Day 5：What valuable company is nobody building
（Tuesday）
各位书友，今天我们一起阅读《Zero to One》第三章ALL HAPPY COMPANIES ARE DIFFERENT 的23-30页。
What valuable company is nobody building?
还有什么有价值的公司没有成立？
01 ALL HAPPY COMPANIES ARE DIFFERENT
THE BUSINESSVERSION of our contrarian question is: what valuable company is nobody building? This question is harder than it looks, because your company could create a lot of value without becoming very valuable itself. Creating value is not enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create.
如果把我们之前提出的反主流问题用在商业上，那就是：还有什么有价值的公司没有成立？这个问题同样比看起来要难回答，因为虽然你的公司自身还不是很有价值，但是已经可以创造价值了。创造价值还不够，你还必须抓得住自己创造的部分价值。
Economists use two simplified models to explain the difference: perfect competition and monopoly.
经济学家用两个简单模型解释了这两种现象：一是完全竞争，二是垄断。
“Perfectcompetition” is considered both the ideal and the default state in Economics. So-called perfectly competitive markets achieve equilibrium when producer supply meets consumer demand. Every firm in a competitive market is undifferentiated and sells the same homogeneous products. Since no firm has any market power, they must all sell at whatever price the market determines. If there is money to be made, new firms will enter the market, increase supply, drive prices down, and thereby eliminate the profits that attracted them in the first place. If too many firms enter the market, they’ll suffer losses, some will fold, and prices will rise back to sustainable levels. Under perfect competition, in the long run no company makes an economic profit.
在经济学入门的第一课中，“完全竞争”是一种理想的、默认的状态。所谓的完全竞争市场在供求相当时达到平衡。处于竞争市场中的每个公司之间没有差别，卖的都是同质产品。因为这些公司都没有市场支配力，其产品价格必须由市场定。如果有钱可赚，就会有新公司入市。这样供给量上升，价格下落，起先吸引这些新公司的利润荡然无存。如果进入市场的公司太多，这些公司就会亏损，一些还会倒闭。最终价格会回升到可维持的水平。在完全竞争下，从长远来看，没有公司会获得经济利益。
The opposite of perfect competition is monopoly. Whereas a competitive firm must sell at the market price, a monopoly owns its market, so it can set its own prices. Since it has no competition, it produces at the quantity and price combination that maximizes its profits.
与完全竞争相反的是垄断。竞争性公司的产品由市场定价，而垄断公司拥有自己的市场，所以可以自己定价。没有了竞争，垄断公司可以自由决定供给量和价格，以实现利益最大化。
To an economist, every monopoly looks the same, whether it deviously eliminatesrivals, secures a license from the state, or innovates its way to the top.
在经济学家眼中，无论垄断企业是靠什么方式成立的，是耍手段消灭竞争对手，还是从政府那儿弄到了许可证，抑或是靠创新一步步攀到了顶峰，它们都是一样的。
02 LIES PEOPLE TELL
How much of the world is actually monopolistic? How much is truly competitive? It’s hard to say, because our common conversation about these matters is so confused. To the outside observer, all businesses can seem reasonably alike, so it’s easy to perceive only small differences between them.
世界上有多少真正垄断的市场？又有多少真正完全竞争的市场？这很难说，因为我们对垄断和竞争的认识本身就很模糊。在旁观者看来，所有企业都一样，他们只能看出两者间的一些细微差别。
But the reality is much more binary than that. There’s an enormous difference between perfect competition and monopoly, and most businesses are much closer to one extreme than we commonly realize.
但是事实要更为两极分化。完全竞争和垄断之间存在巨大差别，因此大多数企业都比我们想象中的更靠近这两个极端之一。
The confusion comes from a universal bias for describing market conditions in self-serving ways: both monopolists and competitors are incentivized to bend the truth.
我们对两者的模糊概念源于企业从对己有利的角度描述市场：不管是垄断者还是竞争者，都乐于歪曲事实来维护自己的利益。
03 Monopoly Lies
Monopolists lie to protect themselves. They know that bragging about their great monopoly invites being audited, scrutinized, and attacked. Since they very much want their monopoly profits to continue unmolested, they tend to do whatever they can to conceal their monopoly—usually by exaggerating the power of their (nonexistent) competition.
