超越金融——索罗斯的哲学

[美] 乔治·索罗斯 著

宋嘉 译

中信出版社

图书在版编目（CIP）数据

超越金融：索罗斯的哲学（纪念版） /（美）索罗斯著；宋嘉译. —2版. —北京：中信出版社，2013.7

书名原文：THE SOROS LECTURES

ISBN 978–7–5086–4042–6

I. ①超… II. ①索… ②宋… III. ①金融投资－经验－美国 IV. ①F837.124.8

中国版本图书馆CIP数据核字（2013）第110996号

THE SOROS LECTURES: At the Central European University by George Soros

Copyright © 2010 by George Soros

Simplified Chinese translation copyright © 2013 by China CITIC Press

Published by arrangement with PublicAffairs, a member of Perseus Books Inc.

through Bardon-Chinese Media Agency

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

本书仅限中国大陆地区发行销售

超越金融—索罗斯的哲学（纪念版）

著 者：[美] 乔治·索罗斯

译 者：宋 嘉

策划推广：中信出版社（China CITIC Press）

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目录

前言

第一讲 人的不确定性原则

第二讲 金融市场

第三讲 开放社会

第四讲 资本主义与开放社会

第五讲 未来的路

THE SOROS LECTURES Author’s Note

Lecture One The Human Uncertainty Principle

Lecture Two Financial Markets

Lecture Three Open Society

Lecture Four Capitalism Versus Open Society

Lecture Five The Way Ahead

读者评论

英汉对照：THE SOROS LECTURES Author’s Note

前言

2009年10月，我在布达佩斯的中欧大学发表了一个系列讲座。中欧大学是一所致力于人文和社会科学领域的国际研究生院，是我于1991年苏联解体后创建的。

第一讲和第二讲总结了我一生的经历和反思，详细阐明了指导我从事商业经营和公益慈善事业的理念架构，以及如何运用它对当前动荡的金融市场进行解释和分析。第三讲和第四讲涉及的是对我来说较新的领域，即有关道德价值观和政治权力，以及两者之间的关系问题。最后一讲，是在我的理念架构许可的范围内提出的预测和对策。

我对我的目标满怀热望，即这个理念架构可为更好地理解人类事务提供基础。读者们可以评判我是否实现了这个目标。我的这些看法是以批判性的思维提出的，希望人们也同样以批判性的思维来对待，而不是把它当成某种武断的教条。

这个系列讲座及随后的讨论，用会议视频的方式播放给了世界各地的大学。其录像可在开放社会研究所的网站上看到，网址是：www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/sorosceu_20091112。

讨论的合作者中有中国的复旦大学和香港大学。我对此感到非常欣慰，因为我相信中国对世界的影响在日益增长，如果我的理念架构能在中国找到一批追随者，世界可能会变得更美好。其他讨论合作者包括哥伦比亚大学、我的母校伦敦经济学院和麻省理工学院。我非常高兴能在这些著名的学府中分享我的理念。

我在此对中欧大学、开放社会研究所和我的工作人员致谢，感谢他们为五个讲座和视频的成功传播做出的努力，并对我的出版商彼得·奥斯诺斯及其公共事务出版社（PublicAffairs）的同事表示感谢。需要感谢的人还包括：科林·麦金和马克·诺图尔诺，他们协助我弄清了某些哲学观点；中欧大学校长约翰·沙特克；在讲座后主持讨论的阿诺托利·卡莱茨基、伊万·克拉斯蒂夫、马克·丹纳和霍华德·戴维斯。另外，我要对克里斯顿范姆·布阿尔克及其他做出评论的人表示感谢。

乔治·索罗斯

2010年1月于纽约

THE SOROS LECTURES

第一讲

人的不确定性原则

英汉对照：Lecture One The Human Uncertainty Principle

我在人生历程中逐渐形成了一个理念架构（conceptual framework），它既帮助我经营对冲基金去赚钱，又使我作为一名以政策为导向的慈善家去用钱。但是这个理念架构本身不是关于钱，而是关于一个哲学家们早已深入研究过的主题，即思维与现实之间的关系。我对这一哲学命题的研究，是从20世纪50年代末在伦敦经济学院学习时开始的。我提前一年完成了毕业考试，所以在拿到学位之前有一年的自主时间。我可以自己选导师，于是选了出生于维也纳的哲学家卡尔·波普。他的著作《开放社会及其敌人》对我影响甚深。

波普在书中论述，经验性的真理不可能是绝对确定的。即使是科学原理，也不能毫无疑义地被证实：只能通过检验来证伪。一个失败的检验就足以证伪，而再多的确认性例证也不能完全证实。科学原理具有假设条件，其真实性要能经受证伪的检验。有人声称某种意识形态掌握绝对真理，这样的断言是错误的，所以它只能被强加于社会。所有这类意识形态都会导致压抑。而波普提出了一个更有吸引力的社会组织形式：开放社会。在这个社会里，人们可以自由地持有不同的见解，法律允许观点不同和利益各异的人们和平地生活在一起。因为我在当时德国和苏联占领下的匈牙利生活过，所以开放社会的理念对我有极大的吸引力。

我在读波普的著作时也研究经济学理论。波普强调人的认知的不完美，经济学中的完美竞争理论则假定存在完美的认知。这两者之间的矛盾触动了我，使我开始对经济学理论的假设前提产生质疑。这是激发我进行哲学思考的两个主要的理论动因，当然还有其他许多次要的原因。

我的哲学理念的形成也深受我个人经历的影响。我的个性形成时期是1944年德国占领匈牙利时，那时我还不到14岁。我来自经济状况尚可的中产阶级家庭，突然之间，只因为我是犹太人，就要面对被驱逐和被杀害的可能。幸亏我父亲对这一动荡早有准备。他经历了俄国革命，那是他的个性形成时期。在俄国革命之前，他是一个雄心勃勃的年轻人。第一次世界大战爆发时他自愿参加了奥匈帝国军队，结果被俄国人俘虏，作为战俘被送到西伯利亚。因为有抱负，他成了战俘们自办报纸的编辑。报纸是手抄的，贴在一块木板上，叫“木板报”。这使他很有威信，被选为战俘的代表。后来附近一个集中营的一些战俘逃跑，他们的代表被枪毙作为惩戒。我父亲没有坐等同样的事在他所在的集中营发生，而是组织领导了一个越狱小组。他计划做一个木筏，顺着河道漂往大海。但是他的地理知识不够，不知道在西伯利亚地区所有的河都流向北冰洋。他们漂泊了几个星期才发现是朝着北极漂流，后来又用了几个月才穿过针叶林带回到文明世界。这时俄国革命爆发，他们又被卷入其中。历经艰难险阻，我父亲最后终于回到匈牙利。其实，如果当初他留在集中营可能早就回家了。

父亲回家后完全变了一个人，在俄国革命中的经历深深影响了他。他失去了雄心抱负，只希望享受人生，别无他求。他传递给孩子们的价值观与我们生活的那个年代完全脱节。他没有积累财富或在社会上成名的愿望。相反，他只求能养家过日子。我还记得父亲让我去他的一个主要客户那里借钱，好让全家滑雪度假。回来后他抱怨了好几个星期，因为得多工作来还债。所以尽管我们家境不错，但不是典型的中产阶级家庭，而且我们以与众不同为荣。

1944年德国占领匈牙利时，我父亲立刻意识到这是非常时期，以往的规则不再适用了。他为家人和其他一些人准备了假身份证，有钱的付了钱，没钱的他免费帮忙。他们大多数都幸存下来。这是我父亲一生中最自豪的事。以虚假身份生活的经历，对我产生了非常积极的影响。我们随时有生命危险，周围的人不断消失，而我们不但幸存下来，还可以帮助别人。我们很幸运，战胜了许多难以想象的艰险。这令我感到自己很独特，我们的经历太惊险了。父亲是我可靠的向导，我们安然无恙地度过了这一时期。一个14岁的孩子还能奢望什么呢？

有了在纳粹魔爪下逃生的惊心动魄的经历之后，在苏联占领下的匈牙利生活开始变得乏味。我开始寻找新的挑战，并且在父亲的帮助下成功地离开匈牙利，17岁时到了伦敦去上学。我学习的主要兴趣，是想对我生长的这个奇怪的世界有所了解。但必须坦白，我也幻想成为一个大哲学家，我相信自己有与众不同的见解。

在伦敦的生活使我大失所望。我没有钱，很孤独，而且没人对我想说的话感兴趣。即使生存压力迫使我去做一些平庸的事，我也没有放弃自己在哲学上的抱负。学业结束后，我找的几个工作都不对路，最后我终于在纽约做起了套汇交易，但业余时间还是继续我的哲学研究。

就这样我写了第一篇重要论文，题为“意识的重担”（The Burden of Consciousness）。论文试图按照波普开放社会和封闭社会的框架，将有机社会与传统思维方式相对应，将封闭社会与教条式思维相对应，将开放社会与批判式思维相对应。我未能很好地解答的是，思维方式与现实情况之间相互关系的本质。这个问题继续吸引着我，促使我后来提出了反身性（reflexivity）的概念。下面我会对这一概念进行更详细的阐述。

恰恰是反身性使我对金融市场有了比现行的主导理论更好的新认识。这让先是作为证券分析师，后来作为对冲基金经理的我拥有了一些优势。我觉得自己掌握了一个新的重大发现，也许可以使我实现成为一个大哲学家的梦想。有一段时间生意受挫，我把全部精力投入到了哲学理念的研究上，但是我太看重这一发现以至于到了无法摆脱的地步。我感到需要进一步深入探索反身性。我钻得越来越深，以致迷失在自己复杂的思维之中。早上醒来时，我无法理解前一天晚上写的东西。这时我决定放弃哲学探索，集中精力赚钱。直到多年之后成了一个成功的对冲基金经理后，我才又回到我的哲学研究中。

我的第一本书《金融炼金术》（The Alchemy of Finance）是在1987年出版的。在书中，我试图解释自己看待金融市场的内在哲学基础。对冲基金行业中的很多人都读过此书，商学院也将其作为教材，但是其中的哲学论述没有引起太大的反响。这些论述被忽视，读者认为这不过是一个成功商人的自负，把自己想象成一个哲学家而已。

我也开始怀疑，是不是自己真的有一个新的重大发现。毕竟我所涉及的主题是自古以来众多哲学家一直在研究的。我有什么理由认为自己有新的发现，尤其是别人并不这样认为？毫无疑问，这个理念架构对我个人来说十分有用，但其他人似乎并不像我一样觉得它有价值。我不得不接受他们的判断。但我并没有完全放弃自己的哲学兴趣，而是将其作为个人爱好来对待。在我的生意和慈善事业中，我继续受这一理念架构的引导，而且慈善事业在我生活中占的位置越来越重要。我每写一本书都努力阐述我的观点。这有助于我拓展这一理念架构，但我仍然把自己看成一个失败的哲学家。有一次我讲座的题目就是“一个失败哲学家的又一次尝试”。

这一切都被2008年的金融危机改变了。我的理念架构不仅使我预见到了这场危机，还能在它最终到来时有能力应对。它还使我比大多数其他人能更好地解释和预测事件的发展。这让我改变了我自己以及别人对此理念的评价。我的哲学理念已不再是一个个人的问题；它有助于我们对现实的理解，应该被认真对待。正是这一点促使我来做这个系列讲座。

好，现在就开始。今天这一讲，我将大致介绍谬误性（fallibility）和反身性的基本内容。明天，我将用这些理念分析金融市场，然后用于分析政治问题。这也会涉及开放社会的理念。第四讲将探讨市场价值与道德价值的区别。第五讲将对眼下面临的历史时刻给出一些预测及对策。

可以用两个相对简单的命题说明我的核心思想。一个是，在参与者有思维能力的前提下，参与者对世界的看法永远是局部的和扭曲的。这就是“谬误性”。另一个是，这些扭曲的观点可以影响参与者所处的环境，因为错误的看法会导致错误的行为。这就是“反身性”。比如，把吸毒成瘾者当罪犯对待，他们就会做出犯罪行为。因为这会导致对吸毒问题的错误理解，而妨碍对吸毒成瘾者的适当治疗。另一个例子，把政府看成坏政府则往往会使政府变得更坏。

两个命题其实都是常识，所以评论我的人说我讲的不过是显而易见的事，他们说得对，但只是在一定程度上对。我的命题的有趣之处在于它们还没有被广泛认识接受，特别是反身性被经济学理论故意忽视甚至否认。我的理念架构值得受到重视，不是因为它是一个新发现，而是因为像反身性这样属于常识的概念，竟被如此故意忽视。认识反身性成了徒劳地追求人类事务确定性的牺牲品，尤其是在经济学领域，而不确定性恰恰是人类事务最关键的特性。经济学理论建立在均衡的概念基础上，它与反身性直接冲突。我将在下一讲中说明，这两个概念如何导致了对金融市场两种截然不同的解释。

对谬误性概念的争议要少得多。人们一般已经认识到，我们所在的世界的复杂性超出了我们的认知理解能力。在这方面我没有什么重大的新看法。主要的困难在于，参与者是他们所要解决的问题的一部分。面对现实的极端复杂性，人们不得不诉诸各种各样将事情简单化的做法：归纳法、二分法、象征手法、决策法则、道德戒律等。这些思维产物使情况进一步复杂化。

大脑的结构是造成认知扭曲的另一个因素。脑科学近期的发展让人们对大脑功能开始有了新的见解，为大卫·休谟（David Hume）关于“理性是激情的奴隶”这一有洞察力的论点提供了论据。与肉体相分离的理智或理性的想法不过是我们的臆想。大脑中充斥着千百万感官冲动，而意识只能同时处理七八个主题。这些冲动需要在巨大的时间压力下被压缩、整理和解释，不可避免地会发生错误和扭曲。脑科学为我最初的论点增添了很多新的细节，即我们对身处其中的世界的认知理解，是天生不完美的。

反身性的概念需要进一步解释，它仅适用于有思维的参与者的情况。参与者的思维有两个功能：一个是理解我们生活在其中的世界，我称之为认知功能（cognitive function）；另一个是改变境况使之对我们有利，我称之为参与或操纵功能（participating or manipulative function）。这两个功能将思维与现实从相反的方向连接起来。从认知功能的角度看，现实应该决定参与者的看法；因果关系的导向是从世界到头脑。与此相反，在操纵功能中，因果导向是从头脑到世界，也就是说，参与者的意图应该左右结果。当这两种功能同时运作时，它们可以相互干预。干预是怎样发生的呢？是通过使每一个功能都失去自变量（independent variable），而这是决定因变量（dependent variable）的值所必需的：当一种功能的自变量成为另一种功能的因变量时，两个功能都没有了真正的自变量。

这意味着，认知功能不能提供足够的知识作为参与者决策的基础。同样，操纵功能可以对结果有影响，但不能决定结果是什么。换言之，结果有可能偏离参与者的意图。在意图和行动之间肯定会有偏离，行动和结果之间又会有进一步的偏离。这样就使我们对现实的理解和事件的实际发展过程都有了不确定的因素。

为了更好地理解与反身性有关的不确定性，我们需要对每个功能再加以审视。如果认知功能可以不受操纵功能的干扰而独立运作，则可以产生知识，它表现为真命题（true statement）。真理符合论的观点（correspondence theory of truth）告诉我们，一个表述如果符合事实，那么它就是真实的。但如果认知功能受到操纵功能的干扰，这些事实就不能再被作为独立的标准来判断一个表述的真实性，因为改变事实的表述可能已产生了一定的对应性（correspondence）。

看一下这个表述，“天在下雨”。表述正确或错误取决于是否真的在下雨这一事实。再看一下另一个表述，“这是革命性的一刻”。这个表述就是反身性的，其真值取决于它所造成的影响。

反身性表述与说谎者自相矛盾的话有些相似，是一个自我参照（self-reference）的表述。自我参照已被大量分析过，而人们对反身性的关注却很少。这很奇怪，因为反身性对真实世界有影响，而自我参照只是一个单纯的语言学现象。

在现实世界中，参与者的思维不仅表现为陈述，也表现为各种形式的行为举止。这使反身性成了一种非常普遍的现象，其典型的表现形式是反馈环（feedback loops）。参与者的看法影响事件的发展，事件的发展又对参与者的看法产生影响。影响是连续的和循环的，形成环状。这一过程可从两者中的任意一方启动，可以从看法的变化开始，也可以从事件的变化开始。

反身性的反馈环尚未被严格地分析过，当我最初发现反身性并试图对其进行分析时，遇到了种种复杂情况。反馈环应该是参与者的看法和事件的实际发展之间的双向联系。但是参与者们的看法之间又是如何双向联系的呢？或者是一个单独的个体，问自己是什么样的人，主张什么，并经过反思改变了自己的行为，这种情况下的双向联系又是什么呢？

为了避免我早期对反身性进行探讨时陷入的困境，我建议对现实的客观性和主观性加以区分。思维属于主观层面，事件属于客观层面。换言之，主观的一面是指参与者的头脑中发生了什么，客观的一面是指外部的现实发生了什么。外部的现实只有一个，而主观的看法却会有许多。反身性可以将现实中的任何两个或多个方面联系起来，在它们之间形成双向反馈环。在特殊情况下，双向反馈环甚至可以发生在现实的某个单一方面，例如一个单独的个体进行自我反思的情况，这也许可以表述为自我反身性（self-reflexivity）。这样我们可以区分两大类：反身性关系，它与现实的主观层面相连接；反身性事件，属于客观层面。当现实没有主观的一面时，反身性也不会存在。

反馈环可以是负面的或者正面的。负反馈使参与者的看法与实际情况更接近，正反馈使两者背道而驰。换言之，负反馈的过程是自我纠正（self-correcting）的过程。它可以永远地进行下去，而且如果没有外部现实的重大变化，它可能最终达到均衡（equilibrium），这时参与者的看法符合事物的实际情况。这正是金融市场应该发生的现象。因此均衡，作为经济学核心理论，是负反馈的极端情况，即我的理念架构中有局限性的情况。

与此相反，正反馈是自我强化（self-reinforcing）的过程。它不可能无止境地继续下去，因为参与者的看法终将远离客观现实，而使参与者不得不承认其看法是不现实的。如果现实情况没有变化，这一过程也不可能反复出现，因为正反馈的本性会强化现实世界中占主导的趋势，不论该趋势是什么。这样，我们得到的不是均衡，而是动态的不均衡，或者可以称为远非均衡的状况。通常在远非均衡的情况下，认识与现实之间的差距会达到极点，因而向相反的方向启动正反馈的过程。起初是自我强化，但最终成为自我毁灭的繁荣—衰退周期，或是泡沫，这正是金融市场的特性，但这种现象在其他领域里也可以发现。我称其为易扩散谬误（fertile fallacies），即对现实的解释是扭曲的，而其产生的结果又强化了这种扭曲。

我知道我讲的这些可能非常抽象，很难懂。一些具体的例子可能会有助于理解，但请你们耐心听我讲下去。我的看法完全不同，而且抽象的论点难以理解这一事实对我会有所帮助。谈论像现实或者思维，或两者之间的关系这类抽象的概念很容易引起困惑和对问题产生错误的认识，而错误的认识和理解在人类的活动中起着很重要的作用。最近的金融危机，就可以归结为对金融市场如何运作的错误认识。这是我下一讲的主题。在第三讲里我会讨论两个易扩散谬误——启蒙期谬误和后现代谬误，以及这两种谬误对我们世界观的普遍深入的影响。具体的事例可以说明错误的认识在历史进程中起了多么重要的作用。但是在这一讲的后半部分，我还是要站在抽象层面的高度上。

我认为，包括有思维的参与者的情况与自然现象的构成的不同之处在于思维的作用。在自然现象里，思维不起因果的作用，而仅仅是认知功能。在人类活动中，思维是论及的主题的一部分，既有认知功能又有操纵功能。这两种功能可以相互干预，但也不是始终在相互干预。在日常生活中，比如开车或刷房子，这两种功能实际上是互补的。但是当相互干预发生时，就产生了一个自然现象中没有的不确定因素。这种不确定性在两种功能上都有所表现：参与者的认知有缺陷，而且其行为的结果不符合其预期。这是人类活动的一个关键特性。

与此相反，在自然现象中，情况的发展不受观察者的观点的影响，旁观者只是以认知的功能参与。这样，自然现象就提供了一个可靠的标准，可以根据它来判断观察者理论的真实性。旁观者因此获得认知，并在这一认知的基础上成功地操纵自然。在此，认知功能和操纵功能自然地分割开。由于这种分割，两种功能都可以比在人类环境中更好地发挥其作用。

讲到这里我想强调一下，反身性不是人类事务中不确定性的唯一来源。反身性的确给参与者的看法和事情的发展都带来了不确定因素，但是还有其他的因素也可能产生同样的效果。举例来说，一些参与者无法知道其他参与者所知道的情况，这不同于反身性，但也是人类事务不确定性的一个根源。还有，不同的参与者有不同的利益，有些利益可能是相互冲突的，这是不确定性的另一个根源。再者，各个参与者可能有多元的且互不一致的价值取向。这些因素造成的不确定性，很可能比反身性引起的不确定性范围更广。我把这些因素综合在一起，称之为“人的不确定性原则”（human uncertainty principle），这是一个比反身性更宽泛的概念。

人的不确定性原则，比渗透于笛卡儿哲学中的主观怀疑主义（subjective skepticism）要严谨得多。这一原则使我们有客观的理由相信，我们的感性认识和预期是错误的，或者至少可能是错误的。

尽管人的不确定性最初影响的是参与者本身，但它对社会科学的意义要深远得多。我所能解释的最好的办法是引用波普的科学方法论。这是一个极简明而合理的设计，包括三个要素和三项运作。三个要素是：科学原理，运用这些原理的初始条件和最终条件。三项运作是：预测、解释和检验。当科学原理与初始条件相结合时，就产生预测。当原理与最终条件相结合时，则产生解释。从这个意义上来讲，预测和解释是对称的和可逆的。剩下的是检验，即将预测与实际结果进行比较。

根据波普的理论，科学原理是假设性的，不能被证实，但可以通过检验被证伪。这一科学方法成功的关键，是它可借助独特的观察，检验结论的普遍有效性。一个失败的验证即足以证伪，但是不论多少肯定的例子都不足以证实。

这对科学如何既是经验主义的又是理性的这一难题，提出了有效的解决办法。根据波普的方法，科学是经验主义的，因为我们通过观察判断预言是否真实，并依此对我们的理论进行检验；它又是理性的，因为我们观察时使用的是归纳逻辑法。波普放弃了归纳逻辑，改为依靠检验。他认为，未被证伪的概括性结论未必就是科学的。波普强调检验在科学方法中的核心作用，并宣称科学原理仅是暂时有效，可以重新检验，从而为批判性思维提供了强有力的范例。因此，波普模式的三个显著特征是：预测与解释之间是对称的，证实和证伪之间是不对称的，而位于中心的是检验。检验使科学得以发展、改进和创新。

波普的模式非常适用于对自然现象的研究，但是人的不确定性破坏了该模式的简明和合理。预测中的不确定因素破坏了它与解释之间的对称，而且使检验的核心作用受到威胁。初始条件和最终条件应该包括还是应该剔除参与者的思维？这个问题很重要，因为检验要求这些条件能够重复。如果将参与者的思维包括进来，则很难观察初始条件和最终条件，因为参与者的看法只能从他们的表述或行动中推断。如果不包括，初始条件和最终条件则无法形成独特的观察，因为同样的客观情况可以与许多看法非常不同的参与者相关联。这两种情况都无法对普遍有效性作适当的检验。这些困难不能阻止社会学家提出有价值的概括（generalization），但概括很可能无法达到波普模式的要求，也无法与物理学定律的预断力相比。

社会科学家们感到很难接受这一结论。经济学家尤其会感受到弗洛伊德称为“物理羡慕”（physics envy）的苦恼。

曾经有人试图通过创造或假定参与者的思维与实际情况之间的某种固定关系，来消除人的不确定性原则引起的困难。马克思说过，意识形态的上层建筑是由生产的物质条件决定的；弗洛伊德则认为，人的行为是由人们甚至尚未意识到的驱动力和情结决定的。尽管如波普指出的，它们不能通过检验被证明是否是错误的，但两者均断言其理论的科学性。

令人印象最深刻的尝试是经济学的理论。它从一开始就假设认知是完美的，当这个假设站不住脚时，又有越来越多的扭曲观点来维护行为是理性的这一谎言。其结果使经济学得出了一种理性预期的理论，认为人们对未来有一种单一的最乐观的看法，这一看法符合未来的情况，而且最终所有的市场参与者都将围绕这个观点汇集到一起。这一假定是荒谬的，但又是人们所需要的，以便使经济学理论能有如同牛顿物理学定律那样的模式。

有趣的是，波普和哈耶克在《经济学》（Economica）杂志上都表示，社会科学不能得出像物理学那样的结果。哈耶克猛烈抨击了机械地、不加鉴别地应用自然科学定量方法的行为。他称之为科学主义。波普在其撰写的《历史主义的贫困》一文中阐明，历史不能由普遍适用的科学规律来决定。

尽管如此，波普还是提出了他的“统一方法论”（doctrine of the unity of method），他认为，对自然科学和社会科学的判断应使用同样的标准。哈耶克则成了芝加哥经济学派的鼓吹者，那里是市场原教旨主义的发源地。但在我看来，人的不确定性的含义是，自然科学与社会科学研究的主题根本不同，因此需要采用不同的方法，而且必须用不同的标准来衡量。人们不应期望用经济学的理论找出普遍适用的规律，并可以反过来被用于解释和预测历史事件。我的论点是，盲目地模仿自然科学的方法，将不可避免地导致对人和社会现象的曲解。社会科学通过模仿自然科学方法所得到的结果，无法与物理学相比。

我对在自然科学和社会科学之间划分如此分明的界限有些顾虑。这种极端的二元性一般在现实中找不到，是我们为了大致搞清楚非常容易混淆的现实而提出来的。的确是，当有理由在物理学和社会科学之间做出鲜明的区分时，其他一些学科，如生物学和研究动物世界的学科，则处于两者之间。

但是我不得不抛开顾虑，承认自然科学与社会科学的二元性，因为社会科学除具备自然科学所没有的人的不确定性外，还有第二重困难，即社会理论本身还具有反身性。

海森堡（Werner Heisenberg）发现的不确定性原则对极微小的量子粒子的行为没有丝毫影响；但是社会科学，不论是马克思主义，市场原教旨主义，还是反身性理论，对其涉及的主体都有所影响。也就是说，海森堡的不确定性原则对科学方法没有干扰，而社会科学的反身性理论对科学方法有干扰。当社会科学可以被用来积极改变事物的状况时，为什么要把社会科学消极地局限在社会现象的研究上呢？正如我在《金融炼金术》一书中指出的，炼金者们犯了一个错误，他们试图用咒语改变原金属的性质；而他们应该做的，是将注意力集中在能够成功的金融市场上。

社会科学怎样才能被保护而不受这种干扰？我建议采用一个简单的对策：承认自然科学与社会科学的二元性。这可确保社会学理论以自己的价值被判断，而不是错误地与自然科学进行类比。我提议将其作为保护科学方法的一种常规做法，而不是用来贬低社会科学。这一常规做法对社会科学可能获得的成就不设任何限制，相反，可将社会科学从盲目模仿自然科学的泥沼中解放出来，并保护它不受错误标准的评判，以此打开新的前景。正是基于这种精神，下一讲我将阐释我对金融市场的理解。

