阿根廷与理性预期运动

去年阿根廷哈维尔·米雷 (Javier Milei) 当选的激动人心的消息在比特币社区和自由主义者圈子中获得了广泛赞誉。阿根廷数十年的恶性通货膨胀应该会导致人们对央行过度印钞自然产生怀疑，而看到政治能够遵循这一基本逻辑令人欣慰。

Last year brought exciting news with the election of Javier Milei in Argentina, an event that was met with broad acclaim throughout the Bitcoin community and libertarian circles. Given Argentina's decades of hyperinflation, one might expect a natural skepticism towards excessive central bank money printing. It is reassuring to see that politics can follow this basic logic. This was a big win for the sound money movement, of which Bitcoin is a part. The election of the former TV commentator to head of state is a warning call to all central bankers everywhere, and a ripple of hope that democracies can in fact check the power of government bureaucrats.

去年，哈维尔·米雷 (Javier Milei) 在阿根廷当选，带来了令人兴奋的消息，这一事件受到了比特币社区和自由主义者圈子的广泛赞誉。鉴于阿根廷数十年的恶性通货膨胀，人们可能会自然而然地对央行过度印钞表示怀疑。令人欣慰的是，政治能够遵循这一基本逻辑。这是稳健货币运动的一大胜利，比特币就是其中的一部分。这位前电视评论员当选国家元首是对世界各地所有央行行长的警告，也是对民主国家实际上能够遏制政府官僚权力的希望的涟漪。

Argentina and modern macroeconomics

阿根廷与现代宏观经济学

Argentina also played an outsized role in the war of ideas battled in academic economics over the last 30 years. The giants of this field like Robert Lucas, Thomas Sargent, and Ed Prescott were all at the University of Chicago economics department.

阿根廷在过去 30 年学术经济学的思想战争中也发挥了巨大的作用。罗伯特·卢卡斯（Robert Lucas）、托马斯·萨金特（Thomas Sargent）、埃德·普雷斯科特（Ed Prescott）等这一领域的巨头都曾就职于芝加哥大学经济系。

Lucas offered the official critique of central bank stabilization policy in his Nobel-winning article “Expectations and the Neutrality of Money.” He makes a technical contribution establishing a new area of mathematics applied to macroeconomics, following in the footsteps of John Muth. Lucas was a master storyteller and his main idea emerges a simple parable even kids can understand.

卢卡斯在其诺贝尔奖获奖文章《预期与货币中性》中对央行稳定政策提出了官方批评。他追随约翰·穆斯 (John Muth) 的脚步，做出了技术贡献，建立了应用于宏观经济学的数学新领域。卢卡斯是一位讲故事的大师，他的主要思想是一个连孩子都能理解的简单寓言。

Imagine a community of people at a circus who magically receive an extra $20 bill in their pocket. At first, everyone delights in the new money, and they buy more cotton candy, roller coaster rides, and hot dogs. New money now circulates throughout the circus, and yet the total supply of goods and services remains fixed. Over time, prices have only one way to go: up. There may be some adjustment time, but the increase in price is inevitable. And so purchasing power falls, and the general price level will rise.

想象一下马戏团里的一群人神奇地在口袋里收到了额外的 20 美元钞票。起初，每个人都对新钱感到高兴，他们买了更多的棉花糖、过山车和热狗。现在，新资金在整个马戏团中流通，但商品和服务的总供应量仍然固定。随着时间的推移，价格只有一个方向：上涨。可能会有一些调整时间，但涨价是不可避免的。因此购买力下降，总体物价水平将会上升。

But here's the rub: people are rational, so they know this will happen. Therefore, at the moment that everyone receives their $20 bill, they know in advance that everything will ultimately be $20 more expensive. And so it's impossible to fool them into spending more now. In economic terms, these rational expectations will not lead to changes in real consumption. This was a broad critique against Keynesian economics, which argued that increasing the money supply can in fact fool people. Keynesian economics gave a carte blanche to central bankers to manage the money supply to try to induce economic growth. But Lucas argued that such an exercise is a fool's errand. You can't trick people into changing their real consumption or investment if they are smart enough to form rational expectations about the future.

