Free Market Food Banks
自由市场中的救济食品发放中心
Feeding America, the third largest non-profit in the United States, distributes billions of pounds of food every year. Most of the food comes from large firms like Kraft, ConAgra and Walmart that have a surplus of some item and scarce warehouse space. Feeding America coordinates the supply of surplus food with the demand from food banks across the U.S..
作为美国第三大非营利性机构，“喂饱美国”每年要分发数十亿磅食品。大多数食品来自像克拉夫特、康尼格拉和沃尔玛这样产品过剩且仓储不足的大型食品公司。“喂饱美国”可调节过剩食品供给和全美救济食品发放中心【以下简称“救济中心”】需求之间的关系。
Allocating food is not an easy problem. How do you decide who gets what while taking into account local needs, local tastes, what foods the bank has already, what abilities the banks have to store food on a particular day, transportation costs and so forth. Alex Teytelboym writing at The Week points out:
分配食品不是一件容易的差事。在同时考虑当地需求、当地口味、救济中心已有食品、救济中心在特定日期储存食品的能力和运输成本等因素时，你如何决定什么人得到什么食物呢？Alex Teytelboym在《周报》上指出：
…Before 2005, Feeding America allocated food centrally, and according to its rather subjective perception of what food banks needed. Headquarters would call up the food banks in a priority order and offer them a truckload of food. Bizarrely, all food was treated more or less equally, irrespective of its nutritional content. A pound of chicken was the same as a pound of french fries.
…在2005年之前，“喂饱美国”根据对救济中心需求颇为主观的感知来集中分配食物。总部会按优先顺序致电救济中心，并给他们提供一大卡车食物。离奇的是，不论营养成分如何，所有食品或多或少都被同等处理了。一磅鸡肉等同于一磅炸薯条。
If the food bank accepted the load, it paid the transportation costs and had the truck sent to them. If the food bank refused, Feeding America would judge this food bank as having lower need and push it down the priority list. Unsurprisingly, food banks went out of their way to avoid refusing food loads — even if they were already stocked with that particular food.
如果一家救济中心接受了配送，总部会付给运费让卡车把食品送给接受的中心。如果一家救济中心拒绝了，“喂饱美国”会视这家救济中心需求量较低，并把它从优先列表中除去。不出所料，所有的救济中心都特意避免拒绝食品配送——即使某类食物它们已经储存了很多。
This Soviet-style system was hugely inefficient. Some urban food banks had great access to local food donations and often ended up with a surplus of food. A lot of food rotted in places where it was not needed, while many shelves in other food banks stood empty. Feeding America simply knew too little about what their food banks needed on a given day.
这种苏联式的系统非常低效。一些城市的救济中心有很多当地的食品捐赠渠道，因此经常出现食品过剩。很多食品腐烂在不需要它们的地方，而别处救济中心的很多架子仍是空的。“喂饱美国”连某一天救济中心的需求都知之甚少。
In 2005, however, a group of Chicago academics, including economists, worked with Feeding America to redesign the system using market principles. Today Feeding America no longer sends trucks of potatoes to food banks in Idaho and a pound of chicken is no longer treated the same as a pound of french fries.
然而在2005年，一群包括经济学家在内的芝加哥学者用市场准则帮助“喂饱美国”重新设计了分配系统。今天的“喂饱美国”不会再给爱达荷州的救济中心送去一车土豆了，而且一磅鸡肉跟一磅炸薯条也不再同等对待。
Instead food banks bid on food deliveries and the market discovers the internal market-prices that clear the system. The auction system even allows negative prices so that food banks can be “paid” to pick up food that is not highly desired–this helps Feeding America keep both its donors and donees happy.
救济中心转而对食品运送进行竞拍，而且市场发现了理顺整个系统的内部市场价格。这个拍卖系统甚至允许负价格，以便于救济中心可以为取走需求量不大的食物而获得报酬——这帮助“喂饱美国”同时取悦捐赠者和受捐者。
Food banks are not bidding in dollars, however, but in a new, internal currency called shares.
然而救济中心并不用美元竞拍，而是用一种新的名叫“股份”的内部货币。
Every day, each food bank is allocated a pot of fiat currency called “shares.” Food banks in areas with bigger populations and more poverty receive larger numbers of shares. Twice a day, they can use their shares to bid online on any of the 30 to 40 truckloads of food that were donated directly to Feeding America. The winners of the auction pay for the truckloads with their shares.