THE SOROS LECTURES

第二讲

金融市场

英汉对照：Lecture Two Financial Markets

在这一讲中，我将把第一讲中介绍的几个概念——谬误性、反身性和人的不确定性原则，运用于金融市场。请打起精神做好准备，我要把一生的经验浓缩在这一讲里。

金融市场是检验我在上一讲里阐述的抽象理念的一个极好的实验室。金融领域事物的发展过程比其他大多数领域更容易观察。许多事实是定量的，数据也得到很好的记录和保存。检验发生的原因在于，我对金融市场的解释与有效市场假说直接冲突，而这一假说是现今金融市场上占主导地位的理论。这一假说宣称，市场趋于均衡，偏离会随时发生，而且可归因于外来的冲击。如果这个理论是正确的，那我的观点就是错误的，反之也一样。

我先讲一下将我的理念架构运用于金融市场的两个基本原则。第一，市场价格总是扭曲其内在的基本面。扭曲的程度可能微不足道，也可能十分严重。这与有效市场假说针锋相对，有效市场假说认为市场价格能准确地反映所有有效信息。

第二，金融市场不会单纯消极地反映内在现实，它也有积极的作用：能够影响其应该反映的所谓基本面。行为经济学忽略了这一点。它只注重反射过程的一半，即金融资产的错误定价，而没有论及错误定价对基本面的影响。

金融资产的错误定价对所谓基本面的影响可以通过若干途径，其中最常见的是杠杆的使用，包括债务杠杆和资产杠杆。各种反馈环会给人以市场经常是正确的印象，但是现行机制与流行范式的机制很不相同。我认为，金融市场有办法改变基本面，改变的结果可能使市场价格与内在基本面更相符。这与宣称市场总是准确地反映现实，并自动趋于均衡的有效市场假说形成了鲜明对比。

我的这两个论点集中说明了金融市场所具有的反身性反馈环特征。我在第一讲中描述了两种反馈，负反馈和正反馈。负反馈是自我纠正，正反馈是自我强化。这样，负反馈可引发导向均衡的趋势，而正反馈可造成动态的不均衡。正反馈环更有意思，因为它可以使市场价格和内在基本面上都发生大的变动。一个完整运转的正反馈环起初是向某一方向自我强化，但最终会达到极点或逆转点，此后则向相反的方向自我强化。但是正反馈的过程不一定能走完，在任何时刻都可能被负反馈终止。

我根据这个思路研究出了关于繁荣—哀退过程或称泡沫的理论。每个泡沫都有两个组成部分：现实中主导的内在趋势和对这个趋势的错误理解。当趋势与错误理解积极地彼此强化时，就引发了繁荣—哀退的过程。这一过程会在发展中受到负反馈的检验。如果趋势足够强大，能经得起检验，趋势和错误观念则会进一步相互强化。最终，市场预期变得与现实相差太远，致使人们被迫承认错误观念的存在。随之而来的是黄昏期，质疑声越来越大，更多的人失去信心，但是主导的趋势在惯性的作用下仍在继续。像花旗集团前首席执行官查克·普林斯（Chuck Prince）说的：“只要还有音乐，就要起来跳舞。我们还在继续跳。”最后终于到了趋势的逆转点，然后它开始朝相反的方向自我强化。

现在再讲一下1987年我最初提出这个理论时举过的例子，即20世纪60年代末大型企业集团的繁荣：内在趋势的标志是每股收益，与此趋势相关的预期表现为股票价格。企业集团通过收购其他公司提高自己的每股收益。预期膨胀提高了它们的收益水平，但最终现实无法跟上预期。经过黄昏期后，价格趋势出现逆转，所有过去被掩盖的问题都暴露出来，收益崩溃。当时，一个名叫奥格登公司的企业集团（Ogden Corporation）的总裁告诉我：没人再看我的演出了。

下图是企业集团泡沫的模型。像奥格登这样的企业集团的泡沫模型与此很相似。遵循这一模式的泡沫现象会经过几个明显的阶段：（1）发端期；（2）加速期；（3）被证实的检验中断又进一步强化；（4）黄昏期；（5）逆转点或极点；（6）加速下跌；（7）在金融危机中破灭。

每一个阶段的长短及强度很难预测，但是顺序有其内在的逻辑。所以每阶段的顺序可以预测，但顺序也可能由于政府的干预或其他形式的负反馈而终止。在企业集团兴起的案例中，租赁系统与研究公司（Leasco Systems and Research Corporation）企图购买汉华信托公司（Manufacturer Hanover Trust Company）的失败，达到了极点，或逆转点。

泡沫现象具有典型的形状不对称性。上涨拉的时间很长，起始较慢，逐渐加速，直到黄昏期拉平；下跌则很短很陡，因为它是被强迫清算所强化的。幻灭引起恐慌，使之达到金融危机的极点。

最简单的例子是房地产的繁荣。使趋势猛涨的因素是信贷便宜且容易取得；使趋势成为泡沫现象的错误观念是，附属担保物的价值不受信贷量的限制。而实际上，信贷量与附属担保物价值之间是反身性的关系。信贷较便宜又较容易得到时，交易活跃，房地产价值上升，拖延欠付情况较少，信贷表现良好，借贷标准宽松。这样在上涨高潮时，信贷量达到极限；其逆转则造成强迫清算，房地产跌价。

然而，错误的观念以各种其他形式继续出现。1982年的国际银行业危机是围绕主权债务引起的，它没有附属担保物。主权国家借债者的资信度是由各种债务比率衡量的，如债务与国内生产总值的比率，或债务服务与出口的比率等。这些比率被视为客观标准，而实际上它们是反身相关的。20世纪70年代石油美元的回收，增加了对巴西等国家的信贷注入，它们的负债比率提高，促使进一步的信贷注入，从而开始形成泡沫。在美联储主席保罗·沃克尔提高利率以遏制通货膨胀后不久，泡沫就破裂了。

并非所有的泡沫都涉及信贷的扩大，有些是基于资产杠杆操作的。最典型的例子当然是20世纪90年代末的互联网泡沫。艾伦·格林斯潘在1996年谈到非理性繁荣时，对泡沫现象作了错误的说明。人们看到泡沫形成时，冲入市场去买，火上浇油，并不是因为没有理性。这就是为什么我们需要有监管者在泡沫没有变得太大前去控制市场，因为不能指望市场参与者这样去做，无论他们掌握多少信息或是多么有理智。

泡沫不是反身性的唯一表现形式，但恰恰能最明显和最直接地反击有效市场假说，所以的确值得特别注意。反身性还有其他许多表现形式。例如在货币市场上，上扬和下挫是对称的，所以没有繁荣和哀退之间不对称的迹象，但是也没有均衡的迹象。自由浮动的汇率往往表现为大规模的多年期波浪式运动。

最重要也最有趣的反身性互动，发生在金融监管机构和金融市场之间。市场由于不趋于均衡，所以容易阶段性地产生危机。金融危机导致监管改革。中央银行和金融市场的监管法规就是这样产生和发展的。金融监管机构和市场参与者都在不全面的认识基础上运作，这使它们之间的互动形成了反身性关系。

虽然泡沫只是间歇性地形成，但监管机构和市场之间的相互作用是持续进行的。任何一方的错误理解一般会局限在一定的范围内，因为市场的反应会给监管机构提供有益的反馈，使其纠正自己的错误。但有时，错误被证明为自我肯定，因而形成恶性循环或良性循环。这样的反馈环在某种程度上与泡沫现象相似，即最初是自我强化，最终成了自我毁灭。监管机构对阶段性金融危机的干预，在“超级泡沫”的发展中的确起了关键作用，这一泡沫在2007~2008年间破裂。

有一点很重要，即应该认识到并不是所有的价格扭曲都是由反身性造成的。市场参与者不可能用知识来决策——他们必须预测未来，而未来如何取决于他们尚未做出的决定。那些决定是什么，其影响如何，都不可能被准确地预见。尽管如此，人们还是被迫要做出决定。想做出正确的预测，需要知道所有其他参与者的决定及其后果，而这是不可能的。

理性预期理论试图回避这种不可能，它假定只有一种正确的预期，而且人们的看法会以这一预期为中心。这种假定与现实不符，但却是目前大学里讲授的金融经济学的基础。实际上，参与者必须在不确定的情况下做出决定。他们的决定肯定是临时性和有偏见的，这是价格扭曲的根本原因。

有时价格扭曲会引发繁荣—哀退的过程，但更常见的是它们会被负反馈所纠正。在这种情况下，市场波动是没有规律的。我将其比作在游泳池里溅起的水花和海里的波浪，显然后者更巨大，但前者更普遍。这两种价格的扭曲往往混合在一起，所以在实际的繁荣—哀退过程中很少完全遵循我的模式。按照我描述的模式发展的泡沫只在很少的情况下发生，但其力量和影响极大，可淹没与此同时存在的所有其他变化过程。

应该对接近均衡和远非均衡的状态加以区别，前者的特点是波动的随机性，后者的特点是泡沫占支配地位。接近均衡的状态是普通日常情况的重复，构成一般的统计概括。远非均衡的状况下会发生独特的历史性事件，其后果一般不确定，但是有可能打破基于日常情况的统计概括。

在接近均衡的情况下指导决策形成的原则，不适用于远非均衡的情况。最近的金融危机就是一个恰当的例子。有一种假设，即价格从假定均衡的情况下偏离是随机发生的，建立在此假设基础上的所有风险管理办法，以及合成金融产品都失灵了。数学模式在接近均衡的情况下可以为人们服务得很好，但在非常情况下仍依赖这些模式的人则受到了重创。

我从最近的金融危机中对远非均衡的情况得到了一些新的见解。作为参与者，我必须在巨大的时间压力下行动，我无法收集到现有的全部信息，负责监管的机构也是如此。这就是为什么远非均衡的情况会失控。

这种情况不仅限于金融市场，我在苏联解体时也有过这种感受。理性预期理论忽略了参与者的思维是受时间局限的，而并非不受时间约束这一事实。

尽管我意识到了反身性的不确定性，但我还是对2008年的不确定性所达到的程度感到意外和震惊。它使我损失惨重。我看对了市场总的方向，但对其易变性没有留出足够的空间。结果，我的仓位过大而无法承受易变性造成的波动，有几次为了控制风险，不得不在错误的时机降低仓位。如果我仓位较低并坚守住，情况会好一些。我从这个教训中认识到，就连不确定性的程度也是不确定的，而且有的时候几乎是无限的。

易变性反映了不确定性，易变性增大则需要降低风险暴露。这会导致凯恩斯所说的“流动性偏好”提高，是金融危机中特有的强迫清算的又一个因素。当危机减退，不确定性的范围缩小时，流动性偏好停止上升并最终下降，使股市几乎是自动地反弹。这是我最近学到的又一个经验。

需要指出的是，接近均衡和远非均衡状况的区分，是我为了使人们对令人迷惑的现实有所理解而提出的，并不是对现实的准确描述。现实永远比我们说的二元化的概念要复杂得多。最近的这次危机可与百年一遇的风暴相比。它是由已有的若干危机积聚而成的，这些危机相当于五年或十年一遇的风暴。曾成功应对较小风暴的监管者，用类似方法去应对百年风暴就不灵了。

这些一般性的说明为解释最近的金融危机的特定假设奠定了基础。尽管假设不是通过演绎逻辑从我的泡沫理论推断而来，但两者是休戚相关的。

现在我就来讲这个假设。我认为，2007年引人注目的次贷泡沫引起了超级泡沫的爆裂，就像一个普通的炸弹引发了核爆炸一样。美国的房地产泡沫是最普通的一种，唯一不同的是债务抵押债券及其他合成证券的泛滥。在这个普通泡沫的背后，有一个大得多的超级泡沫在较长的一段时间里不断积聚，这是比较独特的。

这一超级泡沫的主导趋势是信贷和杠杆使用的无止境增长。主导的错误观念认为，金融市场可以自我调节，所以应听之任之。里根总统称其为市场的魔力，我称其为市场原教旨主义。这是在里根任美国总统和玛格丽特·撒切尔任英国首相的20世纪80年代里主导的信条。

使这一超级泡沫如此特别的，是金融危机在促使其膨胀的过程中所起的作用。由于市场可以自我调节这一错误观念，超级泡沫引发了一系列的金融危机。最早和最严重的是1982年的国际银行业危机。随之又有许多其他危机，其中最明显的有1987年10月投资组合保险的崩溃（portfolio insurance debacle），1989~1994年以不同形式出现的储蓄和贷款危机，1997~1998年初露端倪的市场危机，和2000年互联网泡沫的破灭。每一次金融危机出现时，监管当局都进行干预，将失败的金融机构并入其他机构或用其他办法解决，并采取货币或财政刺激手段对经济进行保护。这些措施强化了不断增长的信贷及杠杆主导趋势；但只要奏效，这些措施也强化了可以放任市场去自我调节的主导错误观念。这是一种错觉，因为其实是政府的干预挽救了金融体系。尽管如此，这些危机变成了对一个错误观念成功检验的证明，使超级泡沫进一步膨胀。

最终，信贷的膨胀变得无法维持，超级泡沫爆裂。2007年次贷市场的崩溃，导致市场一个接一个很快地崩溃，因为它们是相互关联的，而且防火墙已因取消监管而被拆除。这是最近这次金融危机与此前所有危机的不同之处。此前的危机成了肯定及强化这一过程的成功检验，而2007年的次贷危机是转折点。崩溃随着雷曼兄弟公司的破产达到极点，促使金融监管当局进行大规模的干预。

我的繁荣—哀退模型的特点之一，是它无法事先预测一个检验能否成功通过，这对一般泡沫和超级泡沫都是如此。我以为1997~1998年出现的市场危机会成为超级泡沫的转折点，但我错了。监管机构挽救了金融体系，使超级泡沫得以继续膨胀。这使2007~2008年终于到来的崩溃来得更加凶猛。

雷曼兄弟公司破产后，金融市场不得不被加上人工生命维持器。这不仅是对金融界，也是对整个实体经济的打击。国际贸易受打击尤为严重。但是人工生命维持器奏效，金融市场稳住了，经济逐渐复苏。一年之后，整个事情犹如一场噩梦，人们希望把它忘掉。有一种普遍的愿望，想把这场危机只当作无非是又一个危机来对待，然后回到一切照旧的状态。但现实并不尽如人意。整个体系实际上已经崩溃，需要彻底修整。

我的分析为必要的监管改革提出了一些有价值的思路。第一，也是最重要的，鉴于市场有产生泡沫的倾向，金融监管机构必须承担起防止泡沫变得过大的责任。艾伦·格林斯潘等人已明确地拒绝承担这一责任。格林斯潘说，如果市场不能识别泡沫，监管者也不能，他说的是对的。但是无论如何，金融监管机构必须承担此项职责，即使明确知道他们不可能在这个过程中不犯错误。但是他们可以从市场的反馈中受益，知道是做得太过还是不够，然后对错误进行纠正。

第二，为了控制资产泡沫，仅控制货币供给是不够的，还必须控制信贷的可得性。这不是仅靠货币途径可以做到的，还必须采用信贷控制。目前所知的最佳控制办法是保证金要求和最低资本要求。现在这些要求是不考虑市场情绪而制定的，因为市场不应该有情绪，但市场确实有。为了控制资产泡沫，金融监管机构需要采用不同的保证金要求和最低资本要求。

监管者也许还需要发明新的办法，或者重新起用已废弃的一些办法。比如，很多年以前，我在金融界工作的早期，中央银行会指令商业银行限制对某个经济板块的借贷，如房地产或消费者贷款，因为他们感到那个板块发展过热。市场原教旨主义者认为，这是对市场机制的粗暴干涉，但他们错了。当我们的中央银行曾经这样做时，没有危机可谈。中国的监管机构现在就是这样做的，他们对银行业的控制要好得多。在繁荣时期，中国的商业银行在其央行（中国人民银行）必须保持的存款额增加了17倍，而监管部门扭转方向时，他们也欣然服从。

再看一看互联网的繁荣。1996年格林斯潘在谈论“非理性繁荣”时较早地预示到了这一点。但除了发表著名的演说外，他没有采取任何措施阻止其发生。他认为采用减少货币供应的手段太过生硬。他是对的。但是他本可以要求美国证券交易委员会冻结新股票的发行，因为互联网的繁荣是被资产杠杆刺激起来的。而他没有这样做，因为那会违反他的市场原教旨主义信条。这个思路是错误的。

第三，鉴于市场的潜在不稳定性，除了影响市场个体参与者的风险之外，还有系统性的风险。参与者可能会忽视这些风险，认为他们总是可以将头寸转手给别人，但是监管者不能忽视，因为如果太多的参与者这样做，会出现斩仓引起的间歇波动，在更坏的情况下甚至会引起崩溃。监管者必须关注参与者的仓位以发现潜在的不平衡。这意味着，所有主要市场参与者，包括对冲基金和主权财富基金，都需要被监控。某些衍生品，如信贷违约互换和触碰失效期权等，尤其易于制造隐蔽的不平衡，因此必须被监管，而且在适当时应被限制或禁止。合成证券的发行，就像普通证券的发行一样，需要得到监管部门批准。

第四，我们必须认识到，金融市场的运转是单向的，不可逆的。监管机构在履行防止系统崩溃的职责时，实际上是对所有“太大而不能倒”的机构做出了默许的担保。只要这些机构仍是太大而不能倒，就不可能放心地撤除这种担保。因此他们必须实施监管，以确保不需要进行此担保。“太大而不能倒”的银行必须降低杠杆率，并且接受对储蓄者的存款如何使用的限制。存款不应被用来做自营交易。监管者还需要走得更远，必须监管这些自营交易者的补偿方案，以确保风险与回报相匹配。这也许会将自营交易者推出银行而进入对冲基金，但那是他们本来应去的地方。

正像油轮分成不同的仓以保持平稳一样，不同的市场之间也应设有防火墙。也许像1933年的《格拉斯–斯蒂格尔法案》那样把投资银行与商业银行分开不太实际，但必须有内在的机制，将各种市场中的自营交易彼此分开。一些已经形成准垄断地位的银行，也许必须被拆分。

第五，《巴塞尔资本协议》的起草者们犯了一个错误：他们把银行持有的证券风险等级定得比一般贷款低得多，忽略了证券集中持仓所具有的系统性风险。这是加剧这场危机的一个重要因素。要纠正这一问题，必须提高银行持有证券的风险评级，这也许会降低贷款的证券化。

所有这些措施都将降低银行的利润率和杠杆率，这就提出了一个有趣的时机问题。现在不是进行永久性改革的时机。金融体系和经济都远非均衡，而且不可能用一个直截了当的纠偏措施使其达到接近均衡的状况。就像汽车打滑时，必须先把方向盘转向打滑的方向，然后才能再转过来一样，近期内要做的，与长远的需要几乎完全相反。首先，失去的信誉，必须先用剩下的唯一可信的东西补回来，这就是国家。这意味着增加国债和扩大货币基数。随着经济的稳定，必须以与恢复信誉同样快的速度缩小货币基数，否则通货紧缩将被通货膨胀的幽灵所取代。

我们现在仍处于这一谨慎驾驭的第一阶段。银行尚在摆脱困境的自救过程中，现在降低他们的利润率只能起反作用。监管改革需要等到第二阶段，即当需要控制货币供给时进行，而且需要谨慎地过渡到这一阶段，以免干扰经济的恢复。但是无论如何不能忘记，监管制度需要进行改革。

你们已经看到，我对金融市场的解释，即反身论，与有效市场假说十分不同。严格来讲，这两种理论按照波普的标准都可能被证伪。我预言超级泡沫的破灭是在1998年。那时我错了，现在我是对的吗？面对所有这些证据，一些有效市场假说的支持者们仍在维护这个理论。

人们越来越普遍地感到，我们需要一种新的范式，而且我认为我的理论比现有的其他理论可以提供更好的解释。行为经济学正日益得到认可，但它只触及反身性的一半，即对现实的误解，而没有研究错误定价改变基本面的途径。

我知道我关于金融市场的理论还是很不完善的，需要进一步研究，而且显然对其充分拓展不是我一个人能承担的。因此将我的理论称为新的范式也许还不成熟。但有效市场假说已被结论性地否定，金融市场急需新的解释。更重要的是，建立在市场可自我调节的错误基础上的全球金融市场大厦，必须从根本上重建。

本讲到此结束，但我还要宣布一件事。我决定资助建立“新经济思想研究院”。它将成为一个重要的学术机构，鼓励对非主流范式进行研究、开设讲习班和课程。我将在未来10年中出资5 000万美元，希望还有别人加盟，使该研究院的预算能达到每年1 000万美元或更多。

我希望反身性将成为人们探讨的一个理念，但显然不应是唯一的。我意识到了同时作为积极倡导者和资金赞助者之间潜在的利益冲突。为了避免这一点，我想在我和研究院之间竖起一道隔离墙。为此，我将通过中欧大学提供资助，而我个人不参与研究院的管理。挑选被赞助人的评审团将得到明确授意，鼓励研究除反身论之外的其他理论。

我计划于2010年4月10~11日，在剑桥大学国王学院举办的关于金融危机教训的研讨会上，宣布新经济思想研究院的成立。希望新的经济思维会在中欧大学找到自己的家园。

THE SOROS LECTURES

第三讲

开放社会

英汉对照：Lecture Three Open Society

今天我将介绍我的理念架构的第三个支柱，就是开放社会。前几讲中，我总结了从自己一生的研究和试验中得出的结论，现在我将进入新的领域。我对开放社会的观点随着时间的推移发生了变化，并且仍在发展。因此，后两讲将有更多探讨的性质。

开放社会与反身性之间的联系还远不清楚。从我个人的角度来看，两者是紧密相关的。你们会记得，我在研究经济学理论时，也在读卡尔·波普的《开放社会及其敌人》一书。正是波普所坚持的我们与生俱来有谬误性的观点，引导我对经济学的基本假设进行质疑，进而发展了反身性的概念。

但是在概念的层面上，这两者的关联只是间接的。是第一个支柱，即谬误性，将开放社会与反身性联系在一起。在这里，谬误性不仅意味着我们对世界的看法总是不全面的和扭曲的，还意味着，在我们努力将极其复杂的现实简单化时，经常会做出错误的解释。而且我们的错误观念对塑造历史进程有重要影响。

如果我的思想有任何原创性，那就是对错误观念的强调。它为批判性思维和开放社会提供了强有力的论据。

波普没有给开放社会下一个确切的定义，因为他更喜欢从相反的方向来探讨事物，即先对其进行描述，然后再给一个名称标签。他命名为“开放社会”的社会组织形式与民主制度很相近。

他的研究方法的净效应，是用认识论的观点证明民主制度的合理性。鉴于认知的完美是人的智慧无法达到的，一个以言论和思想自由以及选举自由为特征的社会，比强加其意识形态的社会更可取。由于经历过纳粹的迫害，我感到这个论点很有说服力。

波普的哲学思想使我更敏感地意识到错误观念在金融市场中的作用，而反身性的概念使我提出了关于泡沫现象的理论。作为市场参与者，我从中得到了很大帮助。

在成为一名成功的对冲基金经理之后，我经历了某种程度的中年危机。那时我接近50岁。我的对冲基金增长到1亿美元，其中4 000万美元归我个人所有。我觉得我为自己和家庭挣的钱已足够，而且经营对冲基金的压力和对人的消耗极大。什么是值得我继续去做的事呢？

我苦苦思索，终于决定建立一个致力于促进开放社会的基金会。我为它确定的宗旨是，促使封闭社会逐渐开放，弥补已开放社会中的不足，以及倡导批判性的思维方式。

随着时间推移，我越来越多地投入公益慈善事业。1984年，我在匈牙利建立了一个基金会，那时它还在社会主义制度下；1986年在中国，1987年在波兰和苏联也建立了。苏联和南斯拉夫解体时，我的基金会几乎遍布了所有以往的社会主义国家。

我从中取得了一些建立开放社会的实际经验，学到了很多，发现了一些本应知道的事情。比如，封闭社会的解体不一定导致开放社会的诞生，而可能是持续解体，直到一个新的政体出现。这个新政体与倒台的政体相比，与开放社会有更多的相似之处。

迫使我更彻底地重新考虑开放社会观念的是2004年布什总统在美国再次当选这一事实。美国是世界上最早和最成功的民主社会，却违背了它所应该坚持的原则，以对恐怖主义宣战的名义违反人权，以不实之词入侵伊拉克。然而他再次当选了。这怎么可能呢？我不得不问自己：美国出了什么问题？我写了两本书试图给以回答。我指责布什政府误导人民，又指责人们允许布什政府误导他们。

随着更深入地探索，我开始对自己的理念架构提出疑问。我发现开放社会概念有一个缺陷。波普主要考虑的是对现实的理解，他从认识论而不是从政治的角度提出了支持开放社会的论据。他说：“只有民主制度能够提供允许非暴力地进行变革的框架，所以要在政治事务中使用理性。”

但他的论点是基于一个暗含的假设，即思维的主要目的是为了更好地理解现实。但实际上不一定如此。操纵功能可能被摆在优先于认知功能的位置。的确，在民主社会中，政治家的首要目标是当选，然后是执政。

这一相当明显的洞察对开放社会的概念又提出了一些问题。波普为什么理所当然地认为，自由的政治讨论是为了理解现实？更令人奇怪的是，为什么在反身性概念中强调操纵功能的我，竟会如此盲目地追随他的说法？

这两个问题使我得出了同一个结论：我们对世界的看法深深植根于思想的传统，这一传统或是忽略了操纵功能的作用，或是认为其作用是从属于认知功能的。

不难看出为什么这种世界观会如此根深蒂固。认知功能的目的是产生认识，认识是通过符合事实的表述表达的。为了确立对应关系，表述和事实应该是明显区分的。因此对认识的追求，要求思想与思想的对象区别开。这一要求导致以思维为主的哲学家们相信，理性与现实是分隔的。这种二元论来源于希腊哲学，并且在启蒙时期主宰人们的世界观。

启蒙时期的哲学家们将其信仰置于理性之中。理性应该像探照灯一样照亮消极地躺在那里等待被发现的现实。理性所起的可塑造现实的积极作用在很大程度上被忽视了。也就是说，启蒙思想没有意识到反身性。这就导致对现实看法的扭曲，但这在当时是恰当的。

在启蒙时期，人类对自然力量的认识和控制能力还相对较少，科学的方法提供了无限的希望；所以把现实想象成消极地等在那里被发现，而认为理性积极地参与对现实的发现和探索，是很正常的。毕竟，那时连地球都还没有被完全认识。收集事实并说明它们之间的关系是非常有意义的。知识可以从多个不同的方向，用多种不同的方法获得，显示了无限的可能。理性扫除了千百年来的传统关系和宗教教条，唤起了进步的胜利感。

几乎没有人注意到用反身性理念正确理解人类事务的困难。法国大革命的领导者认为，理性可以帮助人们从根本上重建社会，但是他们过于信仰理性。社会没有遵从理性的支配，1789年的狂喜演变成了1794年的恐怖。

启蒙时期对现实的错误解释，是由于在思维和现实之间引用二分法，以使理性能够获得完美的认知。这一二分法并不是事物的主体中固有的，而是启蒙时期的哲学家们为了说明现实而引进的概念。

启蒙时期哲学家们的错误已经有了一个名字，后现代主义者称之为“启蒙期谬误”。我在此愿意接受这个名称。但要说明一点，即我们所谈的是一个易扩散谬误，它包含一个有价值的真理核心（kernel of truth）。

我现在再准确地解释一下我所指的“易扩散谬误”。我们有能力获取知识，但是永远不可能有足够的知识允许我们据此来做所有的决定。接下来即是，当某一个知识被证明有用时很容易过分使用，并延展到它不再适用的领域，这样它就成了谬误。

这就是启蒙时期所发生的情况。理性与现实之间的二分法在研究自然现象时运用得很好，但是在有关人类事务的研究中就成了误导。易扩散谬误存在于历史的其他分支中，就如同金融市场上的泡沫现象。

