钱生钱已是过时的游戏？当下最出位的致富杠杆是什么？

　　各位老铁，《如何不靠运气获得财务自由》已经翻译完毕，并简单排版制作了一份PDF。感兴趣的旁友可以到我的公众号“雪与炭”的对话框里输入 真探领取阅读。祝用餐愉快。

　　今天再分享其中的三章，关于杠杆。要说当下这个时代和Naval的这本心经，与以往境况的最大区别，就是杠杆了，这个是随着科技进步而来的。用叶芝老师的一本书名说，就是《随时间而来的智慧》。

　　本文要点：

　　1、致富需要杠杆，不用杠杆想达到财务自由就是开玩笑；

　　2、劳动力和资本是旧式的杠杆，它们要么被高估，要么是上个世纪的游戏；

　　3、当前信息时代，有更加高效的致富杠杆，无需别人许可，也不需要资本，就可以强力放大你的劳动成果。

　　阅读全文需50分钟，可以只读中文。

　　翻译：真探叔Rust，版权所有。

　　Naval

　　21. Labor and Capital Are Old Leverage

　　Wealth requires leverage. Labor andcapital are older forms of leverage that everyone is fighting over.

　　21、劳动力和资本是旧式的杠杆

　　致富需要杠杆。劳动力和资本是人人争夺的老式杠杆。

　　Our brainsaren’t evolved to comprehend new forms of leverage

　　Nivi: Why don’t we talk alittle bit about leverage?

　　The firsttweet in the storm was a famous quote from Archimedes, which was, “Give me alever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the Earth.”

　　The nexttweet was, “Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital,people and products with no marginal costs of replication.”

　　我们的大脑还没有进化到能够理解新式的杠杆

　　Nivi：我们来谈谈杠杆吧。第一条推是引用了阿基米德的名言，“给我一个足够长的杠杆和一个支点，我就能够撬动地球。”第二条推是，“财富需要杠杆，商业杠杆来自于资本、人力和无需边际成本就能大规模复制的产品。”

　　Naval: Leverage iscritical. The reason I stuck in Archimedes quote in there is… normally I don’tlike putting other people’s quotes in my Twitter. That doesn’t add any value.You can go look up those people’s quotes. But this quote I had to put in therebecause it’s just so fundamental. I read it when I was very, very young and ithad a huge impression on me.

　　We all knowwhat leverage is when we use a seesaw or a lever. We understand how that worksphysically, but I think what our brains aren’t really well-evolved tocomprehend is how much leverage is possible in modern society and what thenewest forms of leverage are.

　　Naval：杠杆是关键。通常我不喜欢把别人的名言放在我的推特上，不会为我增加价值。你可以自己去看那些人的名言。

　　我不得不把阿基米德的这句名言放在这里，因为它是一切的基础。我在很小很小的时候就读过这句话，给我的印象太深了。

　　我们玩跷跷板或者使用撬杠的时候，都知道杠杆是什么，它的物理原理是什么。

　　但我觉得我们的大脑进化到现在，还没有真正理解到杠杆在现代社会中有多大的可能性，以及最新形式的杠杆是什么。

　　Society overvalues labor leverage

　　The oldestform of leverage is labor, which is people working for you. Instead of melifting rocks, I can have 10 people lift rocks. Then just by my guidance onwhere the rock should go, a lot more rocks get moved than I could do myself.Everybody understands this because we’re evolved to understand the labor formof leverage, so what happens is society overvalues labor as a form of leverage.

　　社会高估了劳动力杠杆

　　最古老的杠杆形式是劳动力，也就是为你工作的人。不用我搬石头，我可以找10个人替我搬口袋妖怪绿叶。我只需要指挥他们，石头应该搬到哪里，就会比我自己搬得又快又多。

　　每个人都明白这一点，因为一路进化过来，我们已经理解了劳动力杠杆。结果就是社会高估了劳动力作为杠杆形式的价值。

　　This is why your parents are impressed when you get a promotion and you have lots of peopleworking underneath you. This is why when a lot of naive people, when you tellthem about your company, they’ll say, “How many people work there?” They’ll usethat as a way to establish credibility. They’re trying to measure how muchleverage and impact you actually have.

