Similarities Between Galbraith And Lindblom

Lindblom and Galbraith

Galbraith and Lindblom were alive during the same time and they both shared something in common– an analysis on the market. The market, for Galbraith and Lindblom, is seen as being steered by powerful monopolies rendering it inefficient and problematic especially for people in society.

Both Galbraith and Lindblom share similarities in that the market had/has two separate spheres. For Lindblom, the market is an ideal free system of exchange that we no longer live in where the power of supply and demand govern – we are now living in the market system, a system of social coordination where the entrepreneurs and corporations control the actions of governmental elites. For Galbraith, we are living in a dual economy; one half is the market system, where consumers are sovereign and their demand drives production, and the second half is the industrial system, where consumers are dependent and producers create artificial demand by means of marketing and advertisements.
They set “arbitrary prices” on goods and are not subject to the laws of supply and demand (examples include cartels and patents). Their activities and existence are highly undemocratic since they have limited liability and shareholders are insulated from lawsuits and actions made against them. In addition, another inefficiency of market society is that monopolies add on further costs for individuals, which is the phenomenon called “spillovers”. Pollution, a type of spillover, is an adverse effect created all for the benefit of the corporate car-company-owning few. These inefficiencies violate the three bones of the market (quid pro quo, liberty, and private property rights). The quid pro quo bone of the market says that people are rewarded for what they put in; it only accounts for market transactions and not for actions that have no market value, such as