启蒙期谬误深深扎根于我们的世界观中。它使波普宣称，自然科学和社会科学应使用同样的方法和标准，经济理论要效仿牛顿的物理学说。波普卓越的科学方法和经济学理论，都未能认识到反身性。更糟糕的是，就连我本人，反身性的发现或发明者，居然也未能认识到波普关于开放社会的观念是建立在认知功能优先于操纵功能的隐含假设基础上的。也就是说，我们是在试图找到真相，而不是操纵人们去相信我们想让他们相信的事。

启蒙期谬误，也深深扎根于有效市场假说及其政治衍生品——市场原教旨主义之中。这两个理论中的启蒙期谬误，被金融体系的崩溃以令人震惊的方式暴露出来。社会上对于我发现开放社会理念的弊病一事并无太大反响，因为这个观念还未被广泛接受；但对我个人来说，这两者同样惊心动魄。它迫使我对开放社会的理念进行重新思考。

我并没有放弃对开放社会的信念，但是我意识到，它需要更强有力的论据来支持。波普理所当然地认为，在开放社会中认知功能优先于操纵功能；我现在认识到，要使开放社会发展繁荣，这必须作为一个明确的前提提出。现在我来说明我是怎样得出这个结论的。

在民主社会中，政治讨论的目的不是发现事实（认知功能），而是当选和执政（操纵功能）。其结果是，自由的政治讨论不一定比压制异议的专制政权产生更有远见的政策。

更坏的是，在操纵现实的政治竞赛中，承诺尊重真相成了一种障碍。布什政府有一个强有力的右翼宣传机器为其服务，不感到有尊重事实的需要。这给了他决定性的优势，因为更传统的政治操纵者在启蒙期谬误的影响下，感到要受事实的制约。

美国最成功的右翼宣传家之一弗兰克·伦兹（Frank Luntz）公开承认，他把乔治·奥威尔（George Orwell）的《1984》一书当作他设计标语口号的教科书。作为开放社会的信奉者，我对此感到震惊。为什么奥威尔式的谎言在一个开放社会里可以成功？

这样的发问为回答我自己提出的“美国出了什么问题”提供了线索。人们已不太在意追求真理。他们已习惯于越来越复杂的操纵技巧，以至于不在意被欺骗，甚至看起来是在积极请求被欺骗。

人们已变得习惯于接受事先包装好的信息，因而就有了拿钱作政治广告的影响。他们更有兴趣的是娱乐而不是知情，因而就有了比尔·奥雷利（Bill O’Reilly）和拉什·林博（Rush Limbaugh）这样的大众评论员的影响。

操纵的技巧随着时间逐渐发展。它产生于19世纪末，在商业界，企业家发现可以通过商标和广告突出其产品而提高利润率。这引发了对消费者动机的研究、对信息的检验和专题小组的诞生，由此形成了一个使公众行为有所改变的反身过程。这促进了消费者群体的发展，进而扩展到政治和文化领域。

经济学和政治赖以立足的隐含的假设被逐渐暴露出来。经济学理论认为供求条件是既定的，并说明自由市场如何可以在完美竞争的情况下达到资源的最佳配置。但是需求曲线的形成不是孤立存在的，而是受广告操纵。代议制民主的理论假设，候选人会对他们自己及其纲领做出说明，投票人会选择他们喜欢的。这种假设没有预期候选人会研究公众的观点，然后讲选民想听的话。这两种理论都没有考虑到现实可被操纵。

对现实的操纵也成为人文科学的一个重要主题。是文学评论最终导致了后现代世界观的发展，将启蒙思想搞得天翻地覆。它否定了一个可以被理性发现的客观现实的存在；实际上，它认为现实经常是互相矛盾的叙述的综合体。

我对后现代主义的世界观曾经根本不予理会，因为它与我对客观现实的深深的尊重相冲突。直到读了罗恩·萨斯金德（Ron Suskind）发表在《纽约时报杂志》上的一篇文章我才大开眼界，看到我过去没有认识到的后现代世界观与布什政府的宣传机器之间的关联。他引用这个宣传机器的主要操纵者之一的话说：“我们行动时，就是在创造自己的现实。当你们研究这一现实时——你们会审慎地研究——我们会继续行动，创造新的现实。”

这迫使我改变了我的态度。我必须更认真地对待后现代主义的观点，把它看作易扩散谬误。它与启蒙期谬误有同等重要的影响，而且在当前也许影响更大。但是我仍然认为，与启蒙期谬误相比，后现代主义的谬误更大，易扩散性更小，它把操纵功能置于优先地位，无视了客观现实的坚实核心是无法操纵的。在我看来，这是比启蒙期谬误忽略了操纵功能更大的缺陷。

根据启蒙思想的看法，理性与现实是彼此分开和相互独立的。人们要使现实变得对自己有利的唯一途径，是理解决定事物发展过程的规律。在这种条件下人们可以理所当然地认为，发现这些规律是第一位的。这一点塑造了人类智能最伟大的成就，即自然科学的发展。只是在对人类事务的研究中，谬误悄悄溜了进来。

相比之下，后现代的世界观是完全误导性的。它为政治提供了一种非道德的实用主义的手段，可以这样归纳：既然我们已经发现现实是可以操纵的，为什么要给认知功能以优先地位呢？为什么不直接进行操纵？为什么不追求权力而要追求真理？

这个问题是有答案的，即尽管现实可以被操纵，但其结果肯定会与操纵者的意图发生偏离。这种偏离有必要被保持在最低限度，而这只能通过更好地理解现实来达到。正是这一系列的推理使我认识到，要把追求真理的承诺作为开放社会的前提明确提出来。

这个抽象论点可用具体事例佐证说明。看一看布什政府，它在操纵现实上非常成功。通过对恐怖主义宣战，它使整个美国都站到总统一边，为入侵伊拉克铺平了道路。侵略是为了确立美国在世界的至高地位，但结果截然相反。美国的力量和影响急转直下，小布什被普遍认为是美国迄今为止最糟糕的总统。

这个例子应该是有说服力的。然而，随着反身性概念逐渐被接受，用它来对后现代谬误做出有利的错误解释是危险的。现实的反身性太难理解，人们很容易被简单的答案误导。理解这个论点，即有效的预测并不一定证明预测所基于的理论是正确的，要花一生的时间；而花钱作一个政治广告只需30秒钟。

接受后现代主义的世界观很有诱惑力，但是不注重客观现实的存在是危险的。使人能切身感受到客观现实的一个方法，是提醒人们注意死亡是生活中的现实这一事实。我们的头脑很难接受人将不复存在的想法，所以关于来世的各种说法和神话应运而生。阿兹特克人（Aztec，墨西哥印第安人）的一种仪式使我很惊讶：几支队伍在玩球的游戏中竞争，赢者被奉献给神。这是此类神话的一个极端例子，事实是赢队的人死了。

尽管如此我必须承认，来世不存在这一观点无法向相信它的人去证实。我坚信现实客观性的重要性，这是我个人的信念。的确，它与宗教信仰有令人好奇的相似之处。我所认为的现实的客观性，有一神论中神的许多属性：它无处不在，无所不能，但它是怎样起作用的仍然有些神秘。

我对现实的客观性十分尊重，而且我过去认为这是常识。后来我认识到，这种态度并不常见，而是与我的个人经历有关。

我的个性形成于1944年德国占领匈牙利时。在我父亲明智的带领下，我们不但幸存下来，而且能在危险的情况下帮助别人。1944年的积极的经历，激发我愿意去面对严酷的现实。

这种态度在我参与金融市场后得到进一步强化。我是一个喜欢冒险的人，经常将事情推向极限，但又避免超过临界点。我学会了注意所有可能出错的地方，以防制造令人不快的惊讶。我选择即使在最坏情况下风险回报比率也有吸引力的投资。这使我特别注意所有情况下的不利一面。

后来我更积极地投入我的基金会的工作。在这里，我能做一些积极的事情以减少不公正，这使我更加乐于认识和面对严峻的现实。一个对现实的消极评估会成为积极参与的诱因。

结果我的基金会将很多资源投入看上去无法解决的问题，例如对毒品的政策，以及缅甸、海地、利比亚、塞拉利昂和刚果等似乎毫无希望的地方。不用说，去打必败之战不是多数基金会偏爱的选择。

对现实客观性的笃信在我思维中的作用，与宗教在有些人的思维中的作用是一样的。在没有完美认知的情况下，我们需要信仰。我相信的是严峻的现实，有些人相信的是神。

但我仍然要说，社会无视现实的客观性，是将其自身置于危险的境地。如果我们为了回避令人不快的现实而欺骗自己或选民，现实将让我们达不到预期而受惩罚。

的确，现实可以被操纵，但是我们行为的结果，不是受愿望支配的，而是受一种我们无法完全理解的外在现实的支配。我们理解得越好，结果就会越符合我们的意图。对现实的理解是认知功能。这也就是为什么认知功能应被置于操纵功能之上，并引导操纵功能。无视不能被完全理解的客观现实的存在，将导致后现代谬误。

综上所述，在近代史上，对思维与现实的关系，人类已接受了两种谬误：启蒙期谬误和后现代谬误，它们是彼此关联的。启蒙期谬误没有认识到人的活动中操纵功能的普遍存在，而对操纵功能的发现导致了后现代谬误。每一种谬误都只认识到错综复杂的关系的一半。

我的建立在谬误性和反身性的共生原则基础上的理念架构，是这两半的结合。两种谬误的影响力都很大，而我的理念还没有被接受。这说明误解现实是多么容易，而正确地理解现实要难得多。

后现代谬误正在上升期。它引导了布什政府的政策，而且我警觉地注意到，它在奥巴马政府中也开始显现。我指的是一本最近出版的书，《动物精神》[1]，是乔治·阿克罗夫（George Akerlof）和罗伯特·希勒（Robert Shiller）合著的，它对奥巴马政府政策的形成很有影响力。书中大力赞扬作者所谓的“信心增值”的功绩。也就是说作者相信，经济的弊病可以由激励人心的讲话来治愈。这么说有一半是对的：股市的回稳使银行可聚集资本，并通过其他途径使经济有所增强。但是信心增值的说法忽视了反身性的另一半：如果现实没有达到预期，信心会转为失望，正如繁荣可转为衰退一样。我对采纳信心增值的说法深感担忧，奥巴马总统已经接过了衰退的所有权，如果颓势有反复，罪责就在于他。

将我关于反身性的理论放在对现实的两种错误解释中来讨论，有助于进一步澄清这一理论。特别是有一点也许还不够明确，需要再次强调：客观现实的核心是无法被操纵的，就像死亡的不可避免。后现代谬误所忽视的正是这一核心。

在最近的成功的鼓舞下，我要进一步宣称，我的理念架构提出了对现实的正确解释。这样宣称很鲁莽，而且初看上去是自相矛盾的。一个对现实的正确解释，怎么可以与人的理解是天生不完美的原则相协调呢？这很容易，就是指出反身性对参与者的思维和事物的发展都注入了不确定性。一个承认未来的不确定性是与生俱来的理念架构，是不会因不完美而受到指责的。但它能够对现实提供重要的洞察，甚至可以在一定的范围内预测未来，尽管范围本身是不确定和可变的，正如我们在最近的金融危机中所看到的。通过承认不确定性，我的理念架构可以既做到自我一致，又与现实一致。而且因为它是不完美的，所以允许改进。

实际上我看到进一步发展的空间很大。我的理念架构最初是在卡尔·波普的影响下形成的，只涉及对现实的理解方面的问题。但是当我加上选民应该珍视诚实、惩罚欺骗的要求时，就进入了价值的范畴。价值范畴的不确定性比认知范畴更明显，所以还需要进行很多思考。

正如我们所看到的，真相很难确定，而且往往很难承受。最省事的做法会导致相反的方向：回避令人不快的现实，鼓励欺骗，只要能让人相信。开放社会要保持开放和繁荣兴盛，必须抵制这些倾向。

这个对策对现在的美国尤为重要，因为美国正面对金融危机后遗症这个极其令人不快的现实。美国过去25年中一直在超前消费，用借外债使收支相抵。现在房地产泡沫已破灭，消费者支出过多需要重建储蓄。银行业已经崩溃，需要赢利以摆脱困境。

布什政府以不实之词入侵伊拉克是故意误导选民。不能说奥巴马政府是有意欺骗，但它已经接受了国家不愿面对严峻的现实这一点，采纳了“信心增值”的说法。

不幸的是，客观现实不太可能满足被信心增值激起的期望。与此同时，政治反对派对总统的攻击也不会受事实的约束。在这种情况下，选民应致力于追求真相的要求很难满足。这为我的基金会提出了一个很好的课题，但是美国目前的民主状况不能有力地支持把开放社会作为更好的社会组织形式。我需要找到一个更有力的论据。

一个较好的办法是回归美国建国之父们的理念，他们理念的形成大大早于开放社会理念的提出。建国之父们的伟业建立在个人自由的价值基础之上。他们采用的认识论是有缺陷的：《独立宣言》中宣称，“我们认为这些真理是显而易见的”，但其实并非显而易见。不论是否显而易见，个人自由的价值是永恒不变的。经历过专制政权的我执着地信仰它，而且有这种信仰的不是只有我一个人。

回归建国之父们的理念还有一个很大的优越性：可以讨论权力的关系。宪法通过权力的分治来防止专制独裁。权力的分治思想认识到，社会中有相互竞争的利益和对现实不同的解释，需要由政治程序来协调。宪法中的权力制衡，可以防止形成宣称握有绝对真理的人拥有绝对的权力。宪法建立了政府的不同分支互相作用和彼此制约的机制，但这还不够。

只有当人们可以对当权者说真话时，开放社会才能成功。它需要法治保障言论和出版自由，集会结社自由，以及其他权利和自由。这些保障能使公民不受权力滥用的践踏，并通过司法体系得到这种保护。这是建国之父们创建的开放社会。

让我说得更明白一些。开放社会是一个有吸引力的社会组织形式，它既是达到目的的手段，也是目的本身。它可以使社会理解面临的问题，并且能比其他形式的社会组织更成功地处理这些问题，但前提是，要将认知功能置于操纵功能之上，而且人民要愿意面对严峻的现实。

也就是说，民主的工具性价值（instrumental value）是有条件的，要看选民是否执意追求真理。在这一点上，美国民主目前的表现不如过去的成就。我们不能依赖美国制度固有的优越性，需要重新证明自我。但是除了工具性价值外，开放社会还有其内在价值，就是个人的自由，无论开放社会兴盛与否，它都同样适用，比如它就适用于苏联。

当然，个人的自由必须与公众利益和其他人的自由和谐共存。

再者，个人自由的内在价值并不是显而易见的。例如在中国，集体的利益优先于个体的利益。这是2008年奥运会开幕式上表现出的明确信息。它显示，在准确的时刻准确地按照指令去做被告知要做的事，可使一个巨大的个人组成的群体，呈现出蔚为壮观的场面。

随着美国和中国之间大国关系的变化，个人自由的价值可能在不久的将来变得越发重要。我将在最后一讲里谈这个问题。

[1] 《动物精神》中文版由中信出版社2009年出版。——编者注

THE SOROS LECTURES

第四讲

资本主义与开放社会

英汉对照：Lecture Four Capitalism Versus Open Society

今天，我想探讨一下资本主义与开放社会，以及市场价值与社会价值之间的冲突。我将间接地涉及这个主题，在此之前先介绍一下最近才引起我注意的一个现象，但它在我的思维中已占据重要的地位，我几乎可称之为我的理念架构的第四个支柱。这个现象就是代理问题（agency problem）：代理人理应代表其委托人的利益，但事实上他们趋于将自己的利益放在其所应代表的人的利益之上。

代理问题已经被经济学家们广泛分析过，但他们完全是从合同和经济动机的角度出发，很大程度上忽略了伦理和价值观问题。而剔除伦理因素，问题就变得很难驾驭。如果诚实和正直这样的价值取向对人们的行为失去控制能力，人就会变得日益只受经济动机的驱使。

市场原教旨主义宣称的“价值中立”（value-free），实际上是削弱了道德价值观。

按照假设，市场被看不见的手操纵，因而十分有效。参与者在作买入与卖出的决定时无须进行道德判断，因为其行为不会对市场价值产生任何有形的影响。

事实上，主宰金融市场的规则是由政治家的有形之手制定的，因此在代议制的民主社会中，政治家陷入了代理问题。

这样，代理问题对代议制民主和市场经济都提出了不求助道德原则将无法解决的重大挑战。这就是为什么代理问题在我的思考中占了如此重要的位置。我想先分析一下代理问题，然后再讲资本主义与开放社会的冲突。

现在让我从头说起。我最早接触代理问题与所谓的“资源诅咒”（resource curse）有关。我说的资源诅咒，是自然资源丰富的国家常常受腐败或专制政府、暴乱和内战的折磨，致使那里的人们比自然资源相对贫乏的国家的人民更贫困，生活更悲惨，例如刚果、苏丹、塞拉利昂和利比亚。

我支持的非政府组织之一“全球见证”（Global Witness），在“公布支付”（Publish What You Pay）的口号下发起了一个运动，敦促石油公司和矿业公司公布他们向各国政府的支付情况。这样人民可以知道和计算政府在资源上的所得，并令其负责说明收入的使用。

于2002年发起的这个运动有一段有趣的经历。这个主意结果成了一个易扩散谬误，因为尽管公众舆论可以对大型石油公司施加足够的压力，但是有背景的开采者和非民主政体国家的大公司不大易受影响和约束，所以支付总额无法计算。

所幸，这一事业得到英国政府的支持，它发起了“采掘业透明行动计划”（Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative），将政府、大公司和公民社会召集在一起，确立对大公司和政府都同样适用的透明度国际标准。签署了此倡议的国家，政府负责公布收入数额。在尼日利亚和阿塞拜疆等国，这一计划已见到积极成果。

在分析“资源诅咒”问题时，我开始重视我所说的“不对称代理问题”。根据现代主权概念，一个国家的自然资源属于它的人民。但是其政府，本应是人民的代理人，却把自己的利益放在其所应代表的人民的利益之上，从事各种腐败活动。而另一方面，国际石油和矿业公司的管理层，对其公司的利益又代表得过分好，以致他们会贿赂政府以取得特许权。对这种贿赂心甘情愿的给予和接受是“资源诅咒”的根源。

一旦意识到了代理问题，我就发现它比比皆是。苏联东欧的失败是因为代理人的问题。马克思关于各尽所能、各取所需的主张很有吸引力，但是苏联东欧的领导人将他们自己的利益放在了人民的利益之上。

代理问题也是代议制民主的祸根：被选出的代表利用权力为自己谋利而损害公众利益。

在最近的金融危机中，代理问题被证实是金融体制失灵的原因。当金融工程师通过发行债务抵押债券将房屋抵押贷款变为证券时，他们以为是在通过地域多元化降低风险，而事实上是将创造和发行合成证券的代理人的利益与证券所有人的利益分割开来，从而制造了一种新的风险。代理人更感兴趣的是赚取手续费，而不是保护其委托人的利益。

所以代理问题似乎无处不在。

然而尽管其影响普遍深入，但直到近期，这个问题一直未引起人们的注意。在我还是学生的时候，这一问题几乎完全没有被认识。过去20年中注意的人多了一些，但仍然以研究合同及经济动机的经济学者为主。实际上，代理问题更多的是道德问题，而从合同及经济动机角度分析，其实更加剧了道德问题。认为人的行为受合同及经济动机主宰的原则，其效果是取消或至少减少了道德因素的考量。这听上去似乎违反常理，因为反身性还没有被很好地理解。

价值观更容易受认知观念而非客观现实的影响，因而更容易受人们所接受的理论的影响，经济学理论就是一个佐证。

市场被认为应该像看不见的手一样使供求平衡。看不见的手之所以如此有效，是因为不需要作道德判断；所有的价值都可以用钱来表示，而钱是可互换的。罗马人曾经说“钱是没有味的”。但是如果理所当然地认为，所有人的行为都是被个人利益左右，就没有了道德判断的余地——而缺乏伦理准则，社会将无法存在。

市场参与者的行为受市场价值左右，而市场价值在性质上，与人们作为社会成员时左右他们行为的道德价值很不相同。这引出了我尚未解决的市场价值与社会价值之间矛盾的一系列有关问题。同时我也被布鲁斯·斯科特（Bruce R. Scott）简短的专著《资本主义的概念》（Springer出版社，2009年）所鼓舞。因此，我可能有了新的见解。的确，我都被自己得出的一些结论震惊了。

斯科特指出，资本主义被错误地解释，与市场机制混为一谈。他将此扭曲主要归因于米尔顿·弗里德曼（Milton Friedman）。我不这么具体地指向某个人，而是将其归因于市场原教旨主义。斯科特还说，无形的市场之手的背后隐藏着人类机构的有形之手，即制定规则的政治程序。这里就出现了代理问题，也出现了市场价值与社会价值的矛盾。

美国是一个建立在个人自由基础上的民主和开放的社会，个人受宪法和法律保护。同时，美国的经济建立在市场机制上，允许个人在不受政府机构独断行为的不适当干预下自由交换。这种政治和经济制度看起来搭配得天衣无缝。人们可以轻易地将开放社会与市场经济相提并论，许多人，包括我自己，也经常这样做。但表面现象容易使人迷惑。资本主义与开放社会，市场价值与社会价值之间，有根深蒂固的冲突。但这一冲突一直被市场原教旨主义的意识形态成功地掩盖着，它从20世纪80年代里根执政时起开始凸显出来。

市场机制的明显特征是“非道德的”（amoral）：一个人的1元钱与另一个人的1元钱完全等值，不论它是怎样获得的。正是这一点使市场变得如此有效：参与者不需要考虑道德因素。在一个有效市场中，个人的决定对市场价格的影响很小：一个人不参与买或卖，另一个人会以很小的价格差别取而代之。因此，个体市场参与者对市场价格的结果责任不大。“非道德”很容易与“不道德”（immoral）混淆。我常常被问到，尤其是学生听众会问，我是否对在股票市场上赚了那么多钱而有负罪感。我解释说，在我成为公众人物之前（公众人物确实可以影响市场），我的决策过程中不包括道德考量。对此，人们往往无法理解。

但市场仅适合做个人选择，而不适合做社会决策。市场允许个人参与者进行自由交换，但它不是为进行社会选择而设计的。制定治理社会的规则，包括市场机制应如何运作，是政治事务的权限。将自由存在、自我管理、自我调整的市场理念延伸到政治领域，颇具欺骗性，因为它从政治中排除了道德考量，而没有这种考量，政治就无法正常运作。

美国的政治体制采用代议制民主。人民选出代表行使权力，当选者应是人民利益的代理人；但实际上，他们倾向于将自己的利益置于人民的利益之上。竞选要花很多钱，当选的代表感恩于支持者。不按这个游戏规则玩的人不能当选。这就是金钱如何污染政治，特殊利益如何战胜公众利益的。

美国政治体制中的代理问题并不是新问题，它是代议制民主中固有的。对当选代表提出要求的权力是写在宪法里的，但是当今代理问题似乎比我1956年刚到美国时要严重得多。这是为什么？

若干客观历史的发展或许对此负有某种责任，特别是特殊利益集团的形成和操纵公众观点的复杂手段的发展等，但公众道德水准下降的主要罪魁祸首，还是市场原教旨主义的兴起。

我愿意相信在美国初建时，民众真正受到了公民道德的引导。所幸，建国之父们的信念没有过多地依赖于此，而是依赖宪法中的分权制：首创了相互竞争的利益之间的制约与平衡。即使在我1956年初到美国时，人们仍然认为应以诚实正直这样的内在价值作为自我行为指南。考虑到在暗中进行的各种不道德行为，这或许有些虚伪，但它毕竟不同于当今的公众生活——赤裸裸地公开承认对个人利益的追求，成功就受到敬慕，不论成功是怎样得到的。

我不想被误解。把过去描绘得过于美好是上了年纪的人的特点，我不想陷入这么明显的陷阱。我不是说1956年时政治家们更诚实，或是社会更公正。自那时以来美国在透明度、问责制和社会公平上已有巨大进步。但是由于市场原教旨主义的兴起，人们对什么是可以被接受甚至被仰慕的社会行为的看法也发生了重大改变。我所说的公众道德的下降，具体是指，市场价值的非道德性（amorality）已渗透到它不应该进入的领域。

我对市场原教旨主义的理解是，它将市场价值不适合地延伸到社会生活的其他方面，特别是政治领域。经济学理论声称，在一般均衡的情况下，看不见的手会确保资源的最佳配置。这意味着，人们对自身利益的追求也间接地服务于公众利益。这就给了个人利益和利润动机以道德上的许可，允许其取代诚实、正直、为他人着想等美德。

市场原教旨主义的论点有几处站不住脚。第一，金融市场不是趋于均衡的。一般均衡理论（general equilibrium theory）认为，供给与需求的条件是独立存在的，市场的无形之手继而会将供给与需求导向均衡。这种说法忽略了市场价格与潜在的供给与需求条件之间的反馈环，也忽略了隐蔽在市场机制背后的政治程序的有形之手的作用。

第二，一般均衡理论认为，资源的初始分配是既定的，这排除了对社会公平的考量。更重要的是，该理论假定人们知道自身的利益是什么，而且知道怎样最好地追求这个利益。实际上，人的想法与事实之间有很大的差异。

尽管如此，市场原教旨主义已经以胜利者的姿态出现。这是怎么发生的呢？

一个原因是，市场原教旨主义的一个主要政策内涵，即政府对经济的干预应控制在最低程度，是不正确的；而为其辩护的论据更荒谬。市场机制可能有缺陷，但政治程序更是如此。政治程序的参与者比市场参与者更容易出错，因为政治围绕社会价值运作，而市场参与者的价值是已知的。如我们所知，社会价值极易受操纵，而且政治已深受代理问题的毒害。为了防止这一点，必须采取各种各样的防范措施，这样就使经济领域的政府机构比私人参与者的行为要僵化和官僚得多。所有这些都使政府对经济的干预要控制在最低限度的论点显得有道理。

因此，市场原教旨主义只是取代了一个不正确的论点，而这个论点本应更为有力。它本可以宣称，所有的人类行为都是不完美的，社会会做出危害较小的选择，据此，政府对经济的干预应控制在最低限度。这才是一个合理的论点。相反，他们说政府干预的失败证明自由市场是完美的。这是完全错误的逻辑。

我想说明的是，我谴责市场原教旨主义是一个错误和危险的教义，但是为了其他更好的理由，我支持将政府的干预和监管控制在最低限度。

目前为止，对市场原教旨主义最强有力的推动力，在于它可以为资本拥有者和管理者的个人利益服务。财富的分配是既定的，对个人利益的追求被认为有利于公众利益，控制资本的人还能再奢望什么呢？他们所形成的富有的强有力的集团，有很大的优势推销市场原教旨主义，不仅通过认知理论，而且通过积极操纵公众舆论。市场原教旨主义给本来是非道德的市场机制赋予了一种道德特性，即将对个人利益的追求变为一种美德，类似对真理的追求。它是靠操纵的力量而不是靠理性的力量获胜的。它受到一个强大的资力雄厚的宣传机器的支持，扭曲公众对自身利益的理解。例如，如果不是这样，为什么取消只适用于占人口1%的上层人士的遗产税的游说会如此成功？

当然在这个领域还有其他竞争的力量在使用类似的操纵手段，但他们的资金不够丰厚，因为他们未能吸引人口中最富有、最有权势阶层的自身利益。市场原教旨主义在过去25年中就是这样以胜利者的姿态出现，而且即使是金融危机也不足以削弱其影响。奥巴马总统的决定显示了这一点，这一决定避免通过给政府多数控股权的方式对银行进行资本重组。

市场原教旨主义不应与有效市场假说混为一谈。信奉有效市场假说的经济学家，不一定是市场原教旨主义者。的确，很多经济学家是颇具同情心的自由派。但是有效市场假说占据了美国大学的经济学讲坛，这可归因于坚信市场原教旨主义的资本家和基金会的资金支持。市场原教旨主义者也应对市场价值侵入其他学科领域负责，如法学和政治学。

