Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

154 What To Make of ItAn obvious example is the sacking of an employee. Inmarket systems many millions of people are never freefrom fear that this burden will be thrust on them. Nor isdischarge necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime burden. Theymay suffer from discharge again and again throughout theirworking lives. How severe a cost is this to them? It depends,of course, on what alternative jobs are available. Idealizedmodels of the market system postulate no lack of satisfactoryalternative jobs, but just that lack is of course a problemin all real-world market systems, even in what is calledfull employment. And the weight of the burden depends onwhether there are fallback protections, like unemploymentcompensation.Other terminations of market relations impose burdensof varying severity: an enterprise leaves a town, a landlordevicts a tenant, or an employer loses a prized employee.Conventional views of the market system see it as anarena in which people engage in advantageous interchanges.But plainly it is in fact an arena in which people both engagein and are ejected from them. Classical arguments for marketefficiency, including mathematical models of idealizedmarkets, show net benefits for all market participants underspecific conditions; but they are benefits of transactionswhen compared to no transactions. Under certain hypotheticalconditions, a market system is better than no marketsystem. The arguments do not show that, given a marketsystem, everyone gains from continuing transactionsand terminations. Everyone does not.Terminations are in fact so deeply burdensome thatmany societies legally restrict rights to terminate transactions.Employers are sometimes prohibited from firingwithout legally allowed cause. Or they are required to givenotice and to pay dismissal wages. Landlords can evict ten-