我们未曾要求这样的互联网

也有人喜欢Instagram。

There are people who like Instagram.

他们知道还有其他选择存在，但他们并不迫切需要一个竞争者或替代品。

They know there are other things out there, and they're not clamoring for a competitor or an alternative.

我认为暗示完全没有切换能力是有点言过其实了。

I think suggesting that there is no capacity to switch is going a little far.

不是。

No.

我并不是说完全没有转换的可能性。

I'm not saying there's no capacity to switch.

我是说，转换成本越高，人们离开的可能性就越低。

I'm saying the higher the switching costs are, the lower the likelihood that people will leave.

你知道，以前我们浏览器里有弹窗广告，真正的弹窗广告，那种古早的弹窗广告，会弹出一个全新的浏览器窗口，哪怕只有一像素大小，自动播放音频，还会躲着你的光标跑。

You know, when we had pop up ads in our browsers and real pop up ads, the the paleolithic pop up ad that was a whole new browser window that spawned one pixel squared, auto played audio, ran away from your cursor.

我们摆脱那种广告的方式是，修改浏览器以加入弹窗拦截器在当时是合法的。

The way that we got rid of that was it was legal to modify browsers to have pop up blockers.

我们中超过50%的人都在浏览器中安装了广告拦截器。

More than 50% of us have installed an ad blocker in our browser.

多克·瑟尔斯称之为人类历史上规模最大的消费者抵制运动。

Doc Searles calls it the largest consumer boycott in human history.

因此，浏览器对你行为的侵入性有所节制，这与应用程序形成鲜明对比，因为逆向工程应用程序——由于它不是开放平台——在美国版权法下是非法的。

And as a result, there is some moderation upon the invasiveness of what a browser does to you that is in marked contrast with apps because reverse engineering app, because it's not an open platform, is illegal under American copyright law.

这违反了《数字千年版权法案》第1201条。

It violates section 12 o one of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

因此，当我们谈论这些平台如何通过竞争走向毒性时，我们排除了一种已被我们定为非法的竞争形式。

And so when we talk about how these platforms have competed their way into toxicity, we're excluding a form of competition that we have made illegal.

例如广告拦截器、隐私保护工具、丢弃算法推荐内容的功能等等。

For example, ad blockers, for example, privacy blockers, for example, things that discard algorithmic suggestions, and so on.

将这些排除在外，意味着你只能获得那些能够提供某种整体性、一揽子替代方案的公司作为竞争对手，它们试图说服你，不，

Taking those off the table means that the only competitors you get are firms that are capable of doing a sort of wholess, bolus replacement to convince you that, no.

你不再想使用Instagram了。

You don't wanna use Instagram anymore.

你更想用TikTok而不是Instagram，或者更确切地说，你希望以一种稍微不同的方式使用TikTok或Instagram，以保护你的利益免受公司利益的侵害。

You wanna use TikTok instead as opposed to you'd like to use TikTok or Instagram rather, but in a slightly different way that defends your interests against the firm's interests.

我们绝不能忘记，在数字技术和我们共同的记忆里，曾经存在一种我们禁止的竞争模式，它常常能对你在此担忧的问题做出非常迅速的回应。

And we mustn't ever forget that within digital technology and living memory, we had a mode of competition that we prohibited that often served as a very rapid response to specifically the thing you're worried about here.

我有个朋友安德里亚·唐宁，她有乳腺癌基因，她是乳腺癌预存活者小组的一员，该小组在2010年代初曾受到Facebook的招揽。

I have a friend, Andrea Downing, who has the gene for breast cancer, and she's part of a breast cancer previvor group that was courted by Facebook in the early twenty tens.

她们搬到了那里，这个小组对她们来说意义重大。

And they moved there, and this group is hugely consequential to them.

如果你携带乳腺癌基因，你就要决定是否切除乳房、切除卵巢；你生命中的女性——你的女儿、姐妹、母亲——她们可能正在生病或濒临死亡，而你正在做出护理决策。

If you have the breast cancer gene, you are deciding whether to have your breasts removed, your ovaries removed, the women in your life, your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, they're dying or sick and you're making care decisions.

这个群体至关重要。

This group is hugely important.

安德里亚发现，无论你是否是某个Facebook群组的成员，你都可以枚举出该群组的全部成员名单。

And Andrea discovered that you could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group whether or not you were a member of it.

这对她在当地的朋友们来说至关重要。

This is hugely important to her friends there.

她向Facebook报告了这个问题。

She reported it to Facebook.

Facebook说这是个功能，不是漏洞。

Facebook said that's a feature, not a bug.

我们会保留它。

We're gonna keep it.

他们提起了诉讼。

They sued.

当联邦贸易委员会（FTC）解决所有隐私索赔时，这是未经同意的和解，他们仍然留在那里，因为他们无法克服离开所需的集体行动问题。

It was nonconsensually settled when the FTC settled all the privacy claims, and they are still there because they cannot overcome the collective action problem that it takes to leave.

最终他们会离开的。

Now they will eventually.

当Facebook糟糕到一定程度时，那个社群就会分崩离析，也许再也无法重组。

When Facebook is terrible enough, that community will shatter, and maybe it will never reform.

这可不是个好结果。

That is not a good outcome.

我正在开启跨平台游戏功能。

I'm opening up cross play.

我一直在和我在《纽约时报》的同事丹对战。

I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times.

我要在计分板翻倍格上玩'stoop'（s t u p e）。

I'm gonna play stoop, s t u p e, across the trick board multiplier square.

猫又走了一步棋。

Cat's played another move.

唉。

Ugh.

她确实有个S。

And she did have an s.

她玩stoop游戏得了36分。

She played stoop for 36 points.

我有个Z，值10分。

I've got a z, which is 10 points.

如果我能把X放在那边，我就能组成一个词。

If I can put my x over there, I can make box.

我有两个A、N和T。

I have two a's, n's, and t's.

我猜tango不是一个有效单词。

I'm guessing tango is not a word.

让我看看。

Let's see.

探戈是个词吗？

Tango is a word?

哦。

Oh.

不知道探戈是什么意思，所以我打算按住这个词，哦，定义弹出来了。

Don't know what tango means, so I'm gonna press down on the word and oh, definition popped up.

塔吉克斯坦的旧货币单位。

Former monetary unit of Tajikistan.

每次玩这个游戏都能学到新东西。

Learn something every time I play this game.

尽管我领先了大约50分，但在跨平台对战中我学到的一点是，游戏永远没有结束。

Even though I'm about 50 points ahead, one thing I've learned in cross play is that the game is never over.

我刚收到通知，丹已经下了他最后一手。

I just got a notification and Dan played his last turn.

我们来看看谁赢了。

Let's see who won.

比分太接近了，但我确实赢了。

It's so close, but I did win.

跨平台对战，纽约时报游戏推出的首款双人文字游戏。

Cross play, the first two player word game from New York Times games.

今天免费下载吧。

Download it for free today.

当你看到一场本可以赢的游戏时，真是令人沮丧。

It's devastating when you see a game that you could have won.

好的。

Alright.

蒂姆，我想听听你这里的这个故事。

Tim, I wanna go to your story here.

你在书中讲述的核心故事之一是关于亚马逊的。

One of the core tales you tell in your book is about Amazon.

那么，请通过你讲述的亚马逊故事，带我了解一下一个平台是如何从一个相对健康、建设性的平台转变为榨取性平台的整个过程。

So walk me through the process of moving a platform from a kind of healthy constructive platform to becoming an extractive platform through your kind of story of what happened with Amazon.

所以，回到九十年代，当人们畅想互联网的伟大前景时，有一个非常严肃且宏大的承诺，那就是它将让许多人变得富有。

So back in the nineties when people were thinking about what is, you know, gonna be great about the Internet, there was this great, really serious promise that it was gonna make a lot of people rich.

它将以新的方式分配财富。

It was gonna distribute wealth in new ways.

当人们谈论这将如何实现时，很多说法是，嗯，你知道，每个人都将能够拥有自己的商店，销售商品，并以此赚很多钱。

And when people talked about how that was gonna happen, a lot of it is like, well, you know, everyone's gonna be able to have their own store, sell stuff, and people are gonna make a lot of money that way.

所以，那是一个重大的承诺，而且我认为在当时那是一个重要的承诺。

So that was that was a big promise, and I think it was an important promise back in the day.

当时人们主要谈论的是eBay。

It was mostly eBay that people were talking about.

然后就有了亚马逊。

So then you have Amazon.

亚马逊，你可能还记得，曾经是一家书店。

Amazon is, you may remember, was once upon a time a bookstore.

我确实记得这一点。

I do remember that actually.

那就是

That's how

我有多老了。

old I am.

他们的基本理念是：规模越大，卖的东西就越多。

And and you know, their basic idea was be bigger and we'll sell more stuff.

在某个时候，他们推出了亚马逊商城，这有所不同，因为它是一个平台。

At some point, they opened the marketplace, the Amazon marketplace, which was different because it was a platform.

换句话说，这是一个人们可以来出售自己物品的地方。

In other words, it was a place that people could come and sell their stuff.