　　Or whensomeone starts a movement, they’ll say how many people they have or how big thearmy is. We just automatically assume that more people is better.

　　这就是为什么当你升职，有了很多下属的时候，你的父母会觉得你了不起。

　　这也是为什么很多天真的人，当你跟他们谈起你的公司时，他们会问，“你有多少员工？”他们将以此来衡量你的信用度和影响力。

　　或者当有人发起一场运动时，他们会看有多少人参加或者有多少军队。我们就是想当然地认为人越多越好。

　　You want the minimum amount of labor that allows you to use the other forms of leverage

　　I wouldargue that this is the worst form of leverage that you could possibly use.Managing other people is incredibly messy. It requires tremendous leadershipskills. You’re one short hop from a mutiny or getting eaten or torn apart bythe mob.

　　It’sincredibly competed over. Entire civilizations have been destroyed over thisfight. For example, communism, Marxism, is all about the battle between capitaland labor, das kapital and das labor. It’s kind of a trap.

　　You reallywant to stay out of labor-based leverage. You want the minimum amount of peopleworking with you that are going to allow to use the other forms of leverage,which I would argue are much more interesting.

　　你只需要最低限度的人力，来保证你可以使用其他形式的杠杆

　　我认为劳动力是最糟糕的杠杆。因为管人是非常麻烦的，它需要高超的领导技巧。你距离兵变、被暴民吃掉或撕成碎片都只有一步之遥。

　　人之间竞争异常激烈，整个文明都被这种战争摧毁了。例如，GC主义、马克思主义，都是关于资本与劳动力之间的斗争。这有点像个陷阱。

　　你真的应该远离以劳动力为基础的杠杆。你只需要最低限度的人力和你一起工作，能够保证你运用其他形式的杠杆。这样会更好。

　　Capital hasbeen the dominant form of leverage in the last century

　　The secondtype of leverage is capital. This one’s a little less hardwired into us becauselarge amounts of money moving around and being saved and being invested inmoney markets, these are inventions of human beings the in last few hundred tofew thousand years. They’re not evolved with us from hundreds of thousands ofyears.

　　Weunderstand them a little bit less well. They probably require more intelligenceto use correctly, and the ways in which we use them keep changing. Managementskills from a hundred years ago might still apply today, but investing in thestock market skills from a hundred years ago probably don’t apply to the samelevel today.

　　资本是在上个世纪占统治地位的杠杆

　　第二种杠杆是资本。这种杠杆和我们的连接还没有那么紧，因为大量的钱流动、被储蓄，然后投入到货币市场，是人类在过去几百年上千年里的发明。它没有和我们一起经过几万年的进化。

　　对资本杠杆，我们的理解没有那么深，正确使用它可能需要更高的智商，而且我们使用它的方式也在不断变化。

　　一百年前的管理技能，现在可能仍然适用；但是一百年前的股市投资方法，在今天可能就不够用了。

　　Capital is atrickier form of leverage to use. It’s more modern. It’s the one that peoplehave used to get fabulously wealthy in the last century. It’s probably been thedominant form of leverage in the last century.

　　You can seethis by who are the richest people. It’s bankers, politicians in corruptcountries who print money, essentially people who move large amounts of moneyaround.

　　If you lookat the top of very large companies, outside of technology companies, in many,many large old companies, the CEO job is really a financial job. They’re reallyfinancial asset managers. Sometimes, an asset manager can put a pleasant faceon it, so you get a Warren Buffet type.

　　资本是一种更难运用的杠杆，它更现代。在上个世纪，人们靠它获得了惊人的财富。它可能是上世纪最具统治地位的杠杆形式。

　　看看最有钱的人都是谁，你就能认识到这一点。是银行家，还有腐败国家的政客，他们大印钞票；本质上就是那些可以大量转移钱的人。

　　你再看看大公司的高层，除了科技公司，在很多老派的大公司，首席执行官就是负责财务的，他们实际上就是金融资产管理者。

　　有时候，资产经理会摆出一副假装和善的面孔，你就看到一个沃伦•巴菲特式的人物。

　　But deep down, I think we all dislike capital as a form of leverage because it feelsunfair. It’s this invisible thing that can be accumulated and passed acrossgenerations and suddenly seems to result in people having gargantuan amounts ofmoney with nobody else around them or necessarily sharing in it.

