Schumpeter: Capitalism Begins at Home

熊彼特：资本主义从家造起

 

Providing better and more affordable housing could be the next “capitalist achievement”

提供更多更好的经适住房，可成就又一“资本主义伟业”

 

Joseph Schumpeter argued that the miracle of capitalism lies in democratizing wealth. Elizabeth I owned silk stockings, he observed, but the “capitalist achievement” does not lie in “providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.” In most areas of life this miracle has been working magnificently: in America the number of hours of work that it takes to buy a car, or a wardrobe full of clothes, has halved in the past generation. But in three big areas it has singularly failed to operate: health care, education and housing.

 

约瑟夫·熊彼特（Joseph Schumpeter）认为资本主义的奇迹在于对财富的民主化。他观察到，伊丽莎白一世拥有丝袜，但“资本主义的成就”并不在于“为女王提供更多丝袜，而是将其推广至普通工厂女工也能拥有。”在生活的大多数领域里，这一奇迹已成效卓著：在美国，一个世代之后，为购买一辆汽车或满满一柜子的衣服所需工作的时间已经减半。但独独在三大领域中，奇迹却无从发挥：医疗保健、教育和住房。 

 

The last few years have seen a ferment of ideas for improving productivity in medicine and teaching. Smart devices will let us monitor our health constantly and help doctors speed their diagnoses. Open-enrolment online courses will give everyone a free college education and iPads will provide universal schooling in Africa. The same cannot be said of housing, where the scope for a digital revolution is limited and productivity has been heading the wrong way: in America, labour productivity in the construction industry fell by 22% in the 20 years to 2009, even as it rose by 45% in the rest of the economy. In the rich world 60m people spend more than 30% of their income on housing; and in the emerging world 200m households live in slums. The combination of population growth and rapid urbanization means that the numbers in each of these undesirable situations look set to swell.

 

过去几年，关于提高医疗及教育生产力的理念不断发酵。智能设备将能让我们随时监测自己的健康，有助医生加快诊断。开放注册的网络课程将为所有人提供免费大学教育，iPad将在非洲提供普及教育。但住房则难以同日而语，在这方面，数字化革命的影响有限，而且生产力不升反降：在美国，截至2009年的20年间，建筑业劳动生产率下降了22％，而其他领域的生产率则有45％的提升。在富裕国家中，6000万人需要把超过30％的收入花费在住房上；而新兴国家中，有两亿家庭生活在贫民窟。人口增长加上城市化加速，上述困境看来仍将加剧。      

 

But is the future so grim? A growing number of big companies are bringing capital and management expertise into the area. Tata, India’s biggest company, established a division devoted to affordable housing, Tata Value Homes, in 2009. Mahindra & Mahindra has a similar venture, called Lifespaces. Other organizations – from NGOs to management consultants – are bringing new ideas or rethinking old ones.

 

但前景真的如此黯淡吗？越来越多大型企业正把资金及管理专才投放至这一领域。印度最大的企业塔塔集团（Tata）在2009年建立了专门开发经适住房的业务部门“塔塔超值房产”（Tata Value Homes）。Mahindra & Mahindra也创立了类似的项目，名为“生活空间”（Lifespaces）。其他包括非政府组织以至管理顾问公司在内的机构亦正激荡新点子或反思旧理念。 

 

A report by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) provides a good summary of one approach to the problem: applying economies of scale and scope to a fragmented industry. Value & Budget Housing Corporation, a privately owned Indian firm, mass-produces aluminum modules that can be slotted together into apartments of various sizes. China’s Broad Group can build a 30-storey block on a completed foundation in just 15 days, again using many factory-made parts. The MGI report notes that there is still vast scope for cutting the cost of building materials. Indian builders are making significant savings by using bricks made from fly ash, a waste product from coal-fired power plants. Britain has reduced the cost of raw materials for social housing by up to 30% since 2010 by establishing purchasing consortia.

 

麦肯锡全球研究院（MGI）的一份报告很好地概括出了解决问题的一个路径：运用规模及范围经济的原理促进零散型产业发展。“超值与经济型住房公司”（Value & Budget Housing Corporation）是印度一家私营企业，大量生产建筑铝制模块，可用以组嵌成不同尺寸的公寓楼房。中国的远大集团在建成的地基上盖一栋30层高楼只需15天，同样也是采用了许多工厂预制部件。该报告指出，建筑材料成本仍有广阔的减省空间。印度建筑商利用以粉煤灰这种燃煤电厂废品制成建筑用砖，成本节约显著。英国自2010年以来通过建立采购联盟节省了30%的社会住房原材料开支。

 

There are some obvious objections to this sort of top-down approach. The rich world’s great post-war experiment with the mass-production of housing was a disaster. Much of it soon degenerated into little more than vertical slums. This was partly because of shoddy construction: some blocks of flats from the 1960s and 1970s were so badly built that they were demolished in the 1980s. But it is also because people like their houses to have a human touch: nobody wants to live in something that feels as if it were built by a machine. Many of the solutions to the housing problem will need to come from the bottom of the pyramid. Slum-dwellers are constantly fixing up their dwellings and many NGOs now prefer to work with them to make incremental improvements rather than designing new homes from scratch.