起初是二手书，后来扩展到其他市场，他们意识到了一些事情。

At first it was used books, then it spread into other markets, and they realized a few things.

一个是物流配送会非常重要。

One is that fulfillment would be very important.

在过去的eBay时代，卖家得自己打包包裹然后寄出去。

EBay in the old days, the sellers had to wrap it themselves and and send it off.

所以那个模式的可扩展性并不好。

So that that wasn't a very scalable model.

而且他们有一个很好的搜索引擎。

And they had a good search engine.

亚马逊在搜索方面投入了大量资金，并且取得了成功。

Amazon invested hard in search, and it worked.

越来越多的卖家加入，越来越多的买家也来了。

And more and more sellers came, more and more buyers came.

因此，亚马逊市场超越了eBay，并取得了巨大成功。

And so the Amazon Marketplace took over eBay and became very successful.

在那个阶段，我想说，大概在2010年左右，它实现了互联网时代的梦想，即许多人能够进入这个平台，开创自己的事业，赚取丰厚收入。

And at that point, I would say, you know, maybe around 2010 or something like that, was fulfilling what I, you know, would call the dream of the Internet age, which is a lot of people will be able to go in this place, start their thing, make a lot of money.

这与博客和小型在线杂志的兴起是同步的，就是我们正在谈论的那个时代。

It's it coincides with the rise of the blog and and small online magazines, you know, that whole era that we are are talking about.

在那段时期，亚马逊的抽成比例低于20%。

During that period, Amazon's take was below 20%.

这在一定程度上取决于你如何计算，但你知道，大概在20%左右。

It kinda depends how you count, but, know, somewhere between 20%.

他们从小型企业销售额中抽取的部分。

Their take of what a small business is selling.

占销售额的比例。

Of the sales.

是的。

Yeah.

是的。

Yeah.

对。

Yeah.

所以如果你卖了100美元，他们就拿走20美元。

So if you sold, like, $100, they take $20.

意思是，这有点取决于情况。

Mean, it depend a little bit.

还有一些仓储费之类的。

There were some storage fees and so on.

所以，你知道，那是个赚钱的好地方。

So, you know, it was it was a good place to make money.

我认为改变的是，一旦亚马逊确信自己已经牢牢掌握了卖家和买家。

What changed, I think, was once Amazon had confidence that it had its sellers and it had its buyers more or less locked up.

这基本上发生在2010年代。

This is basically over the the the the 20 tens.

他们收购了几家可能对他们构成威胁的公司。

They bought a couple companies that were potential threats to them.

比如Diapers.com。

Diapers.com, for example.

这听起来可能很荒谬，但尿布，你知道，本可以成为一种威胁他们的途径。

It might seem ridiculous, but diapers, you know, could have been a kind of a a way in to threaten them.

你为什么不

Why don't you

讲讲Diapers.com的故事呢？

tell the diapers.com story for a minute?

这是亚马逊内部一个相当著名的故事，但我认为值得讲一讲。

It's a kind of famous story in Amazon, but I think it's worth telling.

当时有一个平台推出，旨在成为亚马逊的替代品，他们的想法是，每个父母都需要快速收到尿布，所以我们为什么不从这一点入手呢？

So there was a platform launched to be an alternative to Amazon, and their thought was, you know, every parent needs diapers delivered quickly, so why don't we make that the beginning?

就像亚马逊最初从书籍开始一样。

In the same way Amazon started with books.

然后亚马逊看到了这一点，觉得这有点威胁性，就按照当时的策略，直接收购了他们。

And then Amazon saw this, thought it was kind of threatening, and in the strategy of the day, just bought them.

当然，创始人对此非常满意。

Of course, the founder's pretty happy.

亚马逊基本上成功占领了这个市场。

And Amazon managed basically to capture this market.

我认为就是在那时进入了榨取阶段。

And and that's when I think it turned to the extraction phase.

在过去十年里，亚马逊的策略基本上就是让它的市场平台不断施压，提高费用，调整利润率，导致许多卖家需要支付超过50%甚至更高的费用，基本上和实体店的成本差不多了。

In the last ten years, Amazon's strategy has just basically been for its marketplace to turn the screws and increase the fees, change the margins so that many sellers are paying, you know, over 50% or more, you know, basically same as as brick and mortar businesses.

而且亚马逊的价格很少会更低。

And Amazon prices are rarely any lower.

他们实际上做了很多努力来阻止任何人定价更低。

They they actually have done a lot to try to prevent anyone pricing lower.

我认为我会关注的一点是他们所谓的广告，你可能熟悉这种形式，就是你在搜索时得到的那些赞助结果。

And I think the one thing I would focus on is their what they call advertising, which may be familiar to you as as sort of the sponsored results that you get when you're searching.

所以这里的情况是，卖家们在相互竞价，压低自己的利润空间，以在搜索结果中获得更高的排名。

So what's going on there is that sellers are bidding against each other, bidding down their own margins to get a higher up in in the search results.

而这个小小的策略，这种所谓的‘一个奇怪技巧’，已经变成了一个惊人的摇钱树。

And that little trick, that sort of one weird trick has become this extraordinary cash cow.

这比亚马逊网络服务更赚钱，有点令人惊讶。

It's more profitable than Amazon Web Services, which is sort of surprising.

去年，这项业务达到了560亿美元。

Last year, it was 56,000,000,000.

仅仅为了在亚马逊搜索结果中获得更高排名而支付的费用就高达560亿美元。

Just paying Amazon for higher rankings in their search results was $56,000,000,000.

是的。

Yes.

560亿美元。

56,000,000,000.

看起来这个数字将超过700亿美元。

It's looking like it's gonna be over $70,000,000,000.

科里，当我在亚马逊上搜索时，看到那个‘亚马逊之选’看起来像个小奖章，好像这个产品赢得了一场竞赛，由一群编辑选中了它

Corey, when I'm searching on Amazon, and I see that Amazon's choice looks like a little prize, like that that product won a competition, where a bunch of editors chose it

作为最好的那一个。

as the best one.

那我看到的到底是什么？

What am I looking at there?

所以，这 broadly 属于蒂姆刚才讨论的那类现象，他们通过各种附加费用来换取在搜索结果顶部展示的权利。

So that is broadly part of this thing Tim was discussing where they're piling on junk fees for the right to be at the top of the results.

有时这种机制更隐蔽：如果你没有购买Prime服务，也没有使用亚马逊物流和其他这些服务，你就没有资格。

Sometimes it's more subtle where if you're not paying for Prime and paying for fulfillment by Amazon and paying for all these other things, you aren't eligible.

你购买的这类服务越多，被选中的可能性就越大。

And the more of these you buy, the greater chance you have of being chosen.

但是否

But is

他们真的是在直接付费以成为亚马逊的首选？

that be are they literally paying to be Amazon's top choice?

我的意思是，作为一个普通消费者，我可能会看到那个标签然后想，哦，这可能是某种算法综合了它是否是最畅销商品、评价如何等等因素的结果。

I I mean, as a dumb consumer, maybe I look at that and I think, oh, this is some algorithmic combination of is it the best seller, what are its reviews, etcetera.

你说得对，它确实是算法决定的，但算法的输入主要并不是基于质量或客户满意度等因素。

So you're right that it is algorithmic, but the algorithmic inputs are not grounded primarily in things like quality or customer satisfaction.

它们的依据是你让业务依赖亚马逊的方式多种多样，以至于你赚的每一美元都有越来越大的比例被亚马逊抽走。

They're grounded in how many different ways you've made your business your business dependent on Amazon in such a way that, every dollar you make is having more and more of that dollar extracted by Amazon.

关于这一点，Maria Mazzucato和Tim O'Reilly做过很好的实证研究，他们计算出亚马逊搜索结果页面的第一条结果平均比你搜索的最佳匹配商品贵17%。

There's some good empirical work on this from, Maria Mazzucato and Tim O'Reilly, where they calculate that the first result on an Amazon search engine results page, on average, is 17% more expensive than the best match for your search.

所以你看到的基本上就是亚马逊首选其实是最差的选择。

So that's what you're seeing is basically the the Amazon top choice is the worst choice.

所以这确实

So this really

对我来说，这感觉就像科里说的那样，事情变得糟糕了，现在当我在互联网上浏览，在Spotify播放列表中播放歌曲或点击我喜欢的歌曲转到Spotify的电台模式，或者在Google上搜索东西，或者在Amazon上搜索商品时，这些曾经对我来说是非常有价值的服务，比如在Amazon上搜索商品并看到根据产品受欢迎程度和评论高低加权的排名。

feels to me like a place where, to use Cory's word, things inshitified, that when I go around the Internet now, when I play something in a Spotify playlist or click on a song I like and move to the radio version of Spotify, or when I search something on Google, or when I search something on Amazon, these used to be very valuable services to me, to search for something on Amazon and see rankings weighted by how popular the product is, how high the reviews are.

对吧？

Right?

就像，我曾经将搜索结果的权重在一定程度上视为质量的信号。

Like, I took the the weighting of the search as to some degree a signal of quality.

当然，谷歌的理念是，搜索排名靠前的结果是基于PageRank算法，它本应是高质量的。

Certainly, Google, the whole idea was that what comes first in search was, you know, built on PageRank, and it was gonna be quality.

