Name: 為何美國蓋東西變得如此困難？ | The Gray Area (Why building things in America has become so hard | The Gray Area)
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T17:30:55.000Z
Duration: 46 min 20 s

I'm Sean, host of this very show, the Gray Area.

我是 Sean，這個節目的主持人，Gray Area。

For the show this week, I'm talking to Mark Dunkelman.

這週節目，我要跟 Mark Dunkelman 聊聊。

He recently wrote a book called why Nothing Works.

他最近寫了一本書，叫做 why Nothing Works。

And if you are the type of person who wonders why nothing seems to work anymore, why the government, our government, can't seem to do anything well or reliably or at scale, this is the book for you, Mark.

如果你是那種會想說「為什麼什麼事情都做不好」的人，為什麼我們的政府好像什麼都做不好、做不穩、做不大，那這本書就是為你寫的，Mark。

Explains sort of how we got here, where things went sideways, and

他解釋了我們是怎麼走到這一步的，事情是怎麼出錯的，

how the hell we can get this thing back on the tracks.

還有我們到底該怎麼讓事情回到正軌。

Let's talk about your book, the title of which is why Nothing Works.

我們來聊聊你的書，書名是 why Nothing Works。

Are you making the case here that America, our beloved country, is broken?

你是在說，我們摯愛的國家美國，已經壞掉了嗎？

這可是個嚴重的指控喔，先生。

Well, yeah, I think that broadly, I'm trying to connect with people who feel frustrated that a country that used to be able to do a lot of big things now seems incapable of doing even the mundane, and

嗯，是啊，我覺得廣泛來說，我試圖連結那些感到沮喪的人們，他們覺得一個曾經能做很多大事的國家，現在似乎連平凡的小事都做不了，而且

that that feels like it's indicative of some larger wrongness with what's happening in America today.

這感覺就像是今天美國正在發生的事情，有什麼更大的問題。

So any democracy has to do a couple of things at the same time.

所以任何民主國家都必須同時做好幾件事。

Citizens have to have a say in the decisions that impact their lives, and

公民必須對影響他們生活的決策有發言權，而且

government has to be empowered to do big, consequential things.

政府必須有能力去做重大的、有影響力的事情。

And you argue this tension is baked uneasily into progressive thought.

而你認為這種張力，不安地融入了進步思想之中。

And really, it goes all the way back to the founding of the country.

事實上，這可以追溯到國家創立之初。

So just say a bit about that and why Hamilton and Jefferson are.

所以請稍微談談這點，以及為什麼漢彌爾頓和傑佛遜是

So right from the beginning of the nation's story, America is betwixt and between two impulses.

所以從國家故事的一開始，美國就處於兩種衝動之間。

And one of those impulses, which you see in the founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is one that is really frightened of centralized power.

其中一種衝動，你可以在創國文獻《獨立宣言》中看到，就是非常害怕中央集權。

it's born from an impulse to say there is some big bureaucracy that is far away that is coercing us to do things that we don't want to do and that the thing that would save us would be freedom from that.

它的誕生源於一種衝動，想要表達有個遙遠的龐大官僚體系正在脅迫我們做不想做的事，而拯救我們的辦法就是擺脫它。

So that's what the Declaration of Independence is.

And when the Founders created independence for us, they created a system under the Articles of Confederation.

而當創始者們為我們爭取獨立時，他們根據《邦聯條例》建立了一個體系。

And the Articles were a system that created real chaos.

而《邦聯條例》建立了一個導致真正混亂的體系。

That we had independent states in order to have a national government.

我們有獨立的各州，但卻沒有一個國家政府。

We didn't have any that didn't have an executive branch.

沒有任何一個州沒有行政部門。

All the states basically had veto power over Anything.

所有州基本上對任何事情都有否決權。

It was like a government run entirely by filibuster, but

這就像一個完全由冗長辯論（filibuster）運作的政府，但

filibuster by any given state, a single senator could filibuster anything.

任何一個州都可以發動冗長辯論，單一參議員就能阻擋任何事情。

And within a decade, people realized that this sort of antithesis of old British colonial rule, which was too centralized, was this the opposite, which was rule under the Articles, was too chaotic.

