Page:Neurath O. (1942) International Planning for Freedom.pdf/6

Rh solution with its 'optimum happiness', with its 'optimum population', with its 'optimum health', with its 'optimum working week', with its 'optimum productivity' or something else of this kind. From this argument sometimes arises the tendency to ask for a particular authority which should be exercised by technicians and other experts in selecting 'big plans'.

Such decisions of experts would be, in principle, of the same type as common-sense decisions. I think it would even disturb the scientific habit of experts, if they were asked to make decisions and not only to prepare arrays of possible solutions.

Let us take an uncontroversial example. Assume the scientists tell the English people that their fireplaces waste calories - of course they do so enormously. But the fireplaces as an element of our environment are not 'happiness-neutral' as it were, as is e.g., the cable shaft below the surface of the street. The fireplaces are related to homely comfort and to many customs of our private life. How to compute these and other items of 'happiness conditions' would be the subject of discussions and finally of decisions based on common sense and influenced by the scientists' information.

That is one of the reasons why planning in a democracy will presumably be based on far reaching but simple information and education. That fits well into the whole pattern of democracy, in which each group has to expect opposition and discussion and therefore needs a certain amount of data for arguing. That is perhaps one of the reasons why, on an average, propaganda in democratic countries is much more educational and informative than the propaganda in one-party countries, where the government is in a position to suppress unwelcome knowledge altogether.

But a social engineer will regard this educational element of a cooperative habit not only as a measure within the pattern of planning, but also as a 'happiness condition' as far as the joy of self-government and freedom is concerned.

Bread may be produced in a relatively short time, when stores of it have been destroyed. Even destroyed cattle may be replaced after a couple of years, whereas it needs a long time to afforest vast areas and thus to change the climate - and in how short a time a forest and a certain