One of the central consequences of the fact of pluralism is the inevitability of the market economy. The amount of intellectual energy that has been dedicated to the task of searching for an alternative to the market in the past century is staggering. And yet no matter how you run the numbers, the answer always comes out the same. There are essentially two ways of organizing a modern economy: either a system of centralized, bureaucratic production (such as was found in the former Soviet Union), or else a decentralized system, in which producers coordinate their efforts through market exchange. The former is, unfortunately, incompatible with value pluralism. Central planning works fine for the military, or some other organization where members are willing to accept a standardized allotment of clothing, food rations or housing and to be assigned specific jobs to perform. But in a society where individuals hope to pick and choose from among a range of lifestyle opportunities, there is no getting around the need for a market.
Consider a very simple "who gets what" problem. Suppose that one year, thanks to a fortuitous combination of rain and sun, the rubber farmers get a bumper crop. This means that there is more rubber available than usual. Who should get it? There are literally millions of different ways in which the rubber could be used. Should it be used for bike tires? Lacrosse balls? Waterproof boots? Gaskets? Cables? Shock absorbers? The most persuasive response would be to say that the rubber should go to whichever use is most urgent, or to whoever needs it most. In other words, the rubber should be sent to where it will do the most good. Unfortunately, in a pluralistic society, we lack any common measure of "the good." There is no fixed metric that will allow us to determine whether one person's desire to fix his bike tire is more or less important than some other person's desire to replace the washer in her faucet. The only way to approach the question is to ask how important it is to the person in question. And the only way to find out how important it is to that person is to ask how much he or she would be willing to give up in exchange for the rubber. In other words, we must ask how much that person would be willing to pay for it. (If there is no sacrifice involved, then we can be almost certain that the goods will be wasted, since individuals will ask for all sorts of things that they don't really need. Just look at the difference in the way people behave when they are charging things to an expense account rather than paying for them out of their own pocket.)
Thus the market pricing of goods can be seen as a necessary response to the fact that society is not in a position to judge whose projects are more or less important. (Certainly a process of democratic decision-making is no substitute. In the absence of prices, the problem is simply too complex.) As we have seen, the amount a person should be asked to give up in order to acquire some particular good or service should be a function of how much inconvenience his or her consumption causes to other people. If I insist on being served eggs Benedict for breakfast, rather than cereal, then I should expect to pay more, in recognition of the fact that my consumption imposes greater demands upon not just the cook, but also the chicken farmer. But there is an easy way of ensuring this—simply by arranging it so that the transaction occurs at a price that is agreeable to both buyer and seller. And this is nothing other than the mechanism of market exchange.
Market pricing of goods can be seen as a necessary response to the fact that society is not in a position to judge whose desires are more or less important. Of course, we must recognize that some people are born in more advantageous circumstances than others, and thus have an unfair advantage when it comes to getting what they want. For them, paying more represents less of a sacrifice. Yet it is crucial to realize that criticizing the distribution of wealth or the distribution of other "advantages," such as education, is not the same thing as criticizing capitalism—there is significant latitude for redistribution within the capitalist system. Similarly, one can criticize failures of the market (such as pollution, where some get away without paying the full cost that their activities impose upon society) or the ownership structure of the firm. But we must distinguish between these sorts of criticisms and criticisms of the market itself. Most of what left-wing critics identify as the major flaws of capitalism are actually problems of market failure, not a consequence of the market working as it is supposed to.
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