Do not mess with the dreamer

What world do you want to live in?- asks Marian Mazzucato, a revolutionary economist.Reminds the rulers that they decide, not a great business.And he stubbornly claims that there have always been a more important sense of mission, courage and imagination from profits.

I like this nickname, I learned to play with it and use it in my favor, "says a woman called" the most terrible economist in the world ".It was created when a journalist interviewed her.She wrote favorably about her views, but just before releasing the text for printing, the editors of men pinned to the article that was to arouse terror.According to Mariana Mazzucato, this anecdote perfectly reflects the thinking of today's elites that furnished capitalism in a harmful way.Fortunately - which he repeats with a smile, reminding about common sense and freedom of choice - we can change it.He talks about economics as about the history of humanity.Of course, he uses numbers and professional terms, but at the same time argues that behind each number there is a living man and decisions he makes with tangible consequences for others;great plans and cynical play, bad and good choices, failures and trips.Her appearances are kidnapping - she says emphatically, always using facts.As if she wrote a realistic novel, with Tolstoy love for people and faith in them.

He calls things by name, resembles the dictionary meaning of such concepts as value, innovation, participation.Analyzes words and dismantle this, so far, the economy has been described.Like many progressive thinkers, he believes that under the current narrative - a global capitalist fairy tale - it's time to put dynamite.Indicates treatments used by most of the elite of late capitalism.It exposes both the corporate.XX in.Neoliberals have built a feeling that there is no alternative for the free market and unlimited generation of capital profits.Today, this ideological monolith is stormed by various economics researchers, but 54-year-old Mazzucato has an advantage that can actually be dangerous to the prevailing order.Can convince.Politicians listen carefully to her ideas, e.g..South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, British party leaders, subsequent Italian prime ministers, Nicola Sturgeon - the first minister of Scotland, American congressmen (M.in.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, co-author of the new green order) and Republican Senators, European Union Commissioners, and even Pope Francis-a fan of her books.And he doesn't end with listening.The heads of states and the most important state institutions ask her for consultation and help, they employ her to create far -reaching strategies.They care about regaining power and decision -making lost by society to companies."Let's not forget that there are many capitalisms.The one we realize depends on us, "says Mazzucato.Therefore, it would be more appropriate to describe it as "the most influential economist in the world".

Elon, thank you!

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According to Mazzucato, one of the foundations on which it is unbalanced and impossible to maintain the narrative of capitalism is the illusion of the private sector that only he produces value.Such a claim erases the entire public sphere from the game.It was her lawyer and even a preacher who became the famous economist - she shows the decisive participation of societies in the birth of everything: technology, knowledge, achievements or services.We are building the world in which we live together.All achievements are common, but all of the merits and the lion's part of the prizes are scored by a few, which we managed to convince us that we are not worth without them.

She dealt with this thread in an entrepreneurial state (World premiere: 2013.), her first loud book, which she began to work right after the financial crisis in 2007.She watched then how subsequent countries introduced strict savings, cutting down subsidies for development, education, innovations in the public sector.The politicians were dominated by the thought that the state - in neoliberalism is very reduced by great businesses - should be even more reduced in the shadows and leave the field for private interests, and more specifically banks and the Silicon Valley.A similar model was adopted by European countries, ordering many services to private businesses.Mazzucato noticed the main mistake in this strategy and therefore wrote an entrepreneurial state to save politicians, mobilize them to estimate the forces of their countries again.The researcher proved that developing outsourcing - i.e. using the services of private companies in the implementation of public tasks (e.g..Training, garbage export, communication) - is not only much more expensive for budgets, but also harmful to what he calls the "intelligence of the state".And as a fresh example, he now gives decisions of the UK government, which commissioned some of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign and an information campaign on pandemic to external companies, paying for the so-called.consulting, instead of developing new skills of state health care employees.Investing outside meets the belief that the entire public sphere, its institutions and officials are weaker, stupid, less causing.And these are de facto such if they are deprived of their fields to act and do not invest in their development.This persistent belief that state is worse than private is a universal problem.The job offer in a public institution loses with the possibility of working in a private company, for which more interesting challenges, training and higher salary are followed.On the toes you can count outstanding scientists and entrepreneurs who have decided to work for the government in recent years, not for the concern.Although history knew many such cases.At least until the idea of the guardianship state was alive and put as an example. Ostatnie dekadyXX in.And the first 21st century, however, is a time of state degradation.

