Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

44 How It Worksdoux commerce. Again a caution: the market system makessocieties peaceful, but that is not necessarily efficient, equitable,or humane.One claim for the market system as peacekeeper runslike this: People fight with each other when they are dissatisfiedwith their lots in life. But higher income—and especiallygrowing income—reduce frustration, conflict, andconsequent mutual injury, making possible a peaceful andstable political order. Market systems give rise to high incomesand growth, as they have in fact historically in WesternEurope and North America and now conspicuously inAsia. Q. E. D. The market system makes for social peace.Although the argument may be correct, it falls short ofasserting that the market system itself provides socialmechanisms for reducing mutual injury. It says instead thatcitizens will be disposed to keep the peace because they arewell enough off in market societies to be willing to obey thelaws laid down by the state to curb mutual injury. The stateis the peacekeeper.The market system itself produces patterns of behaviorthat themselves reduce mutual injury and keep peace in thesociety, quite aside from inducing people to obey the law.With a little indirection, we can see how.Prospects of mutual injury and social disorder call forways to protect each person or family from incursions byothers. For social peace, each person or family needs a defendedlittle island of autonomy. If that were all there is toit, the defenses erected by custom and law might be sufficientto keep the peace. Through these defenses citizenscould establish rights or entitlements to be enjoyed by eachperson, not to be interfered with by others. That would seemto leave no role for a market system as peacekeeper. Indeed,