电子化时代的社会保障:新经济与“去形态化福利”——以德国工业4.0为例

The Social Protection in the digital age: The new economy and the intangible welfare-An example from the German “Industry 4.0”

当前,德国政府制定了雄心勃勃的"工业4.0计划"以推动所谓的第四次工业革命。本文利用德国联邦部门的数据及汉斯—伯克勒基金会所提供的社会调查数据探索和研究德国电子化时代下的社会政策,并在此基础上建构了一个电子化的新社会政策领域,其主要特征是虚拟空间化与去形态化。虚拟空间化是指网络空间的就业形式如网店、网购及网络交易等挑战了传统实体经济的运作方式。电子空间的新经济形态催生了电子空间的新就业形态,也转变了传统以实体企业为主导的社会保险模式。网络福利"去形态化"是指在一个高度"去管制化"的虚拟电子空间中,就业容量、就业形态及参加社会保险的就业群体都开始转化成为流动虚拟空间的隐形结构,这对国家税收汲取能力、社会保障能力及清晰的数目字管理能力构成了隐然的挑战。

Currently, with the ambitious German ＂Industry 4.0＂, the German government seeks to promote the so-called ＂Fourth Industrial Revolution＂. This paper seeks to elaborate on social policy in the digital age by examining the impact of the new economy on social protection, utilizing data provided by the federal departments of Germany as well as the survey and reports on crowd workers and crowd-sourcing employment in Germany （by the Hans B/Sckler Foundation）. Relying on these data, I construct a new research sphere ofdigital social policy, characterized by certain novel features such as virtualization and intangible welfare. Virtualization highlights emerging physical cyberspaces containing various digital economic entities such as online shops, online finns and online bookstores, which challenge the brick-and-mortar sector substantially. These changing spaces and their shifting economic structural patterns have stimulated the transformation of employment forms, which have re-shaped traditional enterprises-based forms of social insurance organization. Following this trend, the accurate numbers and data, as well as the volume of employmen social insurance contributors in a highly deregulated space （i.e. cyberspace）, have become and ＂invisible＂ for the welfare state, not least social insurance obligations both by employers and t, taxpayers and ＂ intangiblized＂ because digital tax evasion and non-compliance with employees （and also by the self-employed） have become pervasive in the cyberspace. The new intangible welfare configuration may pose a great challenge to the welfare state and state-organized social policy in the 20th century.