Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

90 How It Workstute an enormous category. It includes ideas, inventions,artistry, promises, consultations, and energies of all kinds.It also includes the movement among persons and enterprisesof every object you can think of—found objects,hand-crafted objects, pieces of land, tools, buildings, buriedore, mechanical devices. It includes the pursuit of life—through reproductive services now for sale—and the pursuitof death—through assisted suicide, recently for sale.Although the category includes tag sales and my sale ofa used car, the characteristic and by far most significantbuying and selling is that in which entrepreneurs engagewhen they buy inputs and sell outputs in production intendedto be sold. Their transactions do not, however, fillthe market-system domain.Again, market domain is not defined by the character ofparticipants’ objectives. Nor, of course, is it defined by theethical merit of its transactions. The market system makesroom not only for the most conventional enterprises andtransactions but also for the new Russian mafia just as itmade room for nineteenth-century robber barons. Any aspirationsor objectives, from wealth to piety, can be pursued inthe market system if the pursuit calls for buying and selling.Just which kinds of performances and objects can bebought and sold? Those that satisfy each of three conditions.Obvious as the conditions are, they are neverthelesssignificant in underscoring the immense range or reach ofthe market system. Objects and performances can be boughtand sold—to become goods and services—if• they are subject to contingent human control,• they are scarce,• and they can be obtained without compulsion by voluntaryreciprocating offers of benefits.