Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Market-System Coordination 45under these conditions the idea of the market as a contributorto social peace might strike us as strained or bizarre.But people want more than static defense against incursions.They are at least mildly ambitious for new satisfactionsof many kinds. They struggle with each other formore, a struggle made all the more intense because there isnot enough to go around. They want to enlarge their claims(again, not claims labeled economic but claims of any andall kinds), especially their claims for shares in the benefitsof cooperation (and, again, not economic cooperation butcooperation of any and all kinds)—a bigger share of whateverpies are cut. Much of what they win is at the expense ofothers. Without a peacekeeping mechanism they would inflictmany injuries on one another. And the peacekeepingmechanism consequently has to cope not merely with thestatic defense of established positions but with the intricaciesand ever-changing character of conflict and injury aspeople struggle for more in the face of scarcity.In that struggle, each person’s ambitions constantlychange during the course of life. Say one wants to acquire inearly adulthood a place to live, possibly a spouse, and a circleof friends. As the years pass, one strives for a better placeto live, a widened circle of friends, and then, as a septuagenarian,for the care with which some societies slowly escorttheir members to the grave. Even from month to month orweek to week one moves from one aspiration to another,and often back again. One needs to acquire a supply of foodtoday, but then not again for a week or so. Or perhaps anunanticipated need for medical care arises. Hence, forpeacekeeping, every society needs a system for settlingsuch endless questions as who does which job, who holdswhich position, or how much food and of what kinds is to