20. “It’s so easy to copy in the internet”
在互联网上复制变得如此容易
WARREN BUFFETT: OK, number 2.
WARREN BUFFETT：好的，第二个问题。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, gentleman. David Winters, Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.
AUDIENCE MEMBER：早上好，先生们。我是来自新泽西州 Mountain Lakes 的 David Winters。
Thanks again for Berkshire Fest 2000 and having it on Saturday, for those of us who tap dance to work on Monday. (Buffett laughs)
再次感谢你们举办 2000 年的 Berkshire Fest 并选择在周六举行，让我们这些周一要“跳舞上班”的人能够参加。（Buffett 笑）
You know, over the previous 30 years or so, Berkshire has been a tactical participant in the insurance business. With the acquisition of Gen Re and the broadening of GEICO’s scope, the company’s been transformed into a mainstream activity.
过去大约 30 年间，Berkshire 一直是保险业务中的战术性参与者。随着收购 Gen Re 以及 GEICO 业务范围的扩展，公司已转型为该行业的主流玩家。
How will this transformation result in growth and low cost float over time? I.e., how do you avoid becoming average?
这种转型将如何在未来带来增长和低成本浮存金？换句话说，你们如何避免变得平庸？
And to follow on with the very perceptive 10-year-old from California’s question, will Berkshire’s newspaper interest be able to make the successful transformation to the new electronic world, especially the unique content of the Washington Post? Thank you.
再接着那位非常敏锐的加州 10 岁孩子的问题，Berkshire 的报业投资是否能够成功转型进入新的电子化世界？尤其是 Washington Post 的独特内容？谢谢。
WARREN BUFFETT: Those are both good questions. I think, to answer your second one, I think the Buffalo News will do just as well as, if you take the top 50 papers in the country, in making a transition. How well the top 50 will do is really an open question.
WARREN BUFFETT：这两个问题都很好。我想，先回答第二个问题，我认为 Buffalo News 在转型上的表现将和全国前 50 大报纸差不多。而前 50 大报纸能转型得多好，本身就是个未知数。
And — but there is — you know, the industry factors will, in my view, just overwhelm any specific strategy. Because any strategy is —
但是——在我看来，行业因素会压倒任何具体的战略。因为任何战略都是——
It’s so easy to copy in the internet. That’s one of the problems of the internet. It’s one of the problems of capitalism.
在互联网上复制太容易了。这是互联网的问题之一，也是资本主义的问题之一。
I mean, if you open a restaurant that’s successful, somebody’s going to come in and figure out what your menu is and how — you know, the whole thing. And then they’re going to try to do it in a little bit better location, or at a lower price, or whatever. That’s what capitalism’s all about and it’s terrific for consumers.
比如说，如果你开了一家成功的餐馆，就会有人来研究你的菜单和经营方式——整个一套。然后他们会尝试在更好的位置开，或者以更低的价格经营，或者用其他方式。这就是资本主义的本质，对消费者而言非常有利。
The internet accentuates that process. I mean, it gives everybody in the world real estate. You know, there are no prime locations to speak of. I mean, I can give you the argument for how you develop one and all of that, but it really changes the world in a big way.
互联网加剧了这种过程。它让全世界的每个人都能获得“地盘”。没有所谓的黄金地段。我当然可以提出一些论点，解释如何在互联网上建立“黄金地段”，但总体而言，它确实在很大程度上改变了世界。
有些想法容易复制（Smart Idea），有些不容易（Simple Idea）。
You know, if you were at 16th and Farnam in Omaha in the ’20s, with Woolworth — that’s the place where the streetcar tracks crossed, you know, and a whole bunch of them were going north/south there and east/west — and there wasn’t any better real estate in town.
比如在 20 世纪 20 年代，如果你在奥马哈 16 街和 Farnam 街交叉口的 Woolworth——那里是电车轨道交汇处，南北、东西方向都有——在镇上没有比那更好的地段了。
I’m not sure if that’s worth as much now in nominal dollars as it was in the 1920s. But — and that looked permanent, incidentally. Who was going to rip up the streetcar tracks or — in 1910 or whenever it was?
我不确定按名义美元计算，那块地现在是否仍然像 1920 年代那样值钱。不过——顺便说，那在当时看起来是永久性的。比如在 1910 年，谁会想到要把电车轨道拆掉呢？
So now, you rip up the tracks every day. You know, and so the fluidity is incredible, in terms of moving economic resources around compared to what it was.