资本主义并不与开放社会针锋相对。尽管如此，它仍对开放社会构成某些严重威胁。我已经提到了其中一点，即金融市场不是趋于均衡，而是易产生泡沫。监管的缺失促使了超级泡沫的产生，其破灭会对今后若干年美国的经济产生负面影响。这又揭示了对开放社会的另一威胁：代理问题和金钱对政治的影响污染了政治程序。

在开放社会中，政治程序应为公众利益服务；而当今的美国，政治程序已被特殊利益把持。我们选举的代表感恩于赞助他们竞选的人，而不是一般的选民。眼下选民对奥巴马总统关于医疗制度改革和能源法案的反应，提供了生动的说明。选民已被洗脑到如此地步，以至于对有关公共利益进行负责任的讨论几乎变得不可能。国民医疗服务和碳排放税都行不通。我们的选择局限于特殊利益能操纵的方案上。

游说是代理问题的核心，怎样才能使之得到控制？

这是一个道德问题，不是调整经济动机的问题。游说的利润很高，而且即使规则更加严格也仍会如此。在缺乏道德价值取向时，人们总有办法绕过规则。更糟的是，规则的设计制定本身也是为特殊利益，而不是为公众服务的。这是今天美国受重创的金融体系试图重新获得以往的优势时所面临的危险。

有一个解决道德问题的办法：在经济和政治领域中划分清楚的界限。市场参与和规则制定是两个不同的功能。市场允许参与者自由交易，在这里参与者可以合法地以利润为动机。与此相比，制定和实施规则应以公众利益的考量为指南，利润动机在这里不适用。当人们为了自己的利益歪曲规则时，政治程序就会变得腐败，代议制民主也不会产生开放社会作为可取的社会组织形式所应有的结果。应该强调，这一论点与目前时兴的市场原教旨主义的态度针锋相对，而且该论点涉及政治市场。

怎样改进开放社会中的政治程序？我提出了一个很简单的规则：人们应区分自己作为市场参与者和政治参与者的作用。作为市场参与者，我们可以追求个人利益；作为政治程序的参与者，我们应以公众利益为指南。阐明这个规则的道理也很简单。在接近完美竞争的情况下，没有单个的竞争者可以影响最终结果，所以个人在市场中的决定对社会状况没有影响，不论参与者是否在意公众利益。但是政治决定却会影响社会状况，所以政治决定是否为公众利益服务，结果会截然不同。

问题是公众利益无法用一个被普遍接受的客观标准来确定，它取决于选民的看法，而在没有客观标准的情况下，看法很容易被操纵。操纵是自我强化的；政治主张及其相反的主张越对立，就越难以辨认谁对谁错。正是这一点使得政治程序的效率极低。

相比之下，市场机制的运作要好得多。人们或许不知道什么对他们有益，但利润提供了衡量参与者表现的客观标准。难怪利润动机在引导人的行为的价值取向中占有如此重要的地位。利润不仅提供了人们追求不同目的的手段，而且它本身也是目的。因为作为衡量成功的可靠尺度，利润可吸引他人的赞赏和改善自我感觉。的确，许多成功的生意人感觉赚钱比使用自己的财富更有安全感。

市场价值的传播带来了巨大的经济利益。回顾历史，基督教曾认为追求利润是罪恶的。这阻碍了经济的发展。后来的宗教改革促进了市场的发展，打开了物质进步和财富积累的途径。社会经历了巨大的变革，传统的关系被契约关系代替。契约关系渗透到了越来越多的社会生活领域，最终，人与人之间的关系开始被交易取代。变化的步伐已经开始加快，在我一生中，变化的速度就已十分惊人。

我在匈牙利的童年时期和在美国的成人生活差异甚大，1956年我到美国时与今天的美国相比也差异甚大。刚到美国时对我触动很大的是，市场价值已经如此深入地渗透进美国社会，而在匈牙利甚至在英国，传统价值观和阶级划分仍占上风。从那时以来，英国和美国都经历了更大的变化。像医学、法律和新闻这样的专业也变成了生意。在我看来，这对社会造成的不稳定与市场原教旨主义对金融市场造成的不稳定，程度是一样的。

社会究竟需要什么样的稳定程度，当然各人的看法不同。同样，在上述专业中，利润动机应占什么样的位置也有待商榷。但不容置疑的是，利润动机在政治领域已有极坏的影响，因为它恶化了代理问题。

怎样使代理问题最小化？想让利益攸关的特殊利益集团不去游说国会，是遥不可及的奢望。烟草工业一定会反对禁止吸烟的立法，保险业也一定会反对单一支付的医疗体制。但是在狭隘的自我利益问题上，那些非利益攸关的人们的利益应让位于公众利益。没有特殊利益的人不必担心所谓的“搭便车问题”，即行为自私的其他人会从他们不自私的行为中受益，因为这种运作的目的就是使公众受益。

归纳起来，前一讲中我谈到了认知功能应被置于操纵功能之上。在这一讲中我要说的是，尽管在现行规则下利润动机是完全合理的，但在制定规则时公众利益应被置于个人利益之上。我坚信，选民中即使有一小部分人达到这两个要求，代议制民主也会运作得更好。

最后，我想讲一点个人的感受。我已经实践了我所倡导的观点。作为对冲基金经理，我按游戏规则试图最大限度地获取利润。作为一个公民，我试图改进这些规则，即使改革不符合我个人的利益。比如，我和其他金融机构一起支持对对冲基金实行监管。我坚信，如果更多的人按这个原则办事，我们的政治制度会运转得更好。我也相信，我这样的基金会之所以可以起到重要作用，恰恰是因为遵循这一原则的人太少了。

在我的基金会，即开放社会研究所，我们把保护公众利益不受私人利益侵犯作为使命。我们也支持公民社会问责政府的努力。我把这些努力称为政治公益慈善事业，我相信与传统的慈善事业相比，它会对改变世界做出更大的贡献，因为这样做的人还很少。

我处于一个很有利的位置。我比多数人更独立，因为我不必依赖客户或顾客，而且我感到有道德义务更好地利用我的位置优势。当然特殊利益的力量远远大于我的力量，但我至少有一种满足感，即我的钱有更大的稀缺价值。

问题是，特殊利益也在伪装自己是为了公众利益，这需要慧眼来识别真伪，特别是因为双方都被迫使用类似的说服手段。在缺乏客观标准的情况下，人们只能通过试验摸索来做出判断。讨论中有良好意愿的一方，往往很难相信另一方有同样良好的愿望。最好的识别办法，是在认可其宣称的表面价值的同时，与他们进行实质性的讨论。这样做的好处是在政治讨论中给认知功能以优先地位。只有当对方不以同样的方式回应时，才应该不再考虑和理睬。这样的人在每个国家都有；不幸的是，在美国他们不是被忽视，而是变得非常有影响力。选民是否拒绝被完全无视真相而企图操纵他们的人所影响，是对每个开放社会能否保持开放的检验。鉴于奥威尔式宣传的成功，美国在这方面做得并不好。

在过去两个世纪中，很好地服务于美国的政治程序看来已经退化了。我们曾经有两大政党竞争的中间地带，但是中间地带已经萎缩，政治越来越两极分化。奥巴马总统已尽了最大的努力扭转这个趋势，试图做一个有凝聚力的领导者，但无济于事。

归根结底，民主制度怎样运作取决于生活在其中的人。我认为，如果更多的美国人将他们作为政治参与者的作用与作为市场参与者的作用区别开来，美国的民主制度会运转得更好。这取决于每个人。我已经这样做了。即使是一个较小的少数群体，对重建正在消失的中间地带也会有帮助。

THE SOROS LECTURES

第五讲

未来的路

英汉对照：Lecture Five The Way Ahead

在这个系列讲座中，我提出了一个能够更好地理解人类行为的理念架构。这些行为不是由亘古不变的自然法则决定的。当然这些法则的确存在，但不足以决定人类行为的发展过程。一个原因在于情况的复杂性，另一个原因在于事件参与者的思维所起的作用。

我已经集中讲了反身性的问题，即参与者的思维与现实的双向关联，我也强调了错误理解和错误观念与现实的因果关系。但这两种影响都很奇怪地被忽视了。这些影响给事物注入了不确定因素，结果是除了非常简单的情况以外，几乎不可能预测未来。

但我们仍然可以大致估计几种情况，并评估其可能性，也可以为希望得到的结果拿出对策。这两方面我都做过，而且有过多次尝试。的确，我可以称为专家，作为投资家，我专注于预测；作为公益慈善家，我主要是为解决问题寻求对策。我前者做得成功，足以支持后者。今天的讲座我想从预测和对策这两个方面来谈。

我们当下所处的历史时刻，不确定性的范围异常广泛。我们刚刚度过了第二次世界大战以来最严重的金融危机，这个危机在量上比以往的危机大得多，在质上也与以往的危机很不相同。可作相关比较的，是1991年日本发生的房地产泡沫破灭，至今尚未恢复；还有就是20世纪30年代美国的大萧条。与日本情况不同的是，那次危机仅限于一个国家，而这次危机席卷全世界；与大萧条不同的是，这次没有允许金融体系垮台，而是给它用上了人工生命维持器。

事实上，美国当今所面临的信贷和杠杆问题比20世纪30年代要严重得多。1929年美国的信贷余额是国内生产总值的160%，到1932年增长到250%；而2008年初是365%，这还不包括20世纪30年代金融市场上尚未存在而如今广泛使用的衍生品。尽管如此，人工生命维持器居然奏效了。雷曼兄弟公司倒闭不到一年，金融市场已经稳定，股市也已回升，经济显示复苏迹象。人们想回到一切照旧的情况，把2008年的崩溃只当成一场噩梦。

但我很遗憾地告诉大家，复苏的势头可能会停止，甚至随之出现“再次衰退”（double dip），而我不能确定这将发生在2010年还是2011年。

持这种观点的绝不止我一个人，但我的观点与目前的主流情绪不一样。复苏的时间越长，就会有更多的人相信复苏；但是据我的判断，这种主流情绪与实际情况相去甚远。这是典型的远非均衡的状况，此时人的感知往往落后于现实。更复杂的是，这种落后于现实是双向的：一方面，多数人还没有意识到这次危机不同于以往——我们正处在一个时代的终点；另一方面，其他人，包括我自己在内，未能预见到复苏反弹的程度。

混乱和困惑不限于金融界，它会延伸到整个国际舞台。

苏联解体后，美国成了唯一的超级大国。没有其他大国或国家联盟可以挑战其至高无上的国力，但是这种“单极”的世界秩序未能持久。当布什总统为显示美国的威力，以不实之词入侵伊拉克时，其效果与他的意图背道而驰。美国的实力和影响力一落千丈，结果造成国际金融体系的混乱和国际关系的不稳定。此后终将形成的新的世界秩序，不会像过去那样受美国的控制和左右了。

为了理解正在发生的这些事，我们需要一个不同于以往所熟悉的理念架构。有效市场假说孤立地看待金融市场，完全不考虑政治因素，这是一种曲解。像我已经多次提到过的，在市场的无形之手背后，有一只有形的政治之手，在制定市场运作的规则和条件。我的理念架构关系到政治经济学，而不是概念抽象、受永恒规律主宰的市场经济学。我把金融市场看成历史的一个分支。

第二次世界大战后重建的国际金融体系并没有建立一个公平的竞争环境，其倾斜方向是经过有意设计的。国际货币基金组织和世界银行这样的国际金融机构，是按控股公司的形式组建的，其中富国有不成比例的投票权并且控制其理事会。这使位于该体系边缘的国家相对位于体系中心的国家处于劣势。

该体系从开始建立起就一直受美国控制。在布雷顿森林会议上，尽管英国的凯恩斯提出了其建议，但是美国代表团团长哈里·怀特提出的计划占了上风。从那时起，我们从几乎全面监管的体系变成了几乎完全无监管的体系；这些变化由美国主导，而且所谓的“华盛顿共识”仍在继续引导这个体系。

尽管由华盛顿共识制定的规则理应对所有国家同样适用，但美国作为主要国际货币的发行者，却比别人“更享有平等”。实际上，国际金融体系是一个由两个层级组成的架构：能用本国货币借贷的国家是该体系的核心，而借贷要由一种硬通货来决定的国家是这个体系的外围。如果某个国家遇到困难，它可以得到援助，但条件很苛刻，这对核心国家和外围国家都是一样的。但是如果核心国家自身受到了威胁，那么该体系的维持则成为最优先考虑的事项。

这种情况在1982年的国际银行业危机中第一次发生。如果债务国被允许拖欠还款，银行体系将崩溃。因此国际金融权威机构联手，采用了我当时所称的“合作出借体制”（collective system of lending）。债权国不得不展期贷款（roll over loans），使债务国能得到足够借款支撑债务。最终结果是，债务国陷入严重衰退，拉丁美洲的发展因此被推迟10年，而银行体系得以赢利而摆脱困境。当银行积累了足够的储蓄时，这些贷款则被重新整合为所谓的布雷迪债券（Brady bonds），其余的损失银行也已有能力销账。

1997年类似情况再度发生，但那时银行已经学会审查贷款，不致被迫采取合作出借的做法，因而绝大部分损失不得不由债务国承担。这样就建立了一个模式：债务国受制于严厉的市场戒律，但如果体系本身受到威胁，规则通常暂停执行——整体崩溃会使该体系陷入危险的若干银行得以解脱。

2007~2008年的金融危机与此不同，因为它起源于核心国，而外围国家是在雷曼兄弟公司破产后才被卷入的。国际货币基金组织面对的是一个新的任务——保护因核心国风暴而受影响的外围国。该组织没有足够的资金，但其成员国很快联合行动，募集了1万亿美元。尽管如此，应对该局面还有一定的困难，因为国际货币基金组织成立的初衷是为了应对公共领域的问题，而这时信贷的短缺主要影响的是私营领域。但总的来说，国际货币基金组织在这一新的任务上做得相当出色。

国际金融权威机构应对这次危机的做法，总体上与过去一样：救助将要垮台的金融机构，实行货币及财政刺激措施。但这次危机的规模要大得多，用同样的办法就不见效了。对雷曼兄弟公司的救助失败，是一个具有转折意义的事件：金融市场实际上停止运转，不得不用上人工生命维持器。这意味着政府实际上是被迫在担保，不能让其他可能危及这个体系的机构再垮台。正是此时危机延伸到了外围国，因为这些国家无法提供同样有信誉的担保。这次东欧国家受创最重。处于核心地位的国家，从他们中央银行的资产负债表上给这个体系注入资本，为商业银行的债务进行担保，而且政府为刺激经济，使财政赤字达到前所未有的规模。

这些措施已见成效，全球经济似乎趋于稳定。越来越多的人认为全球金融体系已再次免于崩溃，我们正逐渐回到一切照旧的状态。这是对目前形势的严重误解，已经破碎的东西不可能再回复原样。让我来解释为什么。

20世纪80年代以来形成的金融市场全球化，是一个以美国和英国为首发起的市场原教旨主义计划。允许金融资本在世界范围内自由移动，难以对其征税或监管，使金融资本处于一种优越的地位。各国政府不得不更多地注意国际资本的要求，而不是本国人民的愿望，因为金融资本可以更自由地移动。这样，全球化作为一项市场原教旨主义计划，进行得非常成功，各个国家均难以抵御。但是由此产生的全球金融体系从根本上不稳固，因为它建立在一个错误的假设基础上，即金融市场可以安全地依赖自身的机制来调节。这正是它崩溃的原因，也是它不可能再复原的原因。

全球性的市场需要全球性的监管，而目前的监管措施都是基于国家主权的原则。也有一些国际协议，其中最著名的是设立了最低资本要求的《巴塞尔资本协议》，市场监管者之间也有较好的合作，但是监管权威总是主权国家。这意味着，重新启动一个停止运作的机制于事无补，我们需要创造一个前所未有的监管机制。目前的情形是，每个国家的金融体系是由各个国家自己来维护和支持的。政府主要关注的是本国经济，这会助长“金融保护主义”的倾向，也有可能扰乱甚至摧毁全球金融市场。英国的监管部门永远不会再信赖冰岛政府的政策，东欧国家也会对完全依赖外国银行三思而行。

我想要说明的是，监管的覆盖范围必须是国际性的。不这样的话，金融市场无法维持全球化，会被独断性的监管毁掉。生意会流向监管气候最温和的国家，这会将其他国家置于无法承受的风险之下。全球化之所以如此成功，是因为它迫使所有国家取消监管，但反之则不可行，让所有国家接受统一监管非常困难。不同的国家有不同的利益，这促使它们会采取不同的解决办法。

这一点在欧洲可以看到。如果欧洲国家之间都不能达成一致意见，怎么能让世界其他国家做到呢？在危机期间，欧洲未能达成全欧洲范围内对其金融体系进行担保的共识，因而每个国家不得不自保。目前情况下，欧元是一个不完整的货币：它有一个共同的央行，但没有一个共同的财政部，而对银行担保和对其注入资本是财政部的职能。这次危机提供了修补这一缺陷的机会，但是德国成了阻碍。

德国曾是促进欧洲一体化的主要推动力，但那是在其不惜一切代价实现两德统一的时候。当今的德国已非常不同，它和世界其他国家不一样，担心的是通货膨胀而不是衰退。而且更重要的是，它不想为欧洲其他国家掏腰包。没有了主要推动力，欧洲的一体化进程已逐渐陷于停滞。

所幸欧洲有社会安全网络的保障，在经济状况好的时候，这一保障制度减缓了欧洲的经济增长，经济不好时它则起到了保护作用，使欧洲大陆的衰退没有预期的那么严重。现在随着对经济崩溃的恐惧减退，欧盟正表现出政治复苏的迹象。欧洲中央银行实际上救助了爱尔兰的银行系统，而爱尔兰则痛快地加入了《里斯本条约》。不幸的是，欧盟政治上的复苏很可能和经济复苏一样苍白无力。

金融危机对不同国家将产生不同的长远影响，这一事实也可能会成为一个问题。在短期内，所有的国家都受到了负面影响，但是从长远看，有赢家有输家。虽然情况发展的具体过程中变数仍很大，但对地位相对变化的预测则较为肯定。直截了当地说，美国将输得最多，中国则将以最大的赢家姿态出现。这一转变的程度已经超过多数人的预期。其他国家的相对地位也会有相当大的变化，但从全球角度来看，美国与中国之间的地位变化是最重要的。

自第二次世界大战以来，美国一直是国际金融体系的中心。美元是主要的国际货币，美国因此获利甚多，但近年来开始滥用其特权。从20世纪80年代起，美国的经常账户赤字日益增长，这种情况本可以无限期地延续下去，因为亚洲“小老虎们”，开始以日本为首，后来是中国，愿意支持这种赤字以加强自己的美元储备，但是美国家庭的过度负债使这一进程终止。房地产泡沫破灭后，美国的家庭发现自己承担了过多的风险。银行体系遭受极大损失，必须赢利才能摆脱困境。商业地产和杠杆收购流血的时候还在后面。这些因素会继续增加美国经济的负担，美国的消费者将无力再做世界经济的发动机。

在某种程度上，中国有可能取代这个位置。中国一直是全球化的主要受益者，而且很大程度上置身于金融危机之外。

总的来说，在西方尤其是美国，危机是内在因素引发的，导致了金融体系的崩溃。对中国来说，金融危机来自外部的震动，影响了其出口，但其金融、政治和经济制度并未受创。

中国已找到一种极有效的方法，能释放并激发其人民的创造性、能动性与创业精神，人民被允许谋求自身的利益。同时国家可以通过维持价值被低估的货币和累积贸易顺差，抽取其劳动力剩余价值中相当可观的一部分。因此，中国很可能成为一个大赢家。

中国领导者们知道，如果要保持领导地位，就必须避免社会动荡，所以要尽一切可能保持8%的经济增长速度，并为不断增长的劳动力创造新的就业机会。贸易顺差使中国增强了国力。中国可以通过对基础设施的投资刺激国内经济，还可以通过对其贸易伙伴投资和提供信贷增加出口。事实上中国就是这样做的，通过购买美国国债来资助对美国的出口。鉴于现在美国消费者不得不减少消费，中国可以发展和其他国家的关系。这样在美国蹒跚而行时，中国会成为世界经济的积极推动力量。

当然中国的经济规模比美国小得多，发动机小了，世界经济前行的速度也会慢一些。但在这些限制条件之下，中美之间的地位正在发生结构性的变化，第三方也在积极地重新调整自己的位置。中国已经成为亚洲、非洲、拉丁美洲和中亚国家的主要贸易伙伴。这种位置变化不一定是永久的或不可逆转的——只需想一想日本公司的起落——但在目前，这是全球政治经济中最可预见的也是最重要的趋势。中国正在带动像巴西这样的贸易伙伴及其他一些非洲和亚洲国家。印度以国内增长为基础，发展得也不错。

中国经济政策的成功不能被当成理所当然的事。对中国内地基础设施的投资也许产生不了自身可持续的经济增长。在中国的体制下，新投资的回报一般很慢，因为投资的决策主要是由政治因素而不是商业因素决定的。前两次，银行信贷的宽松造成了一大批不良贷款。这次可能会有所不同，因为权力正在从地方转向中央，地方银行的官员不再受省领导的管辖。但尽管如此，也不能保证一定成功。而且，中国可能被全球的衰退所拖累。但是如果中国出了问题，全球的经济就失去了发动机。因此可以确信，中国会取得相对的成功，但不能确保绝对成功。

我们所处的历史时刻，在某种程度上与第二次世界大战结束时相似。那时既有体系已经崩溃，一个全新体系有待建立。在布雷顿森林会议上，战胜国承担起了这个任务。在凯恩斯理念的激励下，它们创立了一个能包容全世界的体系，尽管美国占据了某种特权地位。目前主导的，我们称为“国际资本主义”的多边体系，还没有彻底垮台，但力量已大大削弱；它的内在弊病已经暴露，而且受到一个可行的替代方式的挑战。中国的崛起展现了一个与目前的国际金融体系完全不同的经济组织形式，可称之为“国家资本主义”，以区别于华盛顿共识下的“国际资本主义”。我们正处于一个时代的终点，但人们还没有完全认识到这一点。

两种经济组织形式，国家资本主义与国际资本主义，在互相竞争。两者都缺乏吸引力。华盛顿共识已经失败。目前的国际资本主义已被证明自身存在固有的不稳定性，因为缺乏足够的监管。而且它极不公正，相对穷人穷国而言，这个体系偏袒富人富国。

与此同时，建立在国家资本主义基础上的国际体系，将不可避免地导致国家之间的冲突。这种冲突已初显端倪，具有讽刺意味的是，当殖民国家已经认识到自己过去的错误并力图纠正时，中国在与自然资源丰富的国家打交道时又在重复这些殖民国家的错误。为了接近自然资源，中国在与这些国家的政府打交道时忽略了那里的老百姓。这有助于具有压迫性和腐败的政体维持政权。这样的结果不好，但中国不是唯一对此负有责任的国家。中国一家公司在试图收购美国石油公司优尼科（Unocal）时遭到拒绝。更近些时候，力拓矿业集团（Rio Tinto）反悔了将一部分股份卖给一家中国公司的交易。这促使中国与国际金融机构回避的一些国家进行交易，其中包括缅甸、苏丹、津巴布韦、刚果和安哥拉等国。几内亚是最近的一个例子。这种情况正在成为相当多摩擦的来源，对中国的根本利益并无好处，对全世界也是如此。但中国视自己为受害者而不愿意参加“采掘业透明行动计划”。这已成为该倡议能否继续成功的最大障碍。

在现行的多边体系力图重建的同时，中国会在双边关系的基础上进一步发展。当然中国也是这个多边体系的一部分，但它在这个体系中所处的地位与它目前的国力不相称；因此它在国际金融机构中的参与是比较消极的，其积极发展主要是通过双边渠道进行的。例如，中国会抱怨美元的作用，而且会推动特别提款权（Special Drawing Rights）的使用。但中国不可能允许人民币自由兑换，因为这样会摧毁现有机制，即允许国家通过价值被低估的货币从中国廉价的劳动力中受益。中国会继续实行资本控制，但会与像巴西这样的国家建立以人民币为主的双边结算账户。这样会削弱美元作为国际货币的地位，但不会取代它。

综上所述，世界正在两个截然不同的经济组织形式，国际资本主义和国家资本主义之间进行选择。前者，以美国为代表，已经垮掉；后者，以中国为代表，正在兴起。我们看到，阻力最小路径（the path of least resistance）导致了国际金融体系的逐渐瓦解，而双边关系体系又容易造成国家之间的冲突。所以一个以更健全的原则为基础的新的多边体系亟待建立，它符合美国和中国的最大利益，自然也符合整个世界的最大利益。

尽管在监管改革上的国际合作几乎不可能以零零散散的方式实现，但是有可能通过整体重新安排，调整金融秩序来商定。20国集团作为国际合作的主要论坛，和在匹兹堡会议上采纳的同行评审程序（peer review process）是朝正确方向迈出的步伐。但是20国集团必须在国际货币基金组织章程的范围内运作，因为修改章程是一个漫长的过程。

一个新的布雷顿森林会议可以一举完成很多任务。它可以重新构建国际货币基金组织，使之能更好地反映国家之间的排序，并且修改现行运作方法。会议也可以决定怎样对待规模太大而不能让其失败的金融机构，以及考虑控制资本流动的新规则。金融资本在国际范围内完全自由地流动已被证明是不稳定因素的一个来源，需要约束控制。

最重要的是，国际金融体系需要改革。将美元作为主要国际货币已造成了危险的不平衡。美元已失去了它曾拥有的信任和信心，但尚无其他货币可取而代之。现在总的趋势是各种货币正在向黄金、其他商品和有形资产转移。这样做是有害的，因为它会将这些资产锁住而不能投入有效的使用，并且会煽起对通货膨胀的恐惧。

美国不应该排斥更广泛地使用特别提款权。这可以使国际社会敦促中国放弃将其货币与美元挂钩，也是减少国际不平衡最好的办法。由于特别提款权是由数个国家的货币决定的，没有哪一种货币可享有不公平的优惠特权。

特别提款权中包括的货币范围也必须扩大，其中一些新加的货币（包括人民币），也许是不能完全自由兑换的。这样，美元仍可能重新将自己树立为更可取的储备货币，其前提是美元要得到严格监管。

特别提款权很大的优越性之一，是它允许国际性的信贷创造。在现在这样的时刻，这种做法尤其有用，信贷将被引向最需要它的地方。考虑到目前的情况，这将是一个大的改进。这种机制允许不需要额外储备的富国将其配额转让给需要储备的国家，该做法在小范围内已经开始实行了。

如果我们想在解决全球变暖和防止核扩散等问题上也有进展的话，那么对当前世界秩序的重新调整也许必须超越金融体系的范畴。这可能需要联合国，特别是安理会成员国的参与。

这一程序需要美国启动，但中国和其他发展中国家应以平等的地位参与。它们是布雷顿森林机构中不积极的成员，而原先主宰这些机构的国家已丧失主宰地位。新兴国家应该参与新秩序的建立，以确保它们是这一新秩序的积极支持者。

美国为什么应该倡导改革自己一直是主要受益者的体系？因为这一体系以目前的形式来看不可能维持，美国如果不带头对其进行改革，损失可能会更大。美国在小布什执政期间已经失去了很多势力和影响。如果没有具有远见的领导者，美国的相对地位很可能会继续下滑。美国仍然可以对世界起领导作用。它不能再像小布什政府企图的那样将其意志强加于人，但它可以领导一种共同的努力，不仅涉及发达国家，也涉及发展中国家。这将以一种可以被接受的形式重新树立美国的领导地位。

既然中国会以赢家的身份从目前的混乱中脱颖而出，那中国为什么应该接受一个新的多边体系呢？答案同样简单。为了继续崛起，中国必须让世界其他国家接受它。这意味着，中国必须向更加开放的社会方向前进，将个人自由的扩大与法治相结合。鉴于目前军事力量之间的关系，只有在和平的环境下中国才能继续崛起，世界各国也才乐于接受中国的崛起。

为了世界的和平，美国在新的世界秩序中找到自己适当的位置更为重要。一个已经失去政治和经济主宰的衰落的超级大国，仍拥有军事上的绝对优势，这是一种危险的混合。

正如我上文所说，美国的民主正陷入困境。金融危机使不喜欢面对严峻现实的美国人备受煎熬。奥巴马总统采用了“信心增值”的做法，宣称衰退已得到控制。如果发生再次衰退，美国人会更容易受各种恐怖言论的煽动。如果奥巴马总统连任失败，下一届政府会极力地制造事端，转移人们对国内问题的注意，这对世界将是非常危险的。

奥巴马总统的思路是正确的，但他需要看得更远。他相信国际合作，而不是像布什和切尼那样信奉强权就是真理。但是他有很多急迫的问题需要考虑，重建国际金融体系在他的日程表上并不靠前。他的一些经济顾问们似乎仍然相信有效市场假说是正确的，认为一百年可能只有一次失灵。幸存下来的金融机构比以往任何时候都更有竞争力，必将抵制会限制它们权力的系统性全面调整。目前缺乏的是一种普遍的认同，即体系已经崩溃，需要重建。因此，我在这些讲座中阐明的有关金融市场的理论应该被更多的人接受，这非常重要。

中国领导人需要比奥巴马总统更有远见卓识。他们是在掌舵，而且如果向更开放的社会迈进，他们必须放弃一些已有的特权。现在中国人还愿意让个人的自由服从于政治稳定和经济繁荣，但不可能永远这样。腐败是一个大问题，中国需要法治，这样公民可以批评政府，防止其滥用权力。

为了使自己被世界所接受，中国也需要成为一个更开放的社会。世界其他国家绝不会让个人的自由服从于中国的繁荣。随着中国逐步成为世界的领导者，它必须学会更多地注意世界其他国家的看法和意见。但是所有这些变化也许发生得太快，中国领导人还来不及调整自己。希望中国的领导人能够承担起历史的重任。毫不夸张地说，世界的未来要看他们怎么做。

英汉对照：前言

THE SOROS LECTURES

Author’s Note

In October 2009, I delivered this series of lectures in Budapest under the auspices of the Central European University, an international postgraduate institution in the field of humanities and social sciences that I established after the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991.

