Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

106 How It Worksrequire neither the heavy hand of compulsion nor the kindof explicit quid pro quo benefits that people offer each otherin the market. Although in these interchanges people pursuemany of the same aspirations as in their market activity,here markets are unnecessary and in some cases wouldobstruct aspirations. If I want a genuine friendship, for example,the friendship relation would be destroyed if I paidfor it. In these relationships there are often rewards on bothsides but no specific contingent quid pro quo. From the activitiesof civil society, including play and adventure, peopledraw immediate satisfaction from experience. This differsfrom the means-end pattern of using resources toachieve satisfaction that characterizes life in market systems.Of course, we often use the market system to obtainnecessary equipment or to bring us to a location where wewill enjoy play or adventure. But once equipped and located,we can for a time stop our buying and selling.Two final comments on scope or domain of the market system.The first is that social interchange and institutionscannot be partitioned into mutually exclusive domains. Ifwe observe a group of people engaged in building a churchwith paid labor and bought materials, we can quickly identifythe activity as within the market domain. But their purposeis to facilitate worship, thus the activity falls withinthe domain of religion. We might also look at the project,depending on the architecture, as an artistic effort or accomplishment,thus no less within the domain of the artsthan in the market domain. We cannot partition social lifeinto mutually exclusive territories.The second comment: The idea of a society in which themarket system alone is society’s coordinator is obviouslynonsense and is fortunately only rarely espoused. Most of