Toward a Science of Social Forecasting

Today the United States is searching for improved policies on energy production, population growth, rural development, income distribution, foreign relations, and other important social areas. It will take decades to work out such policies and to implement them, and decades more to assess completely their consequences. Should the policies prove ineffective or undesirable, the process of revision will require still more years. In spite of these delays, the political and economic institutions that make most social choices are structured to give little weight to the consequences of their actions more than a few years into the future. Politicians are mainly concerned with those outcomes of their decisions that may appear before the next election. The normative and descriptive models of our economy generally disregard the delayed, nonlinear, and irreversible nature of the consequences that may derive from a policy. As a result, most of our society's actions are based implicitly upon a concern for only the next 5-10 years. This myopia is reflected in the lack of any systematic effort to develop a comprehensive view of our society's long term evolution. The Council on Environmental Quality recently conducted an informal survey of forecasting efforts by government agencies (1). The survey found that some agencies, such as the Council of Economic Advisors, make no attempt at comprehensive projections of social and economic changes more than 5 years into the future. Interestingly, the Soviets have assigned an econonmist to make comprehensive forecasts of the United States' society in the year 2000. However, this economist complained recently that he is the only specialist in his institute who has been unable to find a counterpart in the United States. If an ocean liner takes 5 miles or more to change course, one cannot successfully steer it on the basis of information only about obstacles a few hundred yards ahead of it. Instead, radar or some other mechanism must be used to project the course and the speed of the ship well ahead of its minimum maneuvering distance. Because it may take 30