Spotify，你知道的，它确实有算法成分，但它本应向我展示像我这样的人会喜欢听的内容。

Spotify, you know, had an algorithmic dimension to it, but it was supposed to be showing me things that people like me would like to listen to.

而现在这些结果中充斥着大量赞助内容，完全不清楚什么是什么、谁在为哪些内容付费，以及我为什么会听到这首歌或看到那个结果。

And now there is so much sponsored content in every one of these results, and it is so unclear what is what and who is paying for what and why I'm getting this song or that result.

你知道，我当初使用这些平台的一个原因就是信任这些搜索结果，而现在我什么都不信了。

You know, one reason I ended up on these platforms is because I trusted these results, and now I trust nothing.

是的。

Yeah.

我的意思是，这又回到了榨取的定义上，我们实际上是在集体支付700亿美元让搜索变得更糟。

I mean, it's going back to the definition of extraction, I mean, it's we are kind of paying $70,000,000,000 collectively to make search worse.

那么这种情况何时会从‘这只是他们的商业模式’转变为‘如果你想找别的东西，就去沃尔玛买吧’？

So when does this move from this is just their business model, and if you wanna find something else, like, go buy something on Walmart.

去塔吉特买点东西吧。

Go buy something on Target.

去百思买买点东西吧。

Go buy something at Best Buy.

你可以做所有这些事。

You can do all those.

所有这些我都做过了。

I've done all those.

我刚从科尔士订购了一个搅拌机，而不是我们已经转向了榨取模式，我们应该将其视为一个公共政策问题。

I just ordered a blender from Kohl's versus we've moved to extraction, and we should see it as a public policy problem.

是的。

Yeah.

我认为这是一个非常好的问题。

I think that's a really great question.

这是一种我们在历史上反复面对的问题，我认为，当一种商业模式开始稳定下来时，你就会看到真正颠覆性的竞争可能性变小了。

It's a kind of question we faced, I I think, repeatedly in history when you start to have a business model start to settle down, you see less, real disruptive, competition possible.

我认为在某种程度上，一旦市场趋于稳定，就必须设定一个界限，我们在许多其他市场也是这样做的。

And I think at some level, once a market has settled, at some point you gotta call a limit, and we do that in many other markets.

亚马逊仍然是，你知道的，寻找众多产品的一个绝佳途径。

And Amazon is still, you know, a great way to find a lot of product.

它是全球最大的市场。

It's the world's largest marketplace.

但我要说，他们正像一个不受监管的垄断企业那样运作。

But I would say they're running themselves like an unregulated monopoly.

你们两位都花了很多时间研究这些公司进行的小规模收购数量。

Both of you spend a lot of time on the number of small acquisitions that these companies make.

也许其中很多收购最终被关闭，或者他们通过收购来招募顶尖人才，但也有些项目本可能发展成更大的规模或其他可能性。

And maybe many of them get shut down or they acquihire the top people, but there are also things that might have grown into something bigger or else.

另一方面，有时候确实是大公司收购小公司后能够将其扩展成新事物，比如谷歌收购——这其实是一笔相当大的收购——Waymo，而且令人惊讶的是，他们似乎让无人驾驶汽车成功运行了。

On the other side, sometimes it really is the case that a big player buying something smaller, they can scale it up into something, you know, new, like Google bought I mean, this was actually a fairly big acquisition, but Waymo and kind of amazingly, like, they seem to have made driverless cars work.

我认为，能够利用谷歌的计算资源和其他条件在这方面起到了不小的作用。

And I think access to Google's compute and other things was not insignificant in that.

你可以看看其他案例，这些公司收购了一些小公司后，能够将其打造成微软Office或谷歌文档等产品中的优秀选项。

And you can look at other cases where, you know, these companies buying something small, they're able to build it into something that ends up being a great option in Microsoft Office or in Google Docs or whatever it might be.

那么，一方面，谷歌在若干年间进行了超过一千次收购，你如何看待这种情况呢？

So how do you think about, on the one hand, the ways in which I mean, I think it's what Google's made, know, more than a thousand acquisitions over, you know, some number of years.

你认为这会在哪些方面损害竞争？

How do you think about the ways in which that harms competition?

但我也认识一些创始人，他们对被收购感到兴奋，因为他们认为这能让他们获得规模效应和竞争能力，而这是他们自己无法做到的，而不是谷歌自己尝试去做。

But also, you know, I've known founders who get acquired and are excited to get acquired because they think it will give them scale and the capacity to compete in a way they they wouldn't versus Google just trying to do it itself.

我认为反垄断层面是一回事，但反竞争与支持规模扩张之间的权衡，对硅谷目前的运作方式构成了更大的挑战。

I think the antitrust level is one thing, but the the sort of anticompetitive versus pro scale level is like a much bigger challenge to where Silicon Valley now works.

我很想听听你分析一下其中的利弊。

And I'm I'm curious to hear you talk through the the pros and the cons of that.

是的。

Yeah.

我觉得这个问题提得非常好。

I think that's a really great question.

你知道，约瑟夫·熊彼特早在1911年就写了一本关于企业家的书，他说，你知道，有些非常特别的人愿意走出去，承担这类风险。

You know, Joseph Schumpeter back in 1911 wrote a book about entrepreneurs basically, and he said, you know, there's very unusual people who are willing to go out and start to, you know, take these kind of risks.

他们拥有某种远见。

They have some vision.

他们确实会做这类事情。

They do this kind of thing.

他认为这对经济增长至关重要，认为他们是那种不同寻常的、近乎超级英雄般的存在，会去冒险尝试这些机会。

And he thought they were essential to economic growth, that they were these kind of unusual, almost like superheroes, and would do these things and go out and take these chances.

美国经济总体上之所以繁荣，是因为拥有大量这类个体，他们能够开创事业。

The United States economy in general has thrived because it has a lot of those kind of individuals, and they can start things.

而且我认为，我们把所有人才都集中在一个屋檐下的做法已经偏离得太远了。

And and I think we've erred too far in having all the brains under one roof.

你知道吗，这开始让我想起六十年代的AT&T或IBM，那时它们对创新变得更为集权化，而伟大的想法再也无法得到发展。

You know, it's starting to remind me of of AT and T in in the sixties or IBM where they sort of became much more centralized about innovation, and big ideas would never be developed.

当司法部达成协议，起诉AT&T并试图将其拆分时，情况变得有点群体思维化，他们迫使AT&T永远不得涉足计算机领域，并且必须授权所有专利，包括晶体管专利。

It became kind of group thinky, I think, when the Justice Department did a deal, sued AT and T, tried to break them up, and they forced them, AT and T, to stay out of computing forever and also license all of their patents, including the transistor patent.

于是各种各样的人开始辞职，并说我要创办一家半导体公司。这就是美国半导体产业的起源，而且坦率地说，也是没有AT&T参与的美国计算产业的起源。

And all kinds of people started quitting their jobs and saying, I'm gonna start a semiconductor firm, And there lies the origins of US semiconductors and also, frankly, US computing without AT and T.

所以我认为，在技术领导力分散的情况下，我们做得要好得多。

So I think we have done much better with divided technological leadership.

坦白说，我认为如果没有OpenAI作为替代力量，大型语言模型可能永远不会起步，因为它们显然对谷歌的商业模式构成了威胁。

I I frankly think that, you know, LLMs might never have gotten started without OpenAI being an alternative force because they're obviously threatening to Google's business model.

不过话说回来，在大型语言模型这方面，你确实得给谷歌一些肯定。

Although, don't a way, you have to give Google some credit on LLM specifically.

你刚才提到了晶体管。

You were talking about transistors a minute ago.

是的。

Yeah.

但谷歌在Transformer领域进行基础研究，并将其公开发布并创建

But Google does the fundamental research in transformers and releases it publicly and and and creates

内部使用起来很轻松，是的。

an easy with it internally Yes.

直到出现威胁他们的竞争对手。

Until there's a competitor that threatens them.

他们在人工智能领域一度表现得如此出色，确实令人瞩目。

The it's just striking how good of an actor they were for a period on AI specifically.

对吧？

Right?

就像他们拥有贝尔实验室一样。

Like treating it like like they had a Bell Labs.

我同意这一点。

I agree with that.

实际上，这很像贝尔实验室，因为贝尔实验室一直在发明各种东西。

It actually is a lot like Bell Labs in the sense that Bell Labs kept inventing stuff.

我的意思是，贝尔实验室聚集了很多了不起的人才，但从未让这些成果走向市场，互联网可能就是最好的例子。

I mean, Bell Labs collected these, you know, a lot of amazing people and then never let things come to market, the Internet being probably the best example of it.

是的。

Yeah.

我认为，当你审视这些公司及其收购行为时，你会发现它们很快就陷入了布兰代斯和蒂姆都曾提到的'规模诅咒'，即它们发现很难将内部发明的实际产品推向市场。

I think when you look at these companies and their acquisitions, what you see is that these companies very quickly suffer from what both Brandeis and Tim called, the curse of bigness, that they find it very hard to bring an actual product to market that they invent in house.

