Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"She offers something both broad and scarce: a compelling new story about how to create a desirable future."--New York Times An award-winning author and leading international economist delivers a hard-hitting and much needed critique of modern capitalism in which she argues that, to solve the massive crises facing us, we must be innovative--we must use collaborative, mission-oriented thinking while also bringing a stakeholder view of public private partnerships which means not only taking risks together but also sharing the rewards. Capitalism is in crisis. The rich have gotten richer--the 1 percent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 percent of the world's wealth--while climate change is transforming--and in some cases wiping out--life on the planet. We are plagued by crises threatening our lives, and this situation is unsustainable. But how do we fix these problems decades in the making? Mission Economics looks at the grand challenges facing us in a radically new way. Global warming, pollution, dementia, obesity, gun violence, mobility--these environmental, health, and social dilemmas are huge, complex, and have no simple solutions. Mariana Mazzucato argues we need to think bigger and mobilize our resources in a way that is as bold as inspirational as the moon landing--this time to the most 'wicked' social problems of our time.. We can only begin to find answers if we fundamentally restructure capitalism to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by innovation that tackles concrete problems from the digital divide, to health pandemics, to our polluted cities. That means changing government tools and culture, creating new markers of corporate governance, and ensuring that corporations, society, and the government coalesce to share a common goal. We did it to go to the moon. We can do it again to fix our problems and improve the lives of every one of us. We simply can no longer afford not to. --New York Times
Reviews with the most likes.
I want Mariana Mazzucato to take over all governments.
Here she builds further upon on her vision that governments should take on more risk, and steer markets and the private sector into directions that serve the common good, and NOT simply exist to fix market mistakes.
She lists the many ways our economies are broken today, and advocates that we need to restructure governments around more mission-oriented thinking. The prime example of a big mission-oriented government-led success is the decade-long quest to reach the moon. Despite being expensive, the quest united the people and fed many technological innovative offspring projects that brought back the original investments and more.
What differentiates the race to the moon with today's very long list of goals (fighting climate change, fighting inequality, end poverty...) is that the moon was an easy problem only requiring a technological solution. Today's goals (see UN Sustainable Development Goals) are ‘wicked', they involve everyone on earth, are controlled by a complex network of organizations, and potentially even have parties and forces directly opposing those goals. Which scares me. But apparently not Mariana Mazzucato. Hence the beginning of my review.
