DO EXPERTS KNOW?

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 519, 1 May 1933, Page 3

DO EXPERTS KNOW?

ViEWS IGNORED POLITICIANS AND STUDENTS GENERALLY AT VARIANCE. LECTUlRER'S INDICTMENT. (Published by Arrangement with the Auckland Executive, N.Z. Farmers' Union.) Sir Norman Angell, who is the Halley Stewart Lecturer this year, pointed out in his first lecture that for considerably over ten year5 in Europe we have seen this situation: all th'e economists, all the hankers, all the serious students of puhlic affairs, persistently urging one line of economic policy; and all the governments supported by nearly all the politicians persistently taking the contrary line. This rafusal of the governments to do what every -expert had deelaxed must be done if prosperity was to he re-established had ended by reducing the world to economic chaos, by making the economic confusion which the, War produced, already had enough, wor.se eonfounded. The most recent illustration was the line taken by politicians and public in America over the debts — a line directly contrary to that urged by American bankers and experts. "Why have governments thus, against the direct counsel of all their expert advisers, persisted in a line of policy which has worsened the depression, prolonged the chaos?" Sir Norman asked Electors Think They Know Better. "Broadly because if they had not thus consented to follow the wrong policy, if they had insisted upon following the right, they would have been torn from power by angry electorates : who were sure that they knew better than the financial experts in financial matters, better than the economists in economics. "In China and in. India western doetors have been unable to abolish cholera, plague and typhu3 because their recommendations to keep sewage out of drinking water and vermin from houses, and per sons are laughed to scorn by the population of these countries. The latter do not see the point of the microbic theory of disease. Yet the public in the West manage3 to do so. "In certain matters upon which the prevention of economic disease depends, the electorates of Europe are at the stage of understanding in economic matters that the easterners are in the matter of sanitation and its relation to disease. While doetors disagree upon many things, they do not disagree upon the measures necessary to prevent plague and cholera; and though they cannot cure those diseases they can prevent them in large part. Could Have Been Avoided. "So, the economic doetors disagree on many things, but o'n those measures 1 which might have prevented much | of the economic disease from which j we have been suffering, they do not disagree at all; and though it i3 extremely difficult to cure depression or financial disorder once confidence has been lost, those things can in large measure he avoided. . . . "It is certain that sometimes we do not see that the course we take is destructive of our welfare; if we did see more clearly that the. road led over the precipice we might be less keen — to put it no high'er — on taking it. It is true that we see what we want to see, but it is also true that when we see that what we wanted is not at all what we supposed it to be, we bsgin not to want it. "If the American really saw that in insisting stubbornly on payment of govermnental debts he was postponmg the restoration of prosperity, jeopardising the solveney of another thousand banks, including perhaps his own, would he still insist? The fact is, he does not believe the experts; J any more than the layman in India or China believes the medical experts when he is told to keep sewage out of drinking water J he believes that cholera is a matter of luck, or of j angry devil5 and does not take sani- | tation seriously. "An educated man certainly ought * to he able to understand why the vast | sums involved in debts or reparations | can only be paid in goods or services; j but we know as a matter of fact that vast numbers of educated people don't I understand it, and unless our demo- j cracies are to go smash, education j must somehow manage to maka tiiat kind of problem something which the millions can grasp. To do that it must make millions mops conscious of the kind of intellectual folly into which we are all ap't to f all, more aware, that is, of the dangers of our own nature; aware of the nature of society, the character of its mechanism, and must develop the particular skill3 which en-' able us to see the meaning of everyday experience and apply it to our social problems.

"That Social Intelligence." "So often in politics the millions do not even ask themselves what bearing the policy they support has upon the things they desire. Presumably we want welfare, presperity. But plainly the policies about which we get most excited have very little relation to prosperity. "All this really meant that we have not asked ourselves what government is for, what organised society is for; are not guiding instinct and impulse by that social intelligence which it is the business of education to develop."