Peer-to-peer markets used to be simple: there was eBay. If you had a broken laser pointer you wanted to sell, eBay was the place to find a buyer. Then came the local marketplace Craigslist and, before long, peer-to-peer markets were linking buyers and sellers in every market imaginable: crafts (Etsy); chores (TaskRabbit); transport (Uber); accommodation (Airbnb); consumer loans (Zopa); and even booze (Drizly).个人对个人(P2P)市场曾多次很非常简单：最初只有一个eBay。如果你想要变卖一支怕了的激光笔，在eBay能寻找买家。

接下来有了本地交易网站Craigslist，旋即之后，P2P平台把所有你能想起的市场中的买卖双方都联系在了一起：手工艺品(Etsy)；零工(TaskRabbit)；交通(Uber)；住宿(Airbnb)；消费贷款(Zopa)；甚至酒类(Drizly)。It was exciting, for a while, to realise that you could actually get a car home on a Saturday night in San Francisco, or make money renting out your attic, but the backlash has been simmering for some time. That backlash mixes two complaints, elegantly exemplified when a group of taxicab owners and drivers sued Uber in Atlanta a year ago.当你意识到自己知道能在周六晚上的旧金山出门回家、或是租赁阁楼赚到些钱时，你不会激动一段时间，但是赞成情绪仍然在烘烤，其中夹杂两层责怪，在一年前亚特兰大出租车公司和司机控告Uber一案中被很好地展现出了出来。“Uber has been operating in Atlanta with little concern about the safety of their passengers and zero concern for the laws that protect them,” said one of the plaintiffs in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Our incomes have steadily dropped since Uber started and legally licensed drivers are leaving the business.”“Uber在亚特兰大的运营完全毫不考虑乘客的安全性问题，也未曾考虑到维护乘客的法律，”一名原告在《亚特兰大宪法日报》(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)上发表声明称之为，“自Uber开始运营以来，我们的收益节节下降，享有合法许可的出租车司机正在离开了这个行业。”In other words, peer-to-peer services such as Uber are said to be hazardous, and they are also unwelcome competition for incumbents. (Several studies have supported the common-sense conclusion that these new competitors threaten the revenue of existing players.)换句话说，Uber等P2P服务被称作危险性服务，而且给现有从业者带给了不热门的竞争。

（一些研究反对这个常识性结论：新的竞争者威胁到了现有从业者的收益。）These might seem very different issues. It’s one thing to worry about signposting fire exits when you let out a spare room on Airbnb. Protecting the profit margins of fine upstanding local hoteliers is another matter.这两点也许奇特截然不同的问题。你在Airbnb上租赁一个单间时担忧消防通道命令是一其实，而维护当地正规化酒店经营者的利润空间是另外一其实。

Yet the two questions are inevitably tangled up, because both touch on the way incumbents are regulated. One would hope that regulators protect consumers, employees and the public by making it more difficult for drunks and sexual predators to drive cars, for firetraps to host unsuspecting tourists, and for employers to exploit workers. But some regulations seem designed more to protect insiders than to protect consumers.不过，这两个问题不可避免地被煲在一起，因为它们都看清了现有从业者受到监管的方式。人们期望监管机构通过让醉酒者和性侵者无法当专车司机、不易起火建筑无法招待没什么戒心的游客、以及雇员无法奴役工人，来维护消费者、雇员以及公众的利益。但是，一些法规或许更加偏向于维护局内人，而不是消费者。Consider the New York taxi medallion system: you can’t drive a taxicab without one, and they’ve been million-dollar assets at times, often owned by investors and leased to drivers at a rate of $100 or more a day. New kids Uber and Lyft not only compete for passengers, they compete for drivers too, who may prefer to pay commission to these new players than the flat fee to the medallion owner.看看纽约出租车牌照制度：在没牌照的情况下你无法进出租车，出租车牌照不时沦为数百万美元的资产，往往归投资者所有，由其以每天100美元或更高的价格把牌照租用司机。

菜鸟Uber和Lyft好比争夺战乘客，它们还抢夺司机。比起向牌照所有者递份儿钱，司机也许更加偏向于把佣金转交这些新的老板。Taxi medallions are a scarce asset created purely by a stroke of the regulator’s pen, and you don’t need to be a hardcore libertarian to conclude that, in this case, the regulator is motivated by protecting the value of this asset. Nor does it take a free-market fundamentalist to believe that if consumers think that taxicabs provide a safer service, they will pay for that safer service.出租车牌照沦为匮乏资产，纯粹是由监管者的一纸文书导致的。