看看谷歌，他们只推出过一个真正成功的面向消费者的产品，而那还是在上个世纪。

When you look at Google, they've had, like, one really successful consumer facing product launch, and that was in the previous millennium.

而他们在本世纪制造的几乎所有产品都失败了。

And almost everything they made in this millennium failed.

这些产品要么根本没有推出，要么在推出后就被关闭了。

It either didn't launch or when after it launched, they shut it down.

而他们的巨大成功，他们的视频技术栈、广告技术栈、文档、协作、地图、导航、服务器管理、移动端业务。

Whereas their giant successes, their video stack, their ad tech stack, documents, collaboration, maps, navigation, server management, mobile.

对吧？

Right?

这些公司是他们从别人那里收购过来并进行运营的。

These are companies they acquired from someone else and operationalized.

而我以前是做运营的。

And I'm an ex ops guy.

我是一名正在转型的系统管理员。

I'm a I'm a recovering sysadmin.

所以我不会说那不算什么。

So I'm not gonna say that that's nothing.

这本身就是一种技能，需要细致的工作来确保事物正常运转、具备韧性并能扩展规模。

It is a skill unto itself, the careful work to make things work and and make them resilient and scale them.

但认为这一切必须在一个屋檐下完成，我认为是一种错误的二分法。

But the idea that that has to happen under one roof, I think, is a false binary.

我的意思是，谷歌做得比招聘创新者更有效率的一件事，可以说是他们招聘了运营人员。

I mean, one of the things Google did arguably far more efficiently than they hired, innovators is they hired operations people.

而这些人确实在谷歌做着基础而重要的工作，因为那些创新者、产品经理，他们的产品从未真正推向市场。

And those are the people who really do the yeoman service at Google because the innovators, the product managers, never get to launch.

他们只能购买别人的产品并进行优化。

They only get to buy other people's products and refine them.

你知道，这归根结底取决于你怎么看待，我想，垄断创新的历史记录。

You know, it comes down to what you think of is the track record, I guess, of monopolize innovation.

它确实取得了一些成功，但我认为历史上混合模式要强大得多。

And it has some hits, but I'm saying a much more mixed model, I think historically is a lot stronger.

如果你纵观美国创新的整个历史，我认为垄断式创新会让你走向AT&T、波音、通用汽车那种模式，而不是硅谷最优秀的模式。

If you look at the entire track record of US innovation, I think monopoly innovation, you know, leads you towards AT and T, Boeing, General Motors kind of model as opposed to what the best of Silicon Valley has been.

与此同时，我认为你提到了针对那些不幸未能深入硅谷商业运作之人的收购式招聘。

And meanwhile, I think you mentioned acqui hires for people who aren't, unfortunate enough to be steeped in the business of Silicon Valley.

收购式招聘是指一家公司被收购并非因其产品，而是因为其团队已证明具备产品开发能力，随后公司会关闭该产品并聘用整个团队。

An acqui hire is when a company is purchased not for the product it makes, but because the team who made it have proved they can make a product, and then they shut down the product, and they hire the team.

我认为，收购式招聘是科技和投资领域出现问题的先兆。

And acqui hires are, I think, a leading indicator of pathology in tech and investment.

收购式招聘本质上是一个研究生项目，风险投资人在其中投入一些资金，假装你们会开发出一个产品。

An acquihire is basically a postgrad project where venture capitalists sink some money into you pretending that you're gonna make a product.

这只是一个科学展览的演示。

It's a science fair demo.

希望公司会收购你，然后我们以股票代替招聘奖金，以股票代替中介费。

In the hopes that the company will buy you, and in lieu of a hiring bonus, we'll give you stock, and in lieu of a finder's fee, we'll give them stock.

但没有人真正试图将某个产品或业务资本化。

But no one's trying to actually capitalize a product or a business.

我认为，任何时候当你看到经济中充斥着大量收购式招聘时，都应该意识到你需要坐下来重新调整激励机制，因为你的经济已经出问题了。

I think anytime you see a preponderance of acqui hires in your economy, that should tell you that you need to sit down and figure out how to rejigger the incentives because your economy is sick.

科里，我们一直在讨论这些市场实际上只有两个参与者，嗯，也许是三个。

Corey, we've been talking here about these markets as really having two players in them, which is well, maybe three.

我们一直在谈论用户、卖家和平台。

We've been talking about users, sellers, and platforms.

但年鉴中相当关注的是第四个方面，我们也需要讨论一下，那就是劳动力问题。

But something the yearbook focuses quite a bit on is a fourth, which we need to talk about too, which is labor.

嗯。

Mhmm.

有大量的人为这些公司工作，大量的人在配送亚马逊和沃尔玛的包裹。

There are huge numbers of people working for these companies, huge number of people delivering Amazon, packages and Walmart packages.

你们两位都关注的一点是，随着这些公司变得更大、更具主导地位，它们的用工方式可能会变得——我不确定你们是否会使用这个词——更糟糕或更具剥削性。

And one thing that that both of you focus on is the way in which as these companies become bigger and more dominant, their labor practices can become I don't know if is the term you would use there, but shittier or or more extractive.

你能谈谈这方面的情况吗？

Can you talk a bit about that side of it?

劳工实践发生了什么变化？

What has happened to the labor practices?

是的。

Yeah.

我是指，我们可以谈谈其他科技工作者。

I I mean, we could talk about the other tech workers.

对吧？

Right?

大多数科技工作者为优步开车，或为亚马逊工作，或在仓库工作，他们肯定得不到免费的红茶菌饮料和按摩，也没有外科医生为他们冷冻卵子以便在生育年龄继续工作。

The majority of tech workers drive for Uber or for Amazon or work at a warehouse, and they certainly don't get, like, free kombucha and massages and a surgeon who frees their eggs so they can work through their fertile years.

他们在中国的工厂周围安装了防自杀网。

They're in a factory in China with suicide nets around it.

但有一个例子能很好地整合这一切：垄断、监管俘获、技术导致的劳动力退化——这些都依赖于互操作性的阻碍，我认为没有比讨论护士更好的例子了。

But an example that kinda pulls this all together, how you get monopoly, regulatory capture, the degradation of labor with technology that is, relies on blocks on interoperability, I I think we could do no better than to talk about nurses.

这里我要引用维娜·杜布尔的研究成果，她是一位法律学者，创造了一个非常重要的术语——算法性工资歧视。

And I'm gonna be making reference here to the work of Vina Duble, who's a legal scholar who coined a very important term, algorithmic wage discrimination.

在美国，医院优先通过应用程序雇佣护士，并将她们作为合同工聘用。

In America, hospitals preferentially hire nurses through apps, and they do so as contractors.

所以雇佣合同工意味着你可以避免护士们组建工会。

So hiring contractors means that you can avoid the unionization of nurses.

当护士通过这些应用程序签约轮班时，该应用程序能够购买该护士的信用记录。

And when a nurse signs on to get a shift through one of these apps, the app is able to buy the nurse's credit history.

原因在于，自1988年罗纳德·里根签署法律禁止录像带店员透露你的VHS租赁习惯以来，美国政府再未通过任何新的联邦消费者隐私法。

And the reason for that is that the US government has not passed a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988 when Ronald Reagan signed a law that made it illegal for video store clerks to disclose your VHS rental habits.

根据联邦法律，其他任何形式的侵犯消费者隐私权的行为都是合法的。

Every other form of privacy invasion of your consumer rights is lawful under federal law.

因此，数据经纪人会出售给任何持信用卡出现的人的信息包括：其他人背负了多少信用卡债务，以及拖欠情况有多严重。

And so among the things that data brokers will sell, anyone who shows up with a credit card, is how much credit card debt is any other person carrying and how delinquent is it.

基于这些信息，护士们被收取了一种所谓的'绝望溢价'。

And based on that, the nurses are charged a kind of desperation premium.

她们背负的债务越多、逾期越久，被提供的工资就越低，理由是面临经济困境和绝望的护士会为了做同样的工作而接受更低的工资。

The more debt they're carrying, the more overdue that debt is, thus lower the wage that they're offered on the grounds that nurses who are facing economic privation and desperation will accept a lower wage to do the same job.

这并非什么新颖的见解。

Now this is not a novel insight.

付给更绝望的工人更少的钱，这种事你可以在田纳西·厄尼·福德的歌曲中找到，比如那些关于十九世纪煤矿老板的歌。

Paying more desperate workers less money is a thing that you can find in, like, Tennessee Ernie Ford songs about nineteenth century coal bosses.

但区别在于，如果你是十九世纪的煤矿老板，想弄清楚你雇用的每个矿工愿意接受的最低工资是多少，你就需要一支平克顿侦探大军去摸清每个矿工的经济状况，还需要另一群戴着绿色遮光眼罩的家伙在账本上做标注，用来计算他们的工资数额。

But the difference is that if you're a nineteenth century coal boss who wants to figure out how much the lowest wage each coal miner you're hiring is willing to take, you have to have an army of Pinkertons that, like, are figuring out the economic situation of every coal miner, and you have to have another army of guys in green eye shades who are making, annotations to the ledger where you're calculating their pay packet.

这根本不切实际。

It's just not practical.

因此，自动化使这成为可能。

So automation makes this possible.

