Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

152 What To Make of Itstate is inefficient enough in its regulations—and that is alwaysa possibility to be weighed—then there is no escapefrom spillovers as a source of gross inefficiency in marketsystem. Under the influence of business, governments oftenrefuse to curb spillovers and often protect the enterprise’sprerogatives to create them, as, for example, whenthey restrict individual suits against corporations as wellas, sometimes, public criticism of them.It is sometimes noted with surprise, as though the oppositewere to be expected, that communist systems abusedtheir resources—for example, polluted the air and water—more wastefully than did the market societies. Hypotheticallyin a system in which production is decided by centralauthority, that authority looks after such effects as blightand pollution. Entrepreneurs do not. Yet the empiricalrecord shows that the market societies better conserve theenvironment and the society’s amenities than do communistsystems. A careless inference is that the market system,for all its inefficient spillovers, is more attentive tospillover problems than is a centralist system. A more carefulinference is that the market system, combined with governmentalregulation, can deal more effectively with theseproblems than can central control without the help ofmarket system. That may be true even if that regulation isflawed, as it always is.The other side of the coin of spillover burdens is spilloverbenefits. For example, an enterprise trains the employees ithires, and then over the course of months and years someworkers are hired away by other enterprises that can thenbenefit from their training. Or you fashion a beautiful garden,and all passersby benefit. These inadvertent benefitsmay be no less numerous than inadvertent burdens.