1010G【fish】COMMENTS

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

23-2

The future of the tablet computer Not written in stone The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget, seems to have lived up to its maker’s lofty（崇高的，高傲的） expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably to follow after the device’s debut outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success trigger explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones? The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation of tablets at Computex, a trade show held this week in Taiwan, is anything to judge by（作为评判标准）. The exhibition floor was teeming with（大量出现，倒出） prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works. Yet the flurry of activity is deceptive. Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets（两边下注以避免损失） after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly, most of the new devices will not hit the stores（达到标准） before the end of the year, if not later. It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out（挤掉） established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks（行李架）. Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms operators were to subsidise them, as they do with handsets（手动设置）. This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T ditched（上壕沟） its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered rates. What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become. Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room（蓄势待发）. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought. Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray（争论，打架）, although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to unveil its plans. ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009. But tablets may still have a big impact, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying（使满足，使高兴） for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner

agnes2010UID: 2794922

23-2
written by Agnes

The future of the tablet computer
Not written in stone
The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget, seems to have lived up to its maker’s lofty【崇高的】expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably to follow after the device’s debut outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success trigger【引发 引爆】 explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones?

The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation of tablets at Computex, a trade show held this week in Taiwan, is anything to judge by. The exhibition floor was teeming with prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works.

Yet the flurry【一阵忙乱】 of activity is deceptive【导致误解的】. Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets【两面下注】 after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly, most of the new devices will not hit the stores before the end of the year, if not later.

It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out【往外挤出】 established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles【操纵台】 and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche【市场定位 the status of an organism within its environment and community；合适的位置a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it】, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks【行李架】

Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms operators were to subsidise them, as they do with handsets.

This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T ditched (its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered rates.

What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become.

Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room【蓄势待发】. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought. Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray【大声争吵】,although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to unveil its plans【揭幕计划】.

ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.

But tablets may still have a big impact, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying【悦人的，令人满足的】 for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner

azure9UID: 2789030

The state and the economy
Re-enter the dragon
Two books ask how far China’s model of “state capitalism” will spread
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN MAY 2009 the Chinese consulate in New York invited Ian Bremmer to take part in a small seminar on “the current financial crisis”. The diplomat who organised the event was the very embodiment of the new China—sporting a well-tailored suit and speaking only lightly accented English—and he began the discussion with a bold question: “Now that the free market has failed, what do you think is the proper role for the state in the economy?”
Twenty years ago the state was on the defensive across most of the world. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had smashed the post-war consensus. Soviet Communism had collapsed. And the World Bank and the IMF were preaching the “Washington consensus” of privatisation and liberalisation.

China was the most conspicuous standout against this trend. The Communist Party greeted the global revolution by adopting what it termed the “bamboo policy”—bending with the wind rather than standing straight and eventually snapping. The party bent with the wind by abandoning central planning. But it only embraced capitalism in so far as it could be used as an instrument of state power.

China has been transformed from a standout into a global model. The recent financial crisis was clearly a turning-point. The Chinese relished the fact that the Americans had been forced to prop up not just their banks but also industrial companies such as General Motors.

Even before the crisis the Chinese felt that history was moving in their direction. Russia’s experiment with laissez-faire had proved to be a debacle. Financial problems had emerged with sickening regularity. And throughout this turmoil China had succeeded in combining an astonishing rate of growth with social stability. Now it is using its $2.3 trillion in foreign reserves to help prop up America’s profligacy.

From Latin America to the Middle East authoritarian governments are imitating China’s model of “state capitalism”. They are not only using state companies to shore up their power at home, they are directing those companies to reap the fruits of global capitalism. State-controlled manufacturers sell goods on the global market and buy up natural resources. Sovereign-wealth funds invest the profits from all of this activity in global markets.

The rise of this new hybrid has led to a dramatic change in the balance of power between the state and the market. State oil companies control three-quarters of the world’s crude oil reserves. Three of the four largest banks by market capitalisation are state-controlled. The biggest mobile- phone operator, China Mobile, is also a state company. A nice example of the changing balance of power occurred in the same month that Mr Bremmer attended his seminar in New York: America’s largest bank, the Bank of America, was forced to sell its 9% stake in the Construction Bank of China just to stay afloat.

Two books focus on this fascinating subject. Mr Bremmer’s is the better read; he provides a wide-ranging account of the rise of state capitalism and he litters his prose with apposite examples and acute insights. Nobody with a serious interest in the current dilemma should pass it by. “The Beijing Consensus” by Stefan Halper, an American academic at Cambridge University, is narrower. He seems to have spent too much time chewing the fat with his fellow policy intellectuals and not enough getting his boots dirty.

But he does provide a valuable supplement to Mr Bremmer’s book. Mr Halper supplies chapter and verse on the way the Chinese are spreading their influence across much of the developing world, by coughing up no-strings-attached loans, for example, rather than trying to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs in the manner of the World Bank and the IMF. He also serves up by far the best anecdote about the real workings of state capitalism. In the same month that Mr Bremmer was attending his seminar the Chinese Communist Party ordered local officials in Hubei province to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of Hubei-branded cigarettes in order to boost the local economy and stave off lay-offs. Official cigarette monitors roamed the province making sure that people hit their cigarette targets and fining those who dared to smoke other brands.

How serious a threat does state capitalism pose to the market model of capitalism? Messrs Bremmer and Halper are actually less bullish about the new authoritarianism than the titles of their books might suggest. Mr Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, points out that state capitalism’s fate is bound up with the fortunes of some very unpleasant political cliques, such as the Saudi royal family and the Russian oligarchy. Mr Halper demonstrates that China is casting its lot with a number of nasty regimes. Both authors might also have made more of the fact that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that state companies are less productive and innovative than their private-sector competitors. Much of the dynamism of the Chinese economy comes from private companies rather than bloated state firms. There are good reasons for thinking that state capitalism will eventually collapse as a result of what Marxists used to call its internal contradictions. But at the moment it looks as if eventually may be some way off.

