Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Quid Pro Quo 121the rule: adults with an insufficient biological inheritanceof brain and brawn, or with inadequate or no assets at all tooffer in exchange, or with inadequate training.Second, in tying each person’s claims to what that personcan sell, all claims are tied to accidents of birth and history.In great part, inheritance decides what you or I can offerin the market: first, a biological inheritance of cognitiveability and muscular skills; second, a social inheritance ofearly education and assets; and, third, an inheritance of aplace in a society that possesses a supply, large or small, ofassets and skills that determine the possibilities of socialcooperation. With little inherited ability, poor early rearing,and paucity of inherited assets, you would clearly be destinedto a meager share in the benefits of market cooperation.You would also be destined to a meager portion if youwere born into an unproductive society that lacks assetsand skills.Third, the market quid quo pro rule entails insecurity ofincome and status, even if these risks are reduced by insurance.Employed today, one may lose one’s job tomorrow,shortly then lose one’s savings, home, and even status inthe community. Business fluctuation, recession, and depressionevict people from their jobs and cut off their claimsto income from their labor. Illness and temporary disabilityput a stop on one’s market claims, and old age often promisesa termination of all market claims. Some people of coursehave the funds with which to buy insurance against some ofthese losses. Yet so intolerable is this state of affairs formost people that, beginning with Germany in the 1880s, industrialsocieties have departed from the rule by grantingnonmarket claims through such systems as old-age pensions,unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation,and subsidized medical care. Even much earlier, some