economy, we see long term trends of declining numbers of farms, while the size of farms increases.
有些人认为，共产主义苏联的垮台推翻了马克思的理论，但他对市场竞争系统性地消除市场竞争的这一特殊分析，证明了无论何处存在或曾经存在竞争性市场。由于成功者与成功者之间不断加强的反馈循环，美国的许多汽车公司被减少到三家(不是一家，因为反垄断法)。在美国大多数主要城市，只剩下一家报纸。在每一个市场经济体中，我们都看到农场数量下降的长期趋势，而农场规模却在增加。

The trap of success to the successful does its greatest damage in the many ways it works to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Not only do the rich have more ways to avoid taxation than the poor, but::
成功者的成功陷阱在许多方面造成了最大的破坏，它使富人变得更富，使穷人变得更穷。与穷人相比，富人不仅有更多避税的方法，而且:

• In most societies, the poorest children receive the worst educations in the worst schools, if they are able to go to school at all. With few marketable skills, they qualify only for low paying jobs, perpetuating their poverty.^10
10

• People with low income and few assets are not able to borrow from most banks. Therefore, either they can’t invest in capital improvements, or they must go to local moneylenders who charge exorbitant interest rates. Even when interest rates are reasonable, the poor pay them, the rich collect them.

• Land is held so unevenly in many parts of the world that most farmers are tenants on someone else’s land. They must pay part of their crops to the landowner for the privilege of working the land, and so never are able to buy land of their own. The landowner uses the income from tenants to buy more land.

Those are only a few of the feedbacks that perpetuate inequitable distribution of income, assets, education, and opportunity. Because the poor can afford to buy only small quantities (of food, fuel, seed, fertilizer), they pay the highest prices. Because they are often unorganized and inarticulate, a disproportionately small part of government expenditure is allocated to their needs. Ideas and technologies come to them last. Disease and pollution come to them first. They are the people who have no choice but to take dangerous, low paying jobs, whose children are not vaccinated, who live in crowded, crime-prone, disaster-prone areas.
这些只是导致收入、资产、教育和机会分配不均的少数反馈。因为穷人只能买得起少量的食物、燃料、种子和化肥，所以他们支付的价格最高。因为他们往往没有组织，口齿不清，政府开支中不成比例的一小部分被分配给了他们的需求。思想和技术最后才是他们的目标。疾病和污染最先到来。他们别无选择，只能从事危险的低收入工作，他们的孩子没有接种疫苗，他们生活在拥挤的、容易发生犯罪和灾难的地区。

How do you break out of the trap of success to the successful?
你怎样才能从成功的陷阱中挣脱出来？

Species and companies sometimes escape competitive exclusion by diversifying. A species can learn or evolve to exploit new resources. A company can create a new product or service that does not directly compete with existing ones. Markets tend toward monopoly and ecological niches toward monotony, but they also create offshoots of diversity, new markets, new species, which in the course of time may attract competitors, which then begin to move the system toward competitive exclusion again.
物种和公司有时通过多样化来逃避竞争排斥。一个物种可以学习或进化开发新的资源。一家公司可以创造一种新的产品或服务，这种产品或服务不会直接与现有产品或服务竞争。市场趋向于垄断，生态位趋向于单调，但它们也创造了多样性的分支，新的市场，新的物种，随着时间的推移，这可能会吸引竞争者，然后开始使系统再次走向竞争性排斥。

Diversification is not guaranteed, however, especially if the monopolizing firm (or species) has the power to crush all offshoots, or buy them up, or deprive them of the resources they need to stay alive. Diversification doesn’t work as a strategy for the poor.
然而，多样化并不能保证，特别是如果垄断企业(或物种)有能力摧毁所有的分支，或者收购它们，或者剥夺它们赖以生存的资源。对穷人来说，多样化并不是一个有效的策略。

The success-to the-successful loop can be kept under control by putting into place feedback loops that keep any competitor from taking over entirely. That’s what antitrust laws do in theory and sometimes in practice. (One of the resources very big companies can win by winning, however, is the power to weaken the administration of antitrust laws.)
通过建立反馈回路，防止任何竞争对手完全接管，可以控制从成功到成功的循环。这就是反垄断法在理论上，有时在实践中所做的。(然而，一个非常大的公司可以通过胜利获得的资源是削弱反托拉斯法的管理的力量