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

24-1

The state and the economy Re-enter the dragon Two books ask how far China’s model of “state capitalism” will spread Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition IN MAY 2009 the Chinese consulate（领事） in New York invited Ian Bremmer to take part in a small seminar on “the current financial crisis”. The diplomat who organised the event was the very embodiment（体现） of the new China—sporting a well-tailored suit and speaking only lightly accented English—and he began the discussion with a bold question: “Now that the free market has failed, what do you think is the proper role for the state in the economy?” Twenty years ago the state was on the defensive across most of the world. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had smashed（撕碎，使破产） the post-war consensus. Soviet Communism had collapsed. And the World Bank and the IMF were preaching the “Washington consensus” of privatisation and liberalisation. China was the most conspicuous standout against this trend. The Communist Party greeted the global revolution by adopting what it termed the “bamboo policy”—bending with the wind rather than standing straight and eventually snapping（显著的）. The party bent with the wind by abandoning central planning. But it only embraced capitalism in so far as it could be used as an instrument of state power. relish:滋味，喜欢 They all relish their poem. 他们都喜欢他的诗。 have  no relish for 不喜欢，不感兴趣 China has been transformed from a standout into a global model. The recent financial crisis was clearly a turning-point. The Chinese relished the fact that the Americans had been forced to prop up（支撑，支持） not just their banks but also industrial companies such as General Motors. Even before the crisis the Chinese felt that history was moving in their direction. Russia’s experiment with laissez-faire had proved to be a debacle（崩溃，解冻）. Financial problems had emerged with sickening regularity. And throughout this turmoil China had succeeded in combining an astonishing rate of growth with social stability. Now it is using its $2.3 trillion in foreign reserves to help prop up America’s profligacy（放荡，肆意浪费）. From Latin America to the Middle East authoritarian governments are imitating China’s model of “state capitalism”. They are not only using state companies to shore up（支撑，加固） their power at home, they are directing those companies to reap the fruits of global capitalism. State-controlled manufacturers sell goods on the global market and buy up natural resources. Sovereign-wealth funds invest the profits from all of this activity in global markets. The rise of this new hybrid has led to a dramatic change in the balance of power between the state and the market. State oil companies control three-quarters of the world’s crude oil reserves. Three of the four largest banks by market capitalisation are state-controlled. The biggest mobile- phone operator, China Mobile, is also a state company. A nice example of the changing balance of power occurred in the same month that Mr Bremmer attended his seminar in New York: America’s largest bank, the Bank of America, was forced to sell its 9% stake in the Construction Bank of China just to stay afloat. Two books focus on this fascinating subject. Mr Bremmer’s is the better read（that should be read）; he provides a wide-ranging account of the rise of state capitalism and he litters his prose（litter形容文笔很流畅的） with apposite examples and acute insights. Nobody with a serious interest in the current dilemma should pass it by. “The Beijing Consensus” by Stefan Halper, an American academic at Cambridge University, is narrower. He seems to have spent too much time chewing the fat（闲聊，聊天） with his fellow policy intellectuals and not enough getting his boots dirty（形容这趟水还趟得不够深，呵呵~好句）. But he does provide a valuable supplement to Mr Bremmer’s book. Mr Halper supplies chapter and verse on the way the Chinese are spreading their influence across much of the developing world, by coughing up（付出，勉强说出） no-strings-attached（没有任何附加条件的） loans, for example, rather than trying to meddle（参和） in other countries’ internal affairs in the manner of the World Bank and the IMF. He also serves up by far the best anecdote about the real workings of state capitalism. In the same month that Mr Bremmer was attending his seminar the Chinese Communist Party ordered local officials in Hubei province to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of Hubei-branded cigarettes in order to boost the local economy and stave off（避开） lay-offs. Official cigarette monitors roamed（漫步，漫游） the province making sure that people hit their cigarette targets and fining those who dared to smoke other brands. How serious a threat does state capitalism pose to the market model of capitalism? Messrs Bremmer and Halper are actually less bullish（看好的，牛市的） about the new authoritarianism than the titles of their books might suggest. Mr Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, points out that state capitalism’s fate is bound up with（关系密切的） the fortunes of some very unpleasant political cliques, such as the Saudi royal family and the Russian oligarchy. Mr Halper demonstrates that China is casting its lot with a number of nasty（肮脏的） regimes. Both authors might also have made more of the fact that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that state companies are less productive and innovative than their private-sector competitors. Much of the dynamism of the Chinese economy comes from private companies rather than bloated state firms. There are good reasons for thinking that state capitalism will eventually collapse as a result of what Marxists used to call its internal contradictions. But at the moment it looks as if eventually may be some way off（尚有很大距离）.

梦想在路上UID: 2812986

22-1
Yukio Hatoyama resigns【辞职】
Leaderless Japan
It used to be the envy of【令人羡慕的人或物】 the world; now the hope is that things have got so bad that reform is finally possible
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SINCE 2006 Japan has had no fewer than five prime ministers. Three of them lasted just a year. The feckless【无效的，不负责的】 Yukio Hatoyama, who
stepped down【退休，辞职】 on June 2nd, managed a grand total of 259 days. Particularly dispiriting【使人气馁的，沮丧的】 about Mr Hatoyama’s sudden departure【离开】 is that his election last August looked as if it marked the start of something new in Japanese politics after decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). His government has turned out to be as incompetent, aimless and tainted by scandal【丑闻腐败】 as its predecessors【前任】.

