So, can we dare to be optimistic? Well, the thesis of "The Bottom Billion" is that a billion people have been stuck living in economies that have been stagnant for 40 years, and hence diverging from the rest of mankind. And so, the real question to pose is not, "Can we be optimistic?" It's, "How can we give credible hope to that billion people?" That, to my mind, is the fundamental challenge now of development.

如今，我们仍敢乐观么？我于《最底层的10亿人》就已提出，现今仍有10亿人被囚于困境中，他们所处的世界的经济状况依然是四十年如一日，因此他们正自我们的世界脱离。所以，应被真正提出的问题是：我们能对此乐观吗？应是：我们应如何向那群人给予可得的前景？这对于我来说，正是阻碍当今发展的主要路障。

What I'm going to offer you is a recipe, a combination of the two forces that changed the world for good, which is the alliance of compassion and enlightened self-interest. Compassion, because a billion people are living in societies that have not offered credible hope. That is a human tragedy. Enlightened self-interest, because if that economic divergence continues for another 40 years, combined with social integration globally, it will build a nightmare for our children. We need compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get ourselves serious. That's the alliance that changes the world.

我现在就要传授一张秘方给你们，这是两股积极力量的组合，它们就是怜悯心与开明的利己心的联盟。怜悯心，是由于当今世界仍有10亿人处在未有前景的社会里。此乃人类之悲歌。开明的利己心，假若此种经济分歧依旧持续另一四十年，此问题将会与全球社会融合一起成为下一代的梦魇。我们需求怜悯以作动力；我们需求开明的利己心以作效力。这一联盟将会改变世界。

So, what does it mean to get serious about providing hope for the bottom billion? What can we actually do? Well, a good guide is to think, "What did we do last time the rich world got serious about developing another region of the world?" That gives us, it turns out, quite a good clue, except you have to go back quite a long time. The last time the rich world got serious about developing another region was in the late 1940s. The rich world was you, America, and the region that needed to be developed was my world, Europe. That was post-War Europe.

所以，效力对于那10亿人到底是什么意思？我们实际上可做什么？这是一个好的开头，我们最后一次做了什么？那次富有的世界是如何有效的变革了另外一部分世界？这就是一个很好的线索，当然你要回到很久以前[才能找到此线索]。这发生于20世纪40年代，那次富有的世界始认真地发展变革另外一地区。而那富有的世界是你们，美国，而需要发展的地区则是我们，欧洲。那是二战后的欧洲。

Why did America get serious? It wasn't just compassion for Europe, though there was that. It was that you knew you had to, because, in the late 1940s, country after country in Central Europe was falling into the Soviet bloc, and so you knew you'd no choice. Europe had to be dragged into economic development.

那么，美国为什么会认真起来？这不仅仅是对欧洲的同情，虽然事实就是这样。因为你们知道你们不得不这样做，于40年代末期，成批的中欧国家正倒向苏维埃阵营，所以你们只能如此。欧洲定需被拉进一场经济新发展。

So, what did you do, last time you got serious? Well, yes, you had a big aid program. Thank you very much. That was Marshall aid: we need to do it again. Aid is part of the solution. But what else did you do? Well, you tore up your trade policy, and totally reversed it. Before the war, America had been highly protectionist.

所以你们上次是怎么做的？对了，你们筹划起一场巨大的援助计划。非常感谢你们。那就是马歇尔援助计划；我们需要再次实施。援助是解决途径之一。除此之外，你们还做了什么？你们彻底抛弃了原有的贸易政策，而新的则是完全地逆反之。二战前，美国是高度的贸易保护主义。

After the war, you opened your markets to Europe, you dragged Europe into the then-global economy, which was your economy, and you institutionalized that trade liberalization through founding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. So, total reversal of trade policy.