大約十年後，大家就發現這種與英國舊殖民統治過度集權的對立，也就是《邦聯條例》下的統治，反而過於混亂。

Power was too dispersed and too spread for government to actually run effectively.

權力過於分散，政府根本無法有效運作。

And so the founders tried to find a medium which was the Constitution, which.

是以，創始人們試圖找到一個折衷點，那就是憲法。

Which was our second structure of government, which was sort of an in between, meaning that Hamilton.

這也是我們政府的第二種架構，介於兩者之間，意思是漢密爾頓。

And Hamilton sort of played a larger role in the construction of the Constitution and probably would have taken it further had it not been for some moderated influences.

漢密爾頓在憲法的制定過程中扮演了更重要的角色，如果沒有一些緩和的影響，他可能會做得更多。

But his idea is we need to bring back power to a centralized authority that will be able to make choices.

但他的想法是，我們需要將權力還給一個能夠做出決策的中央集權機構。

That in a pluralistic society with different voices wanting different things and people having different values and ideas, what you need is to empower some centralized decision maker to make good decisions in the public interest.

在一個多元社會裡，有不同的聲音想要不同的東西，人們有不同的價值觀和想法，你需要的是賦予某個中央決策者權力，以便在公共利益上做出良好決策。

This tension between liberty and authority, which is really what we're talking about, that's always been a challenge for democracies everywhere.

這種自由與權威之間的張力，也就是我們一直在談論的，一直是各地民主國家面臨的挑戰。

Is there something unique about America's cultural aversion to power, especially state power.

美國對權力，尤其是國家權力的文化厭惡，有什麼特別之處嗎？

In every group of humans, you have to figure out some sort of system for dealing with disagreement.

在任何一群人裡，你都必須想辦法處理意見不合的系統。

And I don't think that's a uniquely American problem.

我認為這不是美國獨有的問題。

I do think that America has a system that is uniquely designed to be able to vacillate between maybe a little bit too much authoritarianism, as we had probably in the middle of the 20th century, and

我確實認為美國的制度設計得很獨特，能夠在有點過度的威權主義（就像我們在二十世紀中期那樣）和

a little bit too much chaos, as we have today and we've had in other periods in American history.

有點過度的混亂（就像我們現在這樣，以及美國歷史上其他時期）之間搖擺。

And we've come to sort of, in the sense that things are.

我們已經來到某種程度，意思就是事情的發展。

I think we're at one particular extreme now, and we're probably headed back.

我認為我們現在正處於一個極端，而且可能正在往回走。

So the distrust is always there in the background.

所以這種不信任感總是在背景中存在。

The pendulum of distrust has swung a little too aggressively, and now we are where we are.

不信任的鐘擺有點太過度地擺盪了，所以我們現在就處在這樣一個情況。

But all this distrust of power, it didn't emerge out of a vacuum, right?

但所有對權力的不信任，並不是憑空出現的，對吧？

I mean, there's, you know, the institutional racism and Vietnam and Watergate and the glut of pollution and all the corruption and captured regulators over the years.

我的意思是，有，你知道的，制度性的種族歧視、越戰、水門事件、汙染氾濫，以及這些年來的各種腐敗和被收買的監管機構。

I mean, we just don't have a lot of faith in our institutions.

我的意思是，我們對我們的機構真的沒什麼信心。

And if we're honest, it's because they haven't been all that trustworthy in many cases, which is just a long way of asking if the current Predicament is less about distrust and more about the public justifiably losing confidence in government.

如果我們誠實一點，那是因為在很多情況下，它們確實不值得信任，這只是在問，目前的困境是關於不信任，還是關於民眾有理由對政府失去信心。

We go through these periods in history where we have real frustration that nothing is getting done.

我們在歷史上會經歷一些時期，會覺得事情真的讓人很沮喪，什麼都做不成。

At the turn of the 20th century, there's sort of a notion that power is dispersed among political machines and that if you want to get something done, it's easier to get something done at the parochial level by knowing your local ward politician who can maybe get your, you know, your ne' er do well brother in law a job in the sanitation department than it is to build a good sanitation system.

在二十世紀初，有一種觀念認為權力分散在各個政治機器手中，如果你想做成什麼事，在地方層級會比較容易，只要認識你當地的議員，他或許能幫你那個不成材的妹夫找個環衛部門的工作，而不是去建立一個好的環衛系統。

Politics is sort of a game of localism and parochialism, so you can't do.