但问题是：人们是理性的，所以他们知道这会发生。因此，当每个人收到 20 美元的钞票时，他们就预先知道所有东西最终都会贵 20 美元。因此，现在不可能欺骗他们增加支出。从经济角度来看，这些理性预期不会导致实际消费发生变化。这是对凯恩斯主义经济学的广泛批评，凯恩斯主义经济学认为增加货币供应量实际上可以愚弄人们。凯恩斯主义经济学赋予央行行长管理货币供应以试图促进经济增长的全权。但卢卡斯认为这样的做法是徒劳的。如果人们足够聪明，能够对未来形成理性预期，那么你就无法欺骗人们改变他们的实际消费或投资。

The rational expectations movement took hold in economics in the '70s and '80s at the freshwater schools of Carnegie Mellon, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Chicago as a pushback against the saltwater schools of Harvard and MIT. Lucas and Sargent often referenced the hyperinflation in Argentina as the prime example of central banking run amok. The University of Chicago at the turn of the century imported dozens of PhD students from Argentina who had lived this daily experience of hyperinflation where prices change not by the quarter or month, but by the week or day. And it's a sad tale that 25 years on, the same is true.

理性预期运动在 70 年代和 80 年代在卡内基梅隆大学、明尼苏达大学和芝加哥大学的淡水学院盛行，作为对哈佛大学和麻省理工学院咸水学院的反击。卢卡斯和萨金特经常将阿根廷的恶性通货膨胀视为中央银行失控的典型例子。芝加哥大学在世纪之交从阿根廷引进了数十名博士生，他们每天都经历过恶性通货膨胀，价格不是按季度或月份变化，而是按周或天变化。这是一个悲伤的故事，25 年过去了，情况依然如此。

Rational Expectations and Bitcoin

理性预期和比特币

It is a loss to the academy that Robert Lucas died, as he pioneered many of the early critiques against central banks. But how does rational expectation square with Bitcoin? This answer is subtle and nuanced. At one level, rational expectations are a strong critique of central banks, as is Bitcoin. So, they have a common enemy. They are both critiquing the poor choices that inevitably ensue from human beings managing their own money supply. For Lucas, aiming to stabilize the macroeconomy by tinkering with the interest rate every six weeks is a waste of time, and ineffective.

罗伯特·卢卡斯的去世是学术界的损失，因为他是许多早期对央行批评的先驱。但理性预期如何与比特币相一致呢？这个答案是微妙而细致的。在某种程度上，理性预期是对央行的强烈批评，比特币也是如此。所以，他们有一个共同的敌人。他们都在批评人类管理自己的货币供应而不可避免地产生的糟​​糕选择。对于卢卡斯来说，通过每六周调整一次利率来稳定宏观经济的目标是浪费时间，而且是无效的。

But the arguments for Bitcoin go further. Bitcoin's issuance schedule is a strong endorsement of a very specific kind of money supply, one that is predictable and unchangeable. In rational expectations, money does not matter, because people are too smart to be fooled by changes in money. For Bitcoin, money supply does matter, and it's vital that everyone knows the supply in advance and that it cannot be altered. So at some level, there are different assumptions about the rationality of people. Lucas argued that people are too rational to be fooled by an errant central bank, while Satoshi assumed (in the design choices of his protocol) that people are not rational enough to completely adjust to bad central bank policies, which is why a fixed and unchangeable money supply is better.

但支持比特币的论点​​更进一步。比特币的发行时间表是对一种非常特殊的货币供应的强烈认可，这种货币供应是可预测且不可改变的。在理性预期中，金钱并不重要，因为人们太聪明，不会被金钱的变化所愚弄。对于比特币来说，货币供应量确实很重要，每个人都提前知道供应量并且供应量无法改变至关重要。所以在某种程度上，人们对理性有不同的假设。卢卡斯认为，人们太理性了，不会被错误的央行愚弄，而中本聪则假设（在他的协议的设计选择中）人们没有足够的理性来完全适应不良的央行政策，这就是为什么一个固定且不可改变的政策。货币供给较好。

An erratic monetary policy, such as those adopted by central banks recently, can damage individual investors and tear the social fabric. The roller coaster ride of interest rates constantly shifting between easy and tight money has a profound impact on an otherwise unknown but essential component of the economy: the allocation of our human capital. The search for yield induces individual investors to gamble in the stock market, and young students to pursue careers in trading rather than producing goods and services in the real economy. A fixed

不稳定的货币政策，例如央行最近采取的货币政策，可能会损害个人投资者并撕裂社会结构。利率的过山车般的变化，不断地在宽松货币和紧缩货币之间转换，对经济中一个未知但重要的组成部分产生了深远的影响：我们的人力资本的配置。对收益的追求促使个人投资者在股票市场上赌博，而年轻学生则从事交易职业，而不是在实体经济中生产商品和服务。一个固定的