二战后，你们则将市场开放给欧洲，你们将欧洲拉进当时的全球经济，是你们所主导的，并且你们将贸易自由制度化，这是通过关贸总协定达成的。这是完全扭转过来的贸易政策。

Did you do anything else? Yes, you totally reversed your security policy. Before the war, your security policy had been isolationist. After the war, you tear that up, you put 100,000 troops in Europe for over 40 years. So, total reversal of security policy. Anything else? Yes, you tear up the "Eleventh Commandment" -- national sovereignty.

你们还有做其他东西吗？有。你们彻底扭转了你们的安全政策。二战前，你们的安全政策是孤立主义。二战后，你们将至抛诸脑后，你们向欧洲派驻了十万人马，而且是长达四十年。你们彻底扭转了安全政策。还有吗？有。你们抛弃了第十一戒—国家主权。

Before the war, you treated national sovereignty as so sacrosanct that you weren't even willing to join the League of Nations. After the war, you found the United Nations, you found the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, you found the IMF, you encouraged Europe to create the European Community -- all systems for mutual government support.

二战前，你们认为国家主权是如此的神圣而不可侵犯，因此你们皆不愿加入国际联盟。二战后，你们则一手建起联合国、经合组织、国际货币基金组织，你们怂恿欧洲人建立欧洲共同体。所有的体系皆为相互扶持而服务。

That is still the waterfront of effective policies: aid, trade, security, governments. Of course, the details of policy are going to be different, because the challenge is different. It's not rebuilding Europe, it's reversing the divergence for the bottom billion, so that they actually catch up. Is that easier or harder? We need to be at least as serious as we were then.

这些至今仍有用：援助、贸易、安全和政府。当然，细节上将会有所变更，因为这些都应有所因革。而且这些不是为了重建欧洲，而应是逆转如今的分歧，从而使最底层的10亿人可以迎头赶上。这将会是更容易抑或更难？我们至少需要有当时的责任心和态度。

Now, today I'm going to take just one of those four. I'm going to take the one that sounds the weakest, the one that's just motherhood and apple pie -- governments, mutual systems of support for governments -- and I'm going to show you one idea in how we could do something to strengthen governance, and I'm going to show you that that is enormously important now. The opportunity we're going to look to is a genuine basis for optimism about the bottom billion, and that is the commodity booms.

今天，我将会四选一。我将选取听起来效力最弱的，那就是母亲和苹果派(注：美国俗语，指美国生活的典型元素) 亦就是政府，政府之间的相互扶持，而我则会向你们展示一种新的想法，此想法将告诉你们如何去加强政府的管理方式，这对如今的世界是极其重要的。如今正有一机会可以使我们乐观，使那最底层的10亿人受益，而这就是商品的繁荣。

The commodity booms are pumping unprecedented amounts of money into many, though not all, of the countries of the bottom billion. Partly, they're pumping money in because commodity prices are high, but it's not just that. There's also a range of new discoveries. Uganda has just discovered oil, in about the most disastrous location on Earth; Ghana has discovered oil; Guinea has got a huge new exploitation of iron ore coming out of the ground.

商品的繁荣正将不可胜数的钱财注入至很多，但不是全部，最底层的10亿人所处的国家。他们将金钱注入这些国家一部分是因为商品的价格很高，但这并非全貌。在那些国家他们发现了一系列的资源。乌干达刚刚被发现储有石油，而那是地球上最灾难性的地方；加纳也被发现储有石油；几内亚则被发现储有丰富的铁矿资源。

So, a mass of new discoveries. Between them, these new revenue flows dwarf aid. Just to give you one example: Angola alone is getting 50 billion dollars a year in oil revenue. The entire aid flows to the 60 countries of the bottom billion last year were 34 billion. So, the flow of resources from the commodity booms to the bottom billion are without precedent. So there's the optimism.

