Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Chosen Domain 105the larger ones, may make substantial use of the market torecruit staff and to assemble other inputs necessary for theiractivities—for example, a political party. Many make use ofthe market system for labor and other inputs. They may notsell anything; or, if they do, they may not maximize thequid for the quo they offer. At an extreme are some conventionalbusiness enterprises selling in the market butdisguised as nonprofit enterprises to escape taxes on theirincome or to create an image of benevolence rather thanprofit seeking. Some motor clubs offering maps, travel information,insurance, and other products appear to be ofthis type.For some people, civil society means more than organizations.Its activities also include acts of friendship orcompassion, favors and return of favors, and other forms ofpersonal cooperation neither compelled by the state nor organizedby buying and selling. These are enormously importantand ubiquitous forms of social cooperation and sociability.Some interpreters of civil society attach the greatestimportance to those interchanges, believing that throughthem each of us forms and endlessly reconsiders our values,life purposes, and, for the shorter term perhaps, our recreationand politics. We are each a creation of these interchanges,beginning with parental influences over us.In a variety of informal small-group interactions, as infamily life, people curb mutual injury and help one another,whether out of affection or helpful impulse or habit. Theylook after other people’s children, come to the aid offriends, enter into interchanges pleasant in themselves.People often seek in small-group interchanges an area of socialinterchange in which the market rule of quid pro quocan be forbidden.In these personal relationships, peace and cooperation