而现在，你每天都在拆轨道。换句话说，相比过去，如今经济资源的流动性简直令人难以置信。
The newspaper industry is going to try and figure out how to be a very important information source in a new medium. And it may solve that problem, to a degree, and still have lousy economics. That’s — you know, that’s — unfortunately, the newspaper industry’s always —
报业将努力想办法，在新的媒介中继续成为重要的信息来源。它也许能在一定程度上解决这个问题，但经济效益仍可能很糟糕。这就是——不幸的是，报业一直以来就是这样。
Historically, the way the industry structure worked, once you got into the majority of households and everything, somebody else could bring out a way better paper, but it wasn’t going to go any place against you.
从历史上看，这个行业的结构就是这样：一旦你的报纸进入了大多数家庭，即使别人办出了一份好得多的报纸，也无法撼动你的位置。
I mean, you had such structural advantages that you could, you know — you could put your idiot nephew in and he would do fine — wonderfully — you know. And nothing could happen to him except when this different medium came along.
换句话说，你拥有如此强大的结构性优势，以至于——即便你让一个愚蠢的侄子来管理，他也会干得很好——非常好。没人能撼动他，直到另一种媒介出现。
Now you can put in a genius and whether that will make any difference is an open question. I would say that it’s quite doubtful. If you own a newspaper, you want to do everything that you can think of and, fortunately, everything anybody else can think of, because you can copy them so fast.
而现在，即便你放进一个天才，能否带来改变仍是未知数。我认为可能性相当小。如果你拥有一家报纸，你就必须把你能想到的一切都尝试，幸运的是，你也要把别人能想到的都尝试，因为复制实在太快了。
And it may work in terms of product and it may not work in terms of product. And it may work in terms of product and still not work in terms of economics very well. And I don’t know the answer to that question.
这在产品层面可能行得通，也可能行不通。即便在产品上可行，在经济上也可能效果很差。对此我没有答案。
I know that we will play it out — at the Buffalo News, for example — as strongly as we can. I don’t think other people are going to get way better results than we are. I don’t know what the other people are — what their results are going to be and how it will work.
我知道我们会尽最大努力——比如在 Buffalo News——去应对。我不认为其他人会比我们取得显著更好的结果。但我不知道他们的结果会是什么，或会如何发展。
It would be crazy to sit on the sidelines and simply ignore what’s going on. So we will do our darnedest to have good economics when this is all through. But nobody knows how it’s going to play out, in my view.
袖手旁观、对眼下发生的事置之不理，那将是疯狂的。因此，我们会拼尽全力，争取在这一切结束时拥有良好的经济效益。但在我看来，没有人知道这件事最终会如何发展。
36. “Media businesses do not have a great outlook”
“媒体行业的前景不太乐观”
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 1.
沃伦·巴菲特：第一名。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: OK. First, my name is Egil Dahl. I’m a retailer from Norway. I would like first to thank you gentlemen for the opportunity to come here and ask two of the best businessmen in the world a question.
观众成员：好的。首先，我的名字是埃吉尔·达尔。我是来自挪威的零售商。首先，我想感谢各位先生给我这个机会来到这里，向世界上最优秀的两位商人提问。
My question is regarding the media and entertainment business. Do you think that the nature of newspapers, magazine, television, and maybe movie and music business as well, are about to change permanently and become less predictable because of new technology and internet?
我的问题是关于媒体和娱乐行业的。你认为报纸、杂志、电视，或许还有电影和音乐行业的性质，会因为新技术和互联网而永久改变并变得不那么可预测吗？
And the second part is, if not so, do you think that some of these businesses represent good purchases at the moment because the market thinks so? Thank you.
第二部分是，如果不是这样，您是否认为其中一些企业目前是不错的购买机会，因为市场是这样认为的？谢谢。
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, people are always going to want to be entertained and they’re going to want to be informed and some mix thereof. But, you know, we only have two eyeballs, and we only have 24 hours a day.
沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，人们总是想要娱乐，也想要获取信息，或者两者兼而有之。但是，你知道，我们只有一双眼睛，每天只有 24 小时。
So if you go back 50 or 60 years and think about how people got informed or entertained then, the choices were far fewer. You had the local movie theater, and you had the radio, and you had newspapers.
所以，如果你回到五六十年前，想想那时人们是如何获取信息或娱乐的，选择要少得多。你有当地的电影院，有收音机，还有报纸。
And as the years have gone by, what technology has done is opened up a huge variety of ways of being informed faster, certainly. And whether it’s better or not depends on who you ask.
随着岁月的流逝，技术所做的是开辟了多种更快获取信息的方式。当然，这是否更好取决于你问谁。
And certainly entertained in way many more forms, many that are free. And it hasn’t expanded the time you have for entertainment or for acquiring knowledge.
当然，以更多的形式娱乐，许多是免费的。而且它并没有增加你用于娱乐或获取知识的时间。
And any time you get more and more people competing in any given area, generally, the economics deteriorate.
