Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

26 How It Workslarger scale mutual adjustment? Biologists now tell us that50 billion atoms coordinate to make each of your DNAmolecules, and 1,000 million million cells to make yourbody. No central coordination; all through mutual adjustment.The international political order of the past fifty yearsstands as conspicuous evidence of the scope of mutual adjustment.During that time, mutual adjustment has avertednuclear war or any orgy of destruction like that of the firstand second world wars. One might think that the UnitedNations and NATO bring central coordination to bear, butthey lack the necessary unilateral authority to do so becausemember nations are unwilling to grant it. They do, however,facilitate mutual adjustment among nation-states.The Internet may turn out to be the key technology for amammoth expansion of multilateral worldwide communication.It opens up possibilities of mutual adjustment thatare not yet even imaginable.Participants in mutual adjustment of course differgreatly in the capacities they bring to interactions. Pedestriansat a crowded intersection differ from each other in theirmutual influences: height, weight, fierceness of visage,vigor of stride, and the like. A prime minister or CEO notstrong enough to practice unilateral control over colleaguescan nevertheless bring bigger guns to bear on them than anyone of them can respond with.We all know that societies deliberately design some formalstructures of mutual adjustment—the United Nations,for example, or a nation’s tripartite wage board. Much morefrequently, mutual adjustment arises inconspicuously,without design. And participants in interchange often bringtheir influence to bear more inadvertently than deliberately—theyneed not be aware of their parts in a vast coor-