The most obvious way out of the success-to the-successful archetype is by periodically “leveling the playing field.” Traditional societies and game designers instinctively design into their systems some way of equalizing advantages, so the game stays fair and interesting. Monopoly games start over again with everyone equal, so those who lost last time have a chance to win. Many sports provide handicaps for weaker players. Many traditional societies have some version of the Native American “potlatch,” a ritual in those who have the most give away many of their possessions to those who have the least.
从成功到成功的最显而易见的方法就是定期的“公平竞争”传统社会和游戏设计者本能地在他们的系统中设计一些平衡优势的方法，所以游戏保持公平和有趣。大富翁游戏在人人平等的情况下重新开始，这样上次输的人就有机会赢。许多体育项目为实力较弱的运动员提供了障碍。许多传统社会都有某种版本的美洲原住民“大杂烩”(potlatch) ，这是一种仪式，在那些拥有最多财产的人那里，他们会把自己的许多财产赠送给那些拥有最少的人。

There are many devices to break the loop of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer: tax laws written (unbeatably) to tax the rich at higher rates than the poor; charity; public welfare; labor unions; universal and equal health care and education; taxation on inheritance (a way of starting the game over with each new generation). Most industrial societies have some combination of checks like these on the workings of the success-to- the-successful trap, in order to keep everyone in the game. Gift-giving cultures redistribute wealth through potlatches and other ceremonies that increase the social standing of the gift giver.
有许多方法可以打破富人越来越富、穷人越来越穷的循环: 制定税法(无与伦比地) ，对富人征收高于穷人的税率; 慈善; 公共福利; 工会; 普遍和平等的医疗保健和教育; 对遗产征税(每一代新生代都可以重新开始这场游戏)。大多数工业社会都有一些类似这样的组合检查工作的成功到成功的陷阱，为了保持每个人在游戏中。送礼文化通过聚会和其他增加送礼者社会地位的仪式来重新分配财富。

These equalizing mechanisms may derive from simple morality, or they may come from the practical understanding that losers, if they are unable to get out of the game of success to the successful, and if they have no hope of winning, could get frustrated enough to destroy the playing field.
这些均衡机制可能源于简单的道德，也可能源于对失败者的实际理解，如果他们无法从成功的游戏中脱身，如果他们没有获胜的希望，他们可能会沮丧到足以摧毁竞技场。

THE TRAP: SUCCESS TO THE SUCCESSFUL

If the winners of a competition are systematically rewarded with the means to win again, a reinforcing feedback loop is created by which, if it is allowed to proceed uninhibited, the winners eventually take all, while the losers are eliminated.

THE WAY OUT

Diversification, which allows those who are losing the competition to get out of that game and start another one; strict limitation on the fraction of the pie any one winner may win (antitrust laws); policies that level the playing field, removing some of the advantage of the strongest players or increasing the advantage of the weakest; policies that devise rewards for success that do not bias the next round of competition.

Shifting the Burden to the Intervenor— Addiction
把负担转嫁给干预者ーー成瘾

You get some sense of what an incredible downward spiral we’re in. Because more costs keep being shifted to the private sector, more private sector people stop insuring their employees. We are . . . now up to 100,000 Americans a month losing their health insurance.

An enormous percentage of them qualify for state Medicaid benefits. And since states can’t run a deficit, they all go out and either underfund education, or underfund children’s investment programs, or raise taxes, and that takes money away from other investments.

—Bill Clinton, International Herald Tribune, 1992^11
11

If you want to make a Somali angry, it is said, take away his khat. . . .

Khat is the fresh tender leaves and twigs of the catha edulis plant.

. . . It is pharmacologically related to amphetamines. . . . Abdukadr Mahmoud Farah, 22, said he first started chewing khat when he was 15. . . . “The reason is not to think of this place. When I use it, I get happy. I can do everything. I do not get tired.”

—Keith B. Richburg, International Herald Tribune, 1992^12
12

Most people understand the addictive properties of alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, and heroin. Not everyone recognizes that addiction can appear in larger systems and in other guises—such as the dependence of industry on government subsidy, the reliance of farmers on fertilizers, the addiction of Western economies to cheap oil or weapons manufacturers to government contracts.
大多数人都知道酒精、尼古丁、咖啡因、糖和海洛因的成瘾性。并非所有人都认识到，成瘾可能以更大的体系和其他形式出现，例如工业依赖政府补贴、农民依赖化肥、西方经济体依赖廉价石油或武器制造商依赖政府合同。

This trap is known by many names: addiction, dependence, shifting the burden to the intervenor. The structure includes a stock with in-flows and out-flows. The stock can be physical (a crop of corn) or meta-physical (a sense of well-being or self-worth). The stock is maintained by an actor adjusting a balancing feedback loop—either altering the in-flows or outflows. The actor has a goal and compares it with a perception of the actual state of the stock to determine what action to take.
这个陷阱有很多名字: 成瘾，依赖，把负担转移到干预者身上。这个结构包括一个有流入和流出的股票。股票可以是物质的(一种玉米作物)或超物质的(一种幸福感或自我价值感)。股票是由一个调整平衡反馈回路的参与者维持的——或者改变流入或流出。参与者有一个目标，并将其与股票实际状态的感知进行比较，以决定采取什么行动。

