CARROTS AND STICKS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 26

CARROTS AND STICKS

-or the Donkey and Society

S New Zealand a static or a dynamic society? Is our main incentive the carrot or the stick? These questions are to be discussed from different angles by five speakers in a series of talks to start from 3YC this Saturday (October 20), and later to be broadcast from other YC stations. Explaining the origin of the series, Arnold Wall, Talks Officers at 3YA, said a London critic had recently defined "dynamic" societies as those buoyant and confident in material progress -societies with such diverse forms of government as the United States, the Soviet Union, India, China, Japan, Western Germany and Belgium. In each of these he had noted optimism and tapid material development. Productive capital equipment built up and the human burden of hours of labour was reduced as quickly as possible, and fruitful effort, responsibility, or skill on the part of the individual was handsomely rewarded-in Russia as well as in America. The different sorts of incentive used in these dynamic societies provides the title for this new YC talks series, The Carrot or the Stick? "This London critic contrasted the dynamic, ‘carrot-or-stick’ countries with what he called the ‘static’ StatesBritain, France, Spain and the Scandi-

navian countries,’ Mr. Wall _ said. "These countries, he says, are living in, and obsessed by, their past. They believe in the goal of social equality, which rules their politics far more than it does in. say. Russia They believe

in the virtues of a static national income for social re-distribution, rather than in a growing national income to be dgstributed in the best way to make it go on growing. They are living well, though only for the moment; and their attempts to justify their lagging behind the progress of the dynamic nations, on the ground that materia! progress can be made only at the expense. of some intangible and indefinable moral values, is merely a case of sour grapes. That’s the argument, anyway." Mr. Wall said this argument was not, of course, new, but taking it as a basis for discus-

sion five speakers had been asked: In all this where does New Zealand stand? Can we, by and large, accept this division of States into dynamic and static? Are we static or dynamic? Do we enjoy the carrot? Do we flinch under the stick? Or is the national donkey standing pat and staying put? These, Mr. Wall said, were the questions listeners would hear discussed. Economic aspects of the "carrot or stick" argument will be examined in

the first two talks, by Bryan Philpott, of the New Zealand Meat and Wool Board’s economic service, and by J. D. McDonald, Principal of the Technical School, Westport. After that it will be looked at from the historical point of view by Fergus Murray, senior histoty master at Christchurch Boys’ High School; from the socialist point of view by Ormond Wilson, former Labour M.P.; and from the Christian, or moral standpoint, by the Rev. G. A. Naylor.