　　That said,capital is a powerful form of leverage. It can be converted to labor. It can beconverted to other things. It’s very surgical, very analytical.

　　但在内心深处，我觉得我们都不喜欢资本杠杆，因为它让人感觉不公平。

　　资本是一种无形的东西，可以不断积累并代代相传，然后就会导致有人突然拥有了巨额的财富，但是身边连个亲人都没有了，也不用跟社会分享。

　　总之把，资本是一种强大的杠杆，它可以转化为劳动力，或者其他东西。

　　它像外科手术一样复杂，需要很强的分析能力。

　　If you are abrilliant investor and give $1 billion and you can make a 30% return with it,whereas anybody else can only make a 20% return, you’re going to get all themoney and you’re going to get paid very handsomely for it.

　　It scalesvery, very well. If you get good at managing capital, you can manage more andmore capital much more easily than you can manage more and more people.

　　如果你是一个很聪明的投资者，给你10亿美元，你可以用它获得30%的回报，而其他人只能获得20%的回报，那你就会赚走所有的钱，你自己也能得到丰厚的酬劳。

　　资本的扩张能力非常强。如果你善于管理资本，那管理越来越多的资本，比管理越来越多的人，要容易得多。

　　You need specific knowledge and accountability to obtain capital

　　It is a goodform of leverage, but the hard part with capital is how do you obtain it? That’swhy I talked about specific knowledge and accountability first.

　　If you havespecific knowledge in a domain and if you’re accountable and you have a goodname in that domain, then people are going to give you capital as a form ofleverage that you can use to then go get more capital.

　　你需要特知和责任感来获得资本

　　资本是一种很好的杠杆，困难在于你怎么获得它？这就是为什么我先谈到特知和责任感。

　　如果你在某个领域富有特知，又充满责任感，好名远扬，那么就会有人投给你资金，以此为杠杆，你可以去赚取更多的资本。

　　Capital alsois fairly well understood. I think a lot of the knocks against capitalism comebecause of the accumulation of capital.

　　资本也被研究得比较透了。我觉得，很多对资本主义的抨击都是因为资本的过度积累。

　　22. Product and Media are NewLeverage

　　Product and media are the leverage ofnew wealth. Create software and media that work for you while you sleep.

　　22、产品和媒体是新的杠杆

　　产品和媒体是新财富的杠杆。开发软件和媒体产品，让它们在你睡觉的时候帮你赚钱。

　　Product andmedia are the new leverage

　　Naval: The mostinteresting and the most important form of leverage is this idea of productsthat have no marginal cost of replication. This is the new form of leverage.

　　This wasonly invented in the last few hundred years. It got started with the printingpress. It accelerated with broadcast media, and now it’s really blown up withthe Internet and with coding.

　　Now, you canmultiply your efforts without having to involve other humans and withoutneeding money from other humans.

　　This podcastis a form of leverage. Long ago, I would have had to sit in a lecture hall andlecture each of you personally. I would have maybe reached a few hundred peopleand that would have been that.

　　Naval：最让人感兴趣和最重要的杠杆，是不需要边际成本就可以大量复制的产品。这是新的杠杆形式，是最近几百年才发明的。

　　它始于印刷机，伴随广播媒体的发展而加速，如今则随着互联网和编程而爆炸。

　　现在，你不需要其他人参与，也不需要别人出钱，就可以加倍放大自己的努力成果。

　　本播客就是一种杠杆。如果是在很久以前，我就必须坐在一个讲堂里，亲自跟每个人讲课，大概只能接触到几百人，也就这么多了。

　　Then 40 years ago, 30 years ago, I would have to be lucky to get on TV, which issomebody else’s leverage. They would have distorted the message. They wouldtaken the economics out of it or charged me for it. They would have muddled themessage, and I would have been lucky to get that form of leverage.

　　Today,thanks to the Internet, I can buy a cheap microphone, hook it up to a laptop oran iPad, and there you are all listening.

　　40年或30年前，我要非常幸运才能上电视，因为那是别人的杠杆。电视会歪曲信息或者把信息搞混，而且它没有经济性，我可能要付费。即便如此，能够得到这种形式的杠杆，我也足够幸运了。

　　今天呢，多亏了互联网，我只要买一个便宜的麦克风，把它连到笔记本或iPad上，全世界的人就都能听到了。

　　Productleverage is where the new fortunes are made

　　This newestform of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made, all the newbillionaires. The last generation, fortunes were made by capital. That was theWarren Buffets of the world.

　　But the newgeneration’s fortunes are all made through code or media. Joe Rogan making 50to a 100 million bucks a year from his podcast. You’re going to have aPewDiePie. I don’t know how much money he’s rolling in, but he’s bigger thanthe news. The Fortnite players. Of course Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg andLarry Page and Sergey Brin and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. That is all code-basedleverage.

　　产品杠杆是新财富的创造之地

　　这种最新的杠杆，创造了所有的新财富以及新的亿万富翁。

　　上一代人靠资本赚钱，那是沃伦·巴菲特的世界。

　　新一代的财富都是通过代码或媒体创造的。乔·罗根通过播客每年赚5000万到1亿美元。还有PewDiePie，我不知道他赚了多少钱，但他的影响力超过新闻媒体。还有Fortnite游戏的玩家，都赚了大钱。

　　当然还有杰夫·贝佐斯、马克·扎克伯格、拉里·佩奇、谢尔盖·布林、比尔·盖茨和史蒂夫·乔布斯，他们的财富都是基于代码的杠杆。

　　Combiningall three forms of leverage is a magic combination

　　Now, thebeauty is when you combine all of these three. That’s where tech startupsreally excel, where you take just the minimum, but highest output labor thatyou can get, which are engineers, and designers, product developers. Then youadd in capital. You use that for marketing, advertising, scaling. You add inlots of code and media and podcasts and content to get it all out there.

　　That is amagic combination, and that’s why you see technology startups explode out ofnowhere, use massive leverage and just make huge outsize returns.

　　把这三种形式的杠杆结合起来，将会产生神奇的魔力

　　现在，当你把这三种杠杆结合起来的时候，奇妙的事情就发生了。

　　这就是科技初创公司优胜的地方。在这里，你只需要招募最低限度但是有最高产出的人力，就是工程师、设计师和产品开发人员。

　　然后加上资本，用来做营销、广告、扩大规模，最后加入大量的代码、媒体、播客和内容等所有的东西。

　　这是一个魔力组合。这也是为什么你会看到一些科技初创公司，不知道从什么地方突然就爆出来了，因为它们利用了强力的杠杆，然后获得了超额的回报。

　　Product andmedia leverage are permissionless

　　Nivi: Do you want to talka little bit about permissioned versus permissionless?

　　产品和媒体是无需许可的杠杆

　　Nivi：你想谈谈许可与无需许可的区别吗？

　　Naval: Probably the mostinteresting thing to keep in mind about the new forms of leverage is they arepermissionless. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to usethem or succeed.

　　For laborleverage, somebody has to decide to follow you. For capital leverage, somebodyhas to give you money to invest or to turn into a product.

　　Coding,writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing, these kinds of things,these are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, andthat’s why they are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage.

　　Naval：关于新的杠杆形式，最让人感兴趣的就是它们是无需许可的。你不需要经过任何人的同意就可以使用。

　　劳动力杠杆，需要有人愿意跟随你；资本杠杆，需要有人投钱给你，你再拿去投资或者生产东西。

　　但是，编程、写作、录播客、发推、在油管发视频，这些都是不需要许可的，是非常平等的。它们是机会均等的杠杆。

　　As much as people may rail on Facebook and YouTube, they’re not going to stop using itbecause this permissionless leverage, where everyone can be a broadcaster, isjust too good.

