Mission Economy

• Book: Mariana Mazzucato, Mission Economy – A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Penguin UK, 2021. ISBN: 9780141991689

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1. Michael Towsey:

"Mazzucato’s main message is that a strong, highly skilled, and well-resourced government sector is critical to achieving big goals. The elimination of poverty or reaching a net-zero carbon economy will never be achieved by a small, impoverished public service and treasury officials tinkering with interest-rates. Boris Johnson’s recent demand that 20% of the UK civil service be slashed to pay for tax cuts is social and economic suicide. Similarly in Australia, a succession of flood and bushfire disasters over the past three years has revealed the inability of the Australian government to cope with emergencies. Indeed, the message from the country’s conservative prime minister is that it’s not his job!

Apart from reskilling the public service sector (stop outsourcing) and establishing the administrative and physical infrastructure required to achieve big-picture goals, Mazzucato has interesting things to say about the government’s role in creating value.

“The ambition of government should be to set off catalytic reactions across society.” Mazzucato.

Government can infuse (and enthuse) the public service and the public imagination with positive sentiments about big picture goals. The idea is to link ethical values with economic values. Values (in both senses of the word) should be at play in markets. Markets for goods and services, says Mazzucato must be biased towards desired end goals. One way to do this is to tax “bads” and subsidise “goods”. Mazzucato describes this as “shaping markets” and “tilting the playing field” towards goals. Furthermore, supply and demand in a market can be influenced by catalytic sentiments, thereby influencing prices. In other words, economic value is not a static concept dependent on material constraints. Value has psychological determinants, and these can also “tilt” markets towards goals. This introduces a fascinating area of economics which in Prout is referred to as psycho-economics. The discipline is only in its infancy.

Both Raworth and Mazzucato acknowledge the important role of finance in the new economy but insist that it must be subservient to the production of real social and ecological value."

(https://systemschangealliance.org/the-new-economy-movement-comes-of-age/)

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Other books in the same vein:

Roar Bjonnes and Caroline Hargreaves, Growing a New Economy – beyond crisis capitalism and environmental destruction, Innerworld Publications, 2016. ISBN: 9781881717539.

Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics – Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Random House UK, 2018. ISBN: 9781847941398

Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth – Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy, Publisher: John Murray, 2021. ISBN: 9781529352566