Say you are a young boy, living in a land of famine and war, and your goal is to boost your sense of well-being so you feel happy and energetic and There is a huge discrepancy between your desired and actual state, and there are very few options available to you for closing that gap. But one thing you can do is take drugs. The drugs do nothing to improve your real situation—in fact, they likely make it worse. But the drugs quickly alter your perception of your state, numbing your senses and making you feel tireless and brave.
假设你是一个小男孩，生活在饥荒和战争的土地上，你的目标是提高你的幸福感，这样你就会感到快乐和精力充沛。但是有一件事你可以做，那就是吸毒。药物对改善你的真实情况没有任何作用——事实上，它们很可能使情况变得更糟。但是药物会迅速改变你对自己状态的感知，麻木你的感官，让你感到不知疲倦和勇敢。

Similarly, if you are running an ineffective company, and if you can get the government to subsidize you, you can go on making money and continue to have a good profit, thereby remaining a respected member of society. Or perhaps you are a farmer trying to increase your corn crop on overworked land. You apply fertilizers and get a bumper crop without doing anything to improve the fertility of the soil.
同样，如果你经营的是一家效率低下的公司，如果你能得到政府的补贴，你就可以继续赚钱，继续获得丰厚的利润，从而仍然是受人尊敬的社会成员。或者你是一个农民，试图在过度劳作的土地上增加你的玉米产量。你施用化肥，却得到了丰收，却没有采取任何措施来改善土壤的肥力。

The trouble is that the states created by interventions don’t last. The intoxication wears off. The subsidy is spent. The fertilizer is consumed or washed away.
问题在于，政府干预所创造的国家不会持久。这种兴奋逐渐消失。补贴花完了。肥料被消耗或冲走。

Examples of dependence and burden-shifting systems abound:
依赖和负担转移系统的例子比比皆是:

• Care of the aged used to be carried on by families, not always easily. So along came Social Security, retirement communities, nursing homes. Now most families no longer have the space, the time, the skills, or the willingness to care for their elderly members.

• Long-distance shipping was carried by railroads and short distance commuting by subways and streetcars, until the government decided to help out by building highways.

• Kids used to be able to do arithmetic in their heads or with paper and pencil, before the widespread use of calculators.

• Populations built up a partial immunity to diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and malaria, until vaccinations and drugs came along.

• Modern medicine in general has shifted the responsibility for health away from the practices and lifestyle of each individual and onto intervening doctors and medicines.

Shifting a burden to an intervenor can be a good thing. It often is done purposefully, and the result can be an increased ability to keep the system in a desirable state. Surely the 100 percent protection from smallpox vaccines, if it lasts, is preferable to only partial protection from natural smallpox immunity. Some systems really need an intervenor!
把负担转嫁给干预者可能是件好事。这种做法往往是有目的的，其结果可能是增强了保持系统处于理想状态的能力。当然，100% 的天花疫苗保护，如果它持续下去，比仅仅部分保护自然免疫天花更可取。有些系统确实需要一个干预者！

But the intervention can become a system trap. A corrective feedback process within the system is doing a poor (or even so-so) job of maintaining the state of the system. A well-meaning and efficient intervenor watches the struggle and steps in to take some of the load. The intervenor quickly brings the system to the state everybody wants it to be in. Congratulations are in order, usually self-congratulations by the intervenor to the intervenor.
但是干预可能会成为一个系统陷阱。系统内的纠正反馈过程在维护系统状态方面做得很差(甚至一般)。一个善意而高效的干预者观察着这种挣扎并介入以承担一些负担。干预者很快就把系统带到了每个人都想要的状态。恭喜是有序的，通常是干预者对干预者的自我祝贺。

Then the original problem reappears, since nothing has been done to solve it at its root cause. So the intervenor applies more of the “solution,” disguising the real state of the system again, and thereby failing to act on the problem. That makes it necessary to use still more “solution.”
然后原来的问题又出现了，因为没有人从根本上解决它。因此，干预者应用了更多的“解决方案”，再次掩盖了系统的真实状态，从而未能对问题采取行动。这就需要使用更多的“解决方案”

The trap is formed if the intervention, whether by active destruction or simple neglect, undermines the original capacity of the system to maintain itself. If that capability atrophies, then more of the intervention is needed to achieve the desired effect. That weakens the capability of the original system still more. The intervenor picks up the slack. And so forth.
如果干预，无论是主动破坏还是简单忽视，破坏了系统维持自身的原始能力，陷阱就会形成。如果这种能力萎缩，那么就需要更多的干预来达到预期的效果。这会进一步削弱原始系统的能力。干预者收拾残局。诸如此类。

