可口可乐：在外包策略上建立起来的含糖饮料帝国

    我将这种赚钱之道称之为“可口可乐资本主义”。整个20世纪，可口可乐都是这么做的。它让其他人，不论是政府的自来水厂还是垂直整合的炼糖厂，都投入生产和分销系统，共同完成“Real Thing（真家伙）”（来自可口可乐的广告语）的生产。换言之，真正让可口可乐成为一家伟大企业的，不是它做了什么，而是它没有做什么。事实证明，可口可乐长袖善舞，擅于调动其他企业和当地政府，为其承担产品的大部分生产和分销成本。

    以城市再循环系统为例，这是一个由纳税人出资帮助软饮料公司扩大生产力的公共资助计划。20世纪八九十年代，可口可乐又一次不费吹灰之力，让市政府和市民出资修建了精良的回收基础设施，让大批包装材料可以非常便利地回到公司分销商附近的当地回收中心。可口可乐公司不但没有为其生产的垃圾支付任何费用，甚至还享受了一项政府补贴，这项补贴从长远上帮助其不断生产数量巨大的一次性饮料包装（其中72%是PET塑料瓶，它们现在都躺在了美国的垃圾填埋场）。于是除了公共用水外，可口可乐公司动用了又一项公共资源，只不过这次不是水，而是包装材料。

    用这种方法谋取暴利的不止可口可乐一家。像微软（Microsoft）这类软件公司，他们通过销售办公软件获取高额利润，但是依靠的是其他企业生产的昂贵硬件，从而将微软的编程变成消费品。在华尔街，你可以见到可口可乐资本主义的一个极端案例：股票经纪人从不管理任何生产或分销基础设施，而是通过商品在买家中的流通赚取交易费。

    简而言之，可口可乐资本主义已经成为这个时代最赚钱的一类企业模式。这就是21世纪资本主义的回报。

    但是问题依然存在：这个系统能否惠及广大民众？可口可乐的发展史显示，该企业对公共资源的需求极大，例如回收系统、补贴性城市用水、玉米补贴等等，可口可乐公司把这些投资变成商品，但是我们却根本不清楚这是否利国利民（在一个肥胖人口超过总人口30%的国家，我们真的需要更多汽水么？）。

    虽然可口可乐开始推出更健康的饮品选择，尤其是瓶装水，但是对于明智的消费者来说，其价格并不合理。一加仑Dasani矿泉水售价超过4美元，而拧开水龙头美国民众就可以喝上等量的净水，价格不过是几厘。与其购买可口可乐瓶装水，我们还不如把钱用在完善公共供水系统上。据美国环保署（EPA）估计，公共供水系统维修需要的费用超过5,000亿美元。毕竟，正如可口可乐的发展史清楚展示的，无论普通市民还是可口可乐公司，都是靠公共水管存活的。（财富中文网）

    巴托•埃尔莫尔，阿拉巴马大学（University of Alabama）历史学教授，著有《大国民：可口可乐资本主义的形成》（Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism）一书。

    译者：南风

    审校：Patti

    I call this money-making approach Coca-Cola capitalism. Coke followed this path throughout the 20th century. It involved getting others, whether it was government-owned water works or vertically integrated sugar refineries, to invest in the production and distribution systems needed to turn the “Real Thing” into a real thing. What made Coke great, in other words, was not really what it did, but what it didn’t do. It proved incredibly adept at getting independent businesses and local governments to bear the majority of the costs of producing and distributing its products.

    Take municipal recycling systems. Here was a publicly financed program that helped soft drink companies expand their productive capacity on the taxpayer’s dime. Once again, Coke did little of the work, letting municipalities and private citizens invest in elaborate reclamation infrastructure in the 1980s and 1990s that conveniently brought copious quantities of packaging materials back to local centers near its corporate distributors. Rather than having to pay for the waste they produced, Coca-Cola received a kind of public subsidy that in the long run enabled them to continue to produce tremendous quantities of one-way, throwaway containers (72% of which, in the case of plastic PET containers, ends up in American landfills today). As it had with public water supplies, the company was simply tapping into another municipal stream, only this one contained packaging materials, not water.

    Coca-Cola has not been the only company to follow this path to big profits. Software firms, such as Microsoft MSFT -0.25% , have made tremendous revenues selling its Office suite, relying on other businesses to produce expensive hardware that can turn Microsoft’s code into consumable products. You can find an extreme version of Coca-Cola capitalism on Wall Street, where brokers do not manage any kind production or distribution infrastructure but instead make money off transaction fees as commodities flow from one buyer to another.

    In short, Coca-Cola KO 0.36% capitalism has become the model for some of the most profitable firms of our time. This is what 21st century capitalism rewards.

    But the question remains: does this system benefit the public at large? The history of Coca-Cola reveals that the firm demands a great deal of public resources—recycling systems, subsidized municipal water, corn subsidies, etc.—and it is not at all clear that Coke transforms these investments into goods that serve the interests of the nation (do we really need more sugar water in a country in which over 30% of the population is obese?).

    While Coca-Cola is shifting towards healthier drink options, especially bottled water, the price for providing this service should appear unconscionable to the informed consumer. Americans pay more than $4 for a gallon of Dasani water when they could easily enjoy the same quantity of clean water from their tap for a fraction of a cent. Perhaps our money could be better spent fixing public water systems—which currently need over $500 billion in repairs, according to the EPA—rather than purchasing Coke’s bottled water. After all, as Coke’s history makes clear, private citizens and Coca-Cola need public pipes to survive.

    Bartow Elmore is a professor of U.S. history at the University of Alabama and is the author of Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism.