The prejudice of competence

There are some grumblers who are not happy. (You will tell me that they are playing their role as grumblers.) They write to us:

— What are you getting involved in? You are talking about aviation! agricultural accounting! wheat and flour! wood and forests! Do you understand anything about it? Let the skills speak. The skills, sir!…

— The skills have the floor. We gather their opinions with gratitude. These opinions, the surveys, as we conceive and conduct them here, are they not intended to arouse them?

— You arouse them, but you criticize them. Are you not very daring? When the skills have spoken, is it not wise to follow their advice, humbly?

— The devil is that the "skills", as you say, rarely agree with each other. The grain merchant, who is competent, accuses the farmer. The farmer, who is competent, denounces the grain merchant. The forester, who is competent, finds the current law powerless to protect our high forests and coppices. The wood owner, who is competent, considers it sufficient and cries foul if we talk about strengthening it.
"You don't know anything about it!" is really too easy a response to a campaign that we feel is fair and of general interest, but which hinders you in your particular interests. Skills left to their own devices have often led communities to disasters. Have not Messrs. de Lasteyrie and François-Marsal, not to name them, demonstrated superabundantly by their example that the best Finance Ministers are not always financiers? If you want us to believe that we need to be competent to see that the French countryside is still sown with unthreshed millstones and that this is not done to lower the price of bread, if you think that we need to be competent to appreciate the value of a tax system that allows a landowner who has 200,000 francs of agricultural income to pay less tax than a professor who earns 15,000 francs, let us laugh! And first of all, what do you call a competent gentleman?

— But... someone who knows a question and has been interested in it for a long time...

— To be interested in it, or to find oneself interested in it?

Jean Piot