Why does anyone enter the trap? First, the intervenor may not foresee that the initial urge to help out a bit can start a chain of events that leads to ever-increasing dependency, which ultimately will strain the capacity of the intervenor. The American health-care system is experiencing the strains of that sequence of events.
为什么会有人进入这个陷阱？首先，干预者可能没有预见到，最初的帮助一点点的冲动会引发一系列事件，导致依赖性不断增加，最终会压缩干预者的能力。美国的医疗保健系统正在经历这一系列事件带来的压力。

Second, the individual or community that is being helped may not think through the long term loss of control and the increased vulnerability that go along with the opportunity to shift a burden to an able and powerful intervenor.
第二，受到帮助的个人或社区可能没有考虑到长期失去控制和脆弱性增加的问题，这些问题伴随着将负担转移给有能力和有力的干预者的机会。

If the intervention is a drug, you become addicted. The more you are sucked into an addictive action, the more you are sucked into it again. One definition of addiction used in Alcoholics Anonymous is repeating the same stupid behavior over and over and over, and somehow expecting different results.
如果干预是一种药物，你就会上瘾。你越是沉迷于成瘾行为，你就越会再次沉迷其中。匿名戒酒会对成瘾的一个定义就是一遍又一遍地重复同样的愚蠢行为，然后期待不同的结果。

Addiction is finding a quick and dirty solution to the symptom of the problem, which prevents or distracts one from the harder and longer-term task of solving the real problem. Addictive policies are insidious, because they are so easy to sell, so simple to fall for.
上瘾是为问题的症状找到一个快速而肮脏的解决方案，它阻止或分散了一个人从解决真正问题的困难和长期任务。成瘾政策是阴险的，因为它们很容易推销，很容易上当。

Are insects threatening the crops? Rather than examine the farming the monocultures, the destruction of natural ecosystem controls that have led to the pest outbreak, just apply pesticides. That will make the bugs go away, and allow more monocultures, more destruction of ecosystems. That will bring back the bugs in greater outbursts, requiring more pesticides in the future.
昆虫威胁到庄稼了吗？与其研究单一种植，破坏自然生态系统控制，导致害虫爆发，不如直接使用杀虫剂。这样会让虫子消失，允许更多的单一种植，更多的生态系统破坏。这将使昆虫在更大范围内爆发，在未来需要更多的杀虫剂。

Is the price of oil going up? Rather than acknowledge the inevitable depletion of a nonrenewable resource and increase fuel efficiency or switch to other fuels, we can fix the price. (Both the Soviet Union and the United States did this as their first response to the oil price shocks of the 1970s.) That way we can pretend that nothing is happening and go on burning oil—making the depletion problem worse. When that policy breaks down, we can go to war for oil. Or find more oil. Like a drunk ransacking the house in hopes of unearthing just one more bottle, we can pollute the beaches and invade the last wilderness areas, searching for just one more big deposit of oil.
石油价格上涨了吗？与其承认不可再生资源的不可避免的消耗，提高燃料效率或转向其他燃料，我们可以固定价格。(苏联和美国都这样做，作为他们对20世纪70年代石油价格冲击的第一反应这样我们就可以假装什么都没有发生，继续燃烧石油——使石油枯竭问题更加严重。当这一政策失效时，我们可以为石油发动战争。或者找到更多的石油。就像一个醉汉洗劫房子，希望再挖出一个瓶子一样，我们可以污染海滩，侵入最后的荒野地区，只为寻找一个更大的石油储备。

Breaking an addiction is painful. It may be the physical pain of heroin withdrawal, or the economic pain of a price increase to reduce oil consumption, or the consequences of a pest invasion while natural predator populations are restoring themselves. Withdrawal means finally confronting the real (and usually much deteriorated) state of the system and taking the actions that the addiction allowed one to put off. Sometimes the withdrawal can be done gradually. Sometimes a nonaddictive policy can be put in place first to restore the degraded system with a minimum of turbulence (group support to restore the self-image of the addict, home insulation and high-mileage cars to reduce oil expense, polyculture and crop rotation to reduce crop vulnerability to pests). Sometimes there’s no way out but to go cold turkey and just bear the pain.
戒除毒瘾是痛苦的。它可能是海洛因戒断带来的身体痛苦，或是为减少石油消费而提高价格带来的经济痛苦，或是害虫入侵造成的后果，而自然捕食者种群正在恢复自我。戒毒意味着最终面对真实的(通常是严重恶化的)系统状态，并采取行动，使成瘾者能够推迟。有时候戒断是可以逐步完成的。有时，可以首先实施一项不上瘾的政策，以最小的动荡恢复退化的系统(团体支持，以恢复上瘾者的自我形象，家庭隔热和高里程汽车，以减少石油费用，混合栽培和作物轮作，以减少作物对害虫的脆弱性)。有时候，除了突然戒掉，只能忍受痛苦，别无他法。