The private sector reduced the role of governments, and yet after the collapse in 2007.He unscrupulously reached out to them for funding.The financier expected rescue from countries that - because they gradually got rid of various competences - they could not do without it anymore.Mazzucato draws attention to the shocking even naivety and mental powerlessness of the rulers who awarded these high subsidies, without fortifying them: "These were bad decisions, poor negotiations," he says and emphasizes that beaten ways of thinking in crisis situations cause irrational behavior of the rulers.These, however, only strengthen the unhealthy, but also inadequate to the real potential of the relationship between the state and business.The real importance of what is common and public, Mazzucato, restices and precisely faces.Its horse is innovations, which we instinctively attribute to genius from the Silicon Valley and other private centers.Meanwhile, the author has examined the landscape of the progress of recent decades and came out in black and white that without the participation of the state, his finances and the risk taken at public expense (and therefore from our joint money) we would not have any key technologies or devices in our hands today.Internet, GPS, intelligent personal assistant Siri, touch screens, computer mice ... - all these achievements were developed and in the first, key phase financed from government budgets, e.g..agencies such as the American DARPA (Agencja Advanced Research Projects in the area of defense)."I'm not saying that the government has invented the iPhone.I say that we would not have smart devices at all without public investments in a whole bunch of intelligent technologies.The crucial is that this government money was to solve a problem, expenditure and innovations were guided by clear goals, "emphasizes Mazzucato.Draws attention to the differences in the motivations of companies and public organizations.In the case of the latter, the effort is directed to the common good, finding a solution for an issue that will serve everyone.The second important thought is that we all risk the most.Although the heads of investment funds boast of how great they bear the risk, supporting the reckless ideas of start-ups, the facts are that uncertainty in financing innovation at their earliest stage is carrying governments.And they have nothing of it.Let's repeat: Key technological achievements are financed from public funds, and all the profits are won by private companies based on our joint contribution.We have learned to think so badly about governments - shows Mazzucato - that we are demanding and critical of them, meanwhile we even praise businessmen for their failures."If a public official makes a mistake, he lands on the headlines.However, the head of the investment fund says that there are seven failures for each success of his success.And we admire him for that! "- emphasizes the economist.And he calls: governments should have the right to learn in practice, experiment, because that's how competence is obtained.

The author emphasizes how important in innovations it is that we undertake them without cynical calculations.The ambitions have the fact that they do not always come true, but they start many bonfires, give birth to many new ideas, spill, creating new achievements in related fields.No success has one father."I once wrote on Twitter: Elon, say" Thank you! ".Because Elon Musk, his various companies received over $ 5 billion from the American government.And here the problem is revealed.If the government enters the so -called partnerships with private companies, giving them money in any way not cared for, then we are dealing with a parasitic or predatory relationship, not symbiosis.It is the trouble of the rule that give money, but do not provide leadership, clear goals, "believes the author of the concept of an entrepreneurial state, i.e. determining development directions.And even a country that is not afraid to carry a civilization mission.

The value has no price

Although she was born in Rome, she did not spend her childhood in sunny Italy.The family moved overseas when Marian was three years old.The daughter of Italian immigrants - physics from Princeton and the mother's house - she made a brilliant academic career in the States.She conducted research and lectured at universities in various countries, and finally settled in Great Britain.He lives in the London Camden district with her husband and four children.

It can be found wherever something important happens: in the corridors of the Davos Economic Summit, during COP climate conferences - such as recently completed in Glasgow - and other global forums.He raises respect everywhere.Energy, with a penetrating look and sharp facial features during meetings, he dominates over most interlocutors - not only intellectually, but also literally as possible: growth.

The ideas she propagated for decades has already begun to crumble reality."I was always interested in implementing changes in life," he says.However, she began with solid research on theory and history.Specializes in the economy of innovation and public value.At the University College London launched a pioneering Institute of Innovation and Public Goals.Advises the UN on socio-economic matters and the Swedish Innovation Agency Vinnova, and also helps OECD bosses to build a new understanding of growth.

