Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

148 What To Make of Itquently judge to be efficient cannot be efficient if they harmany of the others in the gym. Nor can they be efficient if Aand B are indifferent to benefits that their further transactionsmight bring to others.The inefficiencies of spillovers are enormous, especiallythe adverse effects of the great physical energies that enterprisesharness with contemporary technologies. Spilloversare of course not all traceable to enterprises. Lake Erie becamea dead lake not only because of industrial wastes butbecause residential lawn fertilizer polluted the water. Butgiven the rise of large enterprises driven by the technologicalchanges of the past two centuries, they typically andgenerally rather than exceptionally impose large spilloverburdens or costs. Every factory must dispose of waste products,and they commonly burden millions of people. Evenenterprises that appear to be benign do so. Enterprises nowconstruct, for example, retirement villages and gated townswith far-flung spillovers on the security and freedom ofmovement on nearby persons not in the community. Airand water pollution, as the most familiar examples of spilloverburden, are clearly not exceptional.Now that spillover effects of fuel consumption andother chemical discharges have reached critical magnitudes,not only writers of science fiction but scientists ponderthe possibility that spillovers, if not governmentallycurbed, may impoverish or bring an end to human life onEarth. The World Resources Institute joins with the UnitedNations’ development and environmental programs to concludethat the world is headed “toward a variety of potentialhuman and environmental disasters.” The United KingdomRoyal Society joins with the U.S. National Academy of Sciencesto warn against “irreversible damage to the earth’s capacityto sustain life.”