　　The same wayyou can rail upon Apple for having a slightly closed ecosystem in the iPhone,but everyone’s writing apps for it. As long as you can write apps for it, youcan get rich or reach users doing that, why not?

　　尽管人们会抱怨脸书和油管，但是不会停止使用它们，因为这种无需许可的杠杆太好用了，在这里，每个人都可以放大自己的声音。

　　同样，你也可以指责苹果手机的生态系统有点封闭，但是每个人都在为它写应用程序。

　　只要你可以为它编写应用程序，你就可以赚钱，或者接触到更多用户，为什么不呢？

　　The robotarmy is already here—code lets you tell them what to do

　　I think ofall the forms of leverage, the best one in modern society … This is glib. Thisis a little overused. This is why I tell people learn to code. It’s that wehave this idea that in the future there’s going to be these robots and they’regoing to be doing everything.

　　That may betrue, but I would say that the majority of the robot revolution has alreadyhappened. The robots are already here and there are way more robots than thereare humans, it’s just that we pack them in data centers for heat and efficiencyreasons. We put them in servers. They’re inside the computers. All thecircuits, it’s robot minds inside that’s doing all the work.

　　机器人部队已经有了，就是代码，你只需要告诉它们做什么

　　在当代社会，所有杠杆中最好的一种，我觉得就是编程。这么说可能有点草率，也说滥了。但我一直告诉人们去学编程。

　　我们都有这样的想法，在将来，我们会有大量的机器人，它们会做所有的事情。

　　这很可能是真的。但我要说的是，机器人革命的大部分已经发生了。

　　机器人已经出现了，而且它们的数量远超过人类。只是出于散热和空间效率的原因，它们被集成在数据中心，在服务器上，在电脑里。所有的电路，里面都是机器人的大脑在工作。

　　Every great software developer, for example, now has an army of robots working for him atnighttime, while he or she sleeps, after they’ve written the code and it’s justcranking away.

　　The robotarmy is already here. The robot revolution has already happened. We’re abouthalfway through it. We’re just adding in much more of the hardware componentthese days as we get more comfortable with the idea of autonomous vehicles andautonomous airplanes and autonomous ships and maybe autonomous trucks. There’redelivery bots and Boston Dynamics robots and all that.

　　例如，每一个优秀的软件开发人员，现在都有一支机器人部队，在他或她晚上睡觉时候，彻夜工作。他们只要写好代码，一切就跑起来了。

　　机器人大军已经来了，机器人革命已经发生了，我们已经走到了半路。

　　随着我们越来越接受自动驾驶汽车、自动飞机、自动船只，也许还有自动卡车，只要往上添加更多的硬件组织就可以了。

　　现在已经有了送货机器人、波士顿动力公司的机器人，等等。

　　But robots who are doing web searching for you, for example, are already here. The oneswho are cleaning up your video and audio and transmitting it around the worldare already here. The ones who are answering many customer service queries,things that you would have had to call a human for are already here.

　　An army ofrobots is already here白哉. It’s very cheaply available. The bottleneck is justfiguring out intelligent and interesting things to do to them.

　　Essentially you can order this army of robots around. The commands have to be issued in acomputer language, in a language that they understand.

　　但是，能够帮你进行网络搜索的机器人已经有了，帮你整理视频和音频并能传播到全世界的机器人也有了，可以回应客服问题、让你不用再打给真人的机器人也有了。

　　机器人部队已经在这里了，而且便宜好用。瓶颈只在于找到聪明又有趣的事情给它们去做。

　　只要你能用它们理解的语言，也就是计算机语言，发出命令，你就可以指挥这只机器人大军。

　　These robotsaren’t very smart. They have to be told very precisely what to do and how to doit. Coding is such a great superpower because now you can speak the language ofthe robot armies and you can tell them what to do.

　　这些机器人还不是很智能，你必须很准确地告诉它们做什么，以及怎么做。

　　所以，编程是强大的超能力，让你可以讲机器人部队的语言，对它们发号施令。

　　Nivi: I think at thispoint, people are not only commanding the army of robots within servers throughcode, they’re actually manipulating the movement of trucks, of other people.Just ordering a package on Amazon, you’re manipulating the movement of manypeople and many robots to get a package delivered to you.

