为什么私人投资能成而政府投资不能？
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3)]原创： PragerU字幕组 PragerU字幕组 8月17日
中英对照文本 翻译：银Darthus | 校对：FungChuh
In 2011, a solar power company called Solyndra declared bankruptcy. A company going bankrupt is not news. But Solyndra was not just any company. Its biggest “investor” was the federal government which had given it $500 million dollars. That was news. 2011 年，一家名为索林卓的太阳能公司宣布破产。一家公司破产并不是新闻。但索林卓不是一家普通的公司。它最大的「投资者」是给了它五亿美元的联邦政府。那才是新闻。
But, really, it shouldn’t have been. If history is any guide, it was quite predictable. The government is a very poor investor. And always has been. There are countless examples, but two should serve our purpose here. 但是，真的，这不应该发生。如果以史为鉴，它是容易预见的。政府是一个非常糟糕的投资者。而且一直都是。有无数的例子，但两个就应该能满足我们的目的。
After the Civil War, American leaders were anxious to bind the country’s North, South, East, and West regions together with transcontinental railroads. Congress therefore gave massive federal aid to build the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific, and later the Northern Pacific Railroads. But all three of these roads had huge financial problems. The Union Pacific, for example, was mired in financial scandal from its inception, went bankrupt several times, and had to rebuild large sections of track thanks to shoddy construction practices. 南北战争结束后，美国领导人急于将国家的北部，南部，东部和西部地区用横贯大陆铁路连接起来。因此，国会提供了大规模的联邦资助，建立联合太平洋，中央太平洋以及后来的北太平洋铁路。但这三条铁路都存在巨大的财务问题。例如，联合太平洋公司从一开始就陷入财务丑闻，多次破产，并由于伪劣建造行为，不得不重建大部分轨道。
At that same time, James J. Hill, with no federal aid whatsoever, built a railroad from St. Paul to Seattle -- the Great Northern. How was Hill able to do with private funds what the Union Pacific failed to do with a gift of tens of millions of federal dollars? 与此同时，詹姆斯·J·希尔，在没有联邦资助下，建造了一条从圣保罗到西雅图的铁路——大北部铁路。希尔是如何以私人资金完成联合太平洋在数千万美元联邦资助下也未能完成的事的？
The starting point is incentives. The Union Pacific was paid by the government for each mile of road it built. It was in the railroad’s interest not to build the road straight. The more miles it took the UP to cross Nebraska, for example, the more money it made. 起点在于激励。联合太平洋由政府为它建造的每一英里铁路买单。铁路公司的利益所在是不把铁路修直。例如，越过内布拉斯加州花费的里程越多，它赚的钱就越多。
Hill, by contrast, used his own capital. To make a profit, he had to build his Great Northern Railroad sturdy and straight. Hill’s company remained in business for almost a hundred years until 1970 when it merged with other railroads. The original Union Pacific, riddled with corruption and numerous other financial misdeeds, including the wholesale bribery of public officials, went broke within ten years. 相比之下，希尔使用的是自己的资本。为了盈利，他必须把他的大北部铁路建得又坚固又直。希尔的公司经营了近百年，直到 1970 年才与其他铁路公司合并。最初的联合太平洋公司，充斥着腐败和许多其他金融违法行为，包括贿赂大量公职人员，在十年内破产。
The story of the airplane is even more stark. By the opening of the twentieth century, the major nations of Europe and America were frantically at work trying to invent a flying machine. The first nation to do so would have a huge military and commercial advantage. 飞机的故事则更加鲜明。随着 20 世纪的到来，欧洲大国和美国疯狂地设法发明一种飞行器。第一个做到的国家将获得巨大的军事和商业优势。
In fact, leading American politicians of the day, such as Teddy Roosevelt, President William McKinley, and others argued that building an airplane was a national emergency. There was no time, they argued, to wait for private industry to get the job done. The government needed to pick the best aeronautics expert and give him the money he needed. 事实上，当时领导美国的政治家，如西奥多·罗斯福，威廉·麦金莱总统等人都认为建造飞机是国家紧急事件。他们认为，没有时间等待私营企业完成这份工作。政府需要挑选最好的航空专家并给他所需的钱。
That expert was Samuel Langley, the president of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution and holder of honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge. Langley was already an accomplished inventor and he had written a highly praised book Experiments in Aerodynamics. Federal officials gave Langley funds for two trial flights. He immediately set to work. His theory was that his plane needed to be thrust into the air from a houseboat on the Potomac River. The big engine on the plane would then propel it through air for several minutes. 这位专家是塞缪尔·兰利，著名的史密森尼学会会长，拥有哈佛大学，耶鲁大学，牛津大学和剑桥大学的荣誉学位。兰利已经是一位成功的发明家，他撰写了一本备受好评的书《空气动力学实验》。联邦官员给了兰利两次试飞的资金。他立即开始工作。他的理论是他的飞机需要从波托马克河上的一艘船上弹射向空中。飞机上的大型发动机然后将它推进穿过空气数分钟。
When his first attempt failed, and the plane splashed into the river, Langley was not deterred. But when his second flight did no better, Langley and the politicians gave up. 当他的第一次尝试失败，并且飞机坠入河中时，兰利并没有被吓倒。但当他的第二次飞行没有进展时，兰利和政客们放弃了。
If Langley, with the full backing of the government, could not solve the problem, people simply assumed that it could not be solved. Indeed, The New York Times wrote that human flight might take a million years to accomplish. 如果兰利在政府的全力支持下无法解决问题，人们就会轻易认为它无法解决。确实，《纽约时报》写道，人类飞行可能需要一百万年才能实现。
But to everyone’s surprise, nine days after Langley’s failure, the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, with $2,000 of their own money, conquered the air. On a beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they flew the first plane. Within five years they had constructed an aircraft suitable to sell to the government for military defense. 但令所有人惊讶的是，在兰利失败的九天后，莱特兄弟，奥维尔和威尔伯，两名来自俄亥俄州代顿的自行车修理工，以自己的 2000 美元资金征服了天空。在北卡罗来纳州基蒂霍克的一个海滩上，他们飞行了第一架飞机。在五年内他们就造出了一架适合出售给政府用作军事防御的飞机。
Langley’s subsidized failure was similar to that of the Union Pacific. And the Wright brothers’ success resembled that of James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad. Langley and the Union Pacific were using other people’s money. They did not spend it as carefully as Hill and the Wright brothers spent their own money. As the San Francisco Chronicle concluded at the time: “The destruction of Langley’s machine should put an end to Congressional appropriations of any kind in every field of experiments which properly belongs to private enterprise.” 兰利得到资助的失败与联合太平洋的失败类似。而莱特兄弟的成功与詹姆斯·J·希尔和大北部铁路的成功相似。兰利和联合太平洋使用的是别人的钱。他们没有像希尔和莱特兄弟那样谨慎花费自己的钱。正如《旧金山纪事报》当时所得出的结论：「兰利飞行器的破坏应该终结国会对适合由私营企业来做的任何实验领域的拨款。」
That remains good advice. 这仍然是一条好建议。
Economic growth comes from entrepreneurs risking their own money, not from politicians risking your money. 经济增长来自企业家拿自己的钱冒险，而不是政客拿你的钱冒险。
I’m Burton Folsom, Professor of History at Hillsdale College, for Prager University. 我是伯顿·福尔瑟姆，希尔斯代尔学院历史学教授，为 PragerU 制作。
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