2013年高考英语江苏卷 - 阅读理解B

We’ve considered several ways of paying to cut in line: hiring line standers, buying tickets from scalpers, or purchasing line-cutting privileges directly from, say, an airline or an amusement park. Each of these deals replaces the morals of the queue (waiting your turn) with the morals of the market (paying a price for faster service).
我们想到几种付钱插队的方式：雇人排队；从黄牛那里买票；或者直接从航空公司或游乐场买个插队优先权。每一种都用市场准则（付钱购买更快的服务）取代了排队道德（依次等候）。

Markets and queues — paying and waiting — are two different ways of allocating things, and each is appropriate to different activities. The morals of the queue, “First come, first served," have an egalitarian appeal. They tell us to ignore privilege, power, and deep pockets.
市场和排队，即付钱和等候，是两种维持秩序的不同方式，每一种都适用不同的行为。排队的道德就是“先来先得”，人人平等。不管你有没有优先权、有没有权力，或者有没有钱。

The principle seems right on playgrounds and at bus stops. But the morals of the queue do not govern all occasions. If I put my house up for sale, I have no duty to accept the first offer that comes along, simply because it’s the first. Selling my house and waiting for a bus are different activities properly governed by different standards.
该规则似乎同样适用于娱乐场所和公交，但并不是所有场合都要受排队道德的约束。如果我要卖房子，我没有义务仅仅因为谁先来，就把房子卖给谁。卖房和等公交是两码事，遵守不同的标准。

Sometimes standards change and it is unclear which principle should apply. Think of the recorded message you hear, played over and over as you wait on hold when calling your bank: “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” This is essential for the morals of the queue. It’s as if the company is trying to ease our impatience with fairness.
有时标准会发生变化，不清楚应该遵守哪种规则。当你打电话给银行时，想想你在等待时听到的反复播放的录音：“您的呼叫将按收到的顺序接听。”这对排队的道德至关重要，就好像这家公司正试图用公平来缓解我们的烦躁。

But don’t take the recorded message too seriously. Today, some people’s calls are answered faster than others. Call center technology enables companies to “score” incoming calls and to give faster service to those that come from rich places. You might call this telephonic queue jumping.
但不要把录音信息看得太重。今天，一些人的电话接听比其他人的速度更快。呼叫中心技术可以让公司“记录”来电，为来自富裕地区的人提供更快的服务。你可以称之为电话插队。

Of course, markets and queues are not the only ways of allocating things. Some goods we distribute by merit, others by need, still others by chance. However, the tendency of markets to replace queues, and other non-market ways of allocating goods is so common in modern life that we scarcely notice it anymore. It is striking that most of the paid queue-jumping schemes we’ve considered — at airports and amusement parks, in call centers, doctors’ offices, and national parks — are recent developments, scarcely imaginable three decades ago. The disappearance of the queues in these places may seem an unusual concern, but these are not the only places that markets have entered.
当然，市场和排队并不是分配物品的唯一方式。有些商品我们是按价值分配的，有些按需分配，还有一些是按机会分配。然而，市场取代排队和其他非市场分配商品的趋势在现代生活中如此普遍，以至于我们几乎不再注意到它。令人惊讶的是，我们考虑过的大多数付费插队方式——在机场、游乐场、呼叫中心、医生办公室和国家公园——近来都以得到发展，这在30年前很难想象。在这些地方排队的人消失似乎没必要担忧，但市场并不只是进入这些地方。