Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

22 How It Worksresearch meteorologists all over the world. The efforts ofall, mostly strangers to one another, help to improve the accuracyof weather prediction. Nor is cooperation necessarilyhigh minded. People usually cooperate not altruisticallybut because it serves their purposes or because they arecompelled to do so. They also often cooperate without intendingto, or without even becoming aware that they areactually engaged in cooperation. When I deliver empty bottlesto a local recycling center, somebody trucks them awayto a processing facility. Other steps follow. I may give not amoment’s thought to the chain of cooperation in which Iconstitute a link.To get a sense of the beyond-the-horizon scope of cooperation,it is revealing to try to calculate how many peoplecooperate in order to graduate a student from secondaryschool. (No need to ask how many have to love each other,know each other, or be aware of their roles.) Informally, parentsand other family members do much of the necessaryteaching, they themselves having been taught by their parentsand other family members. We add to that number allthe child’s classroom teachers, from kindergarten throughhigh school, and the teachers who trained them. Includeclassmates—they teach each other and, in so doing, drawon what they have been taught by their family members.We must include also those who build and maintain schoolbuildings—a complete account would include everyonefrom ancestors to meter readers. The list runs not into hundredsor thousands but millions of cooperators.Superficially, it looks as though people fight more thancooperate, as seems evident in controversies on public education,foreign policy, and taxes, for example. Yet each fightis evidence of cooperation. We fight over education andtaxes only because we are cooperatively engaged in main-