It’s worth going through the withdrawal to get back to an unaddicted state, but it is far preferable to avoid addiction in the first place.
通过戒断来回到一个不上瘾的状态是值得的，但是最好是从一开始就避免上瘾。

The problem can be avoided up front by intervening in such a way as to strengthen the ability of the system to shoulder its own burdens. This option, helping the system to help itself, can be much cheaper and easier than taking over and running the system—something liberal politicians don’t seem to understand. The secret is to begin not with a heroic takeover, but with a series of questions.
这个问题可以通过预先进行干预以加强该系统承担其自身负担的能力来避免。这种选择，帮助系统自救，可以比接管和运行系统更便宜和容易——自由派政治家似乎不明白这一点。秘诀不在于英勇的接管，而在于一系列的问题。

• Why are the natural correction mechanisms failing?
•为什么自然修正机制失灵？

• How can obstacles to their success be removed?
怎样才能消除阻碍它们成功的障碍？

• How can mechanisms for their success be made more effective?
如何使其成功的机制更加有效？

THE TRAP: SHIFTING THE BURDEN TO THE INTERVENOR

Shifting the burden, dependence, and addiction arise when a solution to a systemic problem reduces (or disguises) the symptoms, but does nothing to solve the underlying problem. Whether it is a substance that dulls one’s perception or a policy that hides the underlying trouble, the drug of choice interferes with the actions that could solve the real problem.

If the intervention designed to correct the problem causes the self-maintaining capacity of the original system to atrophy or erode, then a destructive reinforcing feedback loop is set in motion. The system deteriorates; more and more of the solution is then required. The system will become more and more dependent on the intervention and less and less able to maintain its own desired state.

THE WAY OUT

Again, the best way out of this trap is to avoid getting in. Beware of symptom-relieving or signal-denying policies or practices that don’t really address the problem. Take the focus off short-term relief and put it on long term restructuring.

If you are the intervenor, work in such a way as to restore or enhance the system’s own ability to solve its problems, then remove yourself.
如果你是介入者，那么你应该努力恢复或增强系统自身解决问题的能力，然后让自己离开。

If you are the one with an unsupportable dependency, build your system’s own capabilities back up before removing the intervention. Do it right away. The longer you wait, the harder the withdrawal process will be.
如果你是一个不可支持的依赖者，在移除干预之前建立你的系统自身的能力。马上去做。你等的时间越长，戒断的过程就越难。

Rule Beating
打破规则

CALVIN: OK, Hobbes, I’ve got a plan.

HOBBES: Yeah?

CALVIN: If I do ten spontaneous acts of good will a day from now until Christmas, Santa will have to be lenient in judging the rest of this last year. I can claim I’ve turned a new leaf.

HOBBES: Well, here’s your chance. Susie’s coming this way.

CALVIN: Maybe I’ll start tomorrow and do 20 a day.

—International Herald Tribune, 1992^13
13

Wherever there are rules, there is likely to be rule beating. Rule beating means evasive action to get around the intent of a system’s rules—abiding by the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. Rule beating becomes a problem only when it leads a system into large distortions, unnatural behaviors that would make no sense at all in the absence of the rules. If it gets out of hand, rule beating can cause systems to produce very damaging behavior indeed.
哪里有规则，哪里就有可能打破规则。规则打击意味着规避系统规则的意图——遵守法律的字面意思，而不是精神意思。规则打击只有在它导致系统出现大规模扭曲、不自然的行为时才会成为问题，而这些行为在没有规则的情况下是毫无意义的。如果它失去控制，规则打击会导致系统产生非常有害的行为。

Rule beating that distorts nature, the economy, organizations, and the human spirit can be destructive. Here are some examples, some serious, some less so, of rule beating:
规则打击扭曲了自然，经济，组织和人类精神，可以是破坏性的。下面是一些打破规则的例子，有些很严重，有些不那么严重:

• Departments of governments, universities, and corporations often engage in pointless spending at the end of the fiscal year just to get rid of money—because if they don’t spend their budget this year, they will be allocated less next year.

• In the 1970s, the state of Vermont adopted a land-use law called Act 250 that requires a complex approval process for subdivisions that create lots of ten acres or less. Now Vermont has an extraordinary number of lots just a little over ten acres.

