Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

256 Thinking About ChoicesThe welfare state has not yet had to cope with theprospect of permanent exile from the market system ofable-bodied workers neither aged nor injured nor temporarilydisplaced but insufficiently productive. It is a frighteningpossibility: the rise of a new underclass consisting ofmillions of people with insufficient skill or capital to offerthe required quid to win the necessary quo. If it forms, itneeds not only income but jobs, together with the statusthat goes with jobs. Those not in the underclass are notlikely to tolerate and support it in its idleness. Those in itare not likely to accept their idle exile quietly. Difficultchoices may have to be made. Two legal scholars have recentlypresented a proposal to provide to every young adultAmerican a once-in-a-lifetime $80,000 share in the capitalwealth of that society, thus creating a society of stakeholders.One would expect significant national differences toemerge if the industrialized nations have to face a future ofable-bodied market exiles.Two VisionsYour choices—mine too, or a society’s—on each of thelisted and other aspects of the market system are probablyguided by a theory or model—not precise but roughlysketched in the mind—of a preferred relation between stateand market system.A common model or vision places the market systemfront and center, leaving the state with two subsidiary roles.The first role is to establish the legal foundations withoutwhich the market system cannot operate. In this model,that first state role raises few questions and is for the mostpart dismissed. The second role is captured in such words as“interference” and “intervention,” or words less critical yet