所以，一系列的新发型。这些新的税收收入使援助金额相形见绌。就给你们一个例子：安哥拉每年从开采石油中可获益五百亿美元。去年向那群最底层的10亿人所处的60个国家提供的援助资金则仅为340亿美元。因此商品的繁荣将给最底层的10亿人带来可触的未来。因此希望就存于此。

The question is, how is it going to help their development? It's a huge opportunity for transformational development. Will it be taken? So, here comes a bit of science, and this is a bit of science I've done since "The Bottom Billion," so it's new. I've looked to see what is the relationship between higher commodity prices of exports, and the growth of commodity-exporting countries.

不过问题是我们如何帮助他们发展？这是对发展进行转型的巨大机遇。这会被采纳么？为此，我对这个问题做了一点研究，这是在我出书之后才做的，所以这应该是新的。我前去观察了高昂的商品出口价格与商品出口国数量增长之间的关系。

And I've looked globally, I've taken all the countries in the world for the last 40 years, and looked to see what the relationship is. And the short run -- say, the first five to seven years -- is just great. In fact, it's hunky dory: everything goes up. You get more money because your terms of trade have improved, but also that drives up output across the board. So GDP goes up a lot -- fantastic! That's the short run.

我是用全球化视角进行观察的，我将全球所有国家都囊括进内，且从40年前开始看起，以来查看这两者之间的关系。从短期来看--大概是第一个五到七年之间--它们的关系是很好的。应该说是极好的：所有东西都保持着上升的势头。因为贸易势头的增加，你所赚得的利润也会增长，但同时这也将所有人都陷入内。因此国民生产总值也上扬了--很好！但这仅是短期。

And how about the long run? Come back 15 years later. Well, the short run, it's hunky dory, but the long run, it's humpty dumpty. You go up in the short run, but then most societies historically have ended up worse than if they'd had no booms at all. That is not a forecast about how commodity prices go; it's a forecast of the consequences, the long-term consequences, for growth of an increase in prices.

从长期来看如何？让我们看15年后的景象。从短期来看，是福；但从长期来看，那就是祸了。虽然你能暂于短期中加速，但大部分社会，从历史角度看，都落得个极惨的结果，几乎都被打回原点。这并不是对商品价格增长的预测；而是对结果的预测，对长期结果的预测，对总体趋势的预测。

So, what goes wrong? Why is there this "resource curse," as it's called? And again, I've looked at that, and it turns out that the critical issue is the level of governance, the initial level of economic governance, when the resource booms accrue. In fact, if you've got good enough governance, there is no resource boom. You go up in the short term, and then you go up even more in the long term. That's Norway, the richest country in Europe. It's Australia. It's Canada.

因此是什么出错了？为什么会有“资源诅咒”(注:经济学术语)的存在？所以我再次对此进行研究，结果表明关键的问题在产生依赖资源发展时，该社会的执政水平，对经济控制的能力。实际上，假如你们的政府拥有足够的执政水平，过度依赖资源是不会发生的。这才是长远之道。那就是挪威，欧洲最富有的国家。那是澳大利亚，是加拿大。

The resource curse is entirely confined to countries below a threshold of governance. They still go up in the short run. That's what we're seeing across the bottom billion at the moment. The best growth rates they've had -- ever. And the question is whether the short run will persist. And with bad governance historically, over the last 40 years, it hasn't. It's countries like Nigeria, which are worse off than if they'd never had oil.

资源诅咒完全被这些国家的强有效的管理方式扼杀。但对大部分正处于最底层的10亿人的国家来说，他们采取的都是速成之道。他们现今的增长速率是有史以来最好的。只是问题在于他们能否保持这股劲头。从历史来看，他们的政府同40年前一样无能。譬如说尼日利亚，假若他们没开采石油，他们的境况应会更好。

So, there's a threshold level above which you go up in the long term, and below which you go down. Just to benchmark that threshold, it's about the governance level of Portugal in the mid 1980s. So, the question is, are the bottom billion above or below that threshold? Now, there's one big change since the commodity booms of the 1970s, and that is the spread of democracy.