 

对这种自上而下的方式亦不乏明显的反对声音。富裕国家在战后的大规模住房建设实验无疑是场灾难。当中许多不久便沦为“垂直贫民窟”。部分原因是建筑过程偷工减料：二十世纪六七十年代建的一些公寓大楼质量之差迫使人们在八十年代就得将其拆毁。同时也因为人们希望自己的房子能更人性化：没人愿意生活在像是机器建造出来的空间里。住房问题的许多解决方案需要来自金字塔的底层。贫民窟的居民总会对住所不断修修补补，因此许多非政府组织现在更愿意与他们合作逐步改善问题，而非从头开始设计新居所。

 

However, system-built housing does not have to be shoddy or impersonal. Huf Haus of Germany has been building high-end prefabricated houses since 1912. Adaptahaus, a British firm, specializes in homes that can be reconfigured as a family’s needs change. IKEA of Sweden sells flat-pack houses that can be customized. Furthermore, big companies can help people to self-build a personalized home while enjoying economies of scale: Cemex of Mexico provides self-builders with access to cheap fixtures and fittings, and cheap finance, as well as cement.

 

然而，系统化建造的住房不一定是劣质或冷冰无情的。德国的贺府公司（Huf Haus）自1912年以来一直致力建造高端预制房屋。英国公司Adaptahaus专门打造可随家庭需要的变化而调适改装的家居。瑞典宜家公司（IKEA）销售可定制的平板式封装房屋。此外，大公司可以帮助人们在自建个性化家居的同时享受到规模经济的实惠：墨西哥Cemex公司除了为自建人士提供水泥，还提供廉价家居组件及低息贷款。

 

The report acknowledges that to fix the housing problem one has to solve a lot of others: obtaining land and getting permits; persuading banks to provide mortgages to poorer people; and getting sluggish utility firms to provide electricity and water connections. Land is particularly tricky. People want to live where the jobs are, usually in the middle of cities, and once they are entrenched they want to make sure that they are not overlooked or overcrowded. But the report includes several good ideas for improving the supply of land. For instance, governments frequently own large chunks of undeveloped land in city centers, if they only bother to look. Turkey’s national housing agency, TOKI, has assembled 4,120 square kilometers (1,600 square miles), equivalent to 4% of the country’s entire urban area, by buying it from other state bodies. Property speculators often sit on chunks of prime city land; to discourage this, China’s government slaps a 20% tax on the value of tracts left undeveloped for a year. Giving slum-dwellers formal title to their properties can also encourage them to join in efforts to redevelop run-down districts.

 

该报告承认，要解决住房问题，必须先解决诸多其他问题：要申请土地及各项许可；要说服银行给贫民提供按揭；还得请公用事业公司接通电力及自来水。土地问题尤为棘手。人们希望住在上班地点附近，往往是市中心，一旦定居下来，人们还想要保证自己的家园既不会孤立无依也不至于人满为患。但该报告为改善土地供应提出了几个好点子。比如，政府常在市中心拥有大片未开发土地，应该好好梳理。土耳其住房建设管理局（TOKI）向其他国家机构收购土地，汇集了4120平方公里（1600平方英里），相当于整个国家市区面积的4%。地皮炒家往往囤积大量市区黄金地块；为遏制这种情况，中国政府规定土地购入后闲置满一年须按土地价款的20%征税。承认贫民窟居民手上的产权也能鼓励他们参与旧区重建。

 

However, putting all this together is hard and, particularly in democracies, provides plenty of scope for NIMBYs and vested interests to block progress. (Authoritarian China bulldozes through such opposition – but many of the buildings it has thrown up over the past couple of decades are ageing badly.) Even so, this is an argument for advancing on several fronts at once, not a counsel of despair. Big firms such as Tata can use their muscle to solve problems such as the supply of land and the availability of cheap finance. NGOs such as Habitat for Humanity have become good at persuading governments to provide the small sums that will help slum-dwellers improve their homes with such things as indoor toilets. There is no reason why the “capitalist achievement” cannot be applied to providing people with decent housing, just as it has provided them with a limitless supply of stockings.

 

然而，要汇合这一切却相当困难，尤其是在民主国家，邻避份子和既得利益集团大有空间阻碍进程。（威权的中国会推平这类反对声音——但过去几十年匆匆建成的楼房现在也已严重老化。）即便如此，这里主张的是要多管齐下解决问题，而非推说不得已而罢休。像塔塔集团这样的大公司可以利用影响力解决土地供应及低息融资等问题。像仁人家园（Habitat for Humanity）这样的非政府组织已成功游说不少政府向贫民窟居民提供小额资助为其改善家居设施，如安装室内厕所等。既然“资本主义成就”可用以向人们源源不断提供丝袜，没理由不能如法炮制，再为人们提供体面的居所。

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