每个救济中心每天都会分配到一壶名为“股份”的法定货币。人口和穷人较多地区的救济中心会收到数量较多的“股份”。他们隔天就可以用自己的“股份”在线竞拍30到40卡车食品中的任意一车，这些食品都是直接捐赠给“喂饱美国”的。赢得拍卖的一方要为那车食品支付其“股份”。
Then, all the shares spent on a particular day are reallocated back to food banks at midnight. That means that food banks that did not spend their shares on a particular day would end up with more shares and thus a greater ability to bid the next day.
然后，一天内花掉的所有“股份”都会在半夜重新分配给救济中心。这意味着这一天没有花掉股份的救济中心最后会有更多“股份”，并因此在来日有更大的竞标能力。
In this way, the system has built-in fairness: If a large food bank could afford to spend a fortune on a truck of frozen chicken, its shares would show up on the balance of smaller food banks the next day. Moreover, neighboring food banks can now team up to bid jointly to reduce their transport costs.
通过这种方式，系统拥有了内在的公平性：如果一家大型救济中心在一车冻鸡肉上花了大价钱，它的“股份”就会在来日出现在小型救济中心的股份账户上。而且，临近的救济中心现在可以组团共同竞标来降低运输费用。
Initially, there was plenty of resistance. As one food bank director told Canice Prendergast, an economist advising Feeding America, “I am a socialist. That’s why I run a food bank. I don’t believe in markets. I’m not saying I won’t listen, but I am against this.”
起初有很多阻力。正如一位救济中心的主管对Canice Prendergast——一位经济学家，“喂饱美国”的顾问——所说，“我是个社会学家。这是为何由我来运营一家救济中心的原因。我不相信市场。我不是说我不会听取你们的建议，但我反对这一举措。”
But the Chicago economists managed to design a market that worked even for participants who did not believe in it. Within half a year of the auction system being introduced, 97 percent of food banks won at least one load, and the amount of food allocated from Feeding America’s headquarters rose by over 35 percent, to the delight of volunteers and donors.
但是这位芝加哥经济学家尽力设计了一个连不相信它的参与者都适用的市场【编注：此处疑似埋了Niels Bohr的马蹄铁梗】。在引入拍卖系统的半年内，97%的救济中心至少竞标成功过一车食品，而且从“喂饱美国”总部分配的食品总量增长了超过35%，这是志愿者和捐赠者喜闻乐见的。
Teytelboym’s very good, short account is working off a longer, more detailed paper by Canice Prendergast, The Allocation of Food to Food Banks.
Teytelboym出色简短的描述都出自Canice Prendergast一篇更长更细致的论文，《救济中心的食品配给》。
Canice’s paper would be a great teaching tool in an intermediate or graduate micro economics class. Pair it with Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society. Under the earlier centralized system, Feeding America didn’t know when a food bank was out of refrigerator space or which food banks had hot dogs but wanted hot dog buns and which the reverse–under the market system this information, which Hayek called “knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place” is used and as a result less food is wasted and the food is used to satisfy more urgent needs.
Canice的论文会是一份很棒的中级或者高级微观经济学课程的教学材料。最好配上哈耶克的《知识在社会中的应用》一文。在早前的集中式系统中，“喂饱美国”并不知道某个救济中心何时冰箱没空间了，或者哪家救济中心有热狗却想要热狗面包而哪家正相反——在市场系统中，这类信息——哈耶克称为“有关特定时空情境的知识”——被利用起来，因此浪费的食物更少，食物用来满足更急切的需求。
The Feeding America auction system is also the best illustration that I know of the second fundamental theorem of welfare economics.
“喂饱美国”的拍卖系统也是我所知的对福利经济学第二基本定理的最好诠释。
Even monetary economics comes into play. Feeding America created a new currency and thus had to deal with the problem of the aggregate money supply. How should the supply of shares be determined so that relative prices were free to change but the price level would remain relatively stable? How could the baby-sitting co-op problem be avoided? Scott Sumner will be disappointed to learn that they choose pound targeting rather than nominal-pound targeting but some of the key issues of monetary economics are present even in this simple economy.
甚至货币经济学派上了用场。“喂饱美国”创造了一种新货币并且因此必须处理总货币供应量的问题。应如何决定“股份”的供应量以使相关价格能够自由变动而价格水平保持相对稳定？如何避免保姆合作社问题？Scott Sumner将会失望地发现，救济中心选择了以紧盯镑重而不是名义镑重为政策指引【编注：此处疑似在调戏Sumner，后者提倡一种紧盯名义GDP的货币政策。】，但是货币经济学的一些关键问题出现在了这个甚为简单的经济体中。
翻译：尼克基得慢（@尼克基得慢）
校对：龙泉（@ L_Stellar）
编辑：辉格@whigzhou