Missão economia: Um guia inovador para mudar o capitalismo

by Mariana Mazzucato

E se aplicássemos aos problemas atuais de nossa sociedade o espírito, a audácia e os meios que nos levaram à Lua? Missão economia , escrito pela premiada economista Mariana Mazzucato, examina de uma maneira radicalmente nova os grandes desafios que temos pela frente.

Aquecimento global, poluição, obesidade, demência, desigualdade, violência armada, exclusão digital — esses dilemas ambientais, sanitários e sociais são enormes, complexos e não têm solução simples.
Inspirando-se nos programas que levaram o ser humano a pisar na Lua e que coordenaram com sucesso os setores público e privado em grande escala, Mariana Mazzucato propõe que o mesmo nível de ousadia e experimentação seja empregado para a resolução dos maiores problemas do nosso tempo. Devemos, argumenta ela, repensar as capacidades e o papel do governo na economia e na sociedade e, acima de tudo, recuperar um senso de propósito público.
Missão economia apresenta uma saída para nossos impasses na direção de um futuro mais otimista.

"Uma das mais influentes economistas do mundo." — Wired

 "Sua defesa por uma nova abordagem é arrebatadora, e o projeto de Mariana Mazzucato é ambicioso. Missão economia nos contagia com o tipo de visão, ambição e criatividade de que tão desesperadamente necessitamos hoje." — The Guardian

"Sua proposta é tão ampla quanto pouco um relato original e convincente sobre como criar um futuro desejável." — The New York Times

"Desde 1969 nos perguntamos como os seres humanos conseguiram chegar à lua, mas não conseguem resolver os problemas urgentes aqui da Terra. Mariana Mazzucato oferece uma resposta." — Financial Times

"Mazzucato influenciou a maneira como os políticos americanos falam sobre o potencial do Estado como uma máquina econômica." — The New Tork Times

"Mazzucato defende que as sociedades devem abjurar ideologias esgotadas e adotar a abordagem política que levou os astronautas à Lua. Convincente e fascinante."— The Economist

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Politics, Business, Sustainability, Audiobook, Society

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 8, 2020

About the author

Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she directs the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Her best selling books include The Entrepreneurial State, The Value of Everything and Mission Economy. Her many prizes include the 2020 John von Neumann Award and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She is Chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All and a member of the UN High Level Advisory Board for Economic and Social Affairs.

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mission stuck orbiting Western liberal capitalism?

Preamble:
--I jumped on this book for 2 reasons:
1) To get a sense of super-star “progressive” (i.e. capitalism reformer, from the subtitle “Changing Capitalism”) economist Mazzucato:
--I bypassed her book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths as I’ve already gone through fellow reformist Ha-Joon Chang (Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism) on developmental state-planning.
...I do still have higher hopes for her book The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy given its foundational topic (re-evaluation of “value”).

2) To see a progressive’s take on state planning, esp. in a war economy:
--Another reformist Steve Keen (similar politically but less sugar-coated delivery; see The New Economics: A Manifesto) recently shifted his attention to the economics of climate change/ecological crises, including the most plausible scenario of nationalist war-economy responses/rationing (for a detailed example, see S. Klein's A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency).
--Unfortunately, Mazzucato's book is set after WWII (focusing on the Apollo program) and completely encrusted with sugar-coating. It bypasses much of the war-related aspects of the Global North “Cold War” framing, ex. “cold” rather than “hot” wars despite the genocidal bombardments of Korea, Vietnam, etc./military coups and their tumultuous effects not just to the entire global economic system (see later).

The Good:

1) Market Fundamentalism - Low-Hanging Fruit:
--The theology of Market fundamentalism is so far-removed from real-world capitalism it is easy pickings for progressives.
--Mazzucato upturns the cult of mainstream economics (Market Failure Theory, Public Choice Theory, New Public Management, etc.) with a gentle dose of reality: the social creation of “value” (not just from private firms), market efficiency as a static snapshot (missing high-risk/long-term investments + spillovers), etc.
--The state and markets are actually two sides of the same capitalist coin (literally: one side of a coin is stamped with the state’s figurehead; the other side is the market exchange-value: see Debt: The First 5,000 Years); it's crucial to note that Market fundamentalists like Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) re-enforce the state-market binary!
--Mazzucato details the “Entrepreneurial State” in high-risk, long-term innovations with wide spillovers that rarely survive in the private market of short-term profit-seeking competition.
...The Apollo program is reviewed to consider organizational learning and dynamism (esp. top-down goals while decentralized project-execution/risk-taking), government capabilities in procurement and directing public-private collaborations, etc.