垄断者为了自问保护而撒谎。他们知道炫耀垄断会招致检查、审核甚至遭受打击，所以为了继续不受干扰地获得垄断利润，他们会想方设法来隐瞒垄断这个事实，通常的方法是夸大（并不存在的）竞争。
Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a Monopoly.
可想而知，对外，谷歌当然不会宣称自己是垄断企业。
04 Competitive Lies
Non-monopolists tell the opposite lie: “we’re in a league of our own.” Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a start-up can make. The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition.
非垄断者的谎言与垄断者相反，他们不会夸大竞争对立，而是会说：“我们结成了自己的联盟。”创业家通常倾向于对市场竞争轻描淡写，但这却是初创公司犯下的最大错误。而最致命的诱惑就是将市场描述得太狭小，好像你可以理所当然地驾驭它一样。
Creative industries work this way, too. No screenwriter wants to admit that her new movie script simply rehashes what has already been done before. Rather, the pitch is: “This film will combine various exciting elements in entirely new ways.” It could even be true. Suppose her idea is to have Jay-Z star in a cross between Hackers and Jaws: rap star joins elite group of hackers to catch the shark that killed his friend. That has definitely never been done before. But, like the lack of British restaurants in Palo Alto, maybe that’s a good thing.
创意产业也遵循同样的原则。没有一个编剧愿意承认他的新电影剧本只是新瓶装旧酒。相反，他们更乐于听到：“这部电影用一种崭新的手法将各种激动人心的要素融合在一起。”这或许是真话。假设他的想法是让说唱歌手杰斯在糅合了电影《黑客》和《大白鲨》的一部影片中担任角色：一个说唱歌手加入了黑客精英组织，然后去捉一头杀害了他朋友的鲨鱼。这绝对是前所未有的，但就像帕洛阿尔托缺少英式餐厅一样，那可能是有原因的。
Non-monopolists exaggerate their distinction by defining their market as the intersection of various smaller markets:
British food? Restaurant ? Palo Alto
Rap star? Hackers ? Sharks
非垄断者通过把他们的市场定义成各种更小市场的交集来夸大自己的独特性
Monopolists, by contrast, disguise their monopoly by framing their market as the
union of several large markets:
search engine? mobile phones? wearable computers? self-driving cars？
相反，垄断者通过把他们的市场描述成若干大市场的并集来伪装他们的垄断性。
What does amonopolist’s union story look like in practice? Consider a statement from Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s testimony at a 2011 congressional hearing:
垄断者自己表造的并集故事在现实当中的情况如何呢？让我们来看看谷歌董事长埃里克.施密特在2011年的国会听证会上做出的陈述：
We face an extremely competitive landscape in which consumers have a multitude of options to access information.
Or, translated from PR-speak to plain English:
Google is a small fish in a big pond. We could be swallowed whole at any time. We are not the monopoly that the government is looking for.
我们面对一个极其严酷的竞争格局，消费者有大量的选择去获取信息。
将这个公关说法转成更直白的陈述是：谷歌只是大池塘里的一条小鱼，我们可能随时被人吞下肚去，我们不是政府正在寻找的垄断企业。
领读达人：刘亚南
本月共读《Zero to One》英文版，长按图片立即加入！
加入英语共读，打开通往世界的窗户
每月共读一本英文原著，一年共读十二本英文原著
1.01的365次方=37.78343433289 >>>1
1的365次方=1
0.99的365次方= 0.02551796445229 <<<1
每天进步0.01，愿一年后的你，感谢今天的自己
—共读书籍简介—
《Zero to One》涉及哲学、历史、经济等多元领域，解读世界运行的脉络，分享商业与未来发展的落实。该书将帮助我们思考从0到1的秘密，在意想不到之处发现价值与机会。
值得关注的是，这本《Zero to One》绝非学术讨论或者思想大师们的论战，自问世起，它的影响就迅速超越了投资圈，在美国亚马逊图书畅销总榜上跻身前列。