政治有點像是地方主義和狹隘主義的遊戲，所以你做不成事。

So those are moments where we are looking for a move towards a more Hamiltonian approach.

所以那些就是我們尋求朝向更像漢密爾頓式做法的時刻。

Then there are the opposite moments, right?

There are moments where we see strong centralized institutions that look oppressive.

有些時刻我們看到強大的中央集權機構，看起來很壓迫。

That's what was happening right around the revolution, where we saw taxation without representation.

這就是革命前後發生的事，當時我們看到無代表不納稅。

So we wanted to push, in a Jeffersonian sense, power back down.

所以我們想在傑佛遜的精神下，把權力下放。

That's exactly what we saw in the 50s and 60s, where we saw powerful institutions of all sorts doing things that we didn't like.

這正是我們在五〇、六〇年代看到的，當時我們看到各種強大的機構做著我們不喜歡的事。

We saw the industrial machine pumping out cars that were unsafe at any speed, as Ralph Nader pointed out.

我們看到工業機器製造出「任何速度都不安全」的汽車，正如雷夫·那德所指出的。

We saw the agricultural establishment putting out groceries that had DDT in them, so women were burying children with terrible birth defects.

我們看到農業機構生產含有DDT的食品，導致婦女們埋葬有嚴重出生缺陷的孩子。

We saw Robert McNamara, who was sort of a quintessential vision of the establishment, sending kids off to Vietnam to be slaughtered in a quagmire.

我們看到羅伯特·麥克納馬拉，他算是權勢機構的典型代表，把年輕人送往越南，在泥淖中被屠殺。

We saw bosses like Richard Daly in Chicago segregating the city purposefully using urban renewal.

我們看到像芝加哥的 Richard Daly 這樣的老闆，透過都市更新刻意隔離城市。

In all of these cases, power was so centralized that people said, no, no, no, no, no.

在所有這些情況下，權力過於集中，以至於人們說，不行，不行，不行，不行，不行。

This Hamiltonian way of governing is corrupt and we need to push power back down.

這種漢彌爾頓式的治理方式是腐敗的，我們需要將權力下放。

What would you say is the window of time when we.

你會說，我們是在什麼時間範圍內。

The country struck the ideal balance between these two poles.

國家在這兩個極端之間取得了理想的平衡。

When did we get this right and what did we do during that window that's worth remembering?

我們是何時做對了這件事，在那段時間裡我們做了什麼值得記住的事？

It is hard not to look at the TVA and not golf, say what that is.

很難不看看田納西河谷管理局，然後說「那是什麼」。

The Tennessee Valley Authority was a bureaucracy set up in the very early years of the New Deal.

田納西河谷管理局是「新政」初期設立的一個官僚機構。

The Upper south at that point in history was flyover country.

當時的美國南部，算是個被忽略的地區。

Before we used that term, it was forgotten.

在我們用這個詞之前，它早就被遺忘了。

Most of the country had washers and dryers and washing machines.

大部分的國家都有洗衣機和烘乾機。

But the Upper south had sort of been left behind, and

但美國南部卻有點被拋在後頭，

people were sick and people were impoverished and the soil had been eroded by years of logging and people were living hand to mouth.

人們生病、貧困，土壤也因為多年的伐木而嚴重流失，大家過著捉襟見肘的生活。

And the private power companies that were organized into trusts under the name Commonwealth and Southern, had no interest in building the poles and wires to these poor farmers because they didn't think the farmers had enough money to justify the expense.

而那些以 Commonwealth and Southern 名義組成的私人電力公司，對在這些貧困農民那裡架設電線杆和電線毫無興趣，因為他們覺得農民沒錢，不值得花這筆錢。

所以他們一直生活在永恆的貧困中。

And when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, he decided that he was going to use public assets to finally build power to these communities.

當富蘭克林·羅斯福當選總統時，他決定要利用公共資產，為這些社區帶來電力。

And he was going to empower a lawyer to make the Upper South a fiefdom through the Tennessee Valley Authority.

他將授權一位律師，透過田納西河谷管理局，讓美國南部成為一個封建領地。

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