Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

88 How It Workswhat activities can and cannot be organized through themarket system.One has to jettison other similar misconceptions. Themarket system coordinates the pursuit of wealth? That istoo narrow, for it also coordinates the pursuit of performances.Does it at least include coordination of the pursuitof wealth? Here thinking often goes wrong. By definition,wealth consists of those things that can be owned and soldin the market as distinct from things, however valuable,that cannot. Furnaces heat buildings, as does the sun. Furnacescan be and are owned; the sun cannot be and is not.Consequently, furnaces are wealth; the sun is not. But wedo not know which kinds of performances and objects canbe owned and sold, which not; all we know is that if a thingcan be brought into the market, whatever it is, we will callit wealth. We have gone in a circle. Instead of saying thatthe market system coordinates the pursuit of wealth (aswell as of performances), we should correctly say that, if itcan coordinate the pursuit of an object, we shall call that objectwealth.We might be tempted to think that the market organizeswork. Not play. Not prayer. Not scientific discovery. Notreading, walking, singing, dreaming, or inventing. The marketsystem is only the world of work. For some purposes,such an interpretation will do. For most purposes, however,including ours, it is too loose. Moses worked to lead his peopleto the Promised Land, Leonardo to paint the Mona Lisa,and Einstein to create relativity theory. But most of uswould think it demeaning, as well as false, to classify theirwork as market activity rather than, respectively, as political,artistic, and scientific. Do I work in my garden? Do Iever work at parenting? Does the pope ever work? Yes, yes,and yes; but none of these efforts counts as market activity.