Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

What Efficiency Requires 131society’s capacity—these are not insignificant differences—be put into medical care? Whatever figure is contemplated,it is easy to see that more is needed, just as more is neededof the things that have to be given up to get more medicalcare. Hence, to find and produce an appropriate combinationof all is an endlessly complex task.We almost never compare generally or abstractly thevalue of, say, food with that of medical care or of any good orservice. We compare only the value of an increment or adecrement of a good or service with the value of an incrementor a decrement of others that have to be forgone. If Imake a choice between shoes and a jacket, I do not ask myself,as though I had neither, whether on the whole I wouldrather wear shoes than a jacket. I ask only whether I wouldprefer a new pair of shoes, to be added to those I alreadyhave, or a new jacket, to be added to the clothes I alreadyhave. A planner asks not whether steel or electric power ismore valuable but whether more steel is worth putting upwith less power.In short, allocative choices are made at the margin.Choosers compare marginal benefits with marginal costs.For choice to be efficient, the marginal values to be receivedmust be worth their marginal costs or burdens.It would be helpful to individual as well as planners’choices if human wants and needs were biologically fixed.Then anyone would know what is worth producing. Butthey are not biologically fixed. Biology never specified that Ineed television nor, if it had, how many sets of what screensize. Nor did it specify my choices of food, as evidenced byhow cuisine differs from one society to another. Nor does itsay whether a society should put more of its resources intoeducation than into health care or vice versa.