这期的视频让我想起 2011年 曾经读过的一则访问报道,“Religion and Capitalism" (宗教与资本主义), 已故的美国哈佛教授 克莱顿·克里斯滕森 (Clayton Christensen) 在访问里这样说: 克莱顿·克里斯滕森:最近我有两次对话,一次是与新加坡的一位高管,另一次是与一位来自中国的马克思主义经济学家。两者都同意,要创建一个和平繁荣的社会,甚至惠及低收入人群,就必须满足两个条件。你必须明确规定每个人都必须遵循的规则,以使系统正常运作;你需要将其他人的生活和自由看作与你自己的相同。然后,你必须有一种机制来追究人们的责任,如果他们不遵循规则的话。 我的新加坡朋友说:“实现这种社会的一种选择是学习新加坡。”新加坡是由四个不同民族组成的合成的国家,他们起初彼此憎恨。已故的前总理 李光耀 说,“我们来制定明确的规则”。而追究人们责任的机制是强有力的拳头,如果你被抓到,你就要受到公正或惩罚。 来自中国的朋友说: 现在你们美国人,你们选择了另一种选择,那就是民主。他指出,民主只有在其下有一种有权力表达这些相同规则的宗教时才能运作。有道德的人自愿遵守规则。实际上,是否有警察或法院来抓住你并不重要, 因为你相信上帝会追究你的责任。所以,你必须诚实,每当你做出承诺时,诚实要求你跟进。你必须尊重别人的财产,永远不要夺走它。他们的生命和自由和你的一样有价值。 因为大多数美国人大部分时间都自愿遵循规则,所以民主才能运作。”即使警察没有出现在你家门口要殴打你,你还是会交税,因为我们被条件反射地认为根本原因是我们的宗教灌输了这种伦理观念。 而且,这种宗教必须对人们的选择产生普遍的影响,使他们自愿遵守即使是无法强制执行的规则。这个文化势头实际上正在失去势头 , 但是如果你们回到150或200年前,美国几乎每个人周末都会去一个犹太教堂或一座教堂,他们在那里受到尊敬的人的教导。 但在这两个条件之间,如果你拥有人们实际上不相信上帝会追究他们责任,或者相信政府会抓住他们的民主制度,那么就会有这个中间地带,充满了腐败,而这些国家就是贫困和暴力持续存在的地方。 所以我认为需要发生的事情是,要么是民主崛起,要么是人们会由一位神或像新加坡前总理李光耀那样正直的独裁者追究责任,他只是制定规则,每个人都必须遵循。如果试图在一个没有这个基础的国家推行自由市场和民主,你得到的只会是混乱,就像在海地一样,例如,他们没有这个基础,试图强加民主和自由市场,只会导致社会秩序的完全崩溃。在很大程度上,这就是在俄罗斯发生的事情。 (原文 Original): Clayton Christensen: I recently had two conversations, one with an executive from Singapore and the other with a Marxist economist from China. Both agreed that to create a society that is peaceful and prosperous, [with benefits even reaching] lower income people, then there are two conditions that must be met. You have to identify the rules that everybody has to follow in order for the system to work; you need to view other people’s life and freedom the same as your own. Then you must have a mechanism to hold people accountable if they don’t follow the rules. My friend in Singapore said, "One option for achieving that kind of society is to do what Singapore did." He puts his arms around this synthetic nation that was comprised of four different ethnic groups, and they hated each other. He said, these are the rules and there are clear rules. And the mechanism for holding people accountable is a strong fist, and if you are caught, you are held accountable with justice or punishment. My friend from China said, now you Americans, you have chosen the other option, which is democracy. He pointed out democracy only works if there is a religion underneath it that has the power to articulate these same rules. Moral people voluntarily obey the rules. It actually doesn’t matter whether there are police or courts that will catch you, because you believe God will hold you accountable. And the religion, that has to have a pervasive influence over people’s choices so that they voluntarily obey even unenforceable rules. But between the two conditions, if you have democracies where people actually don’t believe that God will hold them accountable, or believe the government will catch them, then there is this middle ground that’s just filled with corruption, and those are the nations where poverty and violence persists. So I think what needs to happen is either democracy emerges, or a sense that people will be held accountable either by a deity or an honest dictator like [former Singapore Prime Minister] Lee Kuan Yew, who just makes rules and everybody’s got to follow them. That’s a long way of saying, ‘I’m not sure that I could predict if they would put such a foundation in place.’ But there are tremendous opportunities to grow disruptively.