Lectures One and Two summarize a lifetime of experience and reflection. I lay out in detail the conceptual framework that has guided me in business and philanthropy and apply it to the current turmoil in financial markets. Lectures Three and Four explore what is, for me, newer ground—questions of ethical values and political power and the relationship between the two. The final lecture presents such predictions and prescriptions as my conceptual framework allows.

My goal is ambitious. It is that this conceptual framework should provide the foundation for a better understanding of human affairs. The reader will judge whether I have been successful. I hope that my ideas will be received in the same spirit of critical thinking in which they are offered and not as some sort of dogma.

These lectures and the discussions that followed were videoconferenced to universities around the world. The recordings are available at the website of the Open Society Institute, www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/sorosceu_20091112.

One of the discussion partners was Fudan University, Shanghai, and another partner was Hong Kong University. I am very pleased about that because I believe China will become increasingly influential in the world, and if my conceptual framework finds a following in China, the world might be a better place. Other partners included Columbia University; the London School of Economics, my alma mater; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I was pleased to be able to share my ideas at these distinguished institutions.

I am grateful to those at the Central European University and the Open Society Institute, and to my personal staff who helped make the original presentation and videocasting of these five lectures a success. My thanks also go to my publisher, Peter Osnos, and his colleagues at PublicAffairs. I owe a debt of gratitude to Colin McGinn and Mark Notturno for clarifying certain philosophical points; to John Shattuck, the president of the Central European University; to Anatole Kaletsky, Ivan Krastev, Mark Danner, and Howard Davies for moderating the discussions that followed each lecture; and to Cristovam Buarque and the many others who offered their comments.

George Soros

January 2010

New York

Lecture One

The Human Uncertainty Principle

英汉对照：第一讲 人的不确定性原则

In the course of my life I have developed a conceptual framework that has helped me to make money as a hedge fund manager and also to spend money as a policy-oriented philanthropist. But the conceptual framework itself is not about money—it is about the relationship between thinking and reality, a subject that has been extensively studied by philosophers from early on. I started developing my philosophy as a student at the London School of Economics in the late 1950s. I took my final exams one year early, so I had a year to fill before I was qualified to receive my degree. I could choose my tutor, and I chose Karl Popper, the Viennese-born philosopher whose book The Open Society and Its Enemies had made a profound impression on me.

In his books Popper argued that the empirical truth cannot be known with absolute certainty. Even scientific laws can’t be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt: they can only be falsified by testing. One failed test is enough to falsify, but no amount of conforming instances is sufficient to verify. Scientific laws are hypothetical in character and their truth remains open to falsification. Ideologies that claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth are making a false claim; therefore, they can be imposed on society only by compulsion. All such ideologies lead to repression. Popper proposed a more attractive form of social organization: an open society in which people are free to hold divergent opinions and the rule of law allows people with different views and interests to live together in peace. Having lived through both German and Russian occupation here in Hungary, I found the idea of an open society immensely attractive.

While I was reading Popper I was also studying economic theory, and I was struck by the contradiction between Popper’s emphasis on imperfect understanding and the theory of perfect competition in economics, which postulated perfect knowledge. This led me to start questioning the assumptions of economic theory. These were the two major theoretical inspirations of my philosophy. There were, of course, many other minor ones.

My philosophy is also deeply rooted in my personal history. The formative experience of my life was the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, when I was not yet fourteen years old. I came from a reasonably well-to-do middle-class background, and I was suddenly confronted with the prospect of being deported and killed just because I was Jewish. Fortunately, my father was well prepared for this far-from-equilibrium experience. He had lived through the Russian Revolution—the formative experience of his life. Until then he had been an ambitious young man. When the First World War broke out, he volunteered to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was captured by the Russians and taken as a prisoner of war to Siberia. Being ambitious, he became the editor of a newspaper produced by the prisoners. It was handwritten and displayed on a plank, and it was called The Plank. This made him so popular that he was elected the prisoners’ representative.

Then some soldiers escaped from a neighboring camp, and their prisoners’ representative was shot in retaliation. My father, instead of waiting for the same thing to happen in his camp, organized a group and led a breakout. His plan was to build a raft and sail down to the ocean, but his knowledge of geography was deficient; he did not know that all the rivers in Siberia flow into the Arctic Sea. They drifted for several weeks before they realized that they were heading for the Arctic, and it took them several more months to make their way back to civilization across the taiga. In the meantime, the Russian Revolution broke out, and they became caught up in it. Only after a variety of adventures did my father manage to find his way back to Hungary; had he remained in the camp, he would have arrived home much sooner.

My father came home a changed man. His experiences during the Russian Revolution profoundly affected him.He lost his ambition and wanted nothing more from life than to enjoy it. He imparted to his children values that were very different from those of the milieu in which we lived. He had no desire to amass wealth or become socially prominent. On the contrary, he worked only as much as was necessary to make ends meet. I remember being sent to his main client to borrow some money before we went on a ski vacation. My father was grouchy for weeks afterward because he had to work to pay it back. Although we were reasonably prosperous, we were not the typical bourgeois family, and we were proud of being different.

In 1944, when the Germans occupied Hungary, my father immediately realized that these were not normal times and that the normal rules didn’t apply. He arranged false identities for his family and a number of other people. Those who could, paid; others, he helped for free. Most of them survived. That was his finest hour. Living with a false identity turned out to be a very positive experience for me. With the rest of my family, I was in mortal danger. People perished all around us, but we managed not only to survive but also to help other people. We were on the side of the angels, and we triumphed against overwhelming odds. This made me feel very special. It was high adventure. I had a reliable guide in my father, and I came through unscathed. What more could a fourteen-year-old boy ask for?

After the euphoric experience of escaping the Nazis, life in Hungary started to lose its luster during the Soviet occupation. I was looking for new challenges, and with my father’s help I found my way out of Hungary. When I was seventeen I became a student in London. In my studies, my primary interest was to gain a better understanding of the strange world into which I had been born, but I have to confess, I also harbored some fantasies of becoming an important philosopher. I believed that I had gained insights that set me apart from other people.

Living in London was a big letdown. I was without money, alone, and people were not interested in what I had to say. But I didn’t abandon my philosophical ambitions, even when circumstances forced me to make a living in more mundane pursuits. After completing my studies, I had a number of false starts. Finally, I ended up as an arbitrage trader in New York. But in my free time I continued to work on my philosophy.

That is how I came to write my first major essay, “The Burden of Consciousness.” It was an attempt to model Popper’s framework of open and closed societies. It linked organic society with a traditional mode of thinking, closed society with a dogmatic mode, and open society with a critical mode. What I could not properly resolve was the nature of the relationship between the mode of thinking and the actual state of affairs. That problem continued to preoccupy me, and that is how I came to develop the concept of reflexivity— a concept I shall explore in greater detail a little later.

It so happened that the concept of reflexivity provided me with a new way of looking at financial markets, a better way than the prevailing theory. This gave me an edge, first as a securities analyst and then as a hedge fund manager. I felt as if I were in possession of a major discovery that would enable me to fulfill my fantasy of becoming an important philosopher. At a certain moment when my business career ran into a roadblock, I shifted gears and devoted all my energies to developing my philosophy. But I treasured my discovery so much that I could not part with it. I felt that the concept of reflexivity needed to be explored in depth. As I delved deeper and deeper into the subject, I got lost in the intricacies of my own constructions. One morning I could not understand what I had written the night before. At that point I decided to abandon my philosophical explorations and to focus on making money. It was only many years later, after a successful run as a hedge fund manager, that I returned to my philosophy.

I published my first book, The Alchemy of Finance, in 1987. In that book I tried to explain the philosophical underpinnings of my approach to financial markets. The book attracted a certain amount of attention. It has been read by many people in the hedge fund industry and it is taught in business schools, but the philosophical arguments did not make much of an impression. They were largely dismissed as the conceit of a man who has been successful in business and therefore fancies himself as a philosopher.

I myself came to doubt whether I was in possession of a major new insight. After all, I was dealing with a subject that has been explored by philosophers since time immemorial. What grounds did I have for thinking that I had made a new discovery, especially since nobody else seemed to think so? Undoubtedly, the conceptual framework was useful to me personally, but it did not seem to be considered equally valuable by others. I had to accept their judgment. I didn’t give up my philosophical interests, but I came to regard them as a personal predilection. I continued to be guided by my conceptual framework in my business and in my philanthropic activities—which came to assume an increasingly important role in my life—and each time I wrote a book I faithfully recited my arguments. This helped me to develop my conceptual framework, but I continued to consider myself a failed philosopher. Once I even gave a lecture with the title “A Failed Philosopher Tries Again.”

All this has changed as a result of the financial crisis of 2008. My conceptual framework enabled me both to anticipate the crisis and to deal with it when it finally struck. It has also enabled me to explain and predict events better than most others. This has changed my own evaluation, and that of many others. My philosophy is no longer a personal matter; it deserves to be taken seriously as a possible contribution to our understanding of reality. That is what has prompted me to give this series of lectures. So here it goes.

Today I shall explain the concepts of fallibility and reflexivity in general terms. Tomorrow I shall apply them to the financial markets, and after that, to politics. That will also bring in the concept of open society. In the fourth lecture I shall explore the difference between market values and moral values, and in the fifth I shall offer some predictions and prescriptions for the present moment in history.

I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity. For instance, treating drug addicts as criminals creates criminal behavior. It misconstrues the problem and interferes with the proper treatment of addicts. As another example, declaring that government is bad tends to make for bad government.

Both fallibility and reflexivity are sheer common sense. So when my critics say that I am merely stating the obvious, they are right—but only up to a point. What makes my propositions interesting is that their significance has not been generally appreciated. The concept of reflexivity, in particular, has been studiously avoided and even denied by economic theory. So my conceptual framework deserves to be taken seriously—not because it constitutes a new discovery but because something as commonsensical as reflexivity has been so studiously ignored. Recognizing reflexivity has been sacrificed to the vain pursuit of certainty in human affairs, most notably in economics, and yet uncertainty is the key feature of human affairs. Economic theory is built on the concept of equilibrium, and that concept is in direct contradiction with the concept of reflexivity. As I shall show in the next lecture, the two concepts yield two entirely different interpretations of financial markets.

The concept of fallibility is far less controversial. It is generally recognized that the complexity of the world in which we live exceeds our capacity to comprehend it. I have no great new insights to offer on that subject. The main source of difficulties is that participants are part of the situations they have to deal with. Confronted by a reality of extreme complexity, we are obliged to resort to various methods of simplification: generalizations, dichotomies, metaphors, decision rules, and moral precepts, to mention just a few. These mental constructs take on an existence of their own, further complicating the situation.

The structure of the brain is another source of distortions. Recent advances in brain science have begun to provide some insight into how the brain functions, and they have substantiated David Hume’s insight that reason is the slave of passion. The idea of a disembodied intellect or reason is a figment of our imagination. The brain is bombarded by millions of sensory impulses, but consciousness can process only seven or eight subjects concurrently. The impulses need to be condensed, ordered, and interpreted under immense time pressure, and mistakes and distortions can’t be avoided. Brain science adds many new details to my original contention that our understanding of the world in which we live is inherently imperfect.

The concept of reflexivity needs a little more explication. It applies exclusively to situations that have thinking participants. The participants’ thinking serves two functions. One is to understand the world in which we live; I call this the cognitive function. The other is to change the situation to our advantage. I call this the participating or manipulative function. The two functions connect thinking and reality in opposite directions. In the cognitive function, reality is supposed to determine the participants’ views; the direction of causation is from the world to the mind. By contrast, in the manipulative function, the direction of causation is from the mind to the world—that is to say, the intentions of the participants have an effect on the world. When both functions operate at the same time they can interfere with each other. How? By depriving each function of the independent variable that would be needed to determine the value of the dependent variable: when the independent variable of one function is the dependent variable of the other, neither function has a genuinely independent variable.

This means that the cognitive function can’t produce enough knowledge to serve as the basis of the participants’ decisions. Similarly, the manipulative function can have an impact on the outcome but can’t determine it. In other words, the outcome is liable to diverge from the participants’ intentions. There is bound to be some slippage between intentions and actions, and further slippage between actions and outcomes. As a result, there is an element of uncertainty in both our understanding of reality and the actual course of events.

To understand the uncertainties associated with reflexivity, we need to probe a little further. If the cognitive function operated in isolation without any interference from the manipulative function, it could produce knowledge. Knowledge is represented by true statements. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts—that is what the correspondence theory of truth tells us. But if there is interference from the manipulative function, the facts no longer serve as an independent criterion by which the truth of a statement can be judged because the correspondence may have been brought about by the statement changing the facts.

Consider the statement “It is raining.” That statement is true or false depending on whether it is, in fact, raining. Now consider the statement “This is a revolutionary moment.” That statement is reflexive, and its truth value depends on the impact it makes.

Reflexive statements have some affinity with the paradox of the liar, which involves a self-referential statement. But while self-reference has been extensively analyzed, reflexivity has received much less attention. This is strange because reflexivity has an impact on the real world, while self-reference is purely a linguistic phenomenon.

In the real world, the participants’ thinking finds expression not only in statements but also, of course, in various forms of action and behavior. That makes reflexivity a very broad phenomenon that typically takes the form of feedback loops. The participants’ views influence the course of events, and the course of events influences the participants’ views. The influence is continuous and circular; that is what turns it into a feedback loop. The process may be initiated from either direction; from a change in views or from a change in circumstances.

Reflexive feedback loops have not been rigorously analyzed and when I originally encountered them and tried to analyze them, I ran into various complications. The feedback loop is supposed to be a two-way connection between the participants’ views and the actual course of events. But what about a two-way connection between the participants’ views? And what about a solitary individual asking himself who he is and what he stands for and changing his behavior as a result of his reflections?

To avoid the trap I fell into in my earlier exploration of reflexivity, let me propose the following terminology. Let us distinguish between the objective and subjective aspects of reality. Thinking constitutes the subjective aspect, and events constitute the objective aspect. In other words, the subjective aspect covers what takes place in the minds of the participants, and the objective aspect denotes what takes place in external reality. There is only one external reality, but there are many different subjective views. Reflexivity can then connect any two or more aspects of reality, setting up two-way feedback loops between them. In exceptional cases it may even occur within a single aspect of reality, as in the case of a solitary individual reflecting on his own identity. This may be described as self-reflexivity. We may then distinguish between two broad categories: reflexive relations, which connect the subjective aspects of reality, and reflexive events, which involve the objective aspect. When reality has no subjective aspect, there can be no reflexivity.

Feedback loops can be either negative or positive. Negative feedback brings the participants’ views and the actual situation closer together; positive feedback drives them further apart. In other words, a negative feedback process is self-correcting. It can go on forever and if there are no significant changes in external reality, it may eventually lead to an equilibrium in which the participants’ views come to correspond to the actual state of affairs. That is what is supposed to happen in financial markets. So equilibrium, which is the central case in economics, turns out to be an extreme case of negative feedback, a limiting case in my conceptual framework.

By contrast, a positive feedback process is self-reinforcing. It cannot go on forever because eventually the participants’ views would become so far removed from objective reality that the participants would have to recognize them as unrealistic. Nor can the iterative process occur without any change in the actual state of affairs, because it is the nature of positive feedback to reinforce whatever tendency prevails in the real world. Instead of equilibrium, we are faced with a dynamic disequilibrium, or what may be described as far-from-equilibrium situations. Usually in far-from-equilibrium situations the divergence between perceptions and reality produces a climax that sets in motion a positive feedback process in the opposite direction. Such initially self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating boom-bust processes, or bubbles, are characteristic of financial markets, but they can also be found in other spheres. There, I call them fertile fallacies—interpretations of reality that are distorted but produce results that reinforce the distortion.

I realize that all this is very abstract and difficult to follow. Some concrete examples would be helpful. But you will have to bear with me. I want to make a different point, and the fact that abstract arguments are difficult to follow helps me make it. In dealing with abstract concepts like reality or thinking or the relationship between the two, it’s easy to get confused and formulate problems the wrong way. So misinterpretations and misconceptions can play a very important role in human affairs. The recent financial crisis can be attributed to a mistaken interpretation of how financial markets work. I shall discuss that in the next lecture. In the third lecture, I shall discuss two fertile fallacies: the Enlightenment fallacy and the postmodern fallacy, and the pervasive influence they have on the way we look at the world. These concrete examples will demonstrate how important misconceptions have been in the course of history. But for the rest of this lecture I shall stay at the lofty heights of abstractions.

I contend that situations that have thinking participants have a different structure from natural phenomena. The difference lies in the role of thinking. In natural phenomena, thinking plays no causal role and serves only a cognitive function. In human affairs thinking is part of the subject matter and serves both a cognitive and a manipulative function. The two functions can interfere with each other. The interference does not occur all the time—in everyday activities, like driving a car or painting a house, the two functions actually complement each other—but when it does occur, it introduces an element of uncertainty that is absent from natural phenomena. The uncertainty manifests itself in both functions: the participants act on the basis of imperfect understanding, and the results of their actions will not correspond to their expectations. That is a key feature of human affairs.

By contrast, in the case of natural phenomena, events unfold irrespective of the views held by the observers. The outside observer is engaged only in the cognitive function and the phenomena provide a reliable criterion by which the truth of the observers’ theories can be judged. So the outside observer can obtain knowledge. Based on that knowledge, nature can be successfully manipulated. There is a natural separation between the cognitive and manipulative functions. Due to their separation, both functions can serve their purpose better than in the human sphere.

At this point I need to emphasize that reflexivity is not the only source of uncertainty in human affairs. Yes, reflexivity does introduce an element of uncertainty into both the participants’ views and the actual course of events, but other factors may also have the same effect. For instance, the fact that participants cannot know what the other participants know is something quite different from reflexivity, yet it is a source of uncertainty in human affairs. The fact that different participants have different interests, some of which may be in conflict with each other, is another source of uncertainty. Moreover, each participant may be guided by a multiplicity of values that may not be self-consistent, as Isaiah Berlin pointed out. The uncertainties created by these factors are likely to be even more extensive than those generated by reflexivity. I will lump them all together and speak of the human uncertainty principle, which is an even broader concept than reflexivity.

The human uncertainty principle is much more specific and stringent than the subjective skepticism that pervades Cartesian philosophy. It gives us objective reasons to believe that our perceptions and expectations are—or at least may be—wrong.

Although the primary effects of human uncertainty fall on the participants, it has far-reaching implications for the social sciences. I can explicate them best by invoking Popper’s theory of scientific method. It is a beautifully simple and elegant scheme. It consists of three elements and three operations. The three elements are scientific laws and the initial and final conditions to which those laws apply. The three operations are prediction, explanation, and testing. When the scientific laws are combined with initial conditions, they provide predictions. When they are combined with final conditions, they provide explanations. In this sense, predictions and explanations are symmetrical and reversible. That leaves testing, in which predictions derived from scientific laws are compared with actual results.

According to Popper, scientific laws are hypothetical in character; they cannot be verified, but they can be falsified by testing. The key to the success of scientific method is that it can test generalizations of universal validity with the help of singular observations. One failed test is sufficient to falsify a theory, but no amount of confirming instances is sufficient to verify.

This is a brilliant solution to the otherwise intractable problem of how science can be both empirical and rational. According to Popper it is empirical because we test our theories by observing whether the predictions we derive from them are true, and it is rational because we use deductive logic in doing so. Popper dispenses with inductive logic and relies instead on testing. Generalizations that cannot be falsified do not qualify as scientific. Popper emphasizes the central role that testing plays in scientific method and establishes a strong case for critical thinking by asserting that scientific laws are only provisionally valid and remain open to reexamination. Thus the three salient features of Popper’s scheme are the symmetry between prediction and explanation, the asymmetry between verification and falsification, and the central role of testing. Testing allows science to grow, improve, and innovate.

Popper’s scheme works well for the study of natural phenomena, but the human uncertainty principle throws a monkey wrench into the supreme simplicity and elegance of Popper’s scheme. The symmetry between prediction and explanation is destroyed because of the element of uncertainty in predictions, and the central role of testing is endangered. Should the initial and final conditions include or exclude the participant’s thinking? The question is important because testing requires replicating those conditions. If the participants’ thinking is included, it is difficult to observe what the initial and final conditions are because the participants’ views can only be inferred from their statements or actions. If it is excluded, the initial and final conditions do not constitute singular observations because the same objective conditions may be associated with very different views held by the participants. In either case, generalizations cannot be properly tested. These difficulties do not preclude social scientists from producing worthwhile generalizations, but they are unlikely to meet the requirements of Popper’s scheme, nor can they match the predictive power of the laws of physics.

Social scientists have found this conclusion hard to accept. Economists in particular suffer from what Sigmund Freud might call “physics envy.”

There have been many attempts to eliminate the difficulties connected with the human uncertainty principle by inventing or postulating some kind of fixed relationship between the participants’ thinking and the actual state of affairs. Karl Marx asserted that the ideological superstructure was determined by the material conditions of production, and Freud maintained that people’s behavior was determined by drives and complexes of which they were not even conscious. Both claimed scientific status for their theories, although, as Popper pointed out, they cannot be falsified by testing.

But by far the most impressive attempt has been mounted by economic theory. It started out by assuming perfect knowledge, and when that assumption turned out to be untenable it went through ever-increasing contortions to maintain the fiction of rational behavior. Economics ended up with the theory of rational expectations, which maintains that there is a single optimum view of the future, that which corresponds to it, and eventually all the market participants will converge around that view. This postulate is absurd, but it is needed in order to allow economic theory to model itself on Newtonian physics.

Interestingly, both Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek recognized, in their famous exchange in the pages of Economica, that the social sciences cannot produce results comparable to physics. Hayek inveighed against the mechanical and uncritical application of the quantitative methods of natural science. He called it “scientism.” And Popper wrote “The Poverty of Historicism, ” in which he argued that history is not determined by universally valid scientific laws.

Nevertheless, Popper proclaimed what he called the “doctrine of the unity of method, ” by which he meant that both natural and social sciences should be judged by the same criteria. And Hayek, of course, became an apostle of the Chicago school of economics, where market fundamentalism originated. But as I see it, the implication of the human uncertainty principle is that the subject matter of the natural and social sciences is fundamentally different; therefore they need to develop different methods and they have to be held to different standards. Economic theory should not be expected to produce universally valid laws that can be used reversibly to explain and predict events in history. I contend that the slavish imitation of natural science inevitably leads to the distortion of human and social phenomena. What social science can attain by imitating natural science falls short of what is attainable in physics.

I am somewhat troubled about drawing too sharp a distinction between natural and social sciences. Such dichotomies are usually not found in reality; they are introduced by us, in our efforts to make some sense out of an otherwise confusing reality. Indeed, while a sharp distinction between physics and social sciences seems justified, there are other sciences, such as biology and the study of animal societies that occupy intermediate positions.

Nevertheless, I have to abandon my reservations and recognize a dichotomy between the natural and social sciences because the social sciences encounter a second difficulty, in addition to the human uncertainty principle, from which the natural sciences are exempt. And that is that social theories themselves are reflexive.

Werner Heisenberg’s discovery of the uncertainty principle in physics did not alter the behavior of quantum particles one iota, but social theories—whether Marxism, market fundamentalism, or the theory of reflexivity—can affect the subject matter to which it refers. Scientific method is supposed to be devoted to the pursuit of truth. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle does not interfere with that postulate, but the reflexivity of social theories does. Why should social science confine itself to passively studying social phenomena when it can be used to actively change the state of affairs? As I remarked in The Alchemy of Finance, the alchemists made a mistake in trying to change the nature of base metals by incantation. Instead, they should have focused their attention on the financial markets, where they could have succeeded.

How could social science be protected against this interference? I propose a simple remedy: recognize a dichotomy between the natural and social sciences. This will ensure that social theories will be judged on their merits and not by a false analogy with natural science. I propose this as a convention for the protection of scientific method, not as a demotion or devaluation of social science. The convention sets no limits on what social science may be able to accomplish. On the contrary, by liberating social science from the slavish imitation of natural science and protecting it from being judged by the wrong standards, it should open up new vistas. It is in this spirit that I shall put forward my interpretation of financial markets tomorrow.

I apologize for dwelling so long in the rarefied realm of abstractions. I promise to come down to earth in my next lecture.

Lecture Two

Financial Markets

英汉对照：第二讲 金融市场

In this lecture I’ll apply the concepts introduced in the first lecture—fallibility, reflexivity, and the human uncertainty principle—to the financial markets. Please brace yourselves, because I’ll pack the experience of a lifetime into this one lecture.

Financial markets provide an excellent laboratory for testing the ideas I put forward in an abstract form in the previous lecture. The course of events is easier to observe than in most other areas. Many of the facts take a quantitative form, and the data are well recorded and well preserved. The opportunity for testing occurs because my interpretation of financial markets directly contradicts the efficient market hypothesis, which has been the prevailing theory about financial markets. The efficient market hypothesis claims that markets tend toward equilibrium; that deviations occur in a random fashion and can be attributed to extraneous shocks. If that theory is valid, mine is false—and vice versa.

Let me state the two cardinal principles of my conceptual framework as it applies to the financial markets. First, market prices always distort the underlying fundamentals. The degree of distortion may range from the negligible to the significant. This is in direct contradiction to the efficient market hypothesis, which maintains that market prices accurately reflect all the available information.

Second, instead of playing a purely passive role in reflecting an underlying reality, financial markets also have an active role: they can affect the so-called fundamentals they are supposed to reflect. That is the point that behavioral economics is missing. That discipline focuses on only half of a reflexive process: the mispricing of financial assets; it does not concern itself with the effect the mispricing has on the fundamentals.