Her latest idea is the Health Economic Council for everyone he conducts.This team, appointed in 2020.by the World Health Organization, it is to examine and measure the value of healthcare, as well as take care of its sustainable distribution."Health for everyone should be the heart of government investments and innovative decisions and should be introduced for the common good," says Mazzucato, who in three books published so far took the concept of values.It is central in the perception of economics as a team game.And far more complex than we got used to think.

First of all, Mazzucato opposes the equalization of the price with the price, using the financial meter to determine how much something is worth.It is not possible to attribute the role of decision -makers to markets or buyers, when the full value of every thing, event, service, knowledge arises in the relationship between many actors, is born in a chain of events and should also be measured what consequences it brings, whether, and how and how and howserves.These issues Mazzucato raised the value of everything in the book.Production and appropriation in the global economy (World premiere: 2018.).Has shown that contemporary economics is much more excited about deriving profits than producing values that would be a symptom of true economic health and drive."We made a mistake with taking," she said, encouraging us to start talking about what is for us, who really creates it.She reminded that in classic economic thought it was the creation of values that took a key place and over time it was replaced by corporate obsession of squeezing maximum benefits, raising prices, minimizing costs.Exposed the way the largest American companies operate, which - instead of investing their profits in the development of economics, other companies, science and all of us - gigantic funds load in the purchase of their own shares in order to conquer their market value, and get managerial bonuses for it.Showed a closed circulation of money working for your own cause - greed in the purest form.

Dream budgets

The latest book Mazzucato Mission Economy (2021.) contains a map of inspiration for those who rule too conservatively and agree to the role of repairers of everything that markets spoil.Modern problems are extremely vile - writes Mazzucato - they cannot be solved through one action.Climate crisis or social inequalities are huge, comprehensive entities.To face them, you need courage and vision not less than the one that accompanied the space flight program - it's time to pick up and do something out of this land.This metaphor is not accidental here - this is the mission of landing on the moon announced by President Kennedy in 1962.It became a reference point for the economic imagination of Mazzucato.The author refers to a cosmic flight to show the needed today - and in her opinion - the scale of ambition and government plans.She is particularly interested in how Kennedy, promoting the lunar mission, consciously managed the risk.He knew that the whole undertaking would be very expensive, that it could be associated with enormous difficulties.The government could not realize it by itself.The goal was both developmental and political.The idea was to outdo the Soviets, while achieving the impossible.This great undertaking was guided by a clearly defined goal: to fly to the moon, land and then safely come back.The clarity and scale of this plan, as Mazzucato emphasizes, were of key importance in moving the imagination, stimulating the desire to participate and invest in this great, covering all goals.An anecdotal proof of the effectiveness of such a mission formulation is a meeting in the NASA Kennedy building with a janitor.When the president asked the man what he was doing, he replied that he would help man land on the moon.What we are to undertake together must affect us all and serve us all.

What could be today's equivalent of a flight to the moon?Mazzucato has several suggestions: reduction by half dementia, complete removal of plastic and microplastics from oceans, providing sustainable medical care - in every place in the world, for everyone.He emphasizes that only governments have the strength and position that allows people to designate such a mission.The point is not that they finance it quite independently and manage it in detail, but - as it was with space plans - they indicated the direction and motivated many independent entities to act.

The lunar mission was something like this: an impulse from above, which raised a grassily movement.In the economic sphere, the encouragement from the government and NASA caused an avalanche of private investments in companies such as General Electric or Motorola.The investments did not only apply to aeronautics, the development of integrated circuits, utility design, developing adequate food, and many other activities were needed.To fly into space, a step into the future had to be done in various fields.Mazzucato also uses this example due to data indicating how wisely the bosses of NASA managed finances.Offered money to private companies on the basis of actual disciplined partnerships (e.g..did not allow to increase the costs of planned investments) and declared the division of prizes in the event of success, but also left money in its structure, investing in employee development and own technologies."It was immediately clear that the flight to the moon was not a casino for speculators," says Mazzucato.So there was nothing here for sale, everything was around the cooperation.The effects would be difficult to overestimate.The fruits of this great developmental movement caused by one shared dream - except for the successful landing on the moon, of course - there are: phones with built -in cameras, running shoes, computer tomographs, LED lights, electronic thermometers, materials for insulation of apartments, wireless headphones, portable computers, dry frozen foods and nutritional formulas for newborns, dynamic limb prostheses and scratch -resistant glasses.Of course, this is not the end of the list, but only the tip of the iceberg.