　　People are doing the same things to build businesses now. There’s the army of robotswithin servers and then there’s also an army of actual robots and people thatare being manipulated through software.

　　Nivi：我认为到目前这个时间点，人们不仅通过代码指挥服务器内的机器人，他们实际上以及在***纵着卡车和其他人的移动。

　　在亚马逊上下一个订单，他们就可以***纵很多人和机器人的移动，把包裹送到你的手中。

　　现在，人们也在用同样的方式来建立企业。服务器里有机器人，在外面，也有真正的机器人和人，被软件***作着。

　　24. Pick a Business Model With Leverage

　　Ideally, you should pick a businessmodel with network effects, low marginal costs and scale economies.

　　24、选择一个有杠杆的商业模式

　　理想情况下，您应该选择具有网络效应、低边际成本和规模经济的商业模式。

　　Scalee conomies: the more you produce, the cheaper it gets

　　规模经济：你生产得越多，它的成本就越低

　　Nivi: One more questionabout leverage. Do you think a choice of business model or a choice of productcan also bring a kind of leverage to it?

　　For example,pursuing a business that has network effects. Pursuing a business that hasbrand effects. Or other choices of business model that people could manipulatethat just give you free leverage.

　　Nivi：关于杠杆还有一个问题。你认为对商业模式或者产品的选择，能不能带来某种杠杆作用？例如，选择具有网络效应的，具有品***效应的，或者其他能够带给你免费杠杆的商业模式？

　　Naval: Yeah, there’s somereally good microeconomic concepts that are important to understand.

　　One of thoseis scale economies, which is the more you produce of something the cheaper itgets to make it. That’s something that a lot of businesses have, BasicEconomics 101.

　　You shouldtry and get into a business where making Widget Number 12 is cheaper thanmaking Widget Number 5, and making Widget Number 10,000 is a lot cheaper thanthe previous ones. This builds up an automatic barrier to entry againstcompetition and getting commoditized. That’s an important one.

　　Naval：是的，这里有一些非常重要的微观经济学概念需要理解。

　　其中之一就是规模经济，你生产某种东西越多，生产它的成本就会越低。很多行业都是这样。这是基础经济学101。

　　你应该试着进入这样的行业，它生产第12号小部件比第5号要便宜，第10000号比之前的要便宜得多。这样就自动建立起了一个进入壁垒，可以对抗竞争和商品化。这一点很重要。

　　Zero marginal cost of reproduction: producing more is free

　　Another oneis, and this is along the same lines, but technology products especially, and mediaproducts, have this great quality where they have zero marginal cost ofreproduction. Creating another copy of what you just created is free.

　　When somebody listens to this podcast or watches a YouTube video about this, itdoesn’t cost me anything for the next person who shows up. Those zero marginalcost things, they take a while to get going because you make very little moneyper user, but over time they can really, really add up.

　　零边际再生产成本：生产更多都是免费的

　　沿着同一条线下来，另外一种就是科技产品，特别是媒体产品，有非常高质量的话，它们的再生产的边际成本为零。你刚刚创作了一个东西，再创建一个它的副本是免费的。

　　当有人听这个播客或在油管上看关于这个的视频时，我不会为下一个光顾的人付出任何成本。

　　这些零边际成本的东西，需要时间的酝酿，因为你在每个用户身上赚的钱很少，但是随着时间的推移，它们会累积起来。

　　Joe Rogan is working no harder on his current podcast than he was on Podcast number 1, buton Podcast number 1,100 he’s making a million dollars from the podcast whereasfor the previous one he probably lost money; for the first one. That’s anexample of zero marginal cost.

　　乔·罗根制作他现在的播客并不比第一个播客更努力，但是在第1100号播客上，他赚了100万美元；而在之前的播客上，他可能还亏了钱。

　　这就是边际成本为零的例子。

　　Netw orkeffects: value grows as the square of the customers

　　Then, themost subtle but the most important is this idea of network effects. It comesfrom computer networking. Bob Metcalfe, who created Ethernet, famously coinedMetcalfe’s Law, which is the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in the network.

