TED_Topic1：Why we need to rethink capitalism

Topic 1：Why we need to rethink capitalism

By Paul Tudor Jones II

# Background about our speaker

    Paul Jones is founder of Tudor Investment Corporation and an active philanthropist！

# Why you should listen Paul

Tudor Jones II started to work on Wall Street in 1976. "If there was ever a free market free-for-all（对任何人开放的）, this was it," he says. "Men wearing ties but acting like gladiators（角斗士；与野兽搏斗的人）fought literally and physically for a profit." Jones emerged victorious, and as founder of Tudor Investment Corporation and other companies within the Tudor Group, he engages in trading in the fixed income（定息债券）, equity（普通股票）, currency and commodity markets（货币市场、商品市场）. Headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut（美国康乃迪克州）, Tudor manages some $13.7 billion and employs almost 400 people.

Jones is an active philanthropist（n. 慈善家）, including founding the Robin Hood Foundation and the Excellence Charter School, and he sits on the Boards（担任…..机构的领导） of Just Capital, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Everglades Foundation, and Sonima Foundation. He is also a trustee（托管人/董事） of NYU's Langone Medical Center.

# 视频地址

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_tudor_jones_ii_why_we_need_to_rethink_capitalism/transcript?language=en#

# Subtitles and Transcript（字幕/文字记录）

This is a story about capitalism. It's a system I love because of the successes and opportunities it's afforded me and millions of others.

I started in my 20s trading commodities, cotton in particular, in the pits（赛车道旁的) 检修加油站）, and if there was ever a free market free-for-all, this was it, where men wearing ties but acting like gladiators fought literally and physically for a profit.

Fortunately, I was good enough that by the time I was 30, I was able to move into the upstairs world（特制上流社会）of money management, where I spent the next three decades as a global macro trader. And over that time, I've seen a lot of crazy things in the markets, and I've traded a lot of crazy manias（投机疯狂）. And unfortunately, I'm sad to report that right now we might be in the grips of（正处于…紧要关头） one of the most disastrous（灾难性的；损失惨重的）, certainly of my career, and one consistent takeaway（外卖食品；外卖餐馆，这里指学习心得） is manias never end well. # 这里是说：狂热的投机最终总是以悲剧的结尾收场！

Now, over the past 50 years, we as a society have come to view our companies and corporations in a very narrow, almost monomaniacal（adj. 偏执狂的） fashion with regard to how we value them, and we have put so much emphasis on profits, on short-term quarterly earnings and share prices, at the exclusion of（排除） all else. It's like we've ripped the humanity out of（v. 撕；扯：把人性从公司中拿掉/卸去/狠狠得拔掉） our companies. Now, we don't do that -- conveniently reduce something to a set of numbers that you can play with like Lego toys -- we don't do that in our individual life. We don't treat somebody or value them based on their monthly income or their credit score（信用评分）, but we have this double standard when it comes to the way that we value our businesses, and you know what? It's threatening the very underpinnings of our society. And here's how you'll see.

This chart is corporate profit margins going back 40 years as a percentage of revenues, and you can see that we're at a 40-year high of 12.5 percent. Now, hooray if you're a shareholder, but if you're the other side of that, and you're the average American worker, then you can see it's not such a good thing. ["U.S. Share of Income Going to Labor vs. CEO-to-Worker Compensation Ratio"]

Now, higher profit margins（利润空间） do not increase societal wealth. What they actually do is they exacerbate（vt. 使加剧；使恶化） income inequality, and that's not a good thing. But intuitively, that makes sense, right? Because if the top 10 percent of American families own 90 percent of the stocks, as they take a greater share of corporate profits, then there's less wealth left for the rest of society.

Again, income inequality is not a good thing. This next chart, made by The Equality Trust, shows 21 countries from Austria to Japan to New Zealand. On the horizontal axis is income inequality. The further to the right you go, the greater the income inequality. On the vertical axis are nine social and health metrics. The more you go up that, the worse the problems are, and those metrics include life expectancy（平均寿命）, teenage pregnancy(未成年怀孕), literacy, social mobility(社会流动性), just to name a few. Now, those of you in the audience who are Americans may wonder, well, where does the United States rank? Where does it lie on that chart? And guess what? We're literally off the chart(打破旧记录；好极了,创历史新高，技艺高超的，超赞的). Yes, that's us, with the greatest income inequality and the greatest social problems, according to those metrics.

Now, here's a macro forecast that's easy to make, and that's, that gap between the wealthiest and the poorest, it will get closed. History always does it. It typically happens in one of three ways: either through revolution, higher taxes, or wars. None of those are on my bucket list（遗愿清单/人生清单）. (Laughter)

Now, there's another way to do it, and that's by increasing justness in corporate behavior, but the way that we're operating right now, that would require a tremendous change in behavior, and like an addict trying to kick a habit, the first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem. And let me just say, this profits mania that we're on is so deeply entrenched that we don't even realize how we're harming society. Here's a small but startling example of exactly how we're doing that: this chart shows corporate giving as a percentage of profits, not revenues, over the last 30 years. Juxtapose（vt. 并列；并置） that to the earlier chart of corporate profit margins, and I ask you, does that feel right?

