The Economic Expert

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 239, 27 September 1930, Page 9

The Economic Expert

and the Man in the Street

(By

“Lector”)

“When Mrs. Smith goes into the shop to buy an alarm clock or a pair of stockings and the foreign article is half-a-orown cheaper than the British, she will, without a tremor of conscience, In variably buy the foreign (If it were not so, tariffs would not be necessary). Still more, when Mr, Smith buys a motor car and finds that he can save twenty pounds by buying the American, he does so. But both Mr. and Mrs. Smith will vote enthusiastically to keep out foreign goods, ‘in a general way.’ ”

—Norman Angell, M.P.

JT IS POPE who speaks of “what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”; and most of us will feel that way about Norman Angell’s two sentences quoted above. They epitomise in the pithiest possible manner the inchoate idea that lies behind practically all our minds when we hear or read the usual good advice from economic experts to “buy British” or any other kind of goods. HOW WE BUY. Insofar as we know ourselves, most of us are aware that when we go into any establishment, possibly the last question we ask is as to the country of origin of the goods to be purchased, and almost certainly the first is, “How much, please?” Civen quality and a reasonable price, It may be assumed in the ordinary course that the transaction will be completed. Yet, at tho same time, we would rise in Indignation should anyone impeach our passionately patriotic Ideals and be severely offended were anyone to suggest that, in our business dealings, we were acting as cogs in the wheel of British or Dominion progress. AU this naturally raises the question: how far is the expert to be trusted by the man in the street? PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY. Norman Angell, having delivered himself of the above, adds further telling and valuable remarks. (The rest of this practically amounts to a verbatim quotation.) That brings us, he says, to the fundamental paradox of democracy. Such questions as Empire Free Trade—whether it is worth while taxing our foreign source of raw material and other needed products in order to develop Empire sources and so a possibly new trade—is ultimately a question of fact, of figures, extremely difficult to determine; requiring, if the answer is to be worth two straws, not only specialist knowledge of economics, but the habit of using statistics and a sense of the traps into which they may lead- one; and not merely a special knowledge of economics, but of such things as the internal political situation of the Dominions so as to judge of the possibility of their reducing their tariffs, and so on. THE SPECIALIST IGNORED. But In deciding these questions we do not turn to the specialist; we put it to the public as a whole, usually in the form of a disorderly discursive debate carried on during a week or two’s electoral jamboree. We leave it to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, who can only give a spare-time attention to the matter, anyhow—a very spare-time attention—to decide these abstruse and difficult statistical and technical problems. It is much as though medical experts, baffled by the complexity of a problem like the cause and cure of cancer, doubtful as to the answers which should be given to certain riddles connected therewith, should say: “Let us take a vote of the laboratory night watchman, the janitor, and the boy who brings the milk, and let them give the answer.” It sounds March madness. And in one aspect it is. But also, it is inevitable, if for no other reason than that it is the fate of the butcher, the baker, and can-

diestick maker which is being decided. They are therefore entitled to have some say about it. That is why we cannot be ruled by experts. If the medical experts were about to operate upon the night watchman for cancer, he would, naturally, have the casting vote. The final decision as to whether the operation should take place or not would not rest with the experts, but with the layman. THE DOCTOR AS AN ILLUSTRATION. But the difference, and it Is a very suggestive difference, between the field of medicine and the field of politics is that in the former the layman has learned how, In some measure, to use the expert, and in the field of politics he has not. If the patient is a man of any education he asks such questions as “What is the mortality in these operations? What is the mortality without? What is the strength of my constitution stated in percentages? Has this surgeon a kink or prejudice or fad in favour of the suggested operation? Is there an antioperation school? What is the margin of difference between them?” On the basis of knowledge supplied by the expert and specialist the layman judges. It is not necessary for the layman to have been trained as a medical man to come to- the right decision. It is necessary for the layman to have a certain training in the use of evidence, the use of facts and knowledge that he may secure with the help of others. Incidentally, the consciousness of his own ignorance is the first condition of the layman’s use of the expert at all. If the layman thinks he knows, and believes In remedies of his own, he does not go to the specialist at all. To know our own ignorance is the first step to getting knowledge. THE CHARLADY’S CROSS. To the solution of political and economic problems we make an approach which we should, usually, never dream of making to the solution of a medical problem. When we propose a referendum on such a matter as the taxation of foreign food we assume, presumably, either that the busy and harassed John Citizen or Jane Citizen, the tired labourer or factory girl or typist, will work out the intricate statistics of the matter for him or herself, or that in the decision of the charlady making her cross there enters some sort of magic which enables her to dispense with such things as statistics and facts. The truth is that we have confused the question of the right to make the decision with the means of making it. The failure to supply the means makes the right a farce. USINC THE EXPERT. If publics and governments accepted expert or educated opinion on the tariff problems, 90 per cent, of the difficulties would disappear. But the expert economist is simply disregarded because the ordinary layman cannot understand the expert and thinks he knows better. Our education must aim more at enabling us to be, not experts on fifty subjects, but capable of using the expert’s knowledge. And the technique of government must be so modified as to cease putting to the electorate questions which should be put to the c.viert.