There are various pathways by which the mispricing of financial assets can affect the so-called fundamentals. The most widely traveled are those that involve the use of leverage—both debt and equity leveraging. The various feedback loops may give the impression that markets are often right, but the mechanism at work is very different from the one proposed by the prevailing paradigm. I claim that financial markets have ways of altering the fundamentals and that the resulting alterations may bring about a closer correspondence between market prices and the underlying fundamentals. Contrast that with the efficient market hypothesis, which claims that markets always accurately reflect reality and automatically tend toward equilibrium.

My two propositions focus attention on the reflexive feedback loops that characterize financial markets. I described the two kinds of feedback, negative and positive, in the first lecture. Again, negative feedback is self-correcting, and positive feedback is self-reinforcing. Thus, negative feedback sets up a tendency toward equilibrium, but positive feedback produces dynamic disequilibrium. Positive feedback loops are more interesting because they can cause big moves, both in market prices and in the underlying fundamentals. A positive feedback process that runs its full course is initially self-reinforcing in one direction, but eventually it is liable to reach a climax or reversal point, after which it becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction. But positive feedback processes do not necessarily run their full course; they may be aborted at any time by negative feedback.

I have developed a theory about boom-bust processes, or bubbles, along these lines. Every bubble has two components: an underlying trend that prevails in reality and a misconception relating to that trend. A boom-bust process is set in motion when a trend and a misconception positively reinforce each other. The process is liable to be tested by negative feedback along the way. If the trend is strong enough to survive the test, both the trend and the misconception will be further reinforced. Eventually, market expectations become so far removed from reality that people are forced to recognize that a misconception is involved. A twilight period ensues during which doubts grow and more people loose faith, but the prevailing trend is sustained by inertia. As Chuck Prince, former head of Citigroup said: “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.” Eventually a point is reached when the trend is reversed; it then becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction.

Let me go back to the example I used when I originally proposed my theory in 1987: the conglomerate boom of the late 1960s. The underlying trend is represented by earnings per share, the expectations relating to that trend by stock prices. Conglomerates improved their earnings per share by acquiring other companies. Inflated expectations allowed them to improve their earnings performance, but eventually reality could not keep up with expectations. After a twilight period the price trend was reversed. All the problems that had been swept under the carpet surfaced, and earnings collapsed. As the president of one of the conglomerates, Ogden Corporation, told me at the time: I have no audience to play to.

The chart below is a model of the conglomerate bubble. The charts of actual conglomerates like Ogden Corporation closely resemble this chart. Bubbles that conform to this pattern go through distinct stages: (1) inception; (2) a period of acceleration; (3) interrupted and reinforced by successful tests; (4) a twilight period; (5) and the reversal point or climax; (6) followed by acceleration on the downside; (7) culminating in a financial crisis.

The length and strength of each stage is unpredictable, but there is an internal logic to the sequence of stages. So the sequence is predictable, but even that can be terminated by government intervention or some other form of negative feedback. In the case of the conglomerate boom, it was the defeat of Leasco Systems and Research Corporation in its attempt to acquire Manufacturer Hanover Trust Company that constituted the climax, or reversal point.

Typically, bubbles have an asymmetric shape. The boom is long and drawn out; slow to start, it accelerates gradually until it flattens out during the twilight period. The bust is short and steep because it is reinforced by the forced liquidation of unsound positions. Disillusionment turns into panic, reaching its climax in a financial crisis.

The simplest case is a real estate boom. The trend that precipitates it is that credit becomes cheaper and more easily available; the misconception is that the value of the collateral is independent of the availability of credit. As a matter of fact, the relationship between the availability of credit and the value of the collateral is reflexive. When credit becomes cheaper and more easily available, activity picks up and real estate values rise. There are fewer defaults, credit performance improves, and lending standards are relaxed. So at the height of the boom, the amount of credit involved is at its maximum and a reversal precipitates forced liquidation, depressing real estate values.

Yet, the misconception continues to recur in various guises. The international banking crisis of 1982 revolved around sovereign debt, with which no collateral is involved. The creditworthiness of the sovereign borrowers was measured by various debt ratios, such as debt to GDP or debt service to exports. These ratios were considered objective criteria, but in fact they were reflexive. When the recycling of petro-dollars in the 1970s increased the flow of credit to countries like Brazil, their debt ratios improved, encouraging further inflows and starting a bubble. Shortly after Paul Volcker raised interest rates in the U. S. to arrest inflation, the bubble burst.

Not all bubbles involve the extension of credit; some are based on equity leveraging. The best examples are the conglomerate boom of the late 1960s and the Internet bubble of the late 1990s. When Alan Greenspan spoke about irrational exuberance in 1996, he misrepresented bubbles. When I see a bubble forming I rush in to buy, adding fuel to the fire. That is not irrational. And that is why we need regulators to counteract the market when a bubble is threatening to grow too big; we cannot rely on market participants, however well informed and rational they are.

Bubbles are not the only form in which reflexivity manifests itself. They are just the most dramatic and the most directly opposed to the efficient market hypothesis; so they do deserve special attention. But reflexivity can take many other forms. In currency markets, for instance, the upside and downside are symmetrical so that there is no sign of an asymmetry between boom and bust. But there is no sign of equilibrium either. Freely floating exchange rates tend to move in large, multi-year waves.

The most important and most interesting reflexive interaction takes place between the financial authorities and financial markets. Because markets do not tend toward equilibrium, they are prone to produce periodic crises. Financial crises lead to regulatory reforms. That is how central banking and the regulation of financial markets have evolved. Financial authorities and market participants alike act on the basis of imperfect understanding, and that makes the interaction between them reflexive.

While bubbles only occur intermittently, the interplay between authorities and markets is an ongoing process. Misunderstandings by either side usually stay within reasonable bounds because market reactions provide useful feedback to the authorities, allowing them to correct their mistakes. But occasionally the mistakes prove to be self-validating, setting in motion vicious or virtuous circles. Such feedback loops resemble bubbles in the sense that they are initially self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating. Indeed, the intervention of the authorities to deal with periodic financial crises played a crucial role in the development of a “super-bubble” that burst in 2007–2008.

It is important to realize that not all price distortions are due to reflexivity. Market participants cannot possibly base their decisions on knowledge—they have to anticipate the future, and the future is contingent on decisions that people have not yet made. What those decisions are going to be and what effect they will have cannot be accurately anticipated. Nevertheless, people are forced to make decisions. To guess correctly, people would have to know the decisions of all of the other participants and their consequences, but that is impossible.

Rational expectations theory sought to circumvent this impossibility by postulating that there is a single correct set of expectations and people’s views will converge around it. That postulate has no resemblance to reality, but it is the basis of financial economics as it is currently taught in universities. In practice, participants are obliged to make their decisions in conditions of uncertainty. Their decisions are bound to be tentative and biased. That is the generic cause of price distortions.

Occasionally, the price distortions set in motion a boom-bust process. More often, they are corrected by negative feedback. In these cases market fluctuations have a random character. I compare them to the waves sloshing around in a swimming pool as opposed to tidal waves. Obviously, the latter are more significant but the former are more ubiquitous. The two kinds of price distortions intermingle so that in reality boom-bust processes rarely follow the exact course of my model. Bubbles that follow the pattern I described in my model occur only on those rare occasions when they are so powerful that they overshadow all the other processes going on at the same time.

It will be useful to distinguish between near-equilibrium conditions, which are characterized by random fluctuations, and far-from-equilibrium situations, in which a bubble predominates. Near-equilibrium is characterized by humdrum, everyday events that are repetitive and lend themselves to statistical generalizations. Far-from-equilibrium conditions give rise to unique, historic events in which outcomes are generally uncertain but have the capacity to disrupt the statistical generalizations based on everyday events.

The rules that can guide decisions in near equilibrium conditions do not apply in far-from-equilibrium situations. The recent financial crisis is a case in point. All the risk management tools and synthetic financial products that were based on the assumption that price deviations from a putative equilibrium occur in a random fashion broke down, and people who relied on mathematical models that had served them well in near-equilibrium conditions got badly hurt.

I have gained some new insights into far-from-equilibrium conditions during the recent financial crisis. As a participant I had to act under immense time pressure, and I could not gather all of the information that would have been available—and the same applied to the regulatory authorities in charge. That is how far-from-equilibrium situations can spin out of control.

This situation is not confined to financial markets. I experienced it, for instance, during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fact that the participants’ thinking is time-bound instead of timeless is left out of the account by rational expectations theory.

I was aware of the uncertainty associated with reflexivity, but even I was taken by surprise by the extent of the uncertainty in 2008. It cost me dearly. I got the general direction of the markets right, but I did not allow for the volatility. As a consequence, I took on positions that were too big to withstand the swings caused by volatility, and several times I was forced to reduce my positions at the wrong time in order to limit my risk. I would have done better if I had taken smaller positions and stuck with them. I learned the hard way that the range of uncertainty is also uncertain and at times can become practically infinite.

Uncertainty finds expression in volatility. Increased volatility requires a reduction in risk exposure. This leads to what John Maynard Keynes called “increased liquidity preference.” This is an additional factor in the forced liquidation of positions that characterizes financial crises. When the crisis abates and the range of uncertainty is reduced, it leads to an almost automatic rebound in the stock market as the liquidity preference stops rising and eventually falls. That is another lesson I have learned recently.

I need to point out that I introduced the distinction between near- and far-from-equilibrium conditions in order to make some sense out of a confusing reality, and it does not accurately describe reality. Reality is always more complicated than the dichotomies we introduce into it. The recent crisis is comparable to a hundred-year storm. We have had a number of crises leading up to it. These are comparable to five- or ten-year storms. Regulators who had successfully dealt with the smaller storms were less successful when they applied the same methods to the hundred-year storm.

These general remarks prepare the ground for a specific hypothesis to explain the recent financial crisis. It is not derived from my theory of bubbles by deductive logic. Nevertheless, the two of them stand or fall together.

So here it goes. I contend that the puncturing of the subprime bubble in 2007 set off the explosion of a super-bubble, much as an ordinary bomb sets off a nuclear explosion. The housing bubble in the United States was the most common kind, distinguished only by the widespread use of collateralized debt obligations and other synthetic instruments. Behind this ordinary bubble there was a much larger super-bubble growing over a longer period of time that was much more peculiar.

The prevailing trend in this super-bubble was the ever increasing use of credit and leverage. The prevailing misconception was the belief that financial markets are self-correcting and should be left to their own devices. President Reagan called it the “magic of the marketplace, ” and I call it market fundamentalism. It became the dominant creed in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom.

What made the super-bubble so peculiar was the role that financial crises played in making it grow. Since the belief that markets could be safely left to their own devices was false, the super-bubble gave rise to a series of financial crises. The first and most serious one was the international banking crisis of 1982. This was followed by many other crises, the most notable being the portfolio insurance debacle of October 1987, the savings and loan crisis that unfolded in various episodes between 1989 and 1994, the emerging market crisis of 1997–1998, and the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000. Each time a financial crisis occurred, the authorities intervened, merged away or otherwise took care of the failing financial institutions, and applied monetary and fiscal stimuli to protect the economy. These measures reinforced the prevailing trend of ever increasing credit and leverage, but as long as they worked, they also reinforced the prevailing misconception that markets can be safely left to their own devices. It was a misconception because it was the intervention of the authorities that saved the system; nevertheless these crises served as successful tests of a false belief, and as such, they inflated the super-bubble even further.

Eventually the credit expansion became unsustainable and the super-bubble exploded. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market in 2007 led to the collapse of one market after another in quick succession because they were all interconnected, the fire-walls having been removed by deregulation. And that is what distinguishes the most recent financial crisis from all those that preceded it. Those functioned as successful tests that reinforced the process; the subprime crisis of 2007 constituted the turning point. The collapse then reached its climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, which precipitated the large-scale intervention of the financial authorities.

It is characteristic of my boom-bust model that it cannot predict whether a test will be successful or not. This holds for ordinary bubbles as well as the super-bubble. I thought that the emerging market crisis of 1997–1998 would constitute the turning point of the super-bubble, but I was wrong. The authorities managed to save the system and the super-bubble continued growing. That made the bust that eventually came in 2007–2008 all the more devastating.

After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers financial markets had to be put on artificial life support. This was a shock not only for the financial sector but also for the real economy. International trade was particularly badly hit. But the artificial life support worked, and financial markets stabilized. The economy gradually revived. A year later, the whole episode feels like a bad dream and people would like to forget it. There is a widespread desire to treat the crisis as just another crisis and return to business as usual. But reality is unlikely to oblige. The system is actually broken and needs to be fixed.

My analysis offers some worthwhile clues to the kind of regulatory reform that is needed. First and foremost, since markets are bubble-prone, the financial authorities have to accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big. Alan Greenspan and others have expressly refused to accept that responsibility. If markets can’t recognize bubbles, Greenspan argued, neither can regulators—and he was right. Nevertheless, the financial authorities have to accept the assignment, knowing full well that they will not be able to meet it without making mistakes. They will, however, have the benefit of receiving feedback from the markets, which will tell them whether they have done too much or too little. They can then correct their mistakes.

Second, in order to control asset bubbles it is not enough to control the money supply; you must also control the availability of credit. This cannot be done by using only monetary tools; you must also use credit controls. The best-known tools are margin requirements and minimum capital requirements. Currently they are fixed irrespective of the market’s mood, because markets are not supposed to have moods. Yet they do, and the financial authorities need to vary margin and minimum capital requirements in order to control asset bubbles.

Regulators may also have to invent new tools or revive others that have fallen into disuse. For instance, in my early days in finance, many years ago, central banks used to instruct commercial banks to limit their lending to a particular sector of the economy, such as real estate or consumer loans, because they felt that the sector was overheating. Market fundamentalists consider that to be crass interference with the market mechanism, but they are wrong. When our central banks used to do it we had no financial crises to speak of. The Chinese authorities do it today, and they have much better control over their banking system. The deposits that Chinese commercial banks have to maintain at the People’s Bank of China were increased seventeen times during the boom, and when the authorities reversed course the banks obeyed them with alacrity.

Or consider the Internet boom. Alan Greenspan recognized it quite early when he spoke about irrational exuberance in 1996. But apart from his famous speech, he did nothing to avert it. He felt that reducing the money supply would have been too blunt an instrument to use, and he was right. But he could have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to put a freeze on new share issues since the Internet boom was fueled by equity leveraging. He did not, because that would have violated his market fundamentalist beliefs. That was wrong.

Third, since markets are potentially unstable, there are systemic risks in addition to the risks affecting individual market participants. Participants may ignore these systemic risks in the belief that they can always dispose of their positions, but regulators cannot ignore them because if too many participants are on the same side, positions cannot be liquidated without causing a discontinuity or a collapse. They have to monitor the positions of participants in order to detect potential imbalances. That means that the positions of all major market participants, including hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, need to be monitored. Certain derivatives, such as credit default swaps and knockout options, are particularly prone to create hidden imbalances; therefore, they must be regulated and, if appropriate, restricted or forbidden. The issuing of synthetic securities needs to be subject to regulatory approval, just as the issuing of ordinary securities is.

Fourth, we must recognize that financial markets evolve in a one-directional, nonreversible manner. The financial authorities, in carrying out their duty of preventing the system from collapsing, have extended an implicit guarantee to all institutions that are “too big to fail.” Now they cannot credibly withdraw as long as that guarantees there are institutions that are too big to fail. Therefore, they must impose regulations that will ensure that the guarantee will not be invoked. Too-big-to-fail banks must use less leverage and accept various restrictions on how they invest the depositors’ money. Deposits should not be used to finance proprietary trading. But regulators have to go even further. They must regulate the compensation packages of proprietary traders to ensure that risks and rewards are properly aligned. This may push proprietary traders out of banks into hedge funds where they properly belong.

Just as oil tankers are compartmentalized in order to keep them stable, there ought to be firewalls between different markets. It is probably impractical to separate investment banking from commercial banking as the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 did. But there have to be internal compartments keeping proprietary trading in various markets separate from each other. Some banks that have come to occupy quasi-monopolistic positions may have to be broken up.

Finally, the drafters of the Basel Accords made a mistake when they gave securities held by banks substantially lower risk ratings than regular loans: they ignored the systemic risks attached to concentrated positions in securities. This was an important factor aggravating the crisis. It has to be corrected by raising the risk ratings of securities held by banks, which will probably discourage the securitization of loans.

All of these measures will reduce the profitability and leverage of banks. This raises an interesting question about timing. This is not the right time to enact permanent reforms. The financial system and the economy are very far from equilibrium, and they cannot be brought back to near-equilibrium conditions by a straightforward corrective move, just as when a car is skidding you must first turn the wheel in the direction of the skid before you right the car. What needed to be done in the short term was almost exactly the opposite of what is needed in the long term. First, the credit that evaporated had to be replaced by using the only source that has remained credible—namely, the state. That meant increasing the national debt and extending the monetary base. As the economy stabilizes, the monetary base must be shrunk as fast as credit revives—otherwise, deflation will be replaced by the specter of inflation.

We are still in the first phase of this delicate maneuver. The banks are in the process of earning their way out of a hole. To reduce their profitability now would be directly counterproductive. Regulatory reform has to await the second phase, when the money supply needs to be brought under control; and it needs to be carefully phased in so as not to disrupt recovery. But we cannot afford to forget about it.

You have seen that my interpretation of financial markets— call it the theory of reflexivity—is very different from the efficient market hypothesis. Strictly speaking, neither theory is falsifiable by Popper’s standards. I predicted the bursting of the super-bubble in 1998. I was wrong then; am I right now? And some proponents of the efficient market hypothesis are still defending it in the face of all the evidence.

Still, there is a widespread feeling that we need a new paradigm, and I contend that my theory provides a better explanation than the available alternatives. Behavioral economics, which is gaining increased recognition, deals with only half of reflexivity: the misinterpretations of reality; it does not study the pathways by which mispricing can change the fundamentals.

I realize that my theory of financial markets is still very rudimentary and needs a lot more development. Obviously, I cannot fully develop it on my own. So I may have been premature in putting forward my theory as the new paradigm. But the efficient market hypothesis has been conclusively disproved and a new interpretation of financial markets is urgently needed. Even more than that, the entire edifice of global financial markets, which was erected on the false premise that markets can be left to their own devices, has to be rebuilt from the ground up.

This concludes the lecture, but I also want to make an announcement.

I have decided to sponsor an Institute for New Economic Thinking—INET for short. It will be a major institution, fostering research, workshops, and curricula that will develop an alternative to the prevailing paradigm. I have committed $50 million over ten years, and I hope others will join me to bring the budget up to $10 million a year or more.

I hope reflexivity will be one of the concepts that will be explored, but clearly it should not be the only concept. I recognize a potential conflict between being a protagonist and a financial sponsor at the same time. To protect against it, I want to erect a Chinese wall between me and the Institute. To this end, I will extend my financial support through Central European University, and I will not personally participate in the governance of INET. The jury that selects grantees will be expressly instructed to encourage other alternatives besides the theory of reflexivity.

The plan is to launch INET at a workshop on the lessons of the financial crisis at King’s College, Cambridge, on April 10 and 11, 2010. And I hope that the new economic thinking will find a home here at the Central European University.

Lecture Three

Open Society

英汉对照：第三讲 开放社会

Today I shall introduce the third pillar of my conceptual framework, namely, open society. In the previous lectures I was summarizing the conclusions of a lifetime of study and experimentation. Here I will be breaking new ground because my views on open society have changed over time and they are still evolving. As a result, the next two lectures will be much more exploratory in character.

The connection between open society and reflexivity is far from obvious. On a personal level they are closely connected. As you will recall, I was studying economic theory and at the same time I was reading Karl Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies. It was Popper’s insistence on our inherent fallibility that led me to question the basic assumptions of economic theory and develop the concept of reflexivity.

But on a conceptual level the connection is only indirect. It is the first pillar, fallibility, that connects the other two. Fallibility in this context means not only that our view of the world is always incomplete and distorted but also that in our effort to simplify an extremely complex reality, we often misconstrue it. And our misconceptions play an important, role in shaping the course of history.

If there is anything really original in my thinking it is this emphasis on misconceptions. It provides a strong argument in favor of critical thinking and open society.

Popper did not give an exact definition of open society because he considered exact definitions incompatible with our imperfect understanding. He preferred to approach things from the opposite direction, by first describing them and then giving them a label. The form of social organization he named “open society” bore a close resemblance to democracy.

The net effect of his approach was to justify democracy by an epistemological argument. Since perfect knowledge is beyond the scope of the human intellect, a society characterized by the freedom of speech and thought and free elections is preferable to a society that imposes its ideology by force. Having been exposed to Nazi persecution, I found this argument very persuasive.

Popper’s philosophy made me more sensitive to the role of misconceptions in financial markets, and the concept of reflexivity allowed me to develop my theory of bubbles. This gave me a leg up as a market participant.

After a successful run as a hedge fund manager I went through a kind of midlife crisis. I was approaching fifty. My hedge fund had grown to $100 million, of which about $40 million belonged to me personally. I felt that I had made more than enough money for myself and my family, and running a hedge fund was extremely stressful and depleting. What would make it worthwhile to continue?

I thought long and hard and finally I decided to set up a foundation devoted to the promotion of open society. I defined its mission as opening up closed societies, correcting the deficiencies of open societies, and promoting a critical mode of thinking.

As time went by, I became increasingly involved in philanthropy. I established a foundation in Hungary in 1984 when it was still under Communist rule, in China in 1986, and in Poland and the Soviet Union in 1987. And as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated, I set up a network of foundations that covered almost the entire former Communist world.

In this way I acquired some practical experience in building open societies. I learned a lot. I discovered things that I should have known in the first place—for instance, the disintegration of closed societies does not necessarily lead to the birth of open societies; it may just result in a continuing disintegration until a new regime emerges that bears more resemblance to the regime that had collapsed than to an open society.

The event that forced me to thoroughly reconsider the concept of open society was the reelection of George W. Bush in the United States in 2004. Here was the oldest and most successful democracy in the world violating the principles for which it was supposed to stand by engaging in human rights violations in the name of fighting a war on terror and invading Iraq on false pretenses. Yet, he was reelected. How was that possible? I had to ask myself: what was wrong with America? I wrote a couple of books trying to answer that question. I blamed the Bush administration for misleading the people and I blamed the people for allowing the Bush administration to mislead them.

As I probed deeper, I started to question my own conceptual framework. I discovered a flaw in the concept of open society. Popper was mainly concerned with the problems of understanding of reality. He put forward an epistemological rather than a political argument in favor of open society. He argued that “only democracy provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, and so the use of reason in politics matters.”

But his approach was based on a hidden assumption, namely, that the main purpose of thinking is to gain a better understanding of reality. And that was not necessarily the case. The manipulative function could take precedence over the cognitive function. Indeed, in a democracy, the primary objective of politicians is to get elected and then stay in power.

This rather obvious insight raised some additional questions about the concept of open society. How could Popper take it for granted that free political discourse is aimed at understanding reality? And even more intriguingly, how could I, who gave the manipulative function pride of place in the concept of reflexivity, follow him so blindly?

Both questions led me to the same conclusion: our view of the world is deeply rooted in an intellectual tradition that either ignores the manipulative function or treats it as subservient to the cognitive function.

It is easy to see how this view of the world became so ingrained. The aim of the cognitive function is to produce knowledge. Knowledge is expressed by statements that correspond to the facts. To establish correspondence, statements and facts have to be separate and distinct. Hence, the pursuit of knowledge requires that thoughts should be distinguished from their subject matter. This requirement led philosophers, whose primary preoccupation is with thinking, to the belief that reason and reality are separate. This dualism had its roots in Greek philosophy, and it came to dominate our view of the world during the Enlightenment.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment put their faith in reason. Reason was supposed to work like a searchlight, illuminating a reality that lay there, passively awaiting discovery. The active role that reason can play in shaping reality was largely left out of the account. In other words, the Enlightenment failed to recognize reflexivity. This resulted in a distorted view of reality, but one that was appropriate to the age when it was formulated.

At the time of the Enlightenment humankind had as yet relatively little knowledge of or control over the forces of nature, and scientific method held out infinite promise. It was appropriate to think of reality as something out there, something waiting passively to be discovered, and to think of reason as actively engaged in exploring it. After all, at that time not even the earth had been fully explored. Gathering facts and establishing relationships among them was richly rewarding. Knowledge was being acquired in so many different ways and from so many different directions that the possibilities seemed unlimited. Reason was sweeping away centuries of traditional relationships and religious dogma and generating a triumphant sense of progress.

The difficulties that reflexivity poses to a proper understanding of human affairs went largely unnoticed. The leaders of the French Revolution believed that reason could help reconstruct society from the ground up, but their faith in reason was excessive. Society failed to follow the dictates of reason, and the euphoria of 1789 deteriorated into the terror of 1794.

The Enlightenment misinterpreted reality by introducing a dichotomy between thinking and reality that would enable reason to attain perfect knowledge. The dichotomy was not inherent in the subject matter but introduced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment in their attempt to make sense of reality.

The mistake made by the Enlightenment philosophers has been given a name; postmodernists call it the “Enlightenment fallacy.” I shall adopt that term here, but I want to make it clear that I am talking about a fertile fallacy, one that contains a valuable kernel of truth.

Let me explain more precisely what I mean by “fertile fallacy.” We are capable of acquiring knowledge, but we can never have enough knowledge to allow us to base all our decisions on knowledge. It follows that if a piece of knowledge has proved useful, we are liable to overexploit it and extend it to areas where it no longer applies, so that it becomes a fallacy.

That is what happened to the Enlightenment. The dichotomy between reason and reality worked very well for the study of natural phenomena, but it was misleading in the study of human affairs. Fertile fallacies are, in other branches of history, the equivalent of bubbles in financial markets.

The Enlightenment fallacy is deeply rooted in our view of the world. It led Popper to proclaim that the same standards and criteria apply in both the natural and social sciences, and it led economic theory to model itself on Newtonian physics. Neither Popper’s elegant model of scientific method nor economic theory recognized reflexivity. What is worse, even I, who discovered—or invented— reflexivity in financial markets, failed to recognize that Popper’s concept of open society was based on the hidden assumption that the cognitive function takes precedence over the manipulative function—that we are pursuing the truth and not simply trying to manipulate people into believing what we want them to believe.

The Enlightenment fallacy is also at the root of the efficient market hypothesis and its political derivative, market fundamentalism. The fallacy in these two intellectual constructs was exposed in a spectacular fashion by the collapse of the financial system. My discovery of a flaw in open society was less spectacular because the concept is less widely accepted, but on a personal level it was equally earthshaking. It forced me to rethink the concept of open society. I have not abandoned my belief in the merits of open society, but I realize that it needs stronger arguments to buttress it. Popper took it for granted that in an open society the cognitive function takes precedence over the manipulative function; I now believe that this has to be introduced as an explicit requirement for an open society to flourish. Let me explain how I reached that conclusion.

In a democracy political discourse is aimed not at discovering reality (the cognitive function) but getting elected and staying in power (the manipulative function). Consequently, free political discourse does not necessarily produce more far-sighted policies than an authoritarian regime that suppresses dissent.

To make matters worse, in the political battle to manipulate reality, a commitment to abide by the truth has become a handicap. The Bush administration had at its disposal a powerful right-wing propaganda machine working for it that did not feel any need to respect the facts. This gave it a decided competitive advantage over more old-fashioned political practitioners who were still under the influence of the Enlightenment fallacy and felt constrained by the facts.

Frank Luntz, one of the most successful right-wing propagandists in the United States, openly admitted that he used George Orwell’s 1984 as his textbook in devising his slogans. As a believer in the open society, I found this shocking. How could Orwellian Newspeak be as successful in an open society as in a totalitarian state with its Ministry of Truth?