而且，任何时候在某个特定领域竞争的人越来越多，通常经济状况会恶化。
And the economics have deteriorated for newspapers, although they’re still enormously profitable in relation to tangible equity employed, but they do not have the same economic prospects, if you look at the future stream of earnings, that it looked like they had 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
尽管报纸在使用有形股本方面仍然有非常好的盈利，但其经济状况已经恶化。如果你看未来的收益流，它们的经济前景不再像 20 或 30 或 40 年前那样。
And television, again, the margins have been maintained surprisingly well, but the audience keeps going down and — for any given means of distribution.
电视方面，利润率依然保持得出乎意料的好，但观众数量持续下降——对于任何给定的分发方式都是如此。
So, that has to erode economics over time. Cable was thought to operate pretty much all by itself, and the telecoms come in.
所以，这必然会随着时间的推移侵蚀经济状况。人们曾认为有线电视几乎可以独立运营，但电信公司进来了。
And very few businesses get better because of more competition. They like to talk about it, you know, but it — you know, the idea —
而且很少有企业因为更多的竞争而变得更好。你知道，他们喜欢谈论它，但你知道，这个想法——
I had one friend in the newspaper business. And I think Charlie used to tease her a bit by saying that her idea of a competitor was a corpse laid out on a slab with a toe twitching, you know. And the — it is not a better business when more people compete.
我在报业有一个朋友。我想查理过去常常取笑她，说她对竞争对手的看法是一个躺在石板上的尸体，脚趾还在抽动。竞争者多了，生意并不会更好。
So I think that, generally speaking, the economics of media businesses do not have a great outlook, I mean, compared to — like I say, they’re enormously profitable now, in returns on tangible assets.
所以我认为，总的来说，媒体行业的经济前景并不乐观，我的意思是，相比之下——就像我说的，它们现在在有形资产回报方面是非常盈利的。
I mean, it’s a business — you know, a license from the federal government became a royalty stream on huge amounts of money.
我的意思是，这是一个生意——你知道，从联邦政府获得的许可证变成了巨额资金的版税收入。
I mean, there were only three highways between — electronic highways — between Procter & Gamble and Ford Motor and the eyeballs of several hundred million people, and those three highways could make a lot of money when there were only three highways.
我的意思是，在宝洁公司和福特汽车公司与数亿人眼球之间，只有三条高速公路——电子高速公路——而当时只有这三条高速公路可以赚很多钱。
But you keep building more ways to — for the P&Gs, or the Gillettes, or whomever it might be, or Ford Motor, or General Motors — to get to those eyeballs, and you decrease the value of the highways. It’s not complicated.
但是你不断为宝洁、吉列、或者其他公司，或者福特汽车、通用汽车等，创造更多途径来吸引那些眼球，而这降低了公路的价值。这并不复杂。
So, I think you will see — it’s hard to imagine those businesses having great prospects in aggregate.
所以，我认为你会看到——很难想象这些企业整体上有很好的前景。
We owned the World Book. We still own the World Book. We were selling 300,000 sets a year or something like that in the mid ’80s. It’s a very valuable product. It sold for $600 or thereabouts, and it was worth it.
我们拥有《世界图书》。我们仍然拥有《世界图书》。在 80 年代中期，我们每年销售大约 30 万套。它是一个非常有价值的产品。售价大约为 600 美元，而且物有所值。
But the problem became that you could get that same information, or a good bit of the same information, you know, very, very cheap through the internet.
但问题在于，你可以通过互联网以非常非常便宜的价格获得相同的信息，或者大部分相同的信息。
And you didn’t have to cut down trees. And you didn’t have to run paper mills. And you didn’t have to hire United Parcel Service to deliver a very bulky package.
你不必砍伐树木。你不必运行造纸厂。你不必雇用联合包裹服务公司来递送一个非常笨重的包裹。
And it isn’t that the product we have isn’t worth the money; it’s that people have lots of other alternatives. And that’s true in information and entertainment in a big, big way, and it won’t stop, in my view.
并不是说我们的产品不值这个价钱，而是人们有很多其他选择。在信息和娱乐方面尤其如此，而且在我看来，这种情况不会停止。
Charlie? 查理？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. It’s simplicity itself. It will be a rare business that doesn’t have a way worse future than it had a past.
查理·芒格：是的。这非常简单。很少有企业的未来不会比过去更糟。
WARREN BUFFETT: Give them the bad news, Charlie. (Laughter)
沃伦·巴菲特：告诉他们坏消息，查理。（笑声）
The thing to do was to buy the NFL originally or something like that.
最初要做的事情是购买 NFL 或类似的东西。
I mean, you know, there still is only — you know, there are certain primary events, but it’s the people who transmit them — there’s more ways to transmit those events, and so the value gets extracted in a much different way.
我想，您知道，确实还有——有些主要事件，但传递这些事件的人越来越多，提取价值的方式也大相径庭。