Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

38 How It Worksnections in cooperation practiced in the manufacture ofshoes. A Korean enterprise operating in Indonesia assemblesthe shoes with designs and materials specified by a firmin Oregon and with further design by a firm in Taiwan. Cattleraised, slaughtered, and skinned in Texas provide leatherfor the uppers. Hides go by rail freight from Texas to Los Angeles,then by ship or air to Pusan for tanning, then by air toIndonesia. Midsoles are made from petroleum-based chemicals,one of which is distilled and “cracked” from Saudi petroleumshipped in a tanker to a Korean refinery. Syntheticrubber manufactured in Taiwan with electricity from nuclearpower plants provides the outer soles. A Japanesemademachine sews the corporate logo on the shoes. Shoesare stuffed with paper made from trees harvested in Sumatra,then packed in boxes from a paper mill in New Mexicoand shipped across the Pacific to the United States in asupercontainer ship. Each of these cooperating enterpriseslinks with hundreds of close-at-hand cooperating suppliersand employees and with thousands or millions of more distantsuppliers, like those who provide the fuels that smeltthe ore necessary for the nuclear powerlines. (Again, to appreciatethe scope and detail of the cooperation is not to idealizeit. A common complaint about the shoe industry isthat it grossly underpays its overseas laborers for their contributionto the cooperation.)Even those performances and objects that appear to belocally supplied require long chains of cooperative performances.If you call on a carpenter to replace a rotting fencepost, he can do the job only because of the earlier cooperationof those who made his shovel and hammer. And ofcourse they in turn were dependent on all those who providedthem metals, a power supply, and so on.