Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

74 How It Worksand since, eloquently argued more than fifty years ago thatpolitical voting on issues demands too much of voters. Becauseit demands, so he wrote, more thought and informationthan the voter can manage, political voting cannotserve effectively as a control over governmental policies inthe way that market voting does over entrepreneurial policies.The political voter confronts such complex problemsas how to cope with ethnic conflict, a problem without obvioussolution. As Schumpeter saw it, even a complex choiceamong life insurance policies is easier than a choice of policiesto reduce ethnic conflict.It is an important contrast. It points to another as well,as Schumpeter saw. Mass control over governmental eliteswould on some counts be improved if mass chose notamong alternative policies but chose instead, as it usuallydoes, among alternative elites. Let the elites choose the policies;leave mass the function of turning out any governmentelite that disappoints. In effect, voters give up amethod of specific control for which they lack the competencein order to practice a looser control for which theircompetence may suffice.Such a strategic choice is not possible for buyers. In amarket system, there is little room for escape from the necessityto cast market votes through one’s purchases—andto cast them frequently and endlessly. If you do not vote,you get nothing.There is no question that entrepreneurs and their enterprisesare powerful participants in the market system,many thousands of them each dwarfing the ordinary individualparticipant. As disproportionately strong and keyparticipants making the major proximate decisions, theyare like their brother governmental elites. Popular controlover them, as through voting by spending, imposes a strong