1208 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - Zu 
4) The interest of the community is referred to in the introductory 
text of this study week. But what is the interest of the community? 
Who will decide what the real interest of the community is? Pro- 
fessor FriscH would answer: the majority. But in a real democracy 
there are many questions which cannot be decided by majority votes. 
Minorities have rights which must be respected. So this question 
s again very complex, and personally, I cannot see in any com- 
munity anything other than the superposition of individual interests. 
And if this position is correct, it would appear to be impossible to 
replace individual preferences by a single preference function for a 
whole society. 
5) Prof. FriscH has formulated excellently the stress he puts 
on the relations which must obtain in all cases between the political 
authorities and the people responsible for planning and he has said 
that the political authorities can correct the plan or use it in some 
way. But I would say that, from a practical point of view, this in 
quite impossible, because politicians are incompetent in econometrics. 
Who is to decide what the fundamental variables of the model are? 
Who will decide if the calculations have been made in the right way 
or not? All these questions are very difficult indeed, What the poli- 
‘ical authorities can validly decide is the general rules governing the 
decisions to be taken. But to the extent that millions of decisions 
are in question, they cannot be taken by any central agency. And 
the specific value of a market economy is that it provides a very 
valuable tool for the organisation of decentralised decisions. 
At any event, a political assembly can only discuss questions of 
principle, and decide the general rules governing the decisions to 
be taken. It can discuss technical plans and economic calculations 
neither validly nor efficiently. 
6) Professor FriscH’s starting point is that the overall purpose 
of social policy should be the human personality. I agree completely 
with this principle, but the question is: what are the different aspects 
of respect for the person? Again, who will decide what exactly is 
"17] Frisch - pag. 12