Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

272 Thinking About ChoicesSequential decisions. Market-system planning differsin that it proceeds without a comprehensive plan for production—nofive-year plan, not even a one-year plan. Insteadit proceeds, as observation of it in any contemporarynation shows, with a sequence of decisions or plans for oneor a few segments of the market system at a time, each segmentaldecision made in the light of earlier segmental decisionsand in anticipation of those to come.Some will deny that sequential decision making withouta comprehensive plan deserves to be dignified with theword planning. Theirs is the old—and I think now antiquated—theoryof planning. To see why nonsequentialplanning with five- or one-year plans is antiquated, you canusefully pause to compare national production planningwith decisions on your own household expenditures.If you were asked to write a family one-year plan—specifyingwhat quantities you want of each service and good—you would find it hard to do. If you did manage to specifyeach, you could not be confident that you had anticipatedchanging desires, unanticipated circumstances, changes incosts, or availability of new services and goods. You do notknow your family’s medical needs in advance, or that theroof will begin to leak this year, or that you will want somenew computer software that will appear on the market inJuly.Happily, you never need to practice such all-at-onceplanning. Instead, the market system offers you a sequenceof choices, each choice to be made whenever it suits you todecide. You weigh each choice in the light of choices alreadymade—avoiding lamb chops two days in a row—andin the light of options in the near and distant future—if youbuy a car, you will need insurance. Your choices are manageable,and you can reach a much higher level of compe-