Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Maximum Reach 85other, family another, and so on. These views are not confusedbut perceptive. The market system indeed pervadesall aspects of life. Congregations hire pastors and buildbuildings. Artists buy instruction and sell their performances.This reality notwithstanding, we can separate aspectsof society. Individual, family, church, and state all buyand sell in the market system and are in that sense part of it;but we find it not too difficult to distinguish each segmentfrom the others and each from the market system in whicheach participates.Domain MisperceivedYet scope remains elusive. Even if we distinguish betweenmarket system and church or between market system andstate, we find it difficult to say—and most of us do not eventry—just what activities do or do not fall within the scopeof the market system. One common proposition is that themarket system coordinates the economy, but not the wholesociety. That is a mistake, and a good way to begin theanalysis of market-system scope is to see why.What in fact do people pursue through their market activities?Food and shelter, of course. But also entertainment,novelty and adventure, power, prestige, love, privacy,sociability, and companionship. Indeed, it appears that theentire range of human aspiration is pursued both inside andoutside of market activities. There exists no set of purposesthat is distinctly market, and the scope of the market systemhas nothing to do with the character of the purposespeople pursue in it. On this point, we get a clear implicationthat market-system scope is far broader than it is sometimessaid to be.To understand the market system’s scope one has to rid