This line of enquiry provided me with a clue to the question: what is wrong with America? People are not particularly concerned with the pursuit of truth. They have been conditioned by ever more sophisticated techniques of manipulation to the point where they do not mind being deceived; indeed, they seem to positively invite it.

People have become used to receiving information in prepackaged messages; hence the influence of paid political advertising. They are more interested in being entertained than informed; hence the influence of populist commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

The techniques of manipulation have developed gradually over time. They originated in the commercial arena toward the end of the nineteenth century when entrepreneurs discovered that they could improve their profit margins by differentiating their products through branding and advertising. This prompted research into the motivation of consumers, the testing of messages, and the use of focus groups, setting in motion a Reflexive process that changed the behavior of the public. It led to the development of a consumer society and spread from there to politics and culture.

These trends undermined the hidden assumptions on which economics and politics were based. Economic theory has taken the conditions of demand and supply as given, and it has shown how free markets under the conditions of perfect competition would lead to the optimum allocation of resources. But the shape of the demand curve was not independently given; it was subject to manipulation by advertising. The theory of representative democracy assumed that candidates would present themselves and their programs, and that the electorate would choose the ones they preferred; it did not anticipate that the candidates would study public opinion and then tell the electorate what it wanted to hear. Both of these theories failed to take into account that reality can be manipulated.

The manipulation of reality also became a major theme in the arts. It was literary criticism that eventually led to the development of the postmodern worldview, which turned the Enlightenment upside down. It denied the existence of an objective reality that could be discovered by reason; instead it saw reality as a collection of often contradictory narratives.

I had dismissed the postmodern worldview out of hand because it was in conflict with my profound respect for an objective reality. I did not realize the connection between the postmodern worldview and the Bush administration’s propaganda machine until an article by Ron Suskind in New York Times Magazine opened my eyes. He quoted one of the operators of that machine as saying “when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities.”

This forced me to change my mind. I had to take the post-modern position more seriously and recognize it as a fertile fallacy, fully equal in its influence to the Enlightenment, and currently, perhaps, even more influential. But I still regard the postmodern fallacy as more of a fallacy and less fertile than the Enlightenment fallacy. By giving precedence to the manipulative function it ignores the hard core of objective reality that cannot be manipulated. This is more of a defect, in my eyes, than the Enlightenment’s neglect of the manipulative function.

According to the Enlightenment, reason and reality are separate and independent of each other. The only way people can turn reality to their advantage is by understanding the laws that determine the course of events. Under these conditions it could be taken for granted that discovering those laws has to come first. This led to the development of natural science, which is the greatest achievement of the human intellect. It is only in the study of human affairs that the fallacy crept in.

By contrast, the postmodern worldview is thoroughly misleading. It has spawned an amoral, pragmatic approach to politics. It can be summed up as follows: Now that we have discovered that reality can be manipulated, why should the cognitive function be given precedence? Why not engage directly in manipulation? Why not pursue power rather than truth?

There is an answer to that argument. While reality can be manipulated, the outcome is bound to diverge from the manipulator’s intentions. The divergence needs to be kept to a minimum, and that can be done only through a better understanding of reality. It is this line of reasoning that led me to introduce a commitment to the pursuit of truth as an explicit requirement for open society.

This abstract argument can be reinforced by a concrete example. Look at the Bush presidency. It was remarkably successful in manipulating reality. By declaring war on terror it managed to line up the nation behind the president and pave the way to the invasion of Iraq. The invasion was meant to establish the supremacy of the United States in the world, but it achieved the exact opposite result. America lost power and influence precipitously, and George W. Bush is widely considered the worst president the United States has ever had.

This example ought to be convincing. Yet now that the concept of reflexivity is gaining recognition, the danger is that it will be misinterpreted in favor of the postmodern fallacy. A reflexive reality is just too difficult to understand, and people are easily misled by simple answers. It takes a lifetime to understand the argument that a valid prediction does not necessarily prove that the theory on which it was based is also true, but a paid political announcement takes only thirty seconds.

It is tempting to adopt the postmodern view of the world, but it is very dangerous to disregard the existence of an objective reality. One way to bring home objective reality is to draw attention to death as a fact of life. The mind finds it difficult to accept the idea of ceasing to exist and all kinds of narratives and myths have sprung up around the idea of life after death. I have been struck by an Aztec ritual in which teams compete in a ball game and the winners are sacrificed to the gods. That is an extreme example of the power of such myths. Yet the fact is that the winning team died.

Even so, I have to admit that the absence of life after death cannot be proven to those who believe in it. My insistence on the importance of the objective aspect of reality is a matter of personal belief. Indeed, it has a curious resemblance to a religious belief. The objective aspect of reality as I have construed it has many of the attri-butes of God as conceived in monotheistic religions: it is omnipresent and all-powerful, yet the ways of its working remain somewhat mysterious.

I hold the objective aspect of reality in very high regard, and I used to think that that was the norm. I have come to realize that my attitude is quite unusual and it has to do with my personal history.

The formative experience of my life was the German occupation of Hungary in 1944. Under the wise guidance of my father we not only survived but managed to help others in a situation full of dangers. This turned 1944 into a positive experience for me and gave me an appetite for confronting harsh reality.

This attitude was reinforced by my involvement in the financial markets. I was a risk taker, and I often pushed matters to their limits, though I avoided going over the brink. I learned to protect myself against unpleasant surprises by looking out for all the things that could go wrong. I chose investments that had risk-reward ratios that remained attractive even under the worst assumptions. This made me emphasize the dark side of every situation.

Then I became active with my foundations. Here, the fact that I could do something positive to alleviate injustice increased my willingness to recognize and confront harsh realities. A negative assessment became an invitation for positive involvement.

My foundation ended up devoting much of its resources to seemingly insoluble problems like drug policy and seemingly hopeless cases like Burma, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Congo. Needless to say, fighting losing battles is not the preferred choice of most foundations.

My commitment to the objective aspect of reality plays the same role in my thinking as religion does in other people’s. In the absence of perfect knowledge we need beliefs. I happen to believe in harsh reality, while other people believe in God.

Nevertheless I would argue that when society ignores the objective aspect of reality it does so at its own peril. If we try to avoid unpleasant realities by deceiving ourselves or the electorate, reality will punish us by failing to meet our expectations.

Yes, reality can be manipulated, but the results of our actions are governed not by our desires but by an external reality whose workings we cannot fully comprehend. The better we understand it, the closer the outcome will correspond to our intentions. Understanding reality is the cognitive function. That is why the cognitive function ought to take precedence over and guide the manipulative function. Ignoring an objective reality that cannot be fully understood leads to the postmodern fallacy.

The foregoing discourse has shown that mankind has adopted two fallacies about the relationship between thinking and reality in recent history: the Enlightenment fallacy and the post-modern fallacy. They are related to each other. The Enlightenment failed to recognize the prevalence of manipulation in the human sphere, and the discovery of the manipulative function led to the postmodern fallacy. Each of them recognizes one half of a complicated relationship.

My conceptual framework, based on the twin principles of fallibility and reflexivity, combines the two halves. Both fallacies have been influential, but my framework has received little acceptance. This goes to show how easy it is to misinterpret reality—much easier than to gain a proper understanding.

The postmodern fallacy is now in the ascendant. It guided the policies of the Bush administration and I note with alarm that it has surfaced in the Obama administration as well. I refer to a recent book by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, which has been influential in shaping the policies of the Obama administration. That book extols the merits of what the authors call the “confidence multiplier.” In other words the authors believe that the ills of the economy can be cured by talking up the financial markets. That belief is half true: the stock market rally has allowed banks to raise capital and it has strengthened the economy in other ways as well. But the confidence multiplier disregards the other half of reflexivity: if reality fails to conform to expectations, confidence can turn into disappointment, boom can turn to bust. I am deeply worried that by deploying the confidence multiplier President Obama has taken ownership of the recession and that if there is a relapse he will be blamed for it.

This discussion should help to clarify my theory of reflexivity by putting it into the context of two false interpretations of reality. In particular, a point that may not have come through loud and clear needs to be emphasized: there is a hard core of objective reality that cannot be manipulated, such as the inevitability of death. It is this hard core that is ignored by the postmodern fallacy.

Emboldened by my recent successes, I will go so far as to claim that my conceptual framework provides the correct interpretation of reality. That is a bold claim, and at first sight it seems to be self-contradictory. How can a correct interpretation of reality be reconciled with the principle of inherently imperfect understanding? Easy. By pointing out that reflexivity introduces an element of uncertainty both into the participants’ thinking and into the course of events. A framework that claims that the future is inherently uncertain cannot be accused of perfection. Yet it can provide important insights into reality; it can even anticipate the future within bounds, although the bounds themselves are uncertain and variable, as we have seen in the recent financial crisis. By recognizing uncertainty, my framework manages to be both self-consistent and consistent with reality. Yet, since it is less than perfect, it holds itself open to improvement.

Actually, I see a tremendous scope for further development. My original framework, formulated under the influence of Karl Popper, dealt only with the problems of understanding reality. But when I added the requirement that the electorate should cherish truthfulness and punish deception, I entered the realm of values. In that realm, uncertainty is even more prevalent than in the realm of cognition; therefore, a lot more thinking needs to be done.

As we have seen, the truth is difficult to establish and often hard to bear. The path of least resistance leads in the opposite direction, avoiding unpleasant realities and rewarding deception as long as it remains convincing. These tendencies need to be resisted for an open society to remain open and to flourish.

This prescription is particularly relevant to the United States at the present time because that country is facing a particularly unplea-sant set of realities in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It has been living beyond its means for the last quarter of a century and making ends meet by borrowing abroad. Now the housing bubble has burst, and consumers are overextended and need to rebuild their savings. The banking system has collapsed and needs to earn its way out of a hole.

The Bush administration had deliberately misled the electorate when it invaded Iraq on false pretenses. The Obama administration cannot be accused of deliberate deception; nevertheless, it has accepted that the country is unwilling to face harsh realities and deployed the confidence multiplier.

Unfortunately, objective reality is unlikely to fulfill the hopes raised by the confidence multiplier. At the same time, the political opposition is not constrained by facts in attacking the president. In these circumstances, the requirement that the electorate should be more committed to the pursuit of truth will be difficult to meet. It provides a good agenda for my foundation, but the current state of democracy in America does not strengthen the case for open society as a superior form of social organization. I need to find a stronger argument.

A better case can be found by reverting to the Founding Fathers, who formed their views long before the concept of open society was introduced. The Founding Fathers built their case on the value of individual freedom. The epistemological argument they employed was flawed: the Declaration of Independence states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, ” but there is nothing self-evident about them. Self-evident or not, however, the value of individual freedom is enduring and, having been exposed to totalitarian regimes, I’m passionately devoted to it. And I am not alone.

Reverting to the Founding Fathers has another great advantage: it allows a discussion of power relations. The Constitution protected against tyranny by a division of powers. The division of powers recognizes that there are competing interests and different interpretations of reality within society that need to be reconciled by a political process. The constitutional checks and balances preclude the formation of absolute power that could claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth. The Constitution establishes a mechanism whereby different branches of government interact and control each other. But that is not sufficient.

Open society can prevail only when people can speak truth to power. It needs the rule of law that guarantees freedom of speech and press, freedom of association and assembly, and other rights and freedoms. They empower citizens to defend themselves against the abuse of power and to make use of the judicial branch for such defense. That is how the Founding Fathers created an open society.

Let me spell out my conclusion more clearly. Open society is a desirable form of social organization both as a means to an end and as an end in itself. It enables a society to understand the problems confronting it and to deal with them more successfully than other forms of social organizations, provided it gives precedence to the cognitive function over the manipulative function and the people are willing to confront harsh realities.

In other words, the instrumental value of democracy is conditional on the electorate’s commitment to the pursuit of truth, and in that regard the current performance of American democracy does not live up to its past achievements. We cannot rely on the inherent superiority of the American system and need to prove ourselves anew. But quite apart from its instrumental value, open society also has an intrinsic value, namely, the freedom of the individual, which applies whether open society flourishes or not. For instance, it applied in the Soviet Union.

Of course, the freedom of the individual must be made compatible with the public interest and the freedom of other individuals.

Moreover, the intrinsic value of individual freedom falls short of being self-evident. For instance, it is not generally recognized in China, where the interests of the collective take precedence over the interests of the individual. This was the clear message of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games. The ceremony showed that by doing exactly what they are told at exactly the right time, a large collection of individuals can produce a superb spectacle.

With the changing power relations between the United States and China, the value of individual freedom is likely to assume increasing importance in the immediate future. I will address that subject in my last lecture.

Lecture Four

Capitalism Versus Open Society

英汉对照：第四讲 资本主义与开放社会

Today I want to explore the conflict between capitalism and open society, market values and social values. I am going to approach the subject indirectly by first introducing a phenomenon that has attracted my attention only recently, but has assumed such importance in my thinking that I could almost call it the fourth pillar of my conceptual framework. That phenomenon is the agency problem: Agents are supposed to represent the interests of their principals, but in fact, they tend to put their own interests ahead of the interests of those whom they are supposed to represent.

The agency problem has been extensively analyzed by economists, but they look at it exclusively in terms of contracts and incentives and they largely disregard questions of ethics and values. Yet if you leave out ethical considerations the problem becomes pretty well intractable; values like honesty and integrity lose their grip on people’s behavior and people become increasingly motivated by economic incentives.

By claiming to be value-free, market fundamentalism has actually undermined moral values.

Markets are supposed to be guided by an invisible hand; that is what makes them so efficient. Participants need to exercise no moral judgments in reaching their buy and sell decisions because their actions are not supposed to have any visible influence on market prices.

In truth, the rules governing financial markets are decided by the visible hand of politicians, and in a representative democracy politicians run into an agency problem.

Thus, the agency problem poses grave difficulties for both representative democracy and the market economy that cannot be resolved without an appeal to moral principles. That is how the agency problem has gained such prominence in my thinking. First, I will analyze the agency problem and then I will deal with the conflict between capitalism and open society.

Let me start at the beginning. I first encountered the agency problem in connection with the so-called resource curse. “Resource curse” refers to the tendency of countries that are rich in natural resources to be cursed with corrupt or repressive governments, insurrections, and civil wars so that the people are even poorer and lead more miserable lives than in countries that are less well endowed by nature. Think of the Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

One of the nongovernmental organizations I support, Global Witness, proposed a campaign based on the slogan “Publish What You Pay.” The idea was to get oil companies and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to various governments. The amounts could then be added up and the governments could be held accountable by the people for the monies they received.

The campaign was launched in 2002 and it has had an interesting history. The idea itself turned out to be a fertile fallacy because, although public opinion could put enough pressure on the big oil companies, fly-by-night operators and companies domiciled in nondemocratic states were less susceptible. So the amounts could not be added up.

Fortunately, the British government took up the cause and formed the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which brought together governments, companies, and civil society in an effort to establish international standards of transparency that apply to companies and to governments alike. In those countries that subscribed to the transparency initiative, the governments undertook the task of publishing the amounts they received. Countries like Nigeria and Azerbaijan are seeing positive results.

In analyzing the resource curse, I came to attribute great importance to what I called an “asymmetric agency problem.”According to the modern concept of sovereignty, the natural resources of a country belong to the people of that country, but governments, which are supposed to be agents of the people, put their own interests ahead of the interests of the people whom they are supposed to represent, and they engage in all sorts of corrupt practices. On the opposite side, the managements of international oil and mining companies represent the interests of the companies all too well. They used to go so far as to bribe governments in order to obtain concessions. Willing takers and givers of bribes are the root cause of the resource curse.

Once I became aware of the agency problem, I discovered it everywhere. The Soviet Union and the East Europe failed because of the agency problem. Karl Marx’s proposition about everybody contributing according to their ability and receiving according to their need was a very attractive idea, but the Soviet Union and the East Europe rulers put their own interests ahead of the interests of the people.

The agency problem is also the bane of representative democracy; the elected representatives use their powers for their own interests to the detriment of the common interest.

And in the recent financial crisis, the agency problem proved to be the undoing of the financial system. When financial engineers turned mortgages into securities by issuing collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, they thought they were reducing risk through geographical diversification. In reality, they were introducing a new risk by separating the interests of the agents who created and distributed the synthetic instruments from the interest of the owners of those securities. The agents were more interested in earning fees than in protecting the interests of the principals.

So the agency problem seemed ubiquitous.

Yet, in spite of its pervasive influence, it escaped attention until relatively recently. In my student days it was almost totally unrecognized. In the last twenty years it has received more attention, but, again, mainly from economists who studied it in terms of contracts and incentives. In reality, the agency problem is more of an ethical problem, and analyzing it in terms of contracts and incentives actually aggravated the ethical problem. Establishing the principle that people’s behavior is governed by contracts and incentives had the effect of eliminating, or at least diminishing, ethical considerations. That may sound perverse, but only because reflexivity is not well understood.

Values are less closely governed by an objective reality than cognitive notions; therefore, they are more easily shaped by the theories that people adopt and economic theory is a case in point.

Markets are supposed to act as an invisible hand, bringing demand and supply into balance. What makes the invisible hand so efficient is that there is no need to exercise moral judgment; all values can be expressed in terms of money, and money is fungible. “Pecunia non olet—money doesn’t smell, ” the Romans used to say. But taking it for granted that all human behavior is guided by self-interest leaves no room for the exercise of moral judgment—and society cannot exist without some ethical precepts.

The behavior of market participants is guided by market values, and market values are quite different in character from the moral values that are supposed to guide the behavior of people as members of society. This opens up a whole range of questions that I have not been able to resolve concerning the conflict between market values and social values. The agency problem has provided me with some new insights. I was also inspired by a short monograph by Bruce R. Scott, The Concept of Capitalism(Springer, 2009). As a result, I may have something new to say. Indeed, I myself am shocked by some of the conclusions I have reached.

Scott argues that capitalism has been misinterpreted by conflating it with the market mechanism. This is a distortion that Scott attributes mainly to Milton Friedman; I am less specific and attribute it to market fundamentalism. Scott argues further that behind the invisible hand of the market lurks the visible hand of human agency, namely the political process, which sets and administers the rules. That is where the agency problem comes into play, and so does the conflict between market values and social values.

The United States is a democratic, open society based on the freedom of the individual, who is protected by the rule of law as defined by the Constitution. At the same time, the American economy is based on the market mechanism, which allows individuals to engage in free exchange without undue interference from arbitrary actions by governmental authority. The political and economic arrangements seem to fit together seamlessly. One could easily speak of an open society and a market economy in the same breath, and people, including me, often do. But appearances are deceptive. There is a deep-seated conflict between capitalism and open society, market values and social values. The conflict has been successfully covered up by the market fundamentalist ideology, which gained the upper hand in the 1980s during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

The distinguishing feature of the market mechanism is that it is amoral: one person’s dollar is worth exactly the same as another person’s, irrespective of how she came to possess it. That is what makes markets so efficient: participants need not worry about moral considerations. In an efficient market, individual decisions affect market prices only marginally: if one person abstained from participating as either buyer or seller, someone else would take her place with only a marginal difference in the price. Therefore individual market participants bear little responsibility for the outcome. Amoral is easily confused with immoral. I am often asked, particularly by student audiences, whether I feel guilty about having made so much money on the stock market. When I explain that, prior to becoming a public figure who can, in fact, influence markets, moral considerations did not enter my decision-making process, I am often met with incomprehension.

But markets are suitable only for individual choices, not for social decisions. They allow individual participants to engage in free exchange; but they are not designed to exercise social choices such as deciding the rules that should govern society, including how the market mechanism should function. That is the purview of politics. Extending the idea of a free-standing market, self-governing and self-correcting, to the political sphere is highly deceptive because it removes ethical considerations from politics, which cannot properly function without them.

In the United States politics takes the form of representative democracy. People elect representatives who operate the levers of power. People elected to office are agents who are supposed to represent the interests of the people. In reality, they tend to put their own interests ahead of the interests of the people. Getting elected is expensive, and representatives are beholden to their supporters. Those who don’t play the game don’t get elected. That is how money pollutes politics and special interests trump the public interest.

The agency problem in the American political system is not new. It is inherent in a representative democracy. The right to petition elected representatives was written into the Constitution. Yet the agency problem seems to be much more severe today than it was even as recently as my arrival in the United States in 1956. Why?

There are some objective historical developments that may be held partly responsible, notably the growth of special interests and the development of sophisticated methods of manipulating public opinion, but the main culprit is a decline in public morality fostered by the rise of market fundamentalism.

I would like to think that at the time of the founding of the republic, citizens were genuinely guided by a sense of civic virtue. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers did not put much faith in that and built the Constitution on the division of powers: they created checks and balances between competing interests. That is why the Constitution holds up so well in spite of the decline in morality. Even when I first arrived, in 1956, people professed to be guided by intrinsic values like honesty and integrity. It may have been hypocritical with all kinds of vices clandestinely practiced, but still, it was very different from today’s public life, in which the blatant pursuit of self-interest is openly admitted and people are admired for success, irrespective of how they achieved it.

I do not want to be misunderstood. Painting too rosy a picture of the past is characteristic of people of a certain age, and I do not want to fall into such an obvious trap. I do not claim that politicians were more honest or society was more just in 1956. America has made great progress since then in transparency, accountability, and social equality. But there has been a remarkable transformation in what behavior is socially acceptable and even admirable due to the rise of market fundamentalism. I describe it as a decline in public morality in the very special sense that the amorality of market values has penetrated into areas where it does not properly belong.

I define market fundamentalism as the undue extension of market values to other spheres of social life, notably politics. Economic theory claims that in conditions of general equilibrium, the invisible hand assures the optimum allocation of resources. This means that people pursuing their self-interest are indirectly also serving the public interest. It gives self-interest and the profit motive a moral imprimatur that allows them to replace virtues like honesty, integrity, and concern for others.

The argument is invalid on several counts. First, financial markets do not tend toward equilibrium. General equilibrium theory reached its conclusions by taking the conditions of supply and demand as independently given. The invisible hand of the market then brings supply and demand into equilibrium. This approach ignores the reflexive feedback loops between market prices and the underlying conditions of supply and demand. It also ignores the visible hand of the political process, which lies hidden behind the market mechanism.

Second, general equilibrium theory takes the initial allocation of resources as given. This rules out any consideration of social justice. Most importantly, the theory assumes that people know what their self-interest is and how best to pursue it. In reality, there is a significant gap between what people think and what the facts are.

Nevertheless, market fundamentalism has emerged triumphant. How could that happen?

One reason is that the main policy implication of market fundamentalism—that government interference in the economy should be kept to a minimum—is not as unsound as the arguments employed to justify it. The market mechanism may be flawed, but the political process is even more so. Participants in the political process are even more fallible than market participants because politics revolves around social values, whereas markets take the participants’ values as given. As we have seen, social values are highly susceptible to manipulation. Moreover, politics are poisoned by the agency problem. To guard against the agency problem, all kinds of safeguards have to be introduced, and this makes the behavior of governmental authorities in the economic sphere much more rigid and bureaucratic than the behavior of private participants. On all these grounds, it makes sense to argue that governmental interference in the economy should be kept to a minimum.

So market fundamentalism has merely substituted an invalid argument for what could have been a much stronger one. It could have argued that all human constructs are imperfect and social choices involve choosing the lesser evil, and on those grounds government intervention in the economy should be kept to a minimum. That would have been a reasonable position. Instead, it claimed that the failures of government intervention proved that free markets are perfect. That is simply bad logic.

I want to make myself quite clear: I condemn market fundamentalism as a false and dangerous doctrine, but I am in favor of keeping government intervention and regulations to a minimum for other, better, reasons.

By far the most powerful force working in favor of market fundamentalism is that it serves the self-interests of the owners and managers of capital. The distribution of wealth is taken as given, and the pursuit of self-interest is found to serve the common interest. What more could those who are in control of capital ask for? They constitute a wealthy and powerful group, well positioned to promote market fundamentalism not only by cognitive arguments but also by the active manipulation of public opinion. Market fundamentalism endows the market mechanism, which is amoral by nature, with a moral character and turns the pursuit of self-interest into a civic virtue similar to the pursuit of truth. It has prevailed by the force of manipulation, not by the force of reason. It is supported by a powerful and well-financed propaganda machine that distorts the public’s understanding of its own self-interests. For example, how else could the campaign to repeal the estate tax, which applies only to an elite 1 percent of the population, have been so successful?

There are, of course, competing forces in that arena using similar methods of manipulation, but they tend to be less well financed because they cannot draw on the self-interest of the wealthiest and most powerful segment of the population. That is how market fundamentalism emerged triumphant in the last twenty-five years and why even the financial crisis was not sufficient to impair its influence. This was demonstrated by President Obama’s decision to avoid recapitalizing the banks in a way that would have given the government majority control.

Market fundamentalism should not be conflated with the efficient market hypothesis. You can be an economist working with that hypothesis without being a market fundamentalist. Indeed, many economists are bleeding-heart liberals. But the efficient market hypothesis has a stranglehold on the teaching of economics in American universities, and that phenomenon can be attributed to the financial support given by capitalists and foundations committed to market fundamentalism. Those groups are also responsible for the encroachment of market values into other disciplines, such as law and political science.

Capitalism is not directly opposed to open society. Nevertheless, it poses some serious threats. I have already discussed one of them: financial markets are not equilibrium-bound but bubble-prone. The dismantling of the regulatory mechanism has given rise to a super-bubble whose bursting will negatively influence the American economy for several years to come. This discussion has revealed another threat to open society: the agency problem and the influence of money in politics, which contaminate the political process.

In an open society the political process is supposed to serve the common interest; in contemporary America, the political process has been captured by special interests. Our elected representatives are beholden to those who finance their election, not to the electorate at large. What is happening to President Obama’s healthcare and energy bills provides a vivid illustration. The electorate has been brainwashed to such an extent that a responsible discussion of the public good has become well-nigh impossible. A national health service and a carbon tax are nonstarters. Our choices are confined to solutions that can be gamed by special interests.

Lobbying is at the core of the agency problem. How can it be brought under control?

This is an ethical issue and not a matter of modifying economic incentives. Lobbying is lucrative, and it is liable to remain so even if the rules are tightened. In the absence of moral values, regulations can always be circumvented; what is worse, the regulations themselves will be designed to serve special interests, not the common interest. That is the danger facing the United States today, when a wounded financial sector is seeking to regain its former preeminence.

There is a way to deal with the ethical issue. We need to draw a clear distinction between the economic and political spheres. Market participation and rule making are two different functions. Markets allow participants to engage in free exchange. Here it is quite legitimate for participants to be guided by the profit motive. By contrast, the making and enforcement of rules ought to be guided by consideration of the public good. Here the profit motive is misplaced. It is when people try to bend the rules to their own advantage that the political process becomes corrupted and representative democracy fails to produce the results that would make open society a desirable form of social organization. It should be emphasized that this argument directly contradicts the currently fashionable market fundamentalist attitude, which speaks of a political marketplace.

How could the political process be improved in an open society? I propose a rather simple rule: people should separate their role as market participants from their role as political participants. As market participants we ought to pursue our self-interest; as participants in the political process we ought to be guided by the public interest. The justification for this rule is also rather simple. In conditions of close-to-perfect competition, no single competitor can affect the outcome; therefore individual market decisions have no effect on social conditions, whether or not one cares about the common good. But political decisions do affect social conditions; therefore it makes all the difference whether or not they serve the public interest.

The trouble is that the public good cannot be determined by reference to a generally accepted objective standard. It is contingent on the views of the electorate, but in the absence of an objective standard, those views are easily manipulated. And manipulation is self-reinforcing; the more outrageous the political claims and counter claims, the harder it is to tell what is right and what is wrong. That is what has made the political process so ineffective.

