为什么说为了高考，必须读《经济学人》,荞爸的澳洲来信微信公众号文章

亲爱的微友：

据说今年的江苏英语高考刷出了“地狱模式”，英文试卷1.6米长，堪比清明上河图。用某位考生的话说，就是“我准备了12年，就是为了在你面前长跪不起……”

江苏英语高考到底难在哪里？据说里面有这样一篇文章：

A new commodity brings about a highly profitable, fast-growing industry, urging antitrust regulators to step in to check those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital age. The most valuable firms are Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. All look unstoppable.

Such situations have led to calls for the tech giants to be broken up. But size alone is not a crime. The Giants' success has benefited consumers. Few want to live without search engines or a quick delivery. Far from charging consumers high prices, many of these services are free (users pay, in effect, by handing over yet more data). And the appearance of new-born giants suggests that newcomers can make waves, too.

But there is cause for concern. The Internet has made data abundant, all-present and far more valuable, data collected changing the nature of data and competition. Google initial data collected from users to target advertising better. But recently it hasdiscovered that data can be turned into new services: translation and visualrecognition, to be sold to other companies. Internet companies’ control of datagives them enormous power. So they have a “God's eye view” of activities intheir own markets and beyond.

This nature of data makes the antitrust measures of the pastless useful. Breaking up firms like Google into five small ones would not stopremaking themselves: in time, one of them would become great again. A rethinkis required—and as a new approach starts to become apparent, two ideas standout.

The first is that antitrust authorities need to move fromthe industrial age into the 21st century. When considering a merger, forexample, they have traditionally used size to determine when to step in. Theynow need to take into account the extent of firms' data assets when assessingthe impact of deals. The purchase price could also be a signal that anestablished company is buying a new-born threat. When this takes place, e specially when a new-born company has no revenue to speak of, the regulatorsshould raise red flags.

The second principle is to loosen the control that providersof on-line services have over data and give more to those who supply them.Companies could be forced to reveal to consumers what information they hold andhow much money they make from it. Governments could order the sharing ofcertain kinds of data, with users' consent.

Restarting antitrust for the information age will not beeasy. But if governments don't want a data economy controlled by a few giants,they must act soon.

而这篇文章居然是出自《经济学人》！