Much of the responsibility for the mess belongs with Mr Hatoyama. The man known as “the alien”, who says the sight of a little bird last weekend gave him the idea to resign, has shown
breathtaking【惊人的，壮观的】 lack of leadership. Although support for his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has slumped in opinion polls【民意测验中暴跌】 and the government relied on minor parties, the most
glaring liabilities【易见的债务】 have been over Mr Hatoyama’s own murky financial affairs and his dithering about【慌张，犹豫不决】 where to put an American military base. The question for the next prime minister, to be picked in a DPJ vote on June 4th, is whether Mr Hatoyama’s failure means that Japan’s nine-month experiment with two-party democracy has been a misconceived disaster.

The answer is of interest not just within Japan. Such is the recent
merry-go-round【旋转木马，比喻频繁换届】 of prime ministers that it is easy to assume that whoever runs the show makes no difference to the performance of the world’s second-largest economy. Now Japan’s
prominence【声望】 in Asia has so clearly been eclipsed【日食，使黯淡】 by China, its flimsy【不结实的，无力的】politicians are all the easier to dismiss【解雇，退去，不再谈论】.

But that dangerously underestimates Japan’s importance to the world and the troubles it faces. With the largest amount of debt relative to the size of its economy among the rich countries, and a stubborn deflation problem to boot, Japan has an economic time-bomb ticking beneath it. It may be able to service its debt comfortably for the time being, but the euro zone serves as a reminder that Japan needs strong leadership to stop the bomb from exploding.

What’s more, stability around South and East Asia depends to a large extent on Japan’s 50-year-old security alliance with America, which acts as a counterbalance【抗衡】 against Chinese military expansion. The nine-month stand-off【疏远】 between Japan and America over a marine base in Okinawa, a fight which Mr Hatoyama picked himself and has now done for him, is a glaring example of how poor leadership can muddy the waters【把水搅混，弄乱情况】.

Shogun to Japan’s
head With Mr Hatoyama out of the way, it is tempting to hope that the DPJ will put its problems behind it and quickly rebuild its credibility with the electorate 【快速恢复在选民中的信用】and Japan’s friends abroad. There are two reasons for misgivings, however. The first is the role of Ichiro Ozawa, the Svengali-like figure who stood mischievously【淘气的，有害的】 behind Mr Hatoyama. The second is
the calibre【能力，水准】 of the candidates to become Japan’s next prime minister.

Mr Ozawa resigned as the DPJ’s secretary-general alongside Mr Hatoyama, but he, unlike his boss, has not promised to bow out【放弃做某事】
of politics. Moreover, he has such influence over the party that he could continue to
pull strings from behind the scenes【幕后操纵】, especially ahead of upper-house elections this summer. That would be inexcusable【无法辩解的，不可饶恕的】. Like Mr Hatoyama, Mr Ozawa has been caught up in campaign-funding scandals that have
reeked【冒烟的】 as badly as they ever did under the LDP. He has meddled with【瞎弄，乱动】 good policies and failed to stop bad ones, such as the attempt to roll back the privatisation of the postal system. The “Shadow Shogun” represents the worst side of the old politics. If Mr Ozawa remains influential, he will only undermine any future party leader in the eyes of voters.

Whoever that leader is will have plenty to prove as it is 【照现状看】. As The Economist went to press, the most likely replacement for Mr Hatoyama was Naoto Kan, the finance minister. He has shown more financial nous【精神，常识】 than Messrs Hatoyama and Ozawa in arguing for fiscal reform in Japan. But he has kept so quiet about the DPJ’s failing leadership that it is hard to imagine him putting Mr Ozawa in his place. Other potential candidates, who have stood up more firmly to Mr Ozawa, will be opposed by many in the party who are under the man’s
sway【摇摆，支配统治】. And sadly, none looks like he has enough of the right stuff to restore Japan’s standing in the world.

Look up, Japan
For many voters, this all smacks【掌括，拍击】 of Japan’s earlier attempt to escape the LDP’s shadow, in 1993. The coalition【结合体，同盟】
government that replaced it—also under Mr Ozawa’s spell【魅力，威势】—lasted barely 11 months. But a lot has changed since then. Today the LDP has only slightly benefited from the DPJ’s woes【悲哀】, and is itself in danger of splintering. The legacy【遗产】 of two lost decades has left voters with little nostalgia【怀旧】 for old habits. Having finally
broken the mould【模型】 of Japanese politics, it is almost inconceivable【不能想象的，难以置信的】 that they will vote the old lot back into office.

However far-fetched it seems at this sorry juncture, Japan’s leadership crisis presents a chance to
progress to a new sort of politics, based more around policies than personalities. Besides its fiscal problems, Japan has an ageing population that will be a draw on the public purse【占用公众资金】. Its stock of savings is diminishing, and though it is
riddled with【在…上打了很多洞】 misgivings about the presence of American troops in Japan so long after the second world war, it can hardly pay for its own defence. Factional politics has failed utterly to deal with these problems. But divisions within the political duopoly【双头垄断】 have produced splinter parties【分裂出来的小派别】, some of which have sensible ideas for putting Japan’s economy back on track【踪迹】. The new DPJ leadership, however badly it does in this summer’s upper-house elections, should capitalise on that by forming coalitions with its ideological peers, rather than with the mavericks【异议者】 it has relied on so far. Getting rid of
Mr Ozawa would be a sign of real change.

There is hope therefore that things are beginning to get so bad that reform really will appear relatively soon. But the main impression at the moment is of drift. The sad fact is that the world’s second biggest economy, home to companies that have changed industries around the world, is being kept out of dire trouble【从可怕的麻烦中走出来】 only by the loyalty【忠诚】 of its own savers.

