Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

146 What To Make of Itgies, even if, as we shall see, many are of questionable valueor are dangerous. At an extreme, it is as though the operatingrule for market projects were: “If someone wants itdone, do it!” and the rule for government projects: “If someonedoesn’t want it done, don’t do it!” If Fidelity wants tomanufacture a new kind of financial service, it does nothave to clear its decision with the existing suppliers. But ifthe navy wants to set new tasks for naval air services, itsproposal will often be vetoed by the air force or army.Market systems produce strong motives for the samereasons that other forms of mutual adjustment do. For one,many problems are solved not head-on but as a by-productof attacks on smaller, easier problems more likely to stirindividual persons and collectives to action. In a marketsystem, the distribution of income or the allocation of resourcesto capital investment is a weighty determination tobe made. But it appears on no one’s desk for consideration.Instead, it is determined as an unintended by-product of individualdecisions to buy and sell. The greatest “decisions”of a market system are not decisions at all but states of affairsreached through millions of individual small decisions.They are not delayed by the size and gravity of these“decisions,” as they would be if, in the absence of the marketsystem, they came to someone’s desk. Like other formsof mutual adjustment, the market system can move witha speed rare in central coordination, such as the dazzlingspeed now revolutionizing methods of communication.These are, as I see it, the keys to such efficiency as marketsystems achieve: one, efficient choices made possible by efficiencyprices, the other, powerful motivations. But thereis more to the efficiency story, and what remains to be toldwill lead to conclusions perhaps not expected.