TEXT C Because some resources
must be allocated at the national level, we have created policies which reflect
the aggregated attributes of our society. The Federal budget determines the
proportion of Federal resources to be invested in social welfare programs and
how these resources are distributed among competing programs. This budget is
arrived at through a reiterative aggregative political process which mediates
the claims of groups interested in health, education, welfare, and so on, thus
socializing the continuing conflict generated by their separate aspirations, the
test of whether it can marshal sufficient legitimacy and consent to provide a
basis for cohesion and action. Technical criteria may play a role in the
process, but the ultimate criteria are political and social.
Whether a policy, which is "good" in the aggregate sense, is also "good"
for a particular person, however, is a different matter. If everyone had
identical attributes, these criteria will always produce different outcomes. Any
policy negotiated to attain an aggregate correctness will be wrong for every
individual to whom the policy applies. The less a person conforms to the
aggregate, the more wrong it will be. When a policy is not
working, we normally assume that the policy is right in form but wrong in
content. It has failed because insufficient intelligence has informed its
construction or insufficient energy its implementation. We proceed to replace
the old policy by a new one of: the same form. This buys time, since some time
must elapse before the new policy can fully display the same set of symptoms of
failure as the old. We thus continue to invest our time, energy, and other
resources as if every new discovery of a nonworking policy is surprise, and a
surprise that can be corrected with some reorganized model. But if policies
based on complex, aggregated information are always wrong with respect to the
preferences of every person to whom they apply, we should concentrate on
limiting such policies to minima or "floors." Rather than trying for better
policies, we should try for fewer policies or more limited aggregated ones. Such
limitations could be designed to produce policies as spare and minimal as
possible, for the resources not consumed in their operation would then be usable
in a non-aggregative and person-specific ways--that is, in a disaggregated
fashion. This will require more than just strengthened "local" capacity; it will
require the development of new procedures, institutions, roles, and
expectations. Which of the following words, when substituted for the word aggregate, would LEAST change the meaning of the sentence