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  3. Though the free-market faithful have long preached that competition creates

Though the free-market faithful have long preached that competition creates

游客2024-09-18  41
问题     Though the free-market faithful have long preached that competition creates efficiency, as if it were a law of nature, nature itself teaches a different lesson. The seductively simple story of the virtues of competition contains some general theoretical truth, but execution is how theory dies, and we can’t let blind faith prevent us from seeing the deviling details of how it operates in practice. Unregulated competition in nature regularly delivers disaster. And ignoring nature’s lessons for our economy would have us be as dumb as trees.
    Richard Dawkins tells us, "Tree trunks are standing monuments to futile competition. " No tree can afford to not compete in the height competition. However, if somehow the trees could arrange a pact of friendship to limit their heights, each tree, and the forest as a whole, could save energy. This is obviously not possible for trees, but if it were, Dawkins concludes, the " Forest of Friendship[would be]more efficient as a forest. "
    Systems of self-interested agents, responding only to local incentives, can easily evolve energy-wasting, unfruitful competitions. Once a way of competing is established, it’s very difficult for individuals not to play along. If we let our economies imitate trees, and the majority of nature, in practicing unguided free competition, the results will often be suboptimal, for each and for all. Worse, we will miss the main benefit of being human, which is to use reason to coordinate better outcomes.
    Enormous ill-suited "monuments to futile competition" exist at the heart of our health-care system. A 2008 study found that pharmaceutical companies spend 24% of their revenue on marketing and promotion(versus 13% on research and development). Drug prescription decisions should be based on objective medical criteria, and data on performance and side effects is publicly available. So why on earth would it make sense for pharmaceutical companies to spend so much on the armies of sales reps that visit doctors with such relentless regularity? The local logic at work is that no individual company can risk not playing the game.
    Actually the lack of some cross-agent coordination prevents "the market" from increasing efficiencies in our unintelligently evolved U. S. health-care system. Competition’s benefits are created by constraints. Creative responses to designed and guided limits can work better than "natural constraints".
    Free competition does not magically lead to the best outcome in nature. Nor does it in economics. The magic of markets isn’t like the magic of science: it much more resembles stage magic, where the effect is achieved by misdirection. A selective spotlight story focuses our attention, on the one hand, on the benefits of unbridled competition, but draws attention away from the other, invisible hand, as it’s busy externalizing costs or in other ways causing harm. This oversimplifying and oversold story has outlived its fitness. Our choice is either to be as dumb as trees, or to guide competition for better outcomes. [br] According to the author, competition can lead to inefficiency without______.
选项 A、appropriate theory
B、accurate practice
C、rational guidance
D、proper incentive
答案 C
解析 细节题。作者在第三段开始论述经济世界之中的竞争，其中第三句提到，如果经济简单地效法自然中的竞争，in practicing unguided free competition，无论是对个人还是团体来说，结果常常不是最佳的。可见，竞争必须有合理的引导才能产生效率，故答案为[C]。关于理论和实际操作的问题，在第三段中均没有提及，故[A]和[B]缺乏事实依据，应排除；incentive虽然在第三段中有所涉及，但是在作者看来，这显然不是让竞争产生效率的条件，故[D]也应排除。
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