梦想在路上UID: 2812986

22-2
South Africa
When the whistle blows
South Africans can be proud about hosting the World Cup. Less so about the state of their nation
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

KE NAKO! It is time! On June 11th the opening match of the football World Cup takes place at Soccer City near Soweto, a sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. For the past four years South Africa has been preparing to host the world’s greatest sporting event after the Olympics—the first African nation to do so in the tournament’s 80-year history. Sceptics said South Africa would never make it. But, billions of dollars and much heartache later, it is ready. With ten spectacular new or upgraded stadiums【体育场】, as many new or revamped【修补】
airports, hundreds of kilometres of expanded highways and city streets, and the continent【大陆】’s first high-speed train up and running (just), South Africa is rightly proud of its achievement.

And not only in preparing for the World Cup. South Africa boasts【自夸】
private companies, banks, financial markets and
auditing standards that are as good as any, anywhere. It is Africa’s largest economy (and the world’s 24th-biggest), accounting for 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total GDP. It is also by far【更，尤其】 the most sophisticated, open and democratic country in the region, with one of the most progressive constitutions anywhere. It is the only African member of the G20 and has just been nominated for a (second) two-year seat on the Security Council【联合国安全理事会】, the UN’s decision-making body, starting in January. The country is leader of a continent that has weathered【平稳度过】 the financial crisis surprisingly well, thanks largely to its fabulous【巨大的】 mineral wealth. In some African countries attitudes have slowly begun to shift away from the backing of “big men” towards a more accountable【负有责任的】 sort of democracy.

Yet South Africa struggles, for all that. As our special report in this issue shows, the threats and flaws it must overcome would make even the bravest【勇敢的】
reformer quail: rampant corruption and patronage【猖獗的腐败和赞助】 throughout the public sector; the world’s highest unemployment rate, with more than one in three out of work; one in eight of the population infected with HIV/AIDS; public hospitals described as “death traps” by their own health minister; 80% of schools deemed dysfunctional【机能失调的】; terrible drug and alcohol abuse; crumbling【破碎的】 infrastructure; lethal roads.
Thanks to black-empowerment policies, a small new black middle class has emerged【显现】, yet more than 40% of the population still lives on less than $2 a day. Tragically, since the end of apartheid【种族隔离制度】 inequality【不平等】 in South Africa has grown.

Hospital pass
The African National Congress and its leader, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, did not create this mess, but they will have to sort it out【分类，整顿解决】. Just 16 years ago the ANC inherited a country that was virtually bankrupt, riven with racial hostility and wracked by poverty. Although there have certainly been improvements, those living without jobs in shoddy【劣等的】 homes in poor black townships need more. Many of the young are getting desperate【铤而走险的】. Violent protests【武力抗议】 are spreading.

More than ever【不只是】 the country needs strong political leadership. After one year in office, the polygamous【一夫多妻制的】,
ever-charming Mr Zuma is doing better than many critics had feared. He has been making all the right noises on things like corruption, crime, poverty and education. But as the coming attacks【攻击】 from within his own faction-ridden party mount, he seems to lack vision and drive. He needs to show he can get things done. Some wonder whether he will even be able complete his five-year mandate【授权】. As the anthems
draw to a close【渐进结束】 and the players take their positions to start football’s great tournament, South Africa can allow itself a moment of satisfaction. But a daunting amount of work lies ahead.

梦想在路上UID: 2812986

23-2
The future of the tablet computer
Not written in stone
The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget【小器具】, seems to have
lived up to its maker’s lofty【崇高的，极高的】 expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably【大概，可能】 to follow after the device’s debut【首次演出】 outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success
trigger【引发】
explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones?

The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation【增值】 of tablets at Computex, a trade show【内部预演】 held this week in Taiwan,
is anything to judge by【作为评判标准】. The exhibition floor was teeming with【充满】
prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival【竞争对手】, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works.

Yet the flurry of activity is deceptive. Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging【避免】 their bets after their failure, in many cases, to predict【预测】 the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly, most of the new devices will not hit the stores before the end of the year, if not later.

It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out【取代胜过】 established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks【行李架】.

Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon【分析家估计】, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms【电信】 operators were to subsidise them, as they do with handsets【手机】

This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T
ditched【摆脱抛弃】 its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered【等级的】 rates.

What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become.

Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room【衣帽间】. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought. Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray, although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to
unveil its plans.

ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.
But tablets may still have a big impact【影响，冲击力】, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying【令人满足的】 for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner

谦行天下UID: 2797557

24-1

The state and the economy
Re-enter the dragon
Two books ask how far China’s model of “state capitalism【国家资本主义】” will spread
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN MAY 2009 the Chinese consulate【领事】 in New York invited Ian Bremmer to take part in a small seminar on “the current financial crisis”. The diplomat who organised the event was the very embodiment of the new China—sporting a well-tailored suit and speaking only lightly accented English—and he began the discussion with a bold question: “Now that the free market has failed, what do you think is the proper role for the state in the economy?”
embodiment：a concrete representation of an otherwise nebulous concept

Twenty years ago the state was on the defensive across most of the world. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had smashed the post-war consensus. Soviet Communism had collapsed. And the World Bank and the IMF were preaching the “Washington consensus” of privatisation and liberalisation.
Margaret Thatcher：撒切尔夫人，英国保守党人，1979年至1990年任英国首相。1982年和1984年曾两次以首相身份访华，1984年12月访华时同中国政府总理正式签署了中英关于香港问题的联合声明。
Ronald Reagan ：罗纳德·里根（美国前总统）

China was the most conspicuous standout against this trend. The Communist Party greeted the global revolution by adopting what it termed the “bamboo policy”—bending with the wind rather than standing straight and eventually snapping. The party bent with the wind by abandoning central planning. But it only embraced capitalism in so far as it could be used as an instrument of state power.