于是形成了一个恶性循环：护士越穷，就会变得更穷，获得的工资报价也越低。

And you have this vicious cycle where the poorer a nurse is, the poorer they become, the lower the wage they're offered.

随着她们积累更多消费债务，她们的工资持续被侵蚀。

And as they accumulate more consumer debt, their wages continuously eroded.

我认为我们都能直观地理解为什么这不公平，以及为什么作为一名护士，你可能不愿意接受这种情况。

And I think we can all understand, like, intuitively why this is unfair and why as a nurse, you might not want it.

但话说回来，你真的愿意让一个昨晚开优步到半夜、今早为付房租而没吃早餐的人来给你插导管吗？

But also, like, do you really want your catheter inserted by someone who drove Uber till midnight the night before and skip breakfast this morning so they could make rent?

这让除某个狭隘利益集团外的所有人都变得更糟，这并非一个自由浮动的经济主张。

Is the thing that makes everyone except one parochial interest worse off, and this is not a free floating economic proposition.

这是近些年来特定政策选择的结果，由指名道姓的个人做出，他们当时已被警告这很可能是后果，却依然我行我素。

This is the result of specific policy choices taken in living memory by named individuals who were warned at the time that this would be the likely outcome and who did it anyway.

我认为这触及了我们近来经常听到的一个问题，那就是人们对各种算法定价的愤怒情绪。

I think this is getting at something we're starting to hear a lot about, which is anger over algorithmic pricing of various kinds.

所以今天我来做播客时，CNN上正报道一项调查发现Instacart对许多不同的人收取许多不同的价格。

So when I was walking up to do the podcast today that Chiron on on CNN was about, an investigation finding that Instacart was charging many different people many different prices.

所以你在Instacart上看到的价格并不是实际价格。

And so the price you were seeing on Instacart wasn't the price.

而是你的专属价格。

It's your price.

我可以想象一位新古典主义经济学家正坐在我的位置上说，当定价存在歧视时，效率会变得更高。

And I could imagine a a neoclassical economist sitting in my seat right now and saying pricing becomes more efficient when it discriminates.

如果它能根据对我的了解以及我的康普茶消费习惯，向埃兹拉收取更高的康普茶价格，或者根据对其他人的了解，知道他们对康普茶估值较低或愿意支付更高价格，从而收取更低价格，或者根据他们的具体情况支付更高或更低的工资，那么马可的效率就会更高。

That either Marco will be more efficient if it can charge Ezra a higher price for kombucha, if I'm getting that delivered because of things it knows about me and my kombucha habits, and it charges somebody else a lower price because it knows they value the kombucha less or under a higher price and or a higher wage and a lower wage depending on their situation.

事实上，我们只是在越来越擅长找到市场出清价格。

That in fact, we're just getting better and better and better at finding the market clearing price.

而这正是经济学一直想要的。

And this is what economics always wanted.

我们终于要进入每个人都能获得市场出清工资和市场出清价格的乌托邦了。

We're finally hitting the utopia of every person having, you know, the market clearing wage and the market clearing price.

你为什么不同意这一点？

Why don't you agree with that?

是的。

Yeah.

我的意思是，根本问题在于，这真的是你想要生活的世界吗？

I mean, the fundamental question is, is that really the kind of world you wanna live in?

换句话说，你愿意一直生活在这样一个地方吗：你购买任何东西时总是被收取你愿意支付的最高价格？

In other words, do you constantly wanna live in a place where you are being charged the maximum you would pay for something?

要知道，这可能会惠及非常贫困的人群，但从经济角度来看，这完全只是生产者在从市场中榨取一切。

Now, you know, that could rebound to the benefit of people who are very poor, but it is total in economic terms, it's always only about producers taking everything from the market.

我只是觉得，这可能会偏离效率本身。

And I just think it's a very, you know, just moving away from the the efficiency potentially of it.

我认为这种不断感觉自己被剥削的生活方式会让人非常不快。

I think it makes for a very unpleasant lifestyle to be constantly feeling you're being exploited.

另外我想说的是，人们还会花费大量精力试图改变自己所处的类别，比如假装贫穷。

And the other thing I'll say is there's also a huge amount of effort people make trying to move what category they're in and, you know, pretend to be poor.

所以我认为这被高估了，而且我觉得它依赖于过于简单化的模型来解释什么能让人快乐。

So I think it is overrated, And I guess it relies on overly simplistic models of what makes people happy.

在经济学中，'效率住房'是一个很有意思的术语。

There's a way in which efficiency housing is an interesting term in economics.

因为在经济学中，就像在生活中一样，你希望事情能有一定程度的效率

Because in economics is in life, you want things to be somewhat efficient

嗯。

Mhmm.

但过度的效率确实会变得不近人情。

But too much efficiency becomes truly inhuman.

是的。

Yeah.

我甚至在个人生产力提升这种非常普通的例子中也发现了这一点。

I find this even in the the the very modest example of, like, personal productivity efforts.

你明白吗？

You know?

有个待办事项清单是很好的。

It's great to have a to do list.

如果我总是强迫自己严格遵循待办事项清单的框架，我觉得我就不再是一个人了，而是变成了一种机器，总是在完成任务、回复邮件。

If I really force myself onto the scaffolding of a to do list at all times, I I feel like I cease to be a human being and and become a a kind of machine always just getting things done and responding to the emails.

蒂姆，我认为你提出的这个问题很重要，它引发了关于你想生活在什么样的世界里的思考。

And I think it was important, Tim, when you said it raises the question of what kind of world you wanna live in.

因为事实是，我不想过一个追求极致效率的世界。

Because the truth is that I don't wanna live in a maximally efficient world.

我还有其他相互竞争的价值观。

I have other competing values.

你知道，竞争性的高效市场在一定程度上是好的，但过了那个临界点，它就会腐蚀人与人之间的纽带和团结；准时制调度从经济效率的角度看有其合理性，但如果你希望社会中有健康的家庭，那就不是了。

You know, the competitive efficient market is good up to a point, and after a point, it becomes something corrosive to human bonds, human solidarity, just in time scheduling makes sense from the perspective of economic efficiency and not if you want healthy families in your society.

我认为，能够清晰地提出‘你想生活在怎样的世界’这个问题，而不仅仅局限于‘哪种经济模型更有效’，这一点很重要，而在我的看法中，这常常是一种被遗忘的政治艺术。

And I I think being able to articulate that question of what kind of world you wanna live in, not just what kind of economy works on models, I think is important and and often a lost political art in my view.

是的。

Yeah.

我同意。

I agree.

而且我觉得人们内心有一种直觉，觉得这不公平。

And I feel there's some intuitive feelings, like people feel it's unfair.

人们不喜欢被欺骗。

People don't like being ripped off.

人们讨厌支付垃圾费用。

People hate paying junk fees.

顺便说一句，这个词原本是'狗屁费用'，但在政府内部我们觉得不能让总统这么说。

The the original word for that, by the way, was bullshit fees, but there was inside government we felt we had to we couldn't have the president say that.

所以，是的，我认为这触及了问题的核心。

So, yeah, I think that gets the heart of the matter.

我的意思是，你也谈到了人类的注意力，而事实证明人类的注意力具有相当高的商业价值。

I mean, you had also talked about, you know, human attention, and human attention turns out to be quite commercially valuable.

但是，你真的希望自己生活的每一秒、所处的每一个空间都被用来挖掘你的注意力并榨取其最大价值吗？即便这或许有助于提升整体经济的GDP。

But do you really want every second of your time and every space you inhabit to being mined for your attention and its maximum value, even if that contributes to the, I guess, overall GDP of the economy.

我的意思是，我希望能有时间陪伴孩子和朋友，而不涉及任何金钱交易。

I mean, I'd like to have some time for my kids and friends in which no one's making any money.

而且你知道，这是一个与我们自身紧密相关的商品的例子。

And you know, it's an example of a commodity that is very close to who we are.

在你生命的尽头，你的人生就是你曾关注过的一切。

At the end of your days, what your life was was what you paid attention to.

在我看来，那种试图以最高效率在每一刻都榨取注意力的想法，无异于一种糟糕生活的配方。

And the idea that you can, with maximum efficiency, mind that at every possible moment seems to me a recipe for a very bad life.

我认为，与其围绕效率来讨论这个问题，不如围绕优化来思考。

I think one way to frame this rather than around efficiency is around optimization.

我想我们可以理解，对于一家公司而言，最优的安排就是为其投入支付零成本，而为其产出收取最高费用。

And I think that we can understand that for a firm, the optimal arrangement is one in which they pay nothing for their inputs and charge everything for their outputs.

所以，优化意味着，从公司的角度来看，当它们能发现谁最绝望，并支付尽可能少的报酬，或者向最绝望的人收取尽可能高的费用时，情况就是最优的。

So optimization, things are optimal from the perspective of the firm when they can discover who is most desperate and pay them as little as possible or who is most desperate and charge them as much as possible.

但从用户和供应商的角度来看，当你收入尽可能多、支出尽可能少时，情况才是最优的。

But from the perspective of the users and the suppliers, things are optimal when you get paid as much as possible and are charged as little as possible.