How much did it all cost?Calculated to today's value - around 283 billion dollars.A lot of?Mazzucato believes that visionary requires questions in the reverse order.Let's ask what we want to achieve, and then let's find money for it.After all, only governments have the ability to create and print money.And they do it e.g..In order to build highways, develop research, strengthen safety structures.The state also has the privilege of wise, deliberate management of these means.The mission cannot be limited by strictly calculated profitability, because it is something like a dream of unpredictable and impossible consequences - its values cannot be converted into money.And besides, as the economist likes to repeat when it comes to war, no government says: "We can't afford it".Prints money and sends the army.Designs the budget not around the costs, but in terms of the effects he counts on.So why not launch such opportunities in a good cause?

Missions and tables

It is not surprising that the elites of power are enjoying the presence of Mazzucato - she is the first economist in half a century who, with such enthusiasm and faith.It could be water for a mill of autocrats and European copyists of the Chinese model of state capitalism.However, her books and theories are not a praise of power for power itself, the arguments that her writing is promoted by the return.Mazzucato does not create textbooks for dictators.Her philosophy is rather an incentive to re -accept responsibility for a de facto democratically built reality.In recent years, the awareness has been spread that large corporations have become more powerful than the UN itself, that the solution to any of the global problems is no longer possible at the state level, when the supranational industries, which are in the consent, must be encouraged to consent.Even less government - this is what the private market wants.Much more government, creating the path of progress and dictating fair conditions of the game - is urged by Mazzucato.But he warns: missions are difficult.Their implementation requires a great mental, organizational transformation.Almost a common movement among people who will have to lead to a distant goal.How to do this when the terms of government and their philosophies change every four or five years?Mazzucato encourages to rebuild the balance of power in the world.The arrangement between us - employees, entrepreneurs, clients, officials, i.e. actual creators of values - and companies exercising power using this common potential.The game is about to have real participation in development.For example, just like in Scandinavia, where trade union representatives sit on the boards of companies.Or just like in Scotland, where Mazzucato helped the government to create the first green investment bank - his money at every step support the development of environmentally friendly solutions, not multiplying money.

Changes in thinking, launched to some extent by Mazzucato books, are already visible in politics.The rulers are starting to put business conditions.French President Emmanuel Macron made financial support for the automotive and aviation industry related to Pandemia.."He told them directly: we won't save you.We will change you " - sums up this maneuver Mazzucato.The same happened in Germany, where the metallurgy industry received support dependent on the reduction of the consumption of the amount of raw materials for the production of steel.This forced innovation and made the steelworks there in the green avant -garde today.But Pandemic also became an opportunity to make monstrous mistakes, whose clear example can be previously cited by the huge financial losses of the British government caused by the dedication of vaccinations to private companies.In this persistent scoring of reality for good and poor solutions, Mazzucato shows how to think soberly.It is worth looking at the course of events, checking what works.Not take anything for granted.Being a shareholder in economics begins with questioning, using words adequately describing phenomena.

Although Marian Mazzucato deals with economics, she cares about something more - improving the world.Instead of replacing individual screws and cogs in a complex economic machine.In the governments that we have brought to the role of market repairs of mishaps and payers for businessmen excesses, sees visionary organizations.Urges: ask yourself what world you want to live in, who creates it, whom he serves it.In terms of ambition, Mazzucato does not compromise, but at the same time he goes hard on the ground.Therefore, one leg is among the dorms and the other is in government practice.Does not theorize that others later test its assumptions.Reverses the order."I like to dirty my hands.I love gathering experience and then introduce them to theory.We always learn in action, in risk, experimenting, "he says.That is why each strategic thought contained in the books has a practical implementation scheme: a complicated hierarchy of speech and frames, in which she enters subsequent actions and mutual relationships between their various contractors.The mission is not enough for Mazzucato.A user manual is still needed.

I took the cited statements of Mariana Mazzucato from her interviews, M.in.for "New York Times", "Wired", "Sway", and from British Library, as well as from the publication of the economist in "Guardian" and her public speaking.

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