• To reduce grain imports and assist local grain farmers, European countries imposed import restrictions on feed grains in the 1960s. No one thought, while the restrictions were being drafted, about the starchy root called cassava, which also happens to be a good animal feed. Cassava was not included in the restrictions. So corn imports from North America were replaced by cassava imports from Asia.^14
14

• The U.S. Endangered Species Act restricts development wherever an endangered species has its habitat. Some landowners, on discovering that their property harbors an endangered species, purposely hunt or poison it, so the land can be developed.

Notice that rule beating produces the appearance of rules being followed. Drivers obey the speed limits, when they’re in the vicinity of a police car. Feed grains are no longer imported into Europe. Development does not proceed where an endangered species is documented as present. The “letter of the law” is met, the spirit of the law is not. That is a warning about needing to design the law with the whole system, including its self-organizing evasive possibilities, in mind.
注意，规则打击会产生所遵循的规则的外观。当司机在警车附近时，他们遵守速度限制。饲料谷物不再进口到欧洲。在濒危物种被记录在案的情况下，发展不会继续。“法律条文”得到满足，而法律精神却没有得到满足。这是一个警告，需要在设计法律时考虑到整个系统，包括其自组织的规避可能性。

Rule beating is usually a response of the lower levels in a hierarchy to overrigid, deleterious, unworkable, or ill-defined rules from above. There are two generic responses to rule beating. One is to try to stamp out the self-organizing response by strengthening the rules or their enforcement—usually giving rise to still greater system distortion. That’s the way further into the trap.
规则打击通常是层次结构中较低级别对来自上层的过于僵化、有害、不可操作或定义不清的规则的反应。对于规则打击有两种通用的反应。一种是试图通过加强规则或强制执行来消除自组织反应——通常会导致更大的系统扭曲。这就是进一步深入陷阱的方法。

The way out of the trap, the opportunity, is to understand rule beating as useful feedback, and to revise, improve, rescind, or better explain the rules. Designing rules better means foreseeing as far as possible the effects of the rules on the subsystems, including any rule beating they might engage in, and structuring the rules to turn the self-organizing capabilities of the system in a positive direction.
摆脱困境的方法，也就是机会，就是把打破规则理解为有用的反馈，并修改、改进、废除或者更好地解释规则。更好地设计规则意味着尽可能预见规则对子系统的影响，包括它们可能参与的任何规则打击，并构建规则以使系统的自组织能力朝着积极的方向发展。

THE TRAP: RULE BEATING

Rules to govern a system can lead to rule beating—perverse behavior that gives the appearance of obeying the rules or achieving the goals, but that actually distorts the system.

THE WAY OUT

Design, or redesign, rules to release creativity not in the direction of beating the rules, but in the direction of achieving the purpose of the rules.

Seeking the Wrong Goal
寻找错误的目标

The government formally acknowledged Friday what private economists have been saying for months: Japan will not come close to hitting the 3.5 percent growth target government planners set a year ago. . . .

GNP grew in 1991 by 3.5 percent and in 1990 by 5.5 percent. Since the beginning of this fiscal year . . . the economy has been stagnant or contracting. . . .

Now that the forecast . . . has been lowered sharply, pressure from politicians and business is likely to grow on the Finance Ministry to take stimulative measures.

—International Herald Tribune, 1992^15
15岁

Back in Chapter One, I said that one of the most powerful ways to influence the behavior of a system is through its purpose or goal. That’s because the goal is the direction-setter of the system, the definer of discrepancies that require action, the indicator of compliance, failure, or success toward which balancing feedback loops work. If the goal is defined badly, if it doesn’t measure what it’s supposed to measure, if it doesn’t reflect the real welfare of the system, then the system can’t possibly produce a desirable result. Systems, like the three wishes in the traditional fairy tale, have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce.
回到第一章，我说过影响一个系统行为的最有力的方法之一就是通过它的目的或者目标。这是因为目标是系统的方向设定者，需要采取行动的差异的定义者，遵从性、失败或平衡反馈循环工作的成功的指示器。如果目标定义不当，如果它不能度量它应该度量的东西，如果它不能反映系统的真实福利，那么系统就不可能产生理想的结果。系统，就像传统童话中的三个愿望一样，有一个可怕的倾向，就是只生产你要求它们生产的东西。小心你让他们生产的东西。