By contrast, the market mechanism functions much better. People may not know what is good for them, but profits do provide an objective criterion by which market participants’ performance can be measured. No wonder that the profit motive has gained such prominence among the values that guide people’s behavior. Not only does profit provide the means for the pursuit of whatever ends people may have, but it also serves as an end in itself because as a reliable measure of success they attract other people’s admiration and generate self-esteem. Indeed, many successful business people feel much more secure in making money than in using their wealth.

The spread of market values has brought immense economic benefits. Looking back in history, Christianity used to treat the pursuit of profit as sinful. This hampered economic development. The Reformation then facilitated the development of markets and opened the way to material progress and the accumulation of wealth. Society underwent a great transformation. Traditional relationships were replaced by contractual ones. Contractual relationships came to penetrate into more and more spheres of social life, and eventually relationships started to be replaced by transactions. The pace of change began to accelerate; it has sped up tremendously just during my lifetime.

The difference between my childhood in Hungary and my adult life in America is quite dramatic, and the changes that have occurred in America between my arrival in 1956 and the present day are dramatic as well. When I first came to America I was struck by how much further market values had penetrated into society than in my native Hungary, or even England, where traditional values and class distinctions still prevailed. Since then, both England and America have undergone a further transformation. The professions—such as medicine, law, and journalism—became businesses. In my view, this has had a destabilizing effect on society just as market fundamentalism has had a destabilizing effect on financial markets.

Exactly what level of stability is socially desirable is, of course, a matter of opinion. The proper role of the profit motive in the professions is similarly open to debate. But there can be no question that the profit motive has had a nefarious influence in the political sphere because it has aggravated the agency problem.

How can the agency problem be minimized? It is too much to expect those who have a vital special interest at stake not to lobby Congress; the tobacco industry is bound to oppose legislation against cigarettes, and the insurance industry will be against a single-payer healthcare system. But those who do not have a vital interest at stake ought to give precedence to the public interests over their narrow self-interests. They need not be bothered by the so-called free-rider problem, namely that others who act more selfishly would also benefit from their unselfish behavior—because the objective of the exercise is to benefit the public.

To sum up, in my previous lecture I argued that the cognitive function ought to be given precedence over the manipulative function. In this lecture, I argued that while the profit motive is perfectly justified within the existing rules, when it comes to making the rules, the public interest ought to be given precedence over personal interests. I firmly believe that even if a small portion of the electorate met these two requirements, representative democracy would function better.

I should like to end on a personal note. I have practiced what I preach. As a hedge fund manager I have played by the rules and tried to maximize my profits. As a citizen I try to improve the rules, even if the reforms go against my personal interests. For example, I support the regulation of hedge funds along with other financial institutions. I firmly believe that if more people followed this precept, our political system would function much better. I also believe that foundations like mine can play an important role exactly because so few people follow that precept.

At my foundation, the Open Society Institute, we have made it our business to protect the public interest against the encroachments of private interests. We are also supporting their civil society efforts to hold governments accountable. I would describe these endeavors as political philanthropy. It can, I believe, make a greater contribution toward making the world a better place than conventional philanthropy because fewer people are engaged in it.

I am in a privileged position. I am more independent than most people because I don’t depend on clients or customers, and I feel that I am under a moral obligation to put my privileged position to good use. I am, of course, heavily outgunned by special interests, but at least I have the satisfaction that my money has greater scarcity value.

The trouble is that special interests also seek to disguise themselves as protectors of the public interest, and it takes a discerning eye to discriminate between the genuine and the phony, especially since both sides are forced to resort to similar methods of persuasion. In the absence of objective criteria, one can reach a judgment only by a process of trial and error. People of good intentions engaged on one side of the debate often find it difficult to believe that there are people on the other side with equally good intentions. The best way to find out is by taking their claims at face value and engaging them on the substance of their argument. This has the beneficial effect of giving the cognitive function precedence in the political debate. Only if they fail to respond in kind should they be dismissed and subsequently ignored. There are people like that in every country; unfortunately in the United States they are not ignored. They have become very influential. Whether the electorate refuses to be influenced by people who try to manipulate them with total disregard for the truth is the test that every open society has to pass to remain open. Given the success of Orwellian propaganda, America is not doing well in this regard.

The political process that has served America well for two centuries seems to have deteriorated. We used to have two parties competing for the middle, but the middle ground has shrunk and politics have become increasingly polarized. President Obama has done his level best to reverse the trend—he has tried to be a great unifier, but to no avail.

In the end, how a democracy functions depends on the people who live in it. I believe that if more people separated their role as political participants from their role as market participants, American democracy would function better. It is up to each individual. That is what I have done. Even a small minority could be helpful in rebuilding the vanishing middle ground.

Lecture Five

The Way Ahead

英汉对照：第五讲 未来的路

In these lectures I have offered a conceptual framework for a better understanding of human events. These events are not determined by timelessly valid scientific laws. Such laws exist, of course, but they are not sufficient to determine the course of events. The complexity of the situations is one reason, and the role of the participants’ thinking is another.

I have focused on the reflexive, two-way connection between the participants’ thinking and reality, and I have emphasized the causal role that misunderstandings and misconceptions play in shaping reality. Both of these influences have been strangely ignored. They introduce an element of uncertainty into the subject matter that, except in the simplest situations, makes it impossible to predict the future.

One can still sketch out various plausible scenarios and evaluate their likelihood. One can also prescribe desirable outcomes. I have done both, many times. Indeed, I can claim to have specialized in it, focusing on predictions as an investor and prescriptions as a philanthropist. I have been successful enough in the former to be able to afford the latter. I should like to devote today’s discussion to this dual task.

We are at a moment in history when the range of uncertainties is unusually wide. We have just passed through the worst financial crisis since World War II. It is quantitatively much larger and qualitatively different from other financial crises. The only relevant comparisons are with the Japanese real estate bubble, which burst in 1991 and from which Japan has still not recovered, and with the Great Depression of the 1930s. What differentiates this crisis from the Japanese experience is that the latter was confined to a single country; this crisis has involved the entire world. What differentiates it from the Great Depression is that this time the financial system was not allowed to collapse but was put on artificial life support.

In fact, the magnitude of the credit and leverage problem we face today is even greater than in the 1930s. In 1929, total credit outstanding in the United States was 160 percent of GDP and it rose to 250 percent by 1932; in 2008 we started at 365 percent—and this calculation does not take into account the pervasive use of derivatives, which was absent in the 1930s. And yet, in spite of that, the artificial life support has been successful. Barely a year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, financial markets have stabilized, stock markets have rebounded, and the economy is showing signs of recovery. People want to return to business as usual and think of the crash of 2008 as a bad dream.

I regret to tell you that the recovery is liable to run out of steam and may even be followed by a “double dip, ” although I am not sure whether it will occur in 2010 or 2011.

My views are far from unique, but they are at variance with the prevailing mood. The longer the turnaround lasts, the more people will come to believe in it, but in my judgment, the prevailing mood is far removed from reality. This is characteristic of far-from-equilibrium situations, in which perceptions tend to lag behind reality. To complicate matters, the lag works in both directions. Most people have not yet realized that this crisis is different from previous ones—that we are at the end of an era. Others—including me—failed to anticipate the extent of the rebound.

The confusion is not confined to the financial sphere; it extends to the entire international arena.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States emerged as the sole superpower. No other power, or combination of powers, could challenge its supremacy. But the uni-polar world order did not take root. When President Bush sought to assert America’s supremacy by invading Iraq on false pretences, he achieved the exact opposite of what he intended. The United States suffered a precipitous decline in its power and influence. So the disarray in the international financial system is matched by instability in international relations. The new world order that will eventually emerge will not be dominated by the United States to the same extent as the old one.

To understand what is happening we need a different conceptual framework from the one to which we have been accustomed. The efficient market hypothesis looks at financial markets in isolation and totally disregards politics. But that gives a distorted picture. As I have pointed out several times, behind the invisible hand of markets there is the visible hand of politics, which establishes the rules and conditions in which the market mechanism operates. My conceptual framework relates to the political economy, not the market economy as an abstract construct that is governed by timelessly valid laws. I look at financial markets as a branch of history.

The international financial system, as it was reconstructed after the Second World War, did not create a level playing field; it was lopsided by design. The international financial institutions—the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—were organized as shareholding companies in which rich countries held a disproportionate share of the votes and also controlled the boards. This put the countries at the periphery at a disadvantage vis-à-vis those at the center.

Ever since, the system has been dominated by the United States. At the Bretton Woods conference John Maynard Keynes proposed, but it was the head of the American delegation, Harry White, who disposed. Since then we have gone from an almost completely regulated system to an almost completely deregulated one; the changes were led by the United States, and the system has continued to be guided by what has become known as the Washington Consensus.

Although the rules laid down by the Washington Consensus are supposed to apply to all countries equally, the United States—as the issuer of the main international currency—is “more equal” than the others. Effectively, the international financial system has a two-tier structure: countries that can borrow in their own currency constitute the center, and those whose borrowings are denominated in one of the hard currencies constitute the periphery. If individual countries get into difficulties, they receive assistance, but only under strict conditions. That holds true whether they are from the center or from the periphery. But if the center itself becomes endangered, then preserving the system takes precedence over all other considerations.

That happened for the first time in the international banking crisis of 1982. If the debtor countries had been allowed to default, the banking system would have collapsed. Therefore, the international financial authorities banded together and introduced what I called at the time “the collective system of lending.” The lenders were induced to roll over their loans and the debtor countries were lent enough additional money to service their debts. The net effect was that debtor countries fell into severe recession—Latin America lost a decade of growth—but the banking system was allowed to earn its way out of a hole. When the banks built up sufficient reserves, the loans were restructured into what became known as Brady bonds and the banks were able to write off their remaining losses.

Something similar happened in 1997, but by then the banks had learned to securitize their loans so they could not be forced into a collective system of lending, and most of the losses had to be taken by the debtor countries. This set the pattern: the debtor countries were subjected to harsh market discipline, but when the system itself was in danger, the normal rules were suspended—banks, whose collective failure would have endangered the system, were bailed out.

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 was different because it originated at the center and the periphery countries were drawn into it only after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The IMF was faced with a novel task: to protect the periphery from a storm that originated at the center. It did not have enough capital, but member countries banded together and raised a trillion dollars. Even so, the IMF has had some difficulties in coping with the situation; it was designed to deal with problems in the public sector, and the shortage of credit was affecting mainly the private sector. But on the whole, the IMF adapted itself to its novel task remarkably well.

Overall, the international financial authorities have handled this crisis the same way previous crises have been handled: they bailed out the failing institutions and applied monetary and fiscal stimulus. But this crisis was much bigger and the same techniques did not work so well. The rescue of Lehman Brothers failed. That was a game-changing event; financial markets actually ceased to function and had to be put on artificial life support. This meant that governments had to effectively guarantee that no other institution whose failure could endanger the system would be allowed to fail. That is when the crisis spread to the periphery, because periphery countries could not provide equally credible guarantees. This time it was Eastern Europe that was the worst hit. The countries at the center used the balance sheets of their central banks to pump money into the system and to guarantee the liabilities of commercial banks, and governments engaged in deficit financing to stimulate the economy on an unprecedented scale.

These measures have been successful, and the global economy appears to be stabilizing. There is a growing belief that the global financial system has once again escaped collapse and we are slowly returning to business as usual. This is a grave misinterpretation of the current situation. Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again. Let me explain why.

The globalization of financial markets that has taken place since the 1980s was a market fundamentalist project spearheaded by the United States and the United Kingdom. Allowing financial capital to move around freely in the world made it difficult to tax it or to regulate it. This put financial capital into a privileged position. Governments had to pay more attention to the requirements of international capital than to the aspirations of their own people because financial capital could move around more freely. So as a market fundamentalist project, globalization was highly successful; individual countries found it difficult to resist it. But the global financial system that emerged was fundamentally unstable because it was built on the false premise that financial markets can be safely left to their own devices. That is why it broke down, and that is why it cannot be put together again.

Global markets need global regulations, but the regulations that are currently in force are rooted in the principle of national sovereignty. There are some international agreements, most notably the Basel Accords on minimum capital requirements, and there is also good cooperation among market regulators. But the source of the authority is always the sovereign state. This means that it is not enough to restart a mechanism that has stalled; we need to create a regulatory mechanism that has never existed. As things stand now, the financial system of each country is being sustained and supported by its own government. The governments are primarily concerned with their own economies. This tends to give rise to financial protectionism, which threatens to disrupt and perhaps destroy global financial markets. British regulators will never again rely on the Icelandic authorities, and countries at the periphery will be reluctant to be entirely dependent on foreign-owned banks.

The point I am trying to make is that regulations must be international in scope. Without this, financial markets cannot remain global; they would be destroyed by regulatory arbitrage. Businesses would move to the countries where the regulatory climate is the most benign, and this would expose other countries to risks they cannot afford to run. Globalization was so successful because it forced all countries to remove regulations, but the process does not work in reverse. It will be difficult to get countries to agree on uniform regulations. Different countries have different interests that drive them toward different solutions.

This can be seen in Europe. And if European countries cannot agree among themselves, how can the rest of the world? During the crisis, Europe could not reach a Europewide agreement on guaranteeing its financial system; each country had to guarantee its own. As things stand now, the euro is an incomplete currency. It has a common central bank but it does not have a common treasury—and guaranteeing or injecting equity into banks is a treasury function. The crisis offered an opportunity to remedy this shortfall, but Germany stood in the way.

Germany used to be the driving force behind European integration, but that was at a time when Germany was willing to pay practically any price for reunification. Today’s Germany is very different. It is at odds with the rest of the world in fearing inflation rather than recession and, above all, it does not want to serve as the deep pocket for the rest of Europe. Without a driving force, European integration has ground to a halt.

Fortunately, Europe had the benefit of the social safety net. This held down European growth rates in good times, but it served its purpose in the downturn and so the recession in Euroland turned out to be less severe than expected. Now that the fears of an economic collapse have subsided, the European Union is showing some signs of political revival. The European Central Bank has effectively bailed out the Irish banking system and Ireland has resoundingly endorsed the Lisbon Treaty. Unfortunately the political revival of the European Union is likely to be as anemic as the economic one.

The fact that the financial crisis is having different long-term effects on different countries may also turn out to be a problem. In the short term, all countries were negatively affected, but in the long term there will be winners and losers. Although the range of uncertainties for the actual course of events is very wide, shifts in relative positions can be predicted with greater certainty. To put it bluntly, the United States stands to lose the most and China is poised to emerge as the greatest winner. The extent of the shift is already exceeding most expectations. There will be significant changes in the relative positions of other countries as well, but from a global perspective the one between the United States and China is the most significant.

The United States has been at the center of the international financial system ever since the Second World War. The dollar has served as the main international currency, and the United States has derived immense benefits from it, but lately it has abused its privilege. Starting in the 1980s it has built up an ever-increasing current account deficit. This could have continued indefinitely because the Asian tigers, first under the leadership of Japan and then of China, were willing to finance that deficit by building up their dollar holdings. But the excessive indebtedness of United States households brought the process to an end. When the housing bubble burst, households found themselves overextended. The banking system has suffered tremendous losses and has to earn its way out of a hole. In commercial real estate and leveraged buyouts, the bloodletting is yet to come. These factors will continue to weigh on the American economy, and the American consumer will no longer be able to serve as the motor for the world economy.

To some extent, China may be able to take its place. China has been the primary beneficiary of globalization, and it has been largely insulated from the financial crisis.

For the West in general, and the United States in particular, the crisis was an internally generated event that led to the collapse of the financial system. For China, it was an external shock that hurt exports but left the financial, political, and economic systems unscathed.

China has discovered a remarkably efficient method of unleashing the creative, acquisitive, and entrepreneurial energies of the people. They are allowed to pursue their self-interest while the state can skim off a significant portion of the surplus value of their labor by maintaining an undervalued currency and accumulating a trade surplus. So China is likely to emerge as the big winner.

China knows that they must avoid social unrest if they want to remain the rulers. Therefore, they will do anything in their power to maintain economic growth at 8 percent and to create new jobs for a growing workforce. And they have plenty of power because of the trade surplus. China can stimulate its domestic economy through infrastructure investments, and it can foster its exports by investing in and extending credits to its trading partners. After all, that is what China was doing when it was financing its exports to America by buying U. S. government bonds. Now that American consumers have to cut back, China can develop relations with other countries. So while the United States limps along China will be a positive force in the world economy.

The Chinese economy is, of course, much smaller than that of the United States. With a smaller motor, the world economy is likely to move forward at a slower pace. But within these limits a tectonic shift is taking place between the United States and China, with third parties reorienting themselves toward the source of positive impulses. The shift may not be permanent or irreversible—just think of the rise and fall of Japan Inc. —but at the present moment, it constitutes the most predictable and significant trend in the global political economy, and China is pulling along its trading partners, such as Brazil and some African and Asian countries. India is doing well based on domestic growth.

The success of Chinese economic policy cannot be taken for granted. The infrastructure investment in the Chinese hinterland may not generate self-sustaining economic growth. Under the Chinese system, the return on new investments is generally very low because investment decisions are dictated by political rather than commercial considerations. On the two previous occasions when bank credit was relaxed, the result was a spate of bad loans. This time it may be different because there has been a shift in power from the regional to the central authorities, and the local officials of the banks are no longer under the control of the provincial authorities. But again, success cannot be taken for granted. Moreover, China may be dragged down by a global slowdown. But if China flounders, the global economy will lose its motor. Therefore, the relative success of China is more assured than its absolute success.

We are at a moment in history that, in some ways, is comparable to the end of the Second World War. Then, the prevailing system had actually collapsed and a new one had to be built from scratch. At Bretton Woods, the victorious powers proved equal to the task. Inspired mainly by Lord Keynes, they built a system that could accommodate the entire world even if the United States occupied a privileged position. Today, the prevailing multilateral system—call it “international capitalism” —has not fully collapsed, but it has been greatly weakened, its inherent flaws have been revealed, and it is challenged by a viable alternative. The rise of China offers a form of economic organization that is fundamentally different from the current international financial system. It may be given the label “state capitalism, ” and it is distinct from the international capitalism championed by the Washington Consensus. We are at the end of an era, but we are not fully aware of it.

The two forms of economic organization—state capitalism and international capitalism—are in competition with each other. Neither of them is attractive. The Washington Consensus has failed. International capitalism in its present form has proven itself inherently unstable because it lacks adequate regulation. It is also highly unjust, favoring the haves over the have nots.

At the same time, an international system based on state capitalism would inevitably lead to conflicts between states. The first signs of conflict are already beginning to surface because, ironically, China is repeating the mistakes of the colonial powers in its dealings with the countries that are rich in natural resources—and this just at the time when the colonial powers have learned from their mistakes and are trying to rectify them. In order to gain access to natural resources, China is dealing with the rulers and neglecting the people. This helps oppressive and corrupt regimes to stay in power. This is an undesirable outcome, but China is not the only one to be blamed for it. When a Chinese company tried to buy Unocal, it was rebuffed. And more recently, Rio Tinto reneged on a deal to sell an interest to a Chinese company. This has pushed China into dealing with those countries that the international financial institutions have shunned; among them, Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Angola stand out. Guinea is the latest example. This is becoming a source of considerable friction, which is not in the best interests of China, let alone the rest of the world. But China considers itself the aggrieved party and remains reluctant to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. This has become the biggest obstacle to the continued success of that initiative.

While the prevailing multilateral system will try to reconstitute itself, China will expand on a bilateral basis. China is, of course, part of the multilateral system, but within that system it does not occupy a position that is commensurate with its current strength; therefore, its participation in the international financial institutions is rather passive and its active expansion is likely to go through bilateral channels. For instance, China will complain about the role of the dollar and will promote the role of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), but it is unlikely to allow the renminbi to become freely convertible because that would destroy the mechanism that has allowed the state to harvest the fruits of cheap Chinese labor through an undervalued currency. China will continue to maintain capital controls, but it will establish bilateral clearing accounts denominated in renminbi with countries like Brazil. This will diminish the status of the dollar as the international currency without replacing it.

To sum up: the world is facing a choice between two fundamen- tally different forms of economic organization, international capitalism and state capitalism. The former, represented by the United States, has broken down, and the latter, represented by China, is in the ascendant. The path of least resistance leads to the gradual disintegration of the international financial system as we know it. Yet a system of bilateral relations is liable to generate conflilicts between states. A new multilateral system based on sounder principles needs to be invented. That would serve the best interests of both the United States and China, and, of course, the rest of the world.

While international cooperation is almost impossible to achieve on a piecemeal basis, it may be attainable in a grand bargain where the entire financial order is rearranged. The emergence of the G20 as the primary forum of international cooperation and the peer review process adopted at the Pittsburgh meeting are steps in the right direction. But the G20 has to operate within the confines of the Articles of Association of the IMF because changing the Articles is a long, drawn-out process.

That is what a new Bretton Woods conference could accomplish in one fell swoop. It would reconstitute the IMF to better reflect the prevailing pecking order among states and revise its methods of operation. It would decide how to treat financial institutions that are too big to fail. And it would consider new rules to control capital movements. The total freedom of financial capital to move around internationally has proved to be a source of instability and needs to be curbed.

Above all, the international currency system needs to be reformed. The use of the dollar as the main international currency has produced dangerous imbalances. The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence it once did, yet no other currency is in a position to take its place. There is a general flight from currencies into gold and other commodities and tangible assets. That is harmful because it keeps those assets out of productive use and stokes the fear of inflation.

The United States ought not to shy away from the wider use of SDRs. That should induce China to abandon pegging its currency to the dollar, and that would be the best way to reduce international imbalances. Since SDRs are denominated in several national currencies, no single currency would enjoy an unfair advantage.

The range of currencies included in SDRs would have to be widened, and some of the newly added currencies, which would include the renminbi, may not be fully convertible. Therefore the dollar could still reestablish itself as the preferred reserve currency, provided it is prudently managed.

One of the great advantages of SDRs is that they allow the international creation of credit. That would be particularly useful at times like the present. The credit could be directed to where it is most needed. That would be a great improvement over what is happening currently. A mechanism that allows rich countries that don’t need additional reserves to transfer their allocations to those who need them is readily available and has already been used on a small scale.

The reorganization of the prevailing world order may have to extend beyond the financial system if we are to make progress in resolving issues such as global warming and nuclear proliferation.

It may have to involve the United Nations, especially regarding membership on the Security Council.

The process needs to be initiated by the United States, but China and other developing countries ought to participate in it as equals. They are reluctant members of the Bretton Woods institutions, which are dominated by countries that are no longer dominant. The rising powers need to be present at the creation of the new order to ensure that they will be active supporters of it.

Why should the United States initiate changes in a system of which it had has been the main beneficiary? Because the system cannot survive in its present form and the United States has more to lose if it is not in the forefront of reforming it. America lost a lot of power and influence during the Bush presidency. Without far-sighted leadership, the relative position of the United States is likely to continue eroding. The United States is still in a position to lead the world. It can no longer impose its will on others, as the Bush administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort that would involve not only the developed but also the developing world. This would reestablish American leadership in an acceptable form.

Why should China submit to a new multilateral system in view of the fact that it is set to emerge as the winner from the current turmoil? The answer is equally simple: in order to continue rising, it must make itself acceptable to the rest of the world. That means that it must move toward a more open society, combining an increased measure of individual freedom with the rule of law. Given the current military power relations, China can continue rising only in a peaceful environment in which the rest of the world willingly accepts the rise of China.

For the sake of a peaceful world, it is even more important that the United States finds its proper place in a new world order. A declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance while preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix.

And, as I have tried to show, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality. President Obama has deployed the confidence multiplier and claims to have contained the recession. If there is a double dip, the population will become susceptible to all kinds of fear mongering and populist demagoguery. If President Obama fails, the next administration will be sorely tempted to create some diversion from troubles at home and that could be very dangerous to the world.

President Obama has the right vision, but he needs to be more far-sighted. He believes in international cooperation rather than the Bush-Cheney idea that might is right. But he is preoccupied with many pressing problems. Reinventing the international financial system is not high on his agenda. Some of his economic advisers still seem to believe that the efficient market hypothesis is valid, except once in a hundred years. The financial institutions that have survived are in a stronger competitive position than ever before, and they will resist a systematic overhaul that would curb their powers. What is lacking is a general recognition that the system is broken and needs to be reinvented. That is why it would be so important that the theory of financial markets I have outlined in these lectures should gain wider acceptance.

The Chinese leadership would need to be even more farsighted than President Obama. They are in the driver’s seat, and if they moved toward a more open society they would have to give up some of their privileges. Right now, the Chinese public is willing to subordinate individual freedom to political stability and economic advancement, but that may not continue indefinitely. Corruption is a big problem, and China needs the rule of law so that citizens can criticize the government and prevent it from abusing its powers.

Also, China needs to become a more open society in order to be acceptable to the rest of the world, which will never subordinate the freedom of the individual to the prosperity of the Chinese state. As China is becoming a world leader, it must learn to pay more attention to the opinion of the rest of the world. But all this may be happening too fast for the Chinese leadership to adjust to it. I hope that the Chinese leadership will rise to the occasion. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the world depends on it.

读者评论

投资也是一种哲学，索罗斯将自己的哲学思想与投资，乃至社会公益联系在了一起。正如其书名所写：超越金融！很喜欢。丰富和深化了自己的投资理念。当然，看此书你还得有一点学识、思想。

——陈沁心

原来认为索罗斯是一个金融大鳄，不择手段的资本攫取者。读了本书对他有了新的认识，他是一个有很深经济哲学思想的人，对传统有效经济学有新的诠释，并关注社会经济变革与发展。

——蒲公英

反身性是索罗斯对社会科学的最重要的一个启发，让我们可以理解自然科学与社会神学的区别和差异，使我们更好地理解社会问题。它不仅仅用于金融市场，在各个领域，都可以是启发性的指引！

——武文斌

这本书索罗斯将自己的思想理论描述了出来，虽然很抽象，但是深入理解后，却是博大精深，再结合自己在外汇市场中运作的经验，确实是微妙之处充斥其中。做证券投资，必须要有思想的深度，修好身，才能更好地在证券投资这片天下中驰骋！

——金石668

索罗斯常说自己是一个不成功的哲学家。他用自己的反身性理论指导自己投资。他积极推动开放社会。这是他一次演讲的结集。索罗斯的量子基金如此成功，他个人是有思想的，值得好好学习。

——jerrylaa

看了大师的大作，对我的触动是，赚钱的思想是在生意之外。大师的哲学智慧还是蛮高的。字里行间透露出的全是对古典哲学的精辟理解。看过以后，我的触动是，西方哲学是一定要拜读的。这些哲学思想一百年后依旧熠熠生辉。

——明逍遥

是一部不错的好书，对金融市场有了更加深入的了解。用更大的视野来看待金融，如开放社会这些理想还挺浪漫的。

——鞋知道

索罗斯说：我的投机行为合乎规则，无所谓道德……这便注定他是个顽固的人或者是个虔诚的，或许是个诚实的人。但他却成了一个充满争议的人。我和金融没有多少关系，但却很想一窥这个怪老头的心灵世界。

—— jd_7aef65daa7ca4

索罗斯在中国出了三本像样的书，比起《金融炼金术》这本书很多思想更成熟，讲述的也更清晰。比起《索罗斯带你走出金融危机》，这本书翻译质量好了很多。如果关于索罗斯还想读一点东西，这本书挺好的。

——lbh1208

索罗斯的这本书对我非常有启发，很多似是而非的事情只有引起足够的注意之后才能够被人纳入考虑的范围之内，而这些因素产生的影响往往是非常重要的。在这一方面，成年人就如同孩子一样，在盲目地作着判断。

——zh008008

索罗斯，1997年亚洲金融危机制造者，很厉害的投资家。是他，是魔鬼，是天使，是我的偶像！这本书偏重于哲学，不是很好读，但是挺有味道的，正在慢慢地研读中。

——性情之人