因此对于那些国家能否进入长久发展抑或是短期速跑是有一个门槛的存在。这个门槛打个比方说，就应是葡萄牙于80年代中期的执政水平。所以问题变成了，这些国家的执政水平到底是跨过这道门槛还是没有跨过？自从70年代商品经济繁荣以来，民主的观念正不断的传播。

So I thought, well, maybe that is the thing which has transformed governance in the bottom billion. Maybe we can be more optimistic because of the spread of democracy. So, I looked. Democracy does have significant effects -- and unfortunately, they're adverse. Democracies make even more of a mess of these resource booms than autocracies.

因此我认为这正是使那些国家的政府发生转变的关键要素。也许因为民主的传播，我们可以对此抱乐观的态度。民主的观念的确带来了明显的作用-- 但非正面的作用。民主所带来的麻烦比独裁还麻烦。

At that stage I just wanted to abandon the research, but ---- it turns out that democracy is a little bit more complicated than that. Because there are two distinct aspects of democracy: there's electoral competition, which determines how you acquire power, and there are checks and balances, which determine how you use power.

在这个阶段，我正想放弃研究，但--  --结果显明民主所带来的效用不仅限于此。因为哪里有两种不同的民主。选举竞争，决定着你如何上位；制衡，则决定着你如何使用权力。

It turns out that electoral competition is the thing that's doing the damage with democracy, whereas strong checks and balances make resource booms good. And so, what the countries of the bottom billion need is very strong checks and balances. They haven't got them. They got instant democracy in the 1990s: elections without checks and balances.

原来带来负面效果的民主是选举竞争，而强力的制衡则可引出商品繁荣好的一面。因此那些国家所需的就是有力的制衡制度。但它们仍未取得这些东西。他们于90年代就直接获得了民主：没有任何制衡制度存在的选举。

How can we help improve governance and introduce checks and balances? In all the societies of the bottom billion, there are intense struggles to do just that. The simple proposal is that we should have some international standards, which will be voluntary, but which would spell out the key decision points that need to be taken in order to harness these resource revenues.

我们应如何帮助他们增强政府的权威并且引进制衡制度呢？对所有最底层的10亿人所处的国家里，他们都要通过惨烈的斗争才能摘取果实。我们应该建立一些国际标准，应该是可控的，但同时也应阐明掌控这些资源财富的关键步骤是什么。

We know these international standards work because we've already got one. It's called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. That is the very simple idea that governments should report to their citizens what revenues they have. No sooner was it proposed than reformers in Nigeria adopted it, pushed it and published the revenues in the paper. Nigerian newspapers circulations spiked. People wanted to know what their government was getting in terms of revenue.

我们知道这些国际标准是有效的，我们已经建立了一个。那就是《采掘业透明度倡议》。这个倡议的内容很简单，就是需要政府向他们的民众进行财政收入汇报。但这个倡议被提出时，尼日利亚的改革者就接受了此项倡议，并紧接着于报纸上公布了他们的税收情况。这些报纸马上销售一空。人民渴望得知他们政府的税收情况。

So, we know it works. What would the content be of these international standards? I can't go through all of them, but I'll give you an example. The first is how to take the resources out of the ground -- the economic processes, taking the resources out of the ground and putting assets on top of the ground. And the first step in that is selling the rights to resource extraction.

因此我们知道这是有效的。但这些国际规则的具体条文应是什么呢？我没时间进行细述，就举个例子吧。第一个则是怎么样将资源取出来-- 这是一个经济进程，将资源取出来然后转变成为财产。因此第一步就应是出售资源开采权。

You know how rights to resource extraction are being sold at the moment, how they've been sold over the last 40 years? A company flies in, does a deal with a minister. And that's great for the company, and it's quite often great for the minister ---- and it's not great for their country. There's a very simple institutional technology which can transform that, and it's called verified auctions.

