Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

120 What To Make of Itverges from what one sells or earns in the market. An apartmenthouse provides an unmistakable benefit for or contributionto society—living quarters. But does the owner, asdistinct from the building, make any contribution? If thelaw were to transfer ownership from me to you, you as thenew owner would, by conventional thinking, then be calledthe contributor. Yet nothing has changed except the transferof rights to claim rent. In this kind of case, whether oneis conventionally credited with making a contribution ofassets depends not on one’s actual contribution—that is,not on anything one does—but only on who holds propertyrights over assets offered in the market. Again the ethicalargument that markets allocate claims in response to marketcontribution is shattered.Consequences of the RuleIf common ethical justifications of the rule of market quidpro quo fail, some specific empirical consequences of therule, if it were not modified by nonmarket rules and procedures,threaten any ethical justification that might beerected.The first, of course, is that in practical application therule would leave millions of people on the globe destituteunless charity or nonmarket processes like the welfare statecame to their rescue. Applied to infants, the rule wouldguarantee that none would reach adulthood; the worldwould lie depopulated in one generation. But we do not applyit to infants or even older children not yet capable ofmaking a sufficient contribution. They have not yet inheritedany assets to offer in exchange. Nor are they yet sufficientlytrained. Yet these same incapacities afflict manymillions of adults to whom the market nevertheless applies