![]() ![]() Partnerships, cooperatives, episodic individual transactions, and long-run contractual agreements all exist as alternatives. ![]() The corporation may be the predominant way of doing certain things during a particular era, but it will never be the only market mechanism even during that given era, and certainly not for all eras. But there can be no definitive comparison of market institutions–such as the corporation–and a governmental institution, such as a federal bureaucracy. There are of course particular institutions existing in a market as of a given time. Any comparison of market processes and government processes for making a particular set of decisions is a comparison between given institutions, prescribed in advance, and an option to select or create institutions ad hoc. Its advantages and disadvantages are due precisely to this fact. ![]() “The market” is no particular set of institutions. The need for food can be met by buying groceries, eating at a restaurant, growing a garden, or letting someone else provide meals in exchange for work, property, or sex. The need for housing can be met through “the market” in a thousand different ways chosen by each person–anything from living in a commune to buying a house, renting rooms, moving in with relatives, living in quarters provided by an employers, etc., etc. ![]() The market is simply the freedom to choose among many existing or still-to-be-created possibilities. The government establishes an army or a post office as the answer to a given problem. ![]()
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