ABSTRACT
The evaluation of technical approaches to solving societal problems customarily involves consideration of the relationship between potential technical performance and the required investment of societal resources. Although such performance-versus-cost relationships are clearly useful for choosing between alternative solutions, they do not by themselves determine how much technology a society can justifiably purchase. This latter determination requires, additionally, knowledge of the relationship between social benefit and justified social cost. The two relationships may then be used jointly to determine the optimum investment of societal resources in a technological approach to a social need.