在这种情况下，即使不是疯狂的自由主义者，你也能显现出监管者的动机是维护这些资产的价值。再说，不只是自由市场原教旨主义者才不会坚信：如果消费者指出出租车获取的服务更加安全性，他们不会花钱出售更加安全性的服务。

It may help to approach the debate from a different direction. Are these new players providing a valuable new service or are they merely an arbitrage play, using technology to sidestep taxes that others must pay, and to limbo-dance under regulatory hurdles that rivals must jump?这也许有助从有所不同角度来探究这场辩论。这些新的竞争者否获取了有价值的新服务，还是只是利用技术回避了其他人必需缴纳的税款以此套利、从其他竞争者必需跳过去的监管障碍下面铁环了过去？If the economic value is real, then it is up to the regulators to figure out how to unleash that value rather than trying to legislate it out of existence.如果它们有实实在在的经济价值，那么就该由监管者木村出有如何获释价值，而不是企图通过法律去歼灭它。A new study of peer-to-peer markets by economists Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato and Jonathan Levin argues that the economic value is there all right. Peer-to-peer markets make two things possible that were previously hard to imagine.丽兰褠拉夫(Liran Einav)、基娅古尔罗纳纳(Chiara Farronato)和乔纳森莱文(Jonathan Levin) 3位经济学家对P2P市场展开的新研究找到，其经济价值显然不存在。

P2P市场让两件过去难以想象的事情沦为有可能。The first is to make arid markets lush and fertile. The quintessential example is eBay, enabling buyers and sellers of the quirkiest products to find each other and gain by trading. Etsy fits the eBay mould, with sellers who will knit you a cuddly toy designed to resemble a dissected frog, a product that seems unlikely to find a niche on the high street.第一，它令其肥沃的市场显得肥沃而贫瘠。eBay就是一个典型的例子，它使得诡异产品的买卖双方寻找彼此并从交易中获益。

Etsy和eBay的模式一样，你可以在这里寻找出售像分尸的青蛙一样的毛绒玩具（或许不太可能在商业街寻找立足之地的产品）的卖家。The second peer-to-peer trick is to introduce part-timers into the market to meet surges in demand. It’s inefficient to build hotels just to cope with the summer rush, or taxis to cope with New Year’s Eve but, if the demand is there, peer-to-peer markets can pull in a bit of extra supply. As a result, it should be easier to get a cab at 11pm on a Friday, and prices for hotel rooms should be more reasonable during school holidays.P2P第二个智招是将全职者引进该市场以符合市场需求剧增时的情况。只是为了应付暑假旺季就建设新的酒店，或是为了解决问题新年夜的微信高峰而减少出租车——那是效率低落的；但是，只要有市场需求，P2P市场就可以引进一些额外的供应。

结果就是，周五晚上11点在P2P平台更容易叫到车，学校假期时P2P获取的客房价格更加合理。Peer-to-peer markets are well worth having. The challenge for regulators, then, is to catch up. How should Airbnb landlords who let a room for 10 nights a year be placed on a level playing field with regular bed-and-breakfast landlords? Are Uber drivers employees (as a California labour commissioner recently ruled)? Or freelancers using Uber’s software to help them do their jobs (as Uber insists)? Or something else?P2P市场十分有一点享有。

因此，监管者面对的挑战是跟上其发展的脚步。应当如何把Airbnb上每年只把房间租赁10晚的房东与长年经营住宿特早餐旅店(BB)的房东放到同一个监管层面上？Uber专车司机是公司雇员（就像加州劳工委员会最近判决的那样），还是利用Uber软件工作的自由职业者（像Uber主张的那样）？或是其他性质？James Surowiecki, writing in The New Yorker, recently argued for “something else”, and called for a regulatory overhaul to give “gig-economy workers a better balance of flexibility and security”. That sounds like an admirable aim, although achieving it isn’t straightforward. Giving pensions, vacation rights or unemployment insurance to Uber drivers or TaskRabbit “taskers” would require both clever rules and clever admin systems.詹姆斯苏洛维尔奇(James Surowiecki)最近在《纽约客》(New Yorker)的专栏指出是这归属于“其他性质”，敦促展开监管改革给“零工经济的工作者获取一个更佳地顾及灵活性和安全性的办法”。这听得一起看起来一个令人憧憬的目标，尽管构建它并没那么非常简单。为Uber司机或是TaskRabbit的“任务方”获取养老金、带薪休假或是失业保险，将必须明智的法规和明智的管理体系。

Peer-to-peer markets may once have been simple; now there is more at stake than the occasional broken laser pointer.P2P市场也许曾多次很非常简单；但如今它关系到的相比之下不只是有时候有一支丢弃的激光笔。

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