China has been transformed from a standout into a global model. The recent financial crisis was clearly a turning-point. The Chinese relished the fact that the Americans had been forced to prop up not just their banks but also industrial companies such as General Motors.

relish：derive or receive pleasure from; get enjoyment from; take pleasure in
prop up ：support by placing against something solid or rigid

Even before the crisis the Chinese felt that history was moving in their direction. Russia’s experiment with laissez-faire had proved to be a debacle. Financial problems had emerged with sickening regularity. And throughout this turmoil China had succeeded in combining an astonishing rate of growth with social stability. Now it is using its $2.3 trillion in foreign reserves to help prop up America’s profligacy.

laissez-faire ：the doctrine that government should not interfere in commercial affairs
debacle：a sound defeat

From Latin America to the Middle East authoritarian governments are imitating China’s model of “state capitalism”. They are not only using state companies to shore up their power at home, they are directing those companies to reap the fruits of global capitalism. State-controlled manufacturers sell goods on the global market and buy up natural resources. Sovereign-wealth funds invest the profits from all of this activity in global markets.

The rise of this new hybrid has led to a dramatic change in the balance of power between the state and the market. State oil companies control three-quarters of the world’s crude oil【原油】 reserves. Three of the four largest banks by market capitalisation are state-controlled. The biggest mobile- phone operator, China Mobile, is also a state company. A nice example of the changing balance of power occurred in the same month that Mr Bremmer attended his seminar in New York: America’s largest bank, the Bank of America, was forced to sell its 9% stake in the Construction Bank of China just to stay afloat.

Two books focus on this fascinating subject. Mr Bremmer’s is the better read; he provides a wide-ranging account of the rise of state capitalism and he litters his prose with apposite examples and acute insights. Nobody with a serious interest in the current dilemma should pass it by. “The Beijing Consensus” by Stefan Halper, an American academic at Cambridge University, is narrower. He seems to have spent too much time chewing the fat with his fellow policy intellectuals and not enough getting his boots dirty.

But he does provide a valuable supplement to Mr Bremmer’s book. Mr Halper supplies chapter and verse on the way the Chinese are spreading their influence across much of the developing world, by coughing up no-strings-attached loans, for example, rather than trying to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs in the manner of the World Bank and the IMF. He also serves up by far the best anecdote about the real workings of state capitalism. In the same month that Mr Bremmer was attending his seminar the Chinese Communist Party ordered local officials in Hubei province to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of Hubei-branded cigarettes in order to boost the local economy and stave off lay-offs. Official cigarette monitors roamed the province making sure that people hit their cigarette targets and fining those who dared to smoke other brands.

How serious a threat does state capitalism pose to the market model of capitalism? Messrs Bremmer and Halper are actually less bullish about the new authoritarianism than the titles of their books might suggest. Mr Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, points out that state capitalism’s fate is bound up with【与……有密切关系】 the fortunes of some very unpleasant political cliques, such as the Saudi royal family and the Russian oligarchy. Mr Halper demonstrates that China is casting its lot with a number of nasty regimes. Both authors might also have made more of the fact that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that state companies are less productive and innovative than their private-sector competitors. Much of the dynamism of the Chinese economy comes from private companies rather than bloated state firms. There are good reasons for thinking that state capitalism will eventually collapse as a result of what Marxists used to call its internal contradictions. But at the moment it looks as if eventually may be some way off.

梦想在路上UID: 2812986

23-1
A special report on South Africa
The price of freedom
Since embracing full democracy 16 years ago, South Africa has made huge strides. But, says Diana Geddes (interviewed here), not everything has changed for the better
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SPORT matters in South Africa. In his new year’s address to the nation, President Jacob Zuma described 2010 as “the most important year in our country since 1994”. To outsiders, playing host to this year’s football World Cup seemed perhaps a less momentous【重大的】 event than holding the country’s first fully democratic elections that established a black-majority government 16 years ago—especially when the national team, Bafana Bafana, may be knocked out in the first round. But with the kick-off on June 11th, just days after the country’s 100th birthday on May 31st, the world’s eyes will be on Africa’s leading economy for the next few weeks.

Can the “miracle” nation, which won plaudits【鼓掌，称赞】around the world for its peaceful transition to democracy after centuries of white-supremacist【至上主义者】 rule, conquer【攻克，破除】the bitter divisions【分裂】 of its past to turn itself into the “rainbow nation” of Nelson Mandela’s dreams? Or will it become ever more mired in bad governance, racial tension, poverty, corruption, violence and decay to turn into yet another African failed state? With Zimbabwe, its neighbour to the north, an ever-present reminder of what can happen after just a couple of decades of post-liberation single-party rule, many South Africans, black and white, worry that their country may be reaching a tipping【倾泻】 point.

Western fans arriving in South Africa for the World Cup could be forgiven for thinking that they were still in the rich world. Much of the infrastructure is as good as you will find anywhere—particularly those parts that have been given multi-million-dollar facelifts【翻新，整修】in preparation for the tournament. Ten spectacular stadiums have been newly built or upgraded at a cost of 15 billion rand (see box for currency conversions). Visitors arriving at O.R. Tambo, the main international airport, will be whisked 【挥，甩】into Johannesburg by the Gautrain, Africa’s first high-speed rail link (pictured above). And many of the country’s hotels and restaurants are world-class, including Bushmans Kloof hotel, three hours’ drive from Cape Town, recently voted the world’s best by Travel + Leisure website, and Cape Town’s La Colombe, ranked 12th in this year’s S.Pellegrino list of the best restaurants.

