Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

134 What To Make of Itwhether a 2 percent expansion of steel production is wortha 3 percent cut in electric power output that would makethe expanded steel production possible. Worth the cost towhom? You might reply: worth it to society as I estimate society’sneeds. Or you might reply: worth it to my governmentalsuperiors, as I understand their values to be. Or:worth it to millions of citizens as I estimate what their valuesare (quite irrespective of my values, with which theymay or may not agree). The value of steel against electricpower will differ, depending on your reply. The cost of steelexpansion and the efficiency of expanding will also dependon your reply. There exists no correct value, no correct estimateof cost, no one maximally efficient choice, no correctprice. It all depends on whose values are to count.I do not know how to establish a set of prices that mightbe called efficient rather than arbitrary for a planner willingto disregard all values except what he or his superiors value.It has been a curse, one might say, on central planners thatthey have no such set of prices. But it is possible to constructor give rise to a set of prices that responds to the values ofmillions of people. To avoid a long disquisition on abstractpoints of economic theory, I shall use a shortcut expositionto explain how prices can represent values, though notequally, for almost everyone in the society.Efficiency PricesImagine yourself among a thousand or so people gatheredtogether in a gym for an experiment. With a few exceptions,each is given one or a few goods that many people want: onemight be given a loaf of bread, another a brick, another anauto or an insurance policy. Somehow, as though by magic,