In all fairness,（平心而论/说句公道话/凭良心说） when I started writing this, I thought, "Oh wow, what does my company, what does Tudor do?" And I realized we give one percent of corporate profits to charity every year. And I'm supposed to be a philanthropist. When I realized that, I literally wanted to throw up. But the point is, this mania is so deeply entrenched that well-intentioned （好意的，好心的；出于善意的）people like myself don't even realize that we're part of it. # 深入主题：谈社会公正的重要性！

Now, we're not going to change corporate behavior by simply increasing corporate philanthropy or charitable contributions. And oh, by the way, we've since quadrupled that, but -- (Applause) -- Please. But we can do it by driving more just behavior. And one way to do it is actually trusting the system that got us here in the first place, and that's the free market system. About a year ago, some friends of mine and I started a not-for-profit called Just Capital. Its mission is very simple: to help companies and corporations learn how to operate in a more just fashion by using the public's input to define exactly what the criteria are for just corporate behavior. Now, right now, there's no widely accepted standard that a company or corporation can follow, and that's where Just Capital comes in, because beginning this year and every year we'll be conducting a nationwide survey of a representative sample （代表性样本）of 20,000 Americans to find out exactly what they think are the criteria for justness in corporate behavior. Now, this is a model that's going to start in the United States but can be expanded anywhere around the globe, and maybe we'll find out that the most important thing for the public is that we create living wage jobs（生存所需的工作岗位）, or make healthy products, or help, not harm, the environment. At Just Capital, we don't know, and it's not for us to decide. We're but messengers, but we have 100 percent confidence and faith in the American public to get it right. So we'll release the findings this September for the first time, and then next year, we'll poll（民意调查） again, and we'll take the additive step this time of ranking the 1,000 largest U.S. companies to number one to number 1,000 and everything in between. We're calling it the Just Index, and remember, we're an independent not-for-profit with no bias, and we will be giving the American public a voice. And maybe over time, we'll find out that as people come to know which companies are the most just, human and economic resources will be driven towards them, and they'll become the most prosperous and help our country be the most prosperous. # 正在做的事：设计Just index（美国企业行为公正指数），估计不日即将问世！

Now, capitalism has been responsible for every major innovation that's made this world a more inspiring and wonderful place to live in. Capitalism has to be based on justice. It has to be, and now more than ever（更加，越发；尤其；超出任何时候）, with economic divisions（经济差距） growing wider every day. It's estimated that 47 percent of American workers can be displaced（无家可归的/颠沛流离的） in the next 20 years. I'm not against progress. I want the driverless car（无人驾驶汽车） and the jet pack（单人飞行器） just like everyone else. But I'm pleading for recognition that with increased wealth and profits has to come greater corporate social responsibility.

"If justice is removed," said Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, "the great, the immense（巨大的，广大的；无边无际的） fabric of human society（人类社会结构）must in a moment（立刻） crumble into atoms."

Now, when I was young, and there was a problem, my mama used to always sigh and shake her head and say, "Have mercy, have mercy." Now's not the time for us, for the rest of us to show them mercy. The time is now for us to show them fairness, and we can do that, you and I, by starting where we work, in the businesses that we operate in. And when we put justness on par with（与…同等水平） profits, we'll get the most wonderful thing in all the world. We'll take back our humanity. # 呼吁公正，重返人性、博爱！

Thank you.

Comments I like

This talk gives me optimism for corporate leaders and their ability to see the error of profit over all else focus. I have much respect for Paul Jones and what he is doing. The one thing I would point out as a potential flaw in his approach to the solution - he is assuming that markets in the US are free. How can we have a free market in the US where anyone can compete when you have only major corporations in control of the news and media (via advertising contributions), thus shaping the information the average consumer will recieve, and now a corporation's ability to buy elections with the Citizens United act of 2010? How can the average small to medium business compete in conditions such as these (the ones that don't have the advertising or campaign contributions budget to compete)? These conditions essentially "fix" the game in the favor of giant corporations. Goodbye free market, goodbye consumer ability to see what is actually happening within a corporation (if it's not reported in the news, nor accountable to the government, where would people learn about corporate behavior?), and therefore goodbye to the corporation's incentive to have more just business practices. I agree completely that more just practices need to be implemented, and can have huge profits for the companies that do so (just as the saying goes, you can fool some people sometimes...). But, we need to bring the system back to a healthy and truly free market. We need better, more reliable news reporting, and yes, government intervention when wrong doing occurs (just as you would prosecute an individual for criminal behavior, if a corporation is doing wrong, it needs to be held accountable, self policing at this point would be like giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet, it just doesn't work). Thank you for taking the time to read this and consider my humble opinion.