Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

142 What To Make of Itorder to pile up outputs and capital without regard to whatpeople want or low-cost ways to create new capital. For example,they do not allow their energies, however creative,to construct a mountainous accumulation of air conditionersor of the machines necessary to make them, to the neglectof all else. Their energies, their capital construction,and their innovations are consequential for growth and efficiencybecause they are tailored to what people want and tolow-cost ways to satisfy them. Without the discriminatingchoices that efficiency prices make possible for both the enterpriseand its customers, a society wastes its resources ofelectric power, petroleum, or labor, and falters—or turnsback—in its growth processes.But is it not almost certainly true that this year’s capitalproduction and technological innovation will contributemore to this year’s growth than will improvement in the efficiencyof choice? Of course. But that is because they willbe guided by relatively efficient choices made possible byefficiency prices. Societies do not choose between entrepreneurshipwith capital construction and innovation forgrowth, on one hand, and efficient choices, on the other.The first succeed because they are guided by the second.Granting the many failures of the market system, understandingthat all complex social systems are afflictedwith gross inefficiencies, market systems can neverthelessbe credited with the great and distinctive merit of efficiencyprices that permit a drastically improved degree of efficientchoice. They make cost information universally available.And they force cost information on every chooser, for eachchooser must pay to effect a choice.