Not as rich as it looks
But in reality South Africa is no more than a middle-income developing country with a GDP per person of around $10,000 (at purchasing-power parity), a quarter of the American figure. On a per-head basis, it is the seventh-richest country in Africa by some measures. The average hides huge disparities【不同，悬殊】. Under apartheid【种族隔离】, whites were encouraged to believe they were part of the Western world. It was only when they had to start sharing their streets, goods and services with their darker-skinned compatriots【同胞】 that they began to wonder whether they really were. Many now complain about falling standards. Yet most whites have done rather well since apartheid ended—better, in fact, than most blacks. They still enjoy a good life, helped by cheap domestic help and first-class private medical care and schools.

For the majority of South Africa’s blacks, however, the living is not so easy. Although many of the poorest now get some kind of government support, it is only a
pittance【少量的收入】. Most blacks still live in shoddy shacks【蜗居】 or bungalows【平房】 without proper sanitation in poor crime-ridden【犯罪猖獗的】 townships outside the main cities. Their schools and hospitals are often in a dire state.【可怕的状态】 And, in a country where there is little public transport, most blacks do not own a car. Although it has the world’s 24th-biggest economy, South Africa ranks a dismal 129th out of 182 on the UN’s Human Development Index (and 12th in Africa).

The country’s constitution, adopted in 1996, is one of the most progressive【不断前进的】 in the world. It enshrines a wide range of social and economic rights as well as the more usual civil and political freedoms. Discrimination is banned not only on the grounds of race, gender, age and belief, but also of pregnancy, marital status, sexual orientation and culture. Every one of the country’s 49m people—79% black, 9% white, 9% coloured (mixed race) and 3% Asian/Indian—is guaranteed equal protection under the law. Freedom House, a Washington-based research foundation, gives South Africa a respectable rating of 2 in its “freedom in the world” index, where 1 is completely free and 7 totally unfree.

South Africa is a land of contrasts. It has fabulous mineral wealth, with 90% of the world’s known platinum reserves【储量】, 80% of its manganese, 70% of its chrome and 40% of its gold, as well as rich coal deposits【煤矿】; yet 43% of its population live on less than $2 a day. It has just announced plans to develop a satellite programme (with India and Brazil) and is the leading candidate to host the world’s biggest science project, the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope; yet in international maths, science and reading tests it performs abysmally【深不可测地】. It has sky-high【极高的】 unemployment yet at the same time suffers from crippling skills shortages【高技能短缺】. It was the first country to perform a heart transplant, and some of its doctors are still among the best anywhere; yet its people’s health record is among the world’s worst. And, leaving aside war zones, it is one of the most violent and crime-ridden countries on the planet. This special report will look at South Africa the way that most of its people see it. The results are often harsh.

The bright side
Yet there are some encouraging signs that the contrasts are getting less stark【光秃秃的，荒凉的，完全的】. South Africa has recently cut its murder rate in half; virtually eradicated【完全根除】 severe malnutrition among the under-fives; increased the enrolment【入学人数】 in schools of children aged seven to 15 to nearly 100%; provided welfare benefits for 15m people; and set up the world’s biggest antiretroviral treatment programme for HIV/AIDS.

What about race? South Africa remains obsessed【困扰】 by it. That is hardly surprising after 350 years of racial polarisation【种族分化】, including nearly half a century of apartheid, when inter-racial sex was a criminal offence and non-whites were even banned from using the pavements. The subject waxes and wanes. Only last August Mr Zuma was warning his compatriots against reviving the race debate. But the murder in April of Eugene Terre’Blanche, leader of a white-supremacist group, and the racist outbursts【爆发】 by Julius Malema, the leader of the powerful Youth League of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), have brought it to the fore【在手头，在前面】 again.

azure9UID: 2789030

Buttonwood
Time for a rent cut
Controlling the finance sector’s excess returns
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

WHY do people who work in finance earn more than most other people? It is a question that concerns politicians, as they debate reform of the industry. It ought also to worry those millions who, as savers and borrowers, are consumers of the industry’s products.
Something has clearly changed within the past 40 years. Banking and asset management used to be perceived as fairly dull jobs, which did not attract a significant wage premium.
But after 1980, financial wages started to climb much more quickly than those of engineers, another profession that ought to have benefited from technological complexity.

Around the same time, banks became more profitable. Andrew Smithers of Smithers & Co, a firm of consultants, points out that the return on equity achieved by British banks averaged around 7% between 1921 and 1971; since then it has averaged around 20%.
Such a sustained rise suggests that the finance sector has been able to extract “rents”, a term that economists use to explain excess profits. But that suggestion only raises another question; why haven’t those rents been competed away?

Barriers to entry are a standard explanation for an uncompetitive market. In the case of banking, these barriers may exist in the form of the implicit subsidy provided by government support; this lowers the cost of finance for leading institutions. In March Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, argued that the effective annual subsidy for the five biggest British banks during the credit crunch was more than £50 billion ($73 billion), roughly equal to the whole industry’s annual profit in the years before the crisis.

As evidence of the industry’s lack of competition, Mr Smithers points to its increasing concentration. The proportion of bank assets held by the three biggest American banks has tripled since 1994. It is far from clear that this concentration is healthy for the rest of the economy; Mr Haldane cites research showing that economies of scale peak when banks have $5 billion-10 billion of assets.