而获得经济学学位所造成的特定神经损伤，很大程度上都围绕着从不追问‘对谁而言最优’这个问题。

And so much of kind of the specific neurological injury that arises from getting an economics degree is organized around never asking the question sort of optimal for whom.

我之前提到过，我们国家没有任何隐私法。

I mentioned before that we don't have any privacy law in this country.

隐私法能让我们做到的事情之一，就是变得‘不可优化’。

One of the things that a privacy law would let us do is to become unoptimizable.

所有优化都始于监控，无论是像TikTok试图引诱你的孩子花费比他们愿意更多的时间，还是广告商找到方法跟踪你并向你推送你急需的东西，又或是在招聘或贷款中的歧视。

All optimization starts with surveillance, whether it's things like TikTok trying to entice your kids to spending more time than they wanna spend there, or whether that's advertisers finding ways to follow you around and hit you up with things that you're desperate for, or whether it's discrimination in hiring or in lending.

所有这一切都始于一个不受监管的监控行业。

All of this stuff starts with an unregulated surveillance sector.

我们有平台获取我们的数据，然后出售、使用、回收，成为某种信息掠夺者，他们充分利用了整个数据包。

We have platforms that take our data and then sell it and use it and and recycle it and become sort of the lacota of information where they use the whole package.

而我们却没有任何措施来约束这种行为。

And we do nothing to curb that behavior.

说一句让他们停下来，这并非什么不可思议、富有想象力的高要求。

It is not an incredible, imaginative lift to say that we might tell them to stop.

我想接着谈谈监控这个话题，因为当你讨论经济以人性化方式运作所面临的危害时，我认为新的前沿领域以及如何监控员工，这将会成为一个非常大的政治议题，而且很可能现在就应该已经是了。

I wanna pick up on surveillance because when you talk about the harms to an economy working in a human way, I think that the new frontiers and how you can surveil workers, I think this is going to become a very big political issue and probably should be already.

我同意。

I agree.

这类软件通常被称为'老板软件'。

The category that this falls into, it's broadly called bossware.

而且它有很多不同的版本。

And there's a whole lot of different versions of it.

比如，如果你的公司购买了Office 365，微软就会向你的老板提供按部门排名功能，依据诸如员工移动鼠标的频率、打字错误次数和输入字数等指标。

Like, if your firm buys Office March, Microsoft will offer your boss the ability to stack rank divisions within your firm by, like, how often they move the mouse and how many typos they make and how many words they type.

然后这一点非常惊人。

And then this is amazing.

他们会告诉你，与同行业的类似公司相比你的表现如何，这简直是我能想象到的最不可思议的事情——微软竟然在销售宣传中向客户承诺，会展示你竞争对手的敏感内部信息。

They will tell you how you perform against similar firms in your sector, which is, like, the most amazing thing I can imagine that that Microsoft is finding customers for a sales pitch that says, we will show you sensitive internal information about your competitors.

而且显然，那些人里没有一个会停下来想想。

And apparently, none of those people are like, wait.

这难道不意味着你会向我的竞争对手展示关于我的敏感商业信息吗？

Doesn't that mean you're gonna show my competitors sensitive commercial information about me?

所以你在宏观层面上有这种情况。

So you have this on the kind of broad strokes level.

但我有一个概念，我称之为‘劣质技术采用曲线’。

But I have this notion I call the shitty technology adoption curve.

如果你有一个非常糟糕的想法，涉及的技术对被强加的人来说极其有害，你不能从我这里开始。

If you've got a really terrible idea that involves technology that's incredibly harmful to the people it's imposed on, you can't start with me.

我是一个爱说话的白人中产阶级男性，手里还有个扩音器。

I'm a mouthy, white, middle class guy with a megaphone.

当我生气的时候，其他人就会知道这件事。

And when I get angry, other people find out about it.

你得找那些没有社会权力的人，然后用他们的身体来打磨粗糙的边缘。

You have to find people without social power, and you grind down the rough edges on their bodies.

你从囚犯开始。

You start with prisoners.

你从精神病院里的人开始。

You start with, people in mental asylums.

你从难民开始，然后逐步扩展到儿童、高中生、蓝领工人、粉领工人，再到白领工人。

You start with refugee, and then you work your way up to kids and then high school kids, blue collar workers, and pink collar workers, and then white collar workers.

它始于，就像，唯一在监控摄像头下吃饭的人是在超级监狱里的。

And starts with, like, the only people who eat dinner under a CCTV are in Supermax.

而二十年后，你会发现根本不是这样。

And twenty years later, it's like, no.

你只是蠢到去买苹果、谷歌或者——老天保佑——Facebook的家用摄像头。

You were just dumb enough to buy a home camera from, like, Apple or Google or, god help us all, Facebook.

对吧？

Right?

所以这就是糟糕的技术采用曲线。

So that is the shitty technology adoption curve.

如果你想知道工人的未来会怎样，那就看看最底层、最没有特权的工人，然后你会看到技术是如何一步步向上渗透的。

And if you wanna know what the future of workers is, you look at the least privileged workers at the bottom, and then you see that technology working its way up.

你看看亚马逊的司机们就知道了。

You look at drivers for Amazon.

他们的脸上布满了传感器，货车周围也装满了传感器。

They have all these sensors pointed at their faces, sensors studded around the van.

他们甚至没有足够长的休息时间来应对经期卫生这类事情。

They're not given a long enough break even to deal with things like period hygiene.

因此，那些为亚马逊开车、需要到车后部处理生理期的女性发现，这一切都被摄像头拍了下来，因为整个过程都在录制中。

And so, women who drive for Amazon who go into the back of the van to deal with their periods discover that, that's all on camera because that's all being recorded.

所有这些行为都受到人工和自动化分析的监控。

All of this stuff is subject to both manual and automated analytics.

曾经有一段时间，亚马逊会因为司机开车时嘴巴张着而扣分，因为这可能造成驾驶时分心。

And at one point, Amazon was docking drivers for driving with their mouth open because that might lead to distraction while driving.

所以，正如你所说，这确实剥夺了你所有的尊严。

And so as you say, it kind of denudes you of all dignity.

这真的非常残酷。

It really is very grim.

你知道，蒂姆和我以前每天早上坐多伦多公共交通巴士去上小学。

And, you know, Tim and I used to ride the Toronto Transit Commission buses Mhmm.

我们上小学的早晨，都是坐多伦多公共交通巴士去上学的。

To school in the morning when we were going to elementary school.

我们特别喜欢那些会唱歌、讲笑话、还能记住我们的司机。

And we loved the drivers who would sing and tell jokes and remember you.

This is the thing that makes working in the world being in the world great.

This is the thing that makes working in the world being in the world great.

It's having a human relationship with other humans, not having standardized labor units that have been automated and standardized to the point where they can be swapped out.

It's having a human relationship with other humans, not having standardized labor units that have been automated and standardized to the point where they can be swapped out.

You know, if you give a cashier a cash register instead of making them add up things on the paper, you could give them the surplus to talk with the customers and have a human relationship with them, or you could speed them up so that you fire nine tenths of the cashiers.

You know, if you give a cashier a cash register instead of making them add up things on the paper, you could give them the surplus to talk with the customers and have a human relationship with them, or you could speed them up so that you fire nine tenths of the cashiers.

And you take the remainder, and you make them work at such an accelerated pace that they

And you take the remainder, and you make them work at such an accelerated pace that they

can't even make eye contact.

can't even make eye contact.

Tim, there were things in Corey's description there, in his answer there, that in my view, we should just make a social decision to outlaw.

Tim, there were things in Corey's description there, in his answer there, that in my view, we should just make a social decision to outlaw.

Like, I am willing to say politically, I wanna vote for the people who think you can't eyeball surveil workers.

Like, I am willing to say politically, I wanna vote for the people who think you can't eyeball surveil workers.

And if other people wanna stand up and say the surveillance of workers eyeballs is great, that like, that's a good values debate to have in a democracy, and and I know where I fall on that.

And if other people wanna stand up and say the surveillance of workers eyeballs is great, that like, that's a good values debate to have in a democracy, and and I know where I fall on that.

还有其他一些事情。

Then there are other things.

对吧？

Right?

我来举收银机的例子，我想谈谈我对自动化结账兴起及其发展方式的看法，这在我看来是一项公共政策议题。

I'll build on the cash register example to say that I really struggle with what I think as a public policy measure, one should think about the rise of automated checkout and the way we've seen it.

我看到人们变成了机器的管理者。

I watch people turned into these managers of machines.

他们从曾经为我结账、问我今天过得怎么样的人，变成了现在只是机械地完成任务的人。

They've gone from being somebody who did check out with me and asked me how my day was, and I asked them how their day was.

而现在，他们被叫过去处理我放在称重机上的三个苹果没称准的问题。

And now they get called over because the three apples I put on the weighing machine didn't weigh in correctly.

这既对他们来说是去人性化，对我而言也是如此。

And it seems dehumanizing to them, dehumanizing to me.

我也理解这一点。

I also get it.

你如何看待这种权衡？

How do you think about weighing that?

有些东西确实令人感到压抑和反乌托邦，也许我们应该直接禁止。

There's this stuff that is genuinely, like, grim and dystopic, and maybe we should just outlaw.