　　If a networkof size 10 would have a value of a 100, a network of a size 100 would have avalue of 10,000. It’s not just 10 times more, it’s 100 times more, because ofthe square; the difference is the square.

　　网络效应：价值增长是客户数量增长的平方倍

　　最微妙但又最重要的是网络效应的概念。它来自计算机网络。

　　以太网的发明者鲍勃·梅特卡夫(BobMetcalfe)，提出了著名的梅特卡夫定律，即网络的价值与网络中节点数量的平方成正比。

　　如果用户数量为10的网络的价值为100，那么数量为100的网络的价值就是10,000。不是10倍，而是100倍，是平方，不同之处就是这个平方。

　　You want tobe in a network effects business, assuming you’re not number two. If you’renumber one in network effect business, you win everything. Example: if you lookat Facebook, your friends and family social networking protocol. Who’s theircompetitor? Nobody, because they won everything through network effects. Whichis why when people say, “Well, I can just switch away from Facebook,” theydon’t realize that network effects create natural monopolies. They’re very,very powerful things.

　　你要做具有网络效应的生意，你不能是第二名。如果你是网络效应行业的老大，你就赢得了一切。

　　你看看脸书，你的朋友和家人都在上面，谁是它的竞争对手？没有人，因为它通过网络效应赢得了一切。

　　当人们说，“好吧，我可以离开脸书”时，他们没有意识到网络效应形成了天然的垄断。这是非常强大的东西。

　　Network effect businesses are natural monopolies

　　One of thedirty secrets of Silicon Valley is that a lot of the winning businesses arenatural monopolies. Even ride-sharingtends towards one winner-take-all system.

　　Uber willalways have better economics than Lyft, as long as it’s moving more drivers andmore riders around. Something like Google, there’s basically only one viablesearch engine. I do like DuckDuckGo, privacy reasons, but they’re just alwaysgonna be behind because of network effects. Twitter: where else would you gofor microblogging? Even YouTube has weak network effects, but they’re stillpowerful enough that there’s really no number two site that you go to, toconsume your video on a regular basis. It even turns out in e-tail, AmazonPrime and kind of the convenience of stored credit cards and informationcreates a powerful network effect.

　　网络效应企业天生具有垄断性

　　硅谷的一个肮脏秘密是，许多成功的企业都是天然垄断的。

　　甚至拼车系统也倾向于赢家通吃了。优步的经济效益将永远好于Lyft，只要它能调动更多的司机和乘客。

　　像谷歌，基本上只有它这一个搜索引擎了。我确实喜欢DuckDuckGo，***方面的原因，但因为网络效应他们一直是落后的。

　　推特，除了它你还能去哪里找微博客？油管的网络效应也许有点弱，但也足够强大了，没有第二个视频网站，能让你经常上去看视频。

　　甚至在电子长尾、亚马逊会员等类似的系统，依靠存储了信用卡和个人信息的便利性，都创造了强大的网络效应。

　　In a network effect, each new user adds value to the existing users

　　What is anetwork effect? Let’s just define it precisely. A network effect is when eachadditional user adds value to the existing user base. Your users themselves arecreating some value for the existing users.

　　The classicexample that I think everybody can understand is, language. Let’s say thatthere’s 100 people living in the community and speak 10 different languages,and each person just speaks one of those 10. Well, you’re having to translateall the time; it’s incredibly painful. But if all 100 of you spoke the samelanguage, it would add tremendous value.

　　在网络效应中，每个新用户都为既有用户增加了价值

　　什么是网络效应？让我们精确地定义一下。

　　网络效应是指每个新增用户都为现有的用户群增加了价值，您的用户本身在为现有用户创造价值。

　　我认为大家都能理解的一个经典例子就是语言。

　　假设社区里有100个人，他们说10种不同的语言，每个人只说这10种语言中的一种。那就一直需要翻译，这无疑是非常痛苦的。

　　但如果他们100个人都说同一种语言，就会带来巨大的价值。

　　The way thatcommunity will play out is, 10 people start off speaking 10 languages, andlet’s say one extra person learns English. Well, now all of a sudden, 11 peopleknow English, so the next person comes in to learn a new language is probablygoing to choose English. At some point, let’s say English gets to 20 or 25people, it’s done. It’s just going to own the entire language marketplace, andthe rest of the languages will get competed out.