你们都知道资源开采权是现正被出售的，但从过去40年来看，它们是怎么样被出售的呢？一间公司插入，与部长进行交易，这对这间公司和这位部长来说，是双赢--  --但通常是对这个国家的打击。这里有一项非常简单的科技体制，它就叫作拍卖验证，这可以改变这种情形。

The public agency with the greatest expertise on Earth is of course the treasury -- that is, the British Treasury. And the British Treasury decided that it would sell the rights to third-generation mobile phones by working out what those rights were worth. They worked out they were worth two billion pounds.

与地球上所存的所有公共机构中，专业知识量最大的当然是财政部--英国财政部则是其中翘楚。英国财政部决定将某些权力贩卖给第三代移动电话时，他们需要计算这些权力价值几何。他们算出这些权力共值二十亿英镑。

Just in time, a set of economists got there and said, "Why not try an auction? It'll reveal the value." It went for 20 billion pounds through auction. If the British Treasury can be out by a factor of 10, think what the ministry of finance in Sierra Leone is going to be like.When I put that to the President of Sierra Leone, the next day he asked the World Bank to send him a team to give expertise on how to conduct auctions.

同一时间，一群经济学家则提议说：“为什么不举办一场拍卖会？这将会显示[这些东西的]价值。”拍卖会的成果则是两百亿英镑。假若英国财政部的亏损额可达到10的倍数，那么想想塞拉利昂的财政部会做出什么事来。当我将此项提议提交给塞拉利昂的总统时，第二天这位总统就像世界银行提出申请，申请派出一队专家以帮助他们举行拍卖会。

There are five such decision points; each one needs an international standard. If we could do it, we would change the world. We would be helping the reformers in these societies, who are struggling for change. That's our modest role. We cannot change these societies, but we can help the people in these societies who are struggling and usually failing, because the odds are so stacked against them. And yet, we've not got these rules.

一共有五个关键的步骤；每个步骤都应用相应的国际标准以兹辅助。假若我们可以做到，我们就是改变世界。我们可以帮助那些变革者，帮助他们的社会进行变革。这就是我们的职责。我们无法改变那些社会，但我们可以帮助其国人改变社会，因为他们通常都在挣扎中，且经常失败，这是由于成堆的不利条件击倒了他们。如今，我们还未建立那些规则。

If you think about it, the cost of promulgating international rules is zilch -- nothing. Why on Earth are they not there? I realized that the reason they're not there is that until we have a critical mass of informed citizens in our own societies, politicians will get away with gestures. That unless we have an informed society, what politicians do, especially in relation to Africa, is gestures: things that look good, but don't work. And so I realized we had to go through the business of building an informed citizenry.

假若你们思考下，颁布这些国际规则成本就是零--不需任何成本。但它们为何就是没有呢？我意识到问题的根源所在就是政客们总是故作姿态、不做实事，除非我们的国家都拥有一群知情的公民。除非我们有一个开明的社会，政客们对于非洲问题都只是做做姿态：信言不美，美言不信啊。我又意识到我们还需要建立起一个开明的社会。

That's why I broke all the professional rules of conduct for an economist, and I wrote an economics book that you could read on a beach. . However, I have to say, the process of communication does not come naturally to me. This is why I'm on this stage, but it's alarming. I grew up in a culture of self-effacement.

这就是我破除所有为经济学家制定的规则以来，写的一部可以在沙滩上阅读的经济学著作。不过，我不得不说，进行沟通并不是如此容易的。这就我站在这个舞台上的原因，但却是发人深省的。我是生长一种自谦的文化氛围中。

My wife showed me a blog comment on one of my last talks, and the blog comment said, "Collier is not charismatic ---- but his arguments are compelling." If you agree with that sentiment, and if you agree that we need a critical mass of informed citizenry, you will realize that I need you. Please, become ambassadors. Thank you.

我的妻子向我展示了一个对我演讲进行批评的博客评论，这个博客评论则说：“科利尔并不迷人--  --但他的说理则令人信服。”假使你们同意这一观点，而且你们同意我们需要一个开明的社会和一群知情的民众，你们则会意识到我需要你们。请成为[我的]代表吧。谢谢。

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