Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Freedom? 189their alternatives and do not get what they thought theywere choosing—new shoes losing their soles in the firstweek of wear? Or if in ignorance they overlook what otherwisethey would have chosen? A borderline unfreedom,some would say. They would be more willing to acknowledgecompulsion when market participants deliberatelydeny information, misinform, or confuse in order to controlthe behavior of others, as is common in sales promotion.Even there, however, they will more probably claim onlythat choice is not genuinely free; it is choice without thevalues that we usually associate with freedom—a degeneratekind of free choice. Perhaps most people would not go sofar as to call it compulsion or coercion, although many criticsdo. Again, we cannot call up a single definition of freedom.If we say that manipulative sales promotion obstructsa more genuine free choice, perspective requires us to acknowledgethat political choices—referenda and elections—are also degenerate. Parties and candidates want not to enlightenbut to control the electorate. In what they communicate,they intend to induce people to vote as they, thecommunicators, wish. In that respect they are not at all differentfrom sellers who want to control people—to inducepeople to buy what the sellers propose to sell. Both dealheavily in myths, misrepresentations, and lies. They practicediversion and obfuscation to obstruct what could be amore informed and thoughtful free choice. Increasingly, politicalmanipulation has taken up the same techniques assales promotion. The similarities do not at all reduce thecharge that in the market system manipulation undercutsfree choice. Instead, they suggest that elite manipulation ofmass is at war with free choice wherever it is found—inmarket, politics, education, religion, even science.