If the desired system state is national security, and that is defined as the amount of money spent on the military, the system will produce military spending. It may or may not produce national security. In fact, security may be undermined if the spending drains investment from other parts of the economy, and if the spending goes for exorbitant, unnecessary, or unworkable weapons.
如果期望的系统状态是国家安全，而国家安全被定义为花在军事上的钱数，那么系统将产生军事开支。它可能会也可能不会产生国家安全。事实上，如果开支耗尽了经济其他领域的投资，如果开支用于过高的、不必要的或不可行的武器，安全可能会受到破坏。

If the desired system state is good education, measuring that goal by the amount of money spent per student will ensure money spent per student. If the quality of education is measured by performance on standardized tests, the system will produce performance on standardized tests. Whether either of these measures is correlated with good education is at least worth thinking about.
如果理想的系统状态是良好的教育，用每个学生花费的金额来衡量这个目标将确保每个学生花费的金额。如果教育质量是通过标准化考试的成绩来衡量的，那么这个系统就会产生标准化考试的成绩。至少值得思考的是，这些指标中的任何一项是否与良好的教育相关。

In the early days of family planning in India, program goals were defined in terms of the number of IUDs implanted. So doctors, in their eagerness to meet their targets, put loops into women without patient approval.
在印度计划生育的早期，计划目标是根据植入宫内节育器的数量来定义的。因此，医生们急于达到他们的目标，在没有得到病人同意的情况下给妇女植入了环。

These examples confuse effort with result, one of the most common mistakes in designing systems around the wrong goal. Maybe the worst mistake of this kind has been the adoption of the GNP as the measure of national economic success. The GNP is the gross national product, the money value of the final goods and services produced by the economy. As a measure of human welfare, it has been criticized almost from the moment it was invented:
这些例子混淆了努力和结果，这是围绕错误目标设计系统时最常见的错误之一。也许这类错误中最严重的就是将国民生产总值作为衡量国家经济成功的标准。国民生产总值是国民生产总值，是经济生产的最终产品和服务的货币价值。作为衡量人类福利的标准，它几乎从一开始就受到了批评:

The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.^16
16岁

We have a system of national accounting that bears no resemblance to the national economy whatsoever, for it is not the record of our life at home but the fever chart of our consumption.^17
17

The GNP lumps together goods and bads. (If there are more car accidents and medical bills and repair bills, the GNP goes up.) It counts only marketed goods and services. (If all parents hired people to bring up their children, the GNP would go up.) It does not reflect distributional equity. (An expensive second home for a rich family makes the GNP go up more than an inexpensive basic home for a poor family.) It measures effort rather than achievement, gross production and consumption rather than efficiency. New light bulbs that give the same light with one-eighth the electricity and that last ten times as long make the GNP go down.
国民生产总值把商品和坏东西混为一谈。(如果发生更多的车祸，医疗费用和维修费用，国民生产总值会上升它只计算市场上的商品和服务。(如果所有的父母都雇人抚养他们的孩子，国民生产总值就会上升它没有反映出分配公平。(一个富裕家庭拥有一套昂贵的第二套住房比一个贫穷家庭拥有一套便宜的基本住房的价格更高)它衡量的是努力而不是成就，衡量的是总生产和消费而不是效率。新的灯泡发出同样的光，只有八分之一的电力，而且持续时间是 GNP 的十倍，这使得 GNP 下降。

GNP is a measure of throughput—flows of stuff made and purchased in a year—rather than capital stocks, the houses and cars and computers and stereos that are the source of real wealth and real pleasure. It could be argued that the best society would be one in which capital stocks can be and used with the lowest possible throughput, rather than the highest.
国民生产总值(GNP)是衡量生产能力的指标——一年内生产和购买的商品的流量——而不是资本存量、房屋、汽车、电脑和音响，后者是真正的财富和真正的乐趣的来源。可以说，最好的社会应该是资本存量可以用尽可能低的产量来使用，而不是用尽可能高的产量。

Although there is every reason to want a thriving economy, there is no particular reason to want the GNP to go up. But governments around the world respond to a signal of faltering GNP by taking numerous actions to keep it growing. Many of those actions are simply wasteful, stimulating inefficient production of things no one particularly wants. Some of them, such as overharvesting forests in order to stimulate the economy in the short term, threaten the long term good of the economy or the society or the environment.
尽管有充分的理由希望经济繁荣，但没有特别的理由希望国民生产总值上升。但是世界各国政府对国民生产总值下降的信号作出反应，采取了许多行动来保持增长。许多这样的行动只是简单的浪费，刺激了没有人特别想要的东西的低效率生产。其中一些措施，例如为了在短期内刺激经济而过度砍伐森林，威胁到经济、社会或环境的长期利益。

