2-14日至2-20日的第二篇学习笔记奉上。
经济学人2月6日封面文章《驯服巨人（下）》，这一部分主要阐述以往管控垄断企业的方法已经不再有效，反垄断机构有必要改变旧思维模式，通过更好地利用当前竞争法律法规，加强反垄断审查以及重新思考科技市场的运作方式，要求大企业与初创企业在一定程度上分享用户数据等方式来达到“驯服”谷歌、亚马逊、Facebook等企业巨人的目标。
经济学人的文章不光语句精美，本身内容也很值得思考回味。
所以在接下来的笔记中，我在学习完文章之后，也会对内容进行一个总结概括。
The rivalry remedy
对抗疗法
What to do? In the past, societies have tackled monopolies either by breaking them up, as with Standard Oil in 1911, or by regulating them as a public utility, as with AT&T in 1913. Today both those approaches have big drawbacks. The traditional tools of utilities regulation, such as price controls and profit caps, are hard to apply, since most products are free and would come at a high price in forgone investment and innovation. Likewise, a full-scale break-up would cripple the platforms’ economies of scale, worsening the service they offer consumers. And even then, in all likelihood one of the Googlettes or Facebabies would eventually sweep all before it as the inexorable logic of network effects reasserted itself.
该怎么办呢？过去各国处理垄断企业的办法或是将其拆分，比如1911年对标准石油公司的拆分，或是将它们当作公用事业（单位）来监管，例如1913年对AT&T采取的措施。今天，这两种方法都有很大的缺陷。价格管制和利润上限等传统的公用事业管制工具难以应用，因为大部分产品都是免费的，而且还会抑制投资和创新，代价太高。同样，完全肢解将削弱这些平台的规模经济，导致提供给消费者的服务质量下降。而且即使拆分了谷歌、Facebook这样的企业，由于网络效应无可避免地会重新发挥作用，其中的某个“小谷歌”或“小Facebook”最终还是很可能再次横扫市场。
Forego
动词
If you forego something, you decide to do without it, although you would like it.
Cripple
5.动词
To cripple a machine, organization, or system means to damage it severely or prevent it from working properly. 破坏
Inexorable
形容词
You use inexorable to describe a process which cannot be prevented from continuing or progressing.不可阻挡
The lack of a simple solution deprives politicians of easy slogans, but does not leave trustbusters impotent. Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans. The first is to make better use of existing competition law. Trustbusters should scrutinise mergers to gauge whether a deal is likely to neutralise a potential long-term threat, even if the target（不可以想当然地翻译成目标） is small at the time. Such scrutiny might have prevented Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Google’s of Waze, which makes navigation software. To ensure that the platforms do not favour their own products, oversight groups could be set up to deliberate on complaints from rivals—a bit like the independent “technical committee” created by the antitrust case against Microsoft in 2001. Immunity to content liability must go, too.
缺乏简单的解决办法会让政客找不出简明的口号，但不至于让反垄断机构无能为力。如果能大幅转变两种思考方式，将大大有助于巧妙地驯服这些大家伙。首先是更好地利用现有的竞争法规。反垄断机构应该仔细审查兼并案，判断某项兼并是否有可能消除潜在的长远的威胁，即使当时兼并对象的规模还很小。以前如果有这样的审查，Facebook可能就不会收购Instagram，谷歌也不会收购导航软件Waze了。要确保平台不偏袒自己的产品，可以设立监督小组来审议对手的投诉，这有点像2001年针对微软反垄断案成立的独立“技术委员会”。对内容免责的豁免也必须取消。
trustbuster
名词
a person, esp. a federal official, who seeks to dissolve corporate trusts through the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws
Impotent
1.形容词
If someone feels impotent, they feel that they have no power to influence people or events.
Two broad changes of thinking
原译“大幅转变两种思考方式”，但结合上下文，我个人觉得翻译成“思维的两大变革”更妥当些。
Go a long way
短语
If you say that something goes a long way towards doing a particular thing, you mean that it is an important factor in achievingthat thing.实现某目标的重要因素
Sensible _sensibly
1.形容词
Sensible actions or decisions are good because they are based on reasons rather than emotions.
理智的
Neutralise neutral
1.动词
To neutralize something means to prevent it from having any effect or from working properly.
抵消
Delibrate
形容词和动词发音有差异，此处为动词The verb is pronounced (dɪlɪbəreɪt ).
3.动词
If you deliberate, you think about something carefully, especially before making a very important decision.仔细考虑
Immunity to content liability must go, too.
对内容免责的豁免也必须取消，这句话有点生硬，建议修改为“内容免责条例也必须取消。”
Second, trustbusters need to think afresh about how tech markets work. A central insight, one increasingly discussed among economists and regulators, is that personal data are the currency in which customers actually buy services. Through that prism, the tech titans receive valuable information—on their users’ behaviour, friends and purchasing habits—in return for their products. Just as America drew up sophisticated rules about intellectual property in the 19th century, so it needs a new set of laws to govern the ownership and exchange of data, with the aim of giving solid rights to individuals.
其次，反垄断机构需要重新思考科技市场的运作方式。经济学家和监管机构讨论的越来越多的一个重要见解是，消费者实际上是用个人数据作为货币来购买服务的。从这个角度看，科技巨头通过产品获得了关于用户行为、人际关系和购买习惯的宝贵信息。美国在19世纪制定了有关知识产权的复杂规则，同样，现在它需要一套新的法律来管理数据的所有权和交换，好让个人能切实掌握自己的权利。
Prism
2.可数名词 [usually singular, NOUN of noun]
If you see something through a prism of something such as time or memory, your idea of it is affected by that thing.
In essence this means giving people more control over their information. If a user so desires, key data should be made available in real time to other firms—as banks in Europe are now required to do with customers’ account information. Regulators could oblige platform firms to make anonymised bulk data available to competitors, in return for a fee, a bit like the compulsory licensing of a patent. Such data-sharing requirements could be calibrated to firms’ size: the bigger platforms are, the more they have to share. These mechanisms would turn data from something titans hoard, to suppress competition, into something users share, to foster innovation.
这实质上是让人们更好地控制自己的信息。如果用户有需要，关键数据就应实时提供给其他公司，现在欧洲的银行在处理客户账户信息方面就被要求做到这一点。监管机构可以要求平台公司向竞争对手提供匿名的批量数据，换取一定的费用，有点像专利的强制许可。这种数据共享要求可以根据企业的规模作调整：企业越大，要共享的数据就越多。这些做法能把巨头为了抑制竞争而囤积的数据变成可供用户分享、促进创新的数据。
Hoard
1.动词
If you hoard things such as food or money, you save or store them, often in secret, because they are valuable or important to you.
None of this will be simple, but it would tame the titans without wrecking the gains they have brought. Users would find it easier to switch between services. Upstart competitors would have access to some of the data that larger firms （不必翻译成较大公司）hold and thus be better equipped to grow to maturity without being gobbled up. And shareholders could no longer assume monopoly profits for decades to come.
这些事做起来都不容易，但能让科技巨头收敛，同时又不破坏它们带来的好处。用户转换服务也会更容易。崛起的竞争对手可以获得大公司持有的部分数据，从而更有可能成长壮大而不是被吞并。股东们则再也不能指望未来几十年都获得垄断利润了。
本周上一篇文章请戳：““如何学习经济学人文章（3）”。
英文单词/词组释义均来自柯林斯词典。柯林斯英英词典的释义说明基本采用了十分浅显、简单的英语，对初学者十分友好。
中英原文来自https://weibo.com/economistgroup?from=feed&loc=nickname
笔记原创，仅供学习分享之用。
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