然后还有一些像普遍自动化这样的东西，它确实能带来消费者剩余。

And then there is stuff like the just generalized automation in which there genuinely can be a consumer surplus from that.

比如，时间对我来说就是一种剩余。

Like, time is a surplus for me.

对我来说，事情进展更快是一种盈余。

Things moving faster is a surplus for me.

对我来说，更多的结账台是一种过剩，而它的另一面是有代价的。

More checkout stations is a surplus for me, and there's a cost on the other side of it.

嗯，首先

Well, the first

我想说的是，我们应该更多地做出这类决定，关于我们真正关心什么以及我们想要生活在怎样的世界里。

thing I'd say is we should be making more of these kind of decisions about what we really care about and what world we wanna inhabit.

我的意思是，我认为其中一个情况是，默认状态下我们不会通过任何法律或制定新的道德准则。

I mean, one of the things that I think happens is by default, we don't pass any laws or have new ethical codes.

我的意思是，道德准则承担了很多工作，而我们却因为新事物是新的就允许它们成为王牌。

I mean, ethics does a lot of work, and we just sort of allow a trump card to new stuff because it's new.

而且，你知道，我理解你不想禁止所有新出现的事物，但我觉得在过去大约十五年里，我们有时采取的立场是，你知道，人们对此没有发言权。

And, you know, I I get that you don't wanna ban everything new that shows up, but I feel that we have over the last fifteen years or so sometimes just taken a position that, you know, the people don't get to vote on this.

我的意思是，一个很好的例子就是所有与儿童相关的事情。

I mean, good example is everything to do with children.

我认为没有多少人会觉得监视儿童、针对儿童投放定向广告、以及试图为儿童创造成瘾性技术是件好事。

I don't think there's a lot of people who think it's a great thing to surveil children and have targeted ads for children and try to create addictive technologies for children.

你知道，我在政府工作时，我们曾试图通过一些基本的、甚至只是儿童隐私保护的法律。

You know, when I worked in government, we tried to pass just basic, even child privacy laws.

我们连一次投票表决都没能促成。

We couldn't get a vote ever.

所以，正在发生的情况之一就是我们甚至没有作为一个社会来共同决定这些事情，而这正触及了国会不就民众关心的议题进行表决的问题。

And so one of the things that's going on is we're not even deciding these things as as society, and that gets to, you know, the problem of congress not taking votes on popular issues.

但我也认为这与我们之前关于竞争的讨论有关，即竞争何时有益、何时有害。

But I also think this relates to our conversation earlier about competition and when it's good and when it's bad.

因为我认为，几乎在任何事业中，都存在健康的竞争和有害的竞争。

Because I think for almost any endeavor, there's such a thing as healthy competition and such a thing as toxic competition.

我们之前讨论过注意力市场。

We were talking about the attention markets earlier.

在注意力市场中，什么是良好健康的竞争呢？

What is good healthy competition in the attention markets?

这就像制作非常棒的电影。

It's like making really great movies.

人们喜爱的新电视剧，大家想听的播客。

New TV shows that people love, podcasts that people wanna listen to.

你所说的恶性竞争，本质上就是各种形式的操纵和成瘾机制。

Toxic competition was the stuff you're talking about, essentially different forms of manipulation and addiction.

而我们一直采取这种放任自流的态度，未能尝试引导事物向积极方向发展。

And we've had this kind of like hands off, we cannot try to direct things in a positive direction.

我认为这是一个巨大的错误。

I think that has been a giant mistake.

所以首先，我想说的是我们甚至必须尝试做出这些决定。

So first, I would say we have to even try to make the decisions.

你知道，我会如何权衡取舍呢？

You know, how would I do the trade off?

我的意思是，我想我会从最无可救药的有害内容开始，先禁止那些，然后再看看我们能否——你知道，这听起来可能简单，但我们甚至连那一步都还没能做到。

I mean, I guess I would start with the most unredeeming toxic stuff and ban that first, and then see if we can you know, I I mean, that's maybe easy, but we haven't been able to even do that.

我在政府工作时感到有些震惊，我们竟然无法就一些看似理所当然的事情进行投票表决。

And I was sort of shocked when I worked in government that we just could not get a vote on what seemed like stuff.

隐私法。

Privacy laws.

就像，你知道的，许多美国人在隐私方面需要做出权衡。

Like, many Americans you know, there's trade offs for privacy.

也许，你知道的，他们拥有的数据更少。

Maybe, you know, they have less data.

有些事情效果会更好。

There's certain things work better.

但反监控法的基本内容，我的意思是，就连国家安全部门也真的非常重视这些东西。

But the basics of sort of anti surveillance law I mean, even national security was really into this stuff.

他们觉得，现在监视所有人太容易了，而且这对我们来说是个国家安全问题。

They're like, it's too easy to spy on everybody, and, you know, that's a problem for us as a national security issue.

我们甚至连最基本的反监控法案都无法通过投票，这意味着，比如你下载一个遛狗应用，它不应该随意追踪你并上传你的各类信息，这种行为应该是非法的。

And we just could not get a vote on even the most basic anti surveillance, which would suggest, like, if you download a dog walking app, it shouldn't be just, like, tracking you and uploading every kind of information about you, that that should be illegal.

我一直非常

I have been very

我一直感到不安。

I've been disturbed.

我们在监控和隐私方面未能取得更多进展。

We've not been able to do more on surveillance and privacy.

我也震惊地发现，其他地方已采取的措施效果似乎非常糟糕。

And I've also been struck by how badly what has been done elsewhere seems to have worked out.

我称之为‘条款与条件资本主义’，就是把负担转嫁给消费者。

I find I call this terms and conditions capitalism, where you just move the burden onto the consumer.

所以欧洲出台了一些非常全面的规定，让我有机会自行决定访问的每个网站上的303个cookie中，哪些可能是好的，哪些可能是坏的。

So Europe has put out some very sweeping rules that have given me the opportunity to individually decide which of the 303 cookies on every website I visit might be good or might be bad.

同样地，在我看来，几乎没有人会去阅读iOS的条款与条件更新。

Similarly, nobody's ever, in my view, to a first approximation, read an iOS terms and conditions update.

而且我发现，政策制定者在辩论结束后，往往最终会说，只要进行了披露，消费者就可以自行决定。

And I found that very often, it seems to me where policymakers end up after the debate is saying, well, as long as there is disclosure, then the consumer can decide.

但消费者以一种非常理性的方式，并不想做出决定。

But the consumer, in a very rational way, does not want to decide.

所以我认为，最终结果令人沮丧——它没有建立一个让我确信公司行为受到良好约束的框架，反而要求我付出我不愿意、也认为没人愿意付出的认知劳动，由我自己来监督这些公司，而且如果我不喜欢它们的做法，实际上也没有很好的选择。

So it has ended up, I think, in a very dispiriting place instead of creating a structure in which I'm confident what companies are doing is well bounded, it has demanded of me a level of cognitive work I'm not willing to do and I think nobody else is willing to do to oversee those companies myself with not really great options if I don't like what they're doing.

所以我对你如何看待这个问题感到好奇。

And so I'm curious how you think about that.

不是这样的。

No.

我完全同意。

I couldn't agree more.

我觉得，如果政府行动的副产品是你需要点击更多小窗口，那就是政府的失败。

I feel like if the byproduct of government action is that you are clicking on more little windows, like that is government failure.

坦率地说，我认为这源于政府、监管机构或官员缺乏勇气，不敢做出真正有助于人民的决定。

And I would trace it to frankly a lack of courage on the part of government and the regulators or the officials or, you know, to make decisions that are really supposed to help people.

说‘我害怕做决定，所以我让你来决定’要容易得多。

It's much easier to say, well, you know, I'm afraid to do something, so I'm gonna help them decide.

所以我同意。

So I agree.

我认为《通用数据保护条例》实际上未能阻止监控。

I think the GDPR has actually failed prevent surveillance.

就是那部欧洲法案，它创造了所有那些弹出窗口。

That being the European bill that created all those pop ups.

是的。

Yeah.

GDPR，也就是欧洲的隐私法，实际上成功地制造了大量弹窗和麻烦，同时也成功地让在欧洲挑战大型科技公司变得更加困难，因为它们被过度监管了，而小公司也不得不经历所有这些繁琐程序。

GDPR, the European privacy laws succeeded, you know, in creating as a lot of pop ups and things to mess with, succeeded in making it harder to challenge big tech companies in Europe because they're overregulated, and the little guys have to also go through all this stuff.

所以，是的，我认为这是一次失败。

And so, yes, I think this has been a failure.

我认为要让人们重新信任政府，它必须在那些我们不够强大、无法应对更强大力量或需要更多时间思考的问题上帮助我们。

I think for people to start to believe in government again, it has to help us in situations where we are not strong enough to deal with something much more powerful or something that has a lot more time to think about it.

我的意思是，这就像我们在和专家打扑克牌一样。

I mean, it's like we're playing poker against experts.

要知道，在某些时候，我们需要有骨气，让政府站在人民这边。

You know, at some point, we need to get backbone and have government on people's side.