The big banks may have benefited from other factors apart from a lower cost of capital. In market-making, for example, size gives banks an advantage since they have more knowledge of institutional investors’ order flow and can position themselves to benefit.
In addition, the growth of the financial industry has coincided with the move to floating exchange rates and market liberalisation. The result has been the creation of a whole series of instruments, mainly derivatives, designed to deal with the risks of interest-rate and currency movements. The more complex the product, the less transparent it is to customers; that makes it harder to judge the price they are being charged. The surge in trading volumes is also significant; at every stage the finance industry takes a cut in the form of a bid-offer spread, a fee or a commission. This churning is a classic rent-seeking activity.

What to do about it? At the moment, governments are wading in with all kinds of levies and regulations, which will probably have unintended consequences. Rather than tackle the big problem (for example, by breaking up the banks), they waste their time on populist measures like banning short-selling.

It would be far better if the private sector could deal with the problem. Paul Woolley, a former fund manager who set up centres for studying capital-market dysfunctionality at the London School of Economics and the University of Toulouse, has published a manifesto which he believes should be adopted by the world’s biggest public, pension and charitable investment funds. Among other things, he proposes that the funds should adopt a long-term investment approach, cap annual portfolio turnover at 30%, refuse to pay performance fees or invest in alternative assets such as hedge funds and private equity, and invest only in securities traded on a public exchange (so no structured products like the infamous collateralised debt obligations).

Some will argue with the details but the thrust of the argument is simple. If the big funds in effect own the market in aggregate, then frenetic trading activity is fruitless, even before costs. Perhaps they are chasing a chimera: they all wish to be above-average performers. Perhaps they are bamboozled by an asset-management industry that competes not on price but on the basis of (probably unrepeatable) past performance. Whatever the reason, the effect is that the returns that millions of savers hope to earn end up being paid to the finance sector as rents.

azure9UID: 2789030

June 6, 2010, 5:15 pm
Should This Be the Last Generation?
By PETER SINGER

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.

All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?

If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario?
The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.
Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the Last Generation on Earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

azure9UID: 2789030

June 6, 2010, 5:15 pm
Should This Be the Last Generation?
By PETER SINGER

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally(出生以前的).

contemplating: To consider, regard, ponder, weigh or think
                      To reason or mind
dominant: Exercising influence or control
devastating: Being destructive, ruinous or subversive
                   Being terrific, tremendous, immense or dire
                   Being disastrous, calamitous or catastrophic

All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?

prospect: The possibility of future success
asymmetry:  Want of symmetry, or proportion between the parts of a thing, esp. want of bilateral symmetry
unproblematic:  Easy and not involved or complicated
                       Being elementary or primary

If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario?
The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.
Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

scenario: An outline or synopsis of a play
strive: Attempt by employing effort
          To exert much effort or energy
          To make efforts; to use exertions; to endeavor with earnestness; to labor hard
pessimism: The feeling that things will turn out badly
                 The opinion or doctrine that everything in nature is ordered for or tends to the worst, or that the world is wholly evil
arresting: Being remarkable, distinguished, outstanding or notable
               Being impressive, magnificent, grand or spectacular
inflict: Impose something unpleasant

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.
Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

prolonged: Relatively long in duration; tediously protracted

So why don’t we make ourselves the Last Generation on Earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized(消毒) then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!
Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

sentient:  Endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness
fictitious: Being imaginary, unreal, notional, visionary or imaginative

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

25-1

Buttonwood Time for a rent cut Controlling the finance sector’s excess returns Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition WHY do people who work in finance earn more than most other people? It is a question that concerns politicians, as they debate reform of the industry. It ought also to worry those millions who, as savers and borrowers, are consumers of the industry’s products. Something has clearly changed within the past 40 years. Banking and asset management used to be perceived as fairly dull jobs, which did not attract a significant wage premium. But after 1980, financial wages started to climb much more quickly than those of engineers, another profession that ought to have benefited from technological complexity. Around the same time, banks became more profitable. Andrew Smithers of Smithers & Co, a firm of consultants, points out that the return on equity achieved by British banks averaged around 7% between 1921 and 1971; since then it has averaged around 20%. Such a sustained rise suggests that the finance sector has been able to extract “rents”, a term that economists use to explain excess profits. But that suggestion only raises another question; why haven’t those rents been competed away? Barriers to entry are a standard explanation for an uncompetitive market. In the case of banking, these barriers may exist in the form of the implicit subsidy provided by government support; this lowers the cost of finance for leading institutions. In March Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, argued that the effective annual subsidy for the five biggest British banks during the credit crunch was more than £50 billion ($73 billion), roughly equal to the whole industry’s annual profit in the years before the crisis. As evidence of the industry’s lack of competition, Mr Smithers points to its increasing concentration. The proportion of bank assets held by the three biggest American banks has tripled since 1994. It is far from clear（注意可在argu中用） that this concentration is healthy for the rest of the economy; Mr Haldane cites research showing that economies of scale peak when banks have $5 billion-10 billion of assets. The big banks may have benefited from other factors apart from a lower cost of capital. In market-making, for example, size gives banks an advantage since they have more knowledge of institutional investors’ order flow and can position themselves to benefit. In addition, the growth of the financial industry has coincided with the move to floating exchange rates and market liberalisation（市场自由化）. The result has been the creation of a whole series of instruments, mainly derivatives, designed to deal with the risks of interest-rate and currency movements. The more complex the product, the less transparent it is to customers; that makes it harder to judge the price they are being charged. The surge in trading volumes is also significant; at every stage the finance industry takes a cut in the form of a bid-offer spread, a fee or a commission. This churning（搅拌） is a classic rent-seeking activity. What to do about it? At the moment, governments are wading in（插手） with all kinds of levies（征税） and regulations, which will probably have unintended consequences. Rather than tackle the big problem (for example, by breaking up the banks), they waste their time on populist measures like banning short-selling. It would be far better if the private sector could deal with the problem. Paul Woolley, a former fund manager who set up centres for studying capital-market dysfunctionality（紊乱状态） at the London School of Economics and the University of Toulouse, has published a manifesto（宣言） which he believes should be adopted by the world’s biggest public, pension and charitable investment funds. Among other things, he proposes that the funds should adopt a long-term investment approach, cap（覆盖） annual portfolio turnover at 30%, refuse to pay performance fees or invest in alternative assets such as hedge funds and private equity, and invest only in securities traded on a public exchange (so no structured products like the infamous collateralised debt obligations). Some will argue with the details but the thrust of the argument is simple. If the big funds in effect own the market in aggregate, then frenetic（狂热的，疯狂的） trading activity is fruitless, even before costs. Perhaps they are chasing a chimera（妄想）: they all wish to be above-average performers. Perhaps they are bamboozled（迷惑的） by an asset-management industry that competes not on price but on the basis of (probably unrepeatable) past performance. Whatever the reason, the effect is that the returns that millions of savers hope to earn end up being paid to the finance sector as rents.

