Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

12 Market System Ascendantsystem, it is of course possible that the millions of peoplewho now endorse it are on the wrong track. Such consensusas exists is a political phenomenon, not a scientific demonstration.We cannot simply ignore the many highly informeddissenters who believe that experience with themarket system has already shown, to anyone who cares tolook dispassionately at the evidence, that it has put us all onthe road to disaster.They argue that it exhausts the world’s resources andalso threatens an environmental catastrophe through, amongother possibilities, global warming. They also show that ithas already created health-threatening urban environmentswhile simultaneously drawing ever more people into thecities. Clearly, they can also show, it has not put an end tothe inhumanity of acute poverty. And all these ills, they argue,it will bring to the newly marketized societies. That alternativesto the market system might do worse is not agood reason for failing to examine what the market systemmay do to its participants.None of these and many other claims for or against themarket system—all significant for our futures—is obviouslytrue or obviously false. Is the market system efficient,as its advocates believe? Look at its prodigious output. Is itinefficient? Look at poverty and inadequate medical care.Do market societies spoil the environment and exhaust ourresources? Yes, but so do all societies—perhaps we mistakethe cause. Does the market system degrade personality andculture? On that point, what shall we count as evidence—persons who pursue money to the exclusion of any othervalues, or the institutions for science, education, and artthat flourish in market societies? Is the market system allyor enemy of democracy? What we call democracy does notexist except in market societies; yet the influence of money