Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

64 How It Worksbanks, a rescue that has been estimated to cost taxpayersmore than $200 billion. But I set aside business politicalpower until Chapter 17. Here I want to examine marketpower, as well as its political determinants.The executives of all but the smallest enterprises constitute,as proximate decision makers, a key group of moversand shakers in market societies. Their services to societyare conspicuous, great, and indispensable, yet, because oftheir great power, troubling. In these respects executivesare like government officials. In their functions the twogroups are parallel but not identical. They share responsibilityfor proximate decisions over society’s greatest tasksor achievements in social coordination. It is a characteristicof market societies that many of these tasks are turned overto the proximate control of market executives.In market societies some major decisions—for example,on taxes or whether to drop bombs—are in the proximatehands of government executives. In the hands of market executivesare no less important proximate decisions on howlabor is to be allocated to the society’s many industries, orwhat industries are to be established, or how income sharesare to be distributed. In democratic societies the two groupsdiffer in how they are controlled, the governmental groupby ballot and political agitation, the market group by customerswho can refuse to buy. They do not differ, however,in importance or magnitude of task. The greatest tasks aredivided between them, and both sets of tasks are indispensable.Elites and MassFollowing respected precedents, I shall call members of thetwo groups elites, in contrast to everyone else, whom I shall