Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

46 How It Worksbe allocated to each person or family? Leg of lamb every dayor only once a week or month, and to which persons? Howoften does a new jacket go to any person who desires it?What kind of jacket? The market system is just such apeacekeeping mechanism.We tend to take this for granted, rarely pausing to reflecton the potential for violence in the struggle over potentiallyconflicting claims and the significance of the market systemin substituting peaceful exchange for a more violent allocation.Conventional economics looks on from a different angle.It tells us that scarcity poses an efficiency problem. Ifthere is not enough to go around, then a society must findsome method to weigh its alternatives. If more autos can bemade available only by taking labor and materials awayfrom other lines of production, like kitchen appliances,then somehow people or officials have to decide whetherconstructing more autos is worth reducing the supply ofkitchen appliances.This conventional line of analysis is correct. We shall infact explore later how the market system provides the—orone—required method for efficient choice. But here I am observingthat a more fundamental problem created by scarcityis that of potential violence. The first requirement posed byscarcity is not efficient choice but rather a method for allocatingconflicting claims to desired scarce performances andobjects so that people do not assault and kill each other inpursuit of them. The market system is such a method.It is here useful to think of the market system as though itwere a political process—not governmental yet neverthelessfundamentally political. Societies are poised at the rimof disorder because of ever-changing conflicting aspirations