Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Alternative to the Market System? 271In both these methods of planning, market-system planningdiffers from the look-alike.Within the market system. Market-system planningdiffers, first, in that it is, as is plain, embedded in an operatingmarket system. It is not a rival to the market system.Nor are money, prices, and markets mere adjuncts to planning,as in the hypothetical alternative or as they were inthe USSR and Maoist China. In mere numbers of decisions,most by far continue to be made in markets by consumers,workers, and entrepreneurs rather than by planners outsidethe market system.Efficiency prices. It consequently differs, as we have alreadysaid, because those who make central decisions onproduction, whether cabinet members, legislators, or civilservants, possess cost information in the form of efficiencyprices. In the look-alike, prices are arbitrary.When officials tax and subsidize to modify or overridethe market choices of market-system participants, they areof course bringing collective values to bear—that is whythey act. That means that, for any good or service in question,they regard market evaluations and efficiency pricesas inadequate measures of cost. But efficiency prices neverthelesstell them what masses of participants value and thecosts attached to every individual market choice. That isprecious information. It permits them to compare existingmarket evaluations with their own. It also enables them toplan not by ignoring market evaluations but by amendingthem—by adding or subtracting rather than displacing. Inthe absence of a market system, they would have no suchinformation, no such guidelines, and no such possibility ofamending rather than displacing individual evaluations.They would have no efficiency prices to inform them aboutindividual or popular evaluations.