现在我听起来开始像个政客了。

Now I'm starting to sound like a politician.

但我确实是认真的。

But I but I mean it.

就像人们常说的那样，但真正付诸行动——在人们无能为力、分心或没有精力处理事情时提供帮助——才是关键。

Like, people say that, but really doing it makes making you know, helping people when they are powerless or distracted or don't have energy to deal with things.

科里。

Corey.

听着，我爱你们俩，但你们对GDPR的看法完全错了。

So, look, I love you both, but I think you're dead wrong about the GDPR.

从事实角度来看，关于GDPR的起源、允许什么、禁止什么以及它为何失败，你们都搞错了。

Just as a factual matter about where it comes from, what it permits, what it prohibits, and why it failed.

因为我同意它失败了。

Because I agree it failed.

所以你可能会问，为什么GDPR合规性只表现为一堆 Cookie 同意弹窗？

So you may ask yourself, how is it that GDPR compliance consists of a bunch of cookie compliance dialogues?

答案是，欧洲的联邦制允许税收天堂在联邦内部运作。

And the answer to that is that European federalism allows tax havens to function within the federation.

其中最臭名昭著的是爱尔兰，几乎所有美国科技公司，除了亚马逊，都假装自己是爱尔兰公司，以便利润能在爱尔兰海上处于免税的真空状态。

One of the most notorious of those is Ireland, And almost every American tech company, except for Amazon, pretends that it's Irish so that its profits can float in a state of untaxable grace in the Irish Sea.

由于GDPR的性质，这些由美国大型科技公司催生的垃圾Cookie弹窗的执法，始于都柏林的爱尔兰数据专员，而这位专员基本上什么也不做。

And because of the nature of the GDPR, enforcement for these bullshit cookie pop ups, which are the progeny of the big American tech companies, starts in Dublin with the Irish data commissioner, who to a first approximation does nothing.

这听起来很糟糕，但我想让你明白

That sounds bad, but I wanna get you

为了更好地解释你这里描述的核心机制，因为我其实并不了解它，因为那个法案确实通过了，然后突然间整个互联网就充斥着这些弹窗。

to explain the core mechanism you're describing here better because I actually don't know it because that bill did pass, and then all of a sudden, the entire Internet filled with these pop ups.

所以这只是因为公司去了爱尔兰，违反了法律，然后声称我们没有违法，如果你不同意，你得请爱尔兰数据专员来对我们执行处罚。

So that's only because the companies went to Ireland, broke the law, and said, we're not breaking the law, and if you disagree, you have to ask the Irish data commissioner to enforce against us.

但有少数人，比如爱尔兰公民自由协会的Johnny Ryan，以及NOYB（与你无关组织）的Max Schrems，这是一个欧洲非营利组织。

But a few people, Johnny Ryan with the Irish Civil Liberties Association, Max Schrems with NOYB, this none of your business, this nonprofit, European nonprofit.

他们把这些案件中的一部分拖到德国去处理。

They drag some of those cases to Germany.

更重要的是，他们已经促使欧盟委员会开始修改法律的运作方式。

More importantly, they've got the European Commission to start modifying the way the law works.

所以你只需在浏览器设置里勾选一个默认开启的选项，上面写着‘我不想被监视’就行了。

So you can just you can tick a box in your browser preferences, and it can come turned on by default that says, I don't want to be spied on.

然后他们就不被允许询问你了。

And then they're not allowed to ask you.

我的意思是，答案只会是否定的。

I mean, the answer is just gonna be no.

所以我认为，企业想让你觉得制定一部禁止公司收集你个人数据的法律是极其困难的。

And so I think that corporations want you to think that it's transcendentally hard to write a good law that bans companies from collecting data on you.

他们的意思是，一旦垄断企业达到垄断地位，监管它们就变得极其困难，因为它们比政府更强大。

And what they mean is it's transcendentally hard to police monopolies once they've attained monopoly status because they are more powerful than governments.

如果这就是他们传达的信息，那么我们很多人都会觉得，我们需要采取行动了。

And if that's their message, then a lot of us would be like, well, we need to do something.

我们需要将这种垄断联盟重新打散，而不是像现在这样——天哪，我猜政府在解决这个问题上根本毫无作为。

We need to turn the cartel into a rabble again, as opposed to, god, I guess governments just have no role in solving this problem.

在这一点上我确实不同意你的看法，因为我曾报道过许多不同的游说团体和混乱组织对国会进行游说。

The one place where I do disagree with you having covered a lot of different both cartels and rabbles lobbying congress.

例如，监管社区银行协会并不容易。

It's not easy to regulate the association of community banks, for instance.

当你面对的情况是每个选区都有像这样的个体领袖，他们会来游说自己的国会议员。

When you have something where there are in every single district, like, individual leaders of the district who will come and lobby their member of congress.

这确实很难。

It's really hard.

我并不是说垄断是好事，因为它们让监管变得更容易。

I am not saying that monopolies are good because they make it easier to to regulate.

我只是想说，这并没有解决政府运作依赖金钱和影响力的问题。

I'm just saying that it doesn't solve the problem of the government runs on money and influence.

确实如此。

Sure.

但我们能否就‘必要但不充分’这一点达成共识？

But can we agree on necessary but insufficient?

是的。

Yeah.

所以我们可以做到这一点。

So we can we can do that.

我想问一下，但我想在此基础上向蒂姆提一个独立但相关的问题。

I wanna ask but, I wanna build on this and ask Tim about a separate but related question.

蒂姆，你刚才提到了娱乐产业。

Tim, you mentioned a second ago through the entertainment industry.

接下来要讨论的一个问题是，Netflix是否应该能够收购时代华纳的全部资产，或者说全部娱乐资产。

And one of the questions about to come up is whether Netflix should be able to buy all of the assets of or all the entertainment assets, I should say, of Time Warner.

我认为，关心我们所消费媒体质量的人们，出于在我看来很有说服力的理由，似乎对这种情况的发生感到非常、非常担忧。

And this is one where I think people who care about the quality of the media we consume seem, for reasons that seem compelling to me, very, very worried about having that happen.

你对此怎么看？

How would you think about that?

那么，我们是否需要在此处做出与反垄断判断不同的价值判断呢？

And is this a place where we need to be, say, making values judgments that are different than our antitrust judgments?

反垄断法在这里是否足够适用？

Is this a place where the antitrust laws can suffice?

大家是不是在担心一些本无需担忧的事情？

Is everybody just worried about something they don't need to be worried about?

你怎么看？

How do you see it?

是的。

Yeah.

不是。

No.

我认为，如果反垄断法得到正确且公正的执行，这笔收购就会被阻止。

I I think this is a place where if the antitrust laws are enforced correctly and fairly that the acquisition would be blocked.

我认为这种情况并不特别特殊，因为这是排名第一的优质流媒体公司想要收购排名第三或第四的公司。如果你按照政府发布的指导方针计算数据，这些方针旨在告知企业何时其并购行为会被推定为非法。

And I I'd say that this is not a particularly exotic situation in the sense that you have the number one premium streaming company wanting to buy the number three or number four, and if you do the numbers under the guidelines, which the government issues to tell people when their mergers are, presumptively illegal.

结果是，这起合并被推定为非法。

The result is that this is a presumptively illegal merger.

我认为这确实不好的原因是，坦白说，Netflix和华纳兄弟在其历史上一直是最具创新性和最有趣的媒体渠道之一，而且常常扮演着对立角色。这可以追溯到很久以前，比如华纳兄弟在二十年代就冒险尝试了有声电影。

The reason I do think it's bad is I I think that Netflix and Time Warner have frankly, over their history, been some of the most innovative, interesting outlets, And often in an oppositional role, you know, this goes way back, but like, you know, Time Warner took a chance on sound film back in the twenties.

在五十年代，他们冒险投资了电视，当时人们认为这东西没什么用。

In the fifties, they took a chance on television, which people thought was, you know, useless.

然后是声望电视，在21世纪初HBO引领的黄金时代。

And then prestige television, early thousands with HBO and the golden age.

所以他们承担了很多风险。

So they've taken a lot of bets.

Netflix显然也做了很多创新性的、非常有趣的事情。

Netflix has done a lot of innovative stuff, really interesting, obviously.

坦白说，如果你想讨论过去二十年的优秀技术，想想看，不用等到节目播出时间才能观看，这难道不是一大进步吗？

And frankly, you wanna talk about good tech over the last twenty years, how about, you know, not having to wait until your show comes on?

这种效率我是可以认同的。

That's a form of efficiency I I can agree with.

而且我认为，将这两家常常处于对立立场的公司合并为一家，将会是一场悲剧。

And I think it would be a tragedy to have these two companies who are often so oppositional combined into one.

我认为从文化角度来看，这将是一次巨大的同质化。

I think culturally, it would be a great mushification.

在经济层面上，继续这个话题，我认为通常会是这两家公司竞标最有趣的节目。

At the economic level, just to continue on this, I think it's usually going to be those two companies who are bidding for the most interesting shows.

所以如果有一部新版的，比如《白莲花度假村》或者《火线》，它们会去竞标吗？

So if you had a new version of, you know, White Lotus or something or The Wire, are gonna be bidding for it?