　　Which iswhy, long-term, the entire world is probably going to end up speaking Englishand Chinese. China’s closed off on the Internet, but the Internet itself is agreat leveler, and people who want to communicate on the Internet are forced tospeak English because the largest community of people on the `Internet speaksEnglish.

　　社区的运作方式是，一开始10个人说10种语言，假设有一个额外的人学了英语，那么突然就有11个人懂英语了，接下来要学新语言的人就很可能会选择英语。

　　到了某一时刻，假设英语人数达到20或25人，就结束了。英语将拥有整个语言市场，其他语言将被淘汰。

　　这就是为什么，从长远来看，整个世界可能最终会说英语和汉语。

　　***的网络是封闭的，但互联网本身是一个很好的平台。想在互联网上交流的人被迫说英语，因为互联网上最大的群体都“说英语”。

　　I alwaysfeel bad for my colleagues who grew up speaking foreign languages in foreigncountries, because you don’t have access to so many books; so many books justhaven’t been translated into other languages. If you only spoke French, or youonly spoke German, or you only spoke Hindi, for example, you would be at asevere disadvantage in a technical education.

　　Invariably,if you go and get a technical education, you have to learn English just becauseyou have to read these books that have this data that has not been translated.Languages are probably the oldest example of network effect.

　　Money isanother example. We should all probably be using the same money, except for thefact that geographic and regulatory boundaries have created these artificialislands of money. But even then, the world tends to use a single currency asthe reserve currency at most times; currently, the US dollar.

　　我总是为那些在国外长大说其他语言的同时感到难过，因为有很多书他们读不了，这些书没有被翻译成他们的语言。

　　例如，如果你只会说法语，或者德语，或者印地语，你在技术教育中就会处于严重的劣势。

　　毫无疑问，如果你去接受技术教育，就必须学英语，因为你必须读那些还没有翻译过的英文书，里面包含最新的数据。

　　语言可能是网络效应最古老的例子。金钱是另一个例子。

　　如果不考虑现实中地理和监管的界限，人为制造的这些货币孤岛的话，我们都应该使用同样的货币。

　　但即便如此，在大多数时候，这个世界仍倾向于使用单一货币作为储备货币，目前就是美元。

　　Zero marginal cost businesses can pivot into network effect businesses

　　Networkeffects are a very powerful concept, and when you’re picking a business model,it’s a really good idea to pick a model where you can benefit from networkeffects, low marginal costs, and scale economies; and these tend to gotogether.

　　Anything that has zero marginal costs of production obviously has scale economies, andthings that have zero marginal costs of reproduction very often tend to havenetwork effects, because it doesn’t cost you anything more to stamp out thething. So then you can just create little hooks for users to add value to eachother.

　　零边际成本业务可以转入网络效应业务

　　网络效应是一个非常强大的概念。当你选择商业模式时，一个可以通过网络效应、低边际成本和规模经济来获益的模式，是非常聪明的选择，而且这些效应倾向于同时发生。

　　任何边际生产成本为零的东西，很明显都具有规模效应，而且往往还具有网络效应，因为炮制它不需要更多成本。然后你就可以创造一些小套路，让用户来互相增加价值。

　　You should always be thinking about how your users, your customers, can add value to eachother because that is the ultimate form of leverage. You’re at the beach in theBahamas or you’re sleeping at night and your customers are adding value to eachother.

　　你应该始终考虑如何让你的用户、客户们去互相增加价值，因为这是杠杆的终极形式。

　　想一想，你躺在巴哈马群岛的海滩上，或者晚上躺在床上，你的客户们在互相增值。

　　更多阅读：

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　　真探叔