If you define the goal of a society as GNP, that society will do its best to produce GNP. It will not produce welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency unless you define a goal and regularly measure and report the state of welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency. The world would be a different place if instead of competing to have the highest per capita GNP, nations competed to have the highest per capita stocks of wealth with the lowest throughput, or the lowest infant mortality, or the greatest political freedom, or the cleanest environment, or the smallest gap between the rich and the poor.
如果你把一个社会的目标定义为国民生产总值，那么这个社会将尽最大努力来生产国民生产总值。它不会产生福利、公平、正义或效率，除非你定义一个目标，并定期测量和报告福利、公平、正义或效率的状态。如果各国不是竞相争取最高的人均国民生产总值，而是竞相争取最高的人均财富储备、最低的生产量、最低的婴儿死亡率、最大的政治自由、最干净的环境或最小的贫富差距，那么世界将会是一个不同的地方。

Seeking the wrong goal, satisfying the wrong indicator, is a system characteristic almost opposite from rule beating. In rule beating, the system is out to evade an unpopular or badly designed rule, while giving the appearance of obeying it. In seeking the wrong goal, the system obediently follows the rule and produces its specified result—which is not necessarily what anyone actually wants. You have the problem of wrong goals when you find something stupid happening “because it’s the rule.” You have the problem of rule beating when you find something stupid happening because it’s the way around the rule. Both of these system perversions can be going on at the same time with regard to the same rule.
追求错误的目标，满足错误的指标，是一个与规则打击几乎相反的系统特征。在规则打击中，系统是为了逃避一个不受欢迎或设计糟糕的规则，同时给人一种遵守规则的假象。在追求错误的目标时，系统会顺从地遵循规则并产生特定的结果——这并不一定是任何人真正想要的。当你发现一些愚蠢的事情正在发生时，你就有了错误目标的问题，“因为这是规则。”当你发现一些愚蠢的事情正在发生时，你会有打破规则的问题，因为这是绕过规则的方式。对于同一条规则，这两种系统扭曲可能同时发生。

THE TRAP: SEEKING THE WRONG GOAL

System behavior is particularly sensitive to the goals of feedback loops. If the goals—the indicators of satisfaction of the rules—are defined inaccurately or incompletely, the system may obediently work to produce a result that is not really intended or wanted.

THE WAY OUT

Specify indicators and goals that reflect the real welfare of the system. Be especially careful not to confuse effort with result or you will end up with a system that is producing effort, not result.

INTERLUDE • The Goal of Sailboat Design
插曲 帆船设计的目标

Once upon a time, people raced sailboats not for millions of dollars or for national glory, but just for the fun of it.
很久以前，人们比赛帆船不是为了数百万美元或国家荣誉，而只是为了乐趣。

They raced the boats they already had for normal purposes, boats that were designed for fishing, or transporting goods, or sailing around on weekends.
他们比赛的船只，他们已经有了正常的目的，船只是为了捕鱼，或运输货物，或周末航行。

It quickly was observed that races are more interesting if the competitors are roughly equal in speed and maneuverability. So rules evolved, that defined various classes of boat by length and sail area and other parameters, and that restricted races to competitors of the same class.
人们很快发现，如果参赛者在速度和机动性方面大致相当，那么比赛就会更有趣。因此，规则不断发展，通过长度、航行面积和其他参数来定义不同类别的船，并将比赛局限于同一类别的竞争者。

Soon boats were being designed not for normal sailing, but for winning races within the categories defined by the rules. They squeezed the last possible burst of speed out of a square inch of sail, or the lightest possible load out of a standard-sized rudder. These boats were strange-looking and strange-handling, not at all the sort of boat you would want to take out fishing or for a Sunday sail. As the races became more serious, the rules became stricter and the boat designs more bizarre.
很快，船只不再是为普通航行而设计的，而是为了在规则定义的范围内赢得比赛。他们从一平方英寸的帆中挤出最后一次可能的速度爆发，或者从标准尺寸的舵中挤出最轻的可能载荷。这些船看起来很奇怪，操纵起来也很奇怪，一点也不像那种你会想出去钓鱼或者周日航行的船。随着比赛变得越来越严肃，规则变得越来越严格，船只的设计也越来越奇怪。

Now racing sailboats are extremely fast, highly responsive, and nearly unseaworthy. They need athletic and expert crews to manage them. No one would think of using an America’s Cup yacht for any purpose other than racing within the rules. The boats are so optimized around the present rules that they have lost all resilience. Any change in the rules would render them useless.
现在赛艇速度极快，反应迅速，几乎不适合航海。它们需要运动员和专家来管理它们。没有人会想到使用美洲杯游艇的任何目的，除了在规则范围内比赛。这些游艇在现行规则下进行了优化，以至于失去了所有的弹性。规则的任何改变都会让它们变得毫无用处。