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

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June 6, 2010, 5:15 pm Should This Be the Last Generation? By PETER SINGER Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating（沉思） reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally（产前的）. All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem? If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario? The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction（ 不容易带来满足感）. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself. fleet：快速的，消磨，飞逝，掠过 Excitement will be easy to find, but satisfaction will be fleeting. 找刺激容易，但找满足感却不容易。 Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like（可以用在argu中） the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none. Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone. Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint（好生动的footprint）. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about. So why don’t we make ourselves the Last Generation on Earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized（消毒，绝育） then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction! （pay attention to 'party', 作为v的形式，表庆祝） Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off. Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence? I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

谦行天下UID: 2797557

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Buttonwood北美悬铃树
Time for a rent cut
Controlling the finance sector’s excess returns
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

WHY do people who work in finance earn more than most other people? It is a question that concerns politicians, as they debate reform of the industry. It ought also to worry those millions who, as savers and borrowers, are consumers of the industry’s products.
Something has clearly changed within the past 40 years. Banking and asset management used to be perceived as[regarded as] fairly dull jobs, which did not attract a significant wage premium.
But after 1980, financial wages started to climb much more quickly than those of engineers, another profession that ought to have benefited from technological complexity.

Around the same time, banks became more profitable. Andrew Smithers of Smithers & Co, a firm of consultants, points out that the return on equity[股本回报；股权收益；净资产收益率] achieved by British banks averaged around 7% between 1921 and 1971; since then it has averaged around 20%.
Such a sustained rise suggests that the finance sector has been able to extract “rents”, a term that economists use to explain excess profits. But that suggestion only raises another question; why haven’t those rents been competed away?

Barriers to entry are a standard explanation for an uncompetitive market. In the case of banking, these barriers may exist in the form of the implicit[隐含的] subsidy[津贴] provided by government support; this lowers the cost of finance for leading institutions. In March Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, argued that the effective annual subsidy for the five biggest British banks during the credit crunch was more than £50 billion ($73 billion), roughly equal to the whole industry’s annual profit in the years before the crisis.

credit crunch：信贷紧缩；信贷危机（等于credit crisis）a state in which there is a short supply of cash to lend to businesses and consumers and interest rates are high

As evidence of the industry’s lack of competition, Mr Smithers points to its increasing concentration. The proportion of bank assets held by the three biggest American banks has tripled since 1994. It is far from clear that this concentration is healthy for the rest of the economy; Mr Haldane cites research showing that economies of scale peak when banks have $5 billion-10 billion of assets.

The big banks may have benefited from other factors apart from a lower cost of capital. In market-making, for example, size gives banks an advantage since they have more knowledge of institutional investors’ order flow and can position themselves to benefit.
cost of capital：资本成本

In addition, the growth of the financial industry has coincided with the move to floating exchange rates and market liberalisation【开放】. The result has been the creation of a whole series of instruments, mainly derivatives, designed to deal with the risks of interest-rate and currency movements. The more complex the product, the less transparent it is to customers; that makes it harder to judge the price they are being charged. The surge in trading volumes is also significant; at every stage the finance industry takes a cut in the form of a bid-offer spread, a fee or a commission. This churning is a classic rent-seeking activity.
churning：moving with or producing or produced by vigorous agitation

What to do about it? At the moment, governments are wading in with all kinds of levies and regulations, which will probably have unintended consequences. Rather than tackle the big problem (for example, by breaking up the banks), they waste their time on populist measures like banning short-selling.

It would be far better if the private sector could deal with the problem. Paul Woolley, a former fund manager who set up centres for studying capital-market dysfunctionality at the London School of Economics and the University of Toulouse, has published a manifesto which he believes should be adopted by the world’s biggest public, pension and charitable investment funds. Among other things, he proposes that the funds should adopt a long-term investment approach, cap annual portfolio turnover at 30%, refuse to pay performance fees or invest in alternative assets such as hedge funds and private equity, and invest only in securities traded on a public exchange (so no structured products like the infamous collateralised debt obligations).
manifesto：
a public declaration of intentions (as issued by a political party or government)


Some will argue with the details but the thrust of the argument is simple. If the big funds in effect own the market in aggregate, then frenetic trading activity is fruitless, even before costs. Perhaps they are chasing a chimera: they all wish to be above-average performers. Perhaps they are bamboozled by an asset-management industry that competes not on price but on the basis of (probably unrepeatable) past performance. Whatever the reason, the effect is that the returns that millions of savers hope to earn end up being paid to the finance sector as rents.