Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

18Alternative Market SystemsIn France, market and government elites cooperate more intimatelythan in the United States, where they more oftenlook on each other as adversaries. Or contrast Japan’s longinattention to environmental pollution—it was once the“most polluted nation in the world”—with Britain’s government-businesscooperation to curb it. From multiplecauses, new forms of market system emerge, sometimeshardly winning the attention of policy makers, sometimestheir deliberate creation.In the twentieth century, while policy makers were concernedwith other choices on their agendas, the place of themarket system in our lives was changed in deeply consequentialways by a massive movement of women into theworkforce. Their tasks would now in large part be set bymarket demands rather than by the authority of husband orfamily tradition. With their new money income, womennow buy in the market many of the services—and somegoods—earlier produced in the home. Equally weighty unplannedchanges may in the twenty-first century emergefrom the Internet and new technologies of multilateralcommunication. Internet auctions, for just one example,greatly widen the range of choice open to market participantsand probably increase the volume of market activity.In this chapter I look at some of the choices open withina market system. What I shall say will sometimes make apersuasive case for certain alternatives over others, but thatis not my purpose. I discuss alternatives because they illu-