Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Too Little,Too Late 167ute income so as to allocate more production to the poor.For some tasks the market system is almost wholly out ofthe picture. It cannot, for example, assemble a team of representativesto write a constitution, nor can the market systemthereafter enact it.One might say, however, that this is not an efficiency issue.We do not say that a hammer is inefficient because itwill not bathe a baby or carry telephonic messages. Nor,then, is a market system inefficient because some tasks ofcoordination lie outside its scope. The inability, however,of the market system to coordinate through compulsion isturned back into an efficiency issue when broad claims ofmarket-system efficiency are made. For example, it is acommon broad claim that the market system achieves anefficient allocation of resources. Investigating or weighingthat claim—which is, to repeat, a claim about efficiency—one discovers that it is false. For the very best that can besaid is that the market system is efficient only in such allocationsor resources as can be achieved through voluntarytransactions. In other words, the limited domain of themarket becomes relevant to judgments about its efficiencybecause claims about its efficiency make it relevant.Another overstated efficiency claim for the market systemis that it generally permits people to pursue their aspirations,whatever they may be, through voluntarism ratherthan through compulsion (as though all aspirations can bepursued in that way, if people so choose). The correct statementis quite different. It is that the market system is constrainedto the voluntary track; and when, for the pursuit ofaspiration, voluntarism is not enough—and it is often notenough—the market system will not do. The incapacity ofthe market system again is made into an efficiency issuebecause of an overbroad claim to efficiency.