2) A Hint of Revolutionary Reforms:
--The next step (where progressives often falter) is revolutionary reforms, i.e. reforms that can open the door to more transformative change (as emancipation is a process of building social trust and capabilities), rather than reforms that temporarily rescue capitalism only to erode into the next crisis (sound familiar?).
--Besides the state policy theories (bulk of the book), we only get whispers:
-ex. value should not be confused with price: funny, boogeyman Marx had something about use-value vs. exchange-value that was a foundation of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
-ex. State theory of money: MMT; see Kelton's The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy
-ex. the curious case of government bonds creating a bondholder class, which ties in to economic rent: see Michael Hudson
-ex. reforming intellectual property patents for the public interest.
-ex. “pre-distribution” (rather than redistribution of taxation) i.e. public wealth funds/social dividends/worker ownership; this also relates to alternatives from the state-market binary, i.e. "Commons"/participatory democracy/economic democracy see:
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
-The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
-Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
-ex. “circular economies” supposedly “disconnects economic growth from the extraction and consumption of materials”: similar to Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist; for a more radical approach: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.
--Note: disappointing even by progressive standards is highlighting the “European Green Deal” by the EU Commission, rather than the “Green New Deal for Europe” by DiEM25 (who are after all “progressives”). For more, see:
-On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
-Global South: A People’s Green New Deal
-The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth

The Farcical:

--Just who is the target audience of Mazzucato’s book? Given the growing popularity of the “S” word amongst the younger generation even within the paranoid empire, the target must be Western middle/upper-class boomers who mistake their own shadows for the Red Menace and who heard Bernie Sanders and thought “no thanks, America is #1 in freedom and freedom is paying profiteers or else Stalin”. Consider:

1) Capitalism and Crises:
--In their insistence to rescue “capitalism”, progressives hit a brick wall: why did capitalism need you to rescue it in the first place?
...In this case, Mazzucato stops at the “deeper forces” of Financialization, the Satan that dismantled her glorious “Entrepreneurial State”; there’s a chapter titled “Bad Theory, Bad Practice”, as if Western capitalism just fell for the sin of a new idea, the “bad theory” of Market fundamentalism/ “Neoliberalism”.
...This may explain how…but why? The explanation is weak if we dig deeper; Financialization just happened. As for social factors, we get a pop-psych one-liner: “increasing prosperity and consumerism eroded the bonds of collective interest in favour of individual advancement”.
...The assumption that “Neoliberalism” was driven by “bad theory” biases an “idealist” analysis (i.e. ideas drive social change); this needs to be balanced with a “materialist” analysis (i.e. changing material conditions drive social change through changing social relations, esp. bargaining power). Market fundamentalism is actually not a new theory; Marx himself berated “vulgar economists” of his time for only theorizing the limited sphere of market exchange. So, why did Market fundamentalism become trendy again in the 1970's?
--Now, Mazzucato’s hints of revolutionary reforms reveal that she can dig deeper; she just does not seem to have confidence with her target audience. I think this is a mistake; we can be pragmatic in avoiding trigger words/distractions, but we should still find engaging ways to challenge our audience.
--While Mazzucato debunks the lowest hanging fruit of Market fundamentalism, this still does not explain what real-world “capitalism” is and why she clings to it. The book suggests “asking what kind of markets we want, rather than what problem in the market needs to be fixed”; let’s start here.
--“Capitalism” is built on 3 peculiar markets featuring “fictitious commodities” (humans/nature/purchasing power), i.e. not produced in capitalist production just for buying/selling in markets:
i) labour market (thus the wage labour contract)
ii) land market
iii) money/financial market(s).
...Thus, capitalism is a “market society” as opposed to “society with markets” (which preceded capitalism, i.e. there have long been markets exchanging real commodities). Brilliant intro: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails; Note: Market fundamentalists conveniently focus on markets for real commodities to paint a utopic world where everyone is an individual shopkeeper bartering their goods.
--After Mazzucato exhausts the typical progressive “better regulations” spiel, she has reached the progressive’s cliff. All these regulations have already been dismantled with style during Neoliberalism, so a repetition is rather anticlimactic. This forces Mazzucato to acknowledge the aforementioned revolutionary reforms that directly challenge the 3 peculiar markets of capitalism! Suddenly, the “S” word is no longer “Stalinist”, if only we connect the dots! Mazzucato’s lauded “stakeholder capitalism” buzzword suddenly seems childishly contradictory.
--Next, let us consider why Financialization occurs using a "materialist" analysis. As mentioned, money/financial markets are a fundamental component to capitalism; credit is the first step in social mobilization for the capitalist, where the creditor draws on future expectations of growth and brings it into the present for use. This brings up the “prophecy paradox” based on confidence, which can go both ways.
...Thus, the spectacular volatility of real-world capitalism’s history of booms and busts. The full story, once we consider the geopolitics of the 20th century, is a must-read: The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy

2) Capitalism and War:
--It gets worse. This entire book is trying to square (1) missions for the public interest (*cough* socialism) with (2) capitalism.
...So, we take the glimmering surface of the Apollo program as a shining example of social mobilization for science, technology and “progress”. Mazzucato skates over the arms race context of the Cold War, briefly halting to consider “The Moon and the Ghetto” debates regarding why public spending was not directly targeting poverty. The conclusion is we need both, since abstract science has unexpected spillovers. This is followed by a long section applying mission maps to the UN’s shiny Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
--Mazzucato describes US’s post-WWII global system as “The global, multilateral system painfully constructed after World War Two and the broadly liberal, open values it embodies”; fellow reformist Ha-Joon Chang also lauds this “Golden Age of Capitalism” and it is startling the lack of historical context.
--If we return to our definition of "capitalism" as a "market society", we can add the following definition of capitalism combining "for-profit state" with "armed commerce" (hence, the state-market binary that colonized the world):
-Debt: The First 5,000 Years
-Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital
--The escalating boom/bust cycles of real-world capitalism culminated in the “Roaring Twenties” (1920’s) crash into the endless Great Depression . The capitalist world could only escape this vortex of despair with the creative destruction of the greatest war in human history (WWII), which purged stagnant capital while spawning the US military industrial complex.
...The Western welfare state was a compromise with domestic labour struggles given their heightened socialization during the war and the alternative of socialism on the world stage. Chang’s romanticized Japanese Miracle reindustrialization was subsidized by war contracts from the US’s genocidal bombardment of Korea. Chang’s South Korean rapid industrialization was subsidized by war contracts from the US’s genocidal bombardment of Vietnam (Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980).
…It is too convenient for us to externalize modern war as some political sideshow/“human nature” and not recognize its functions under capitalism (War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier).
--The punchline: it was the War economy of Mazzucato's triumphant “Entrepreneurial State” that unleashed global Financialization! The US's “Cold” War bombardment of Korea/Vietnam drained US gold reserves, driving the US to dismantle its post-WWII global plan (recycling US surpluses) and flip to become a debt empire by controlling the flow of others' surpluses (which required unleashing Wall Street!): Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance

3) Capitalism and Imperialism:
--We can now consider: is there a function for poverty under capitalism? Capitalism’s profit-driven industrialization has been predicated on cheap raw material inputs/cheap labour, thus the violent (and continuing) history of both de-industrializing the Global South (esp. India/China) and forcing the South/periphery into dependency: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--Progressives always focus on capitalist profit-seeking competition resulting in technocratic innovations. They neglect the easier method (esp. on the global scale): cut costs by externalizing it onto labour in the periphery/environment.
...Indeed, it is often resistance to this easier method that forces capitalists to innovate. Why did capitalists develop the elaborate global commodity chain if it wasn’t for labour’s better bargaining power via strikes that shut down domestic, centralized factories? Why did capitalists alter patent monopolies to claim the entire product as opposed to just the process (thus dis-incentivizing innovations in new processes!) if it wasn't for the challenge of Third World Industrialization?
-The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
-Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--We reach farcical levels when we realize that all the examples in this book about state policies are Western (US, Britain, and of course the poster-child Scandinavia). This is where it’s important to consider the class characteristic of the state, i.e. is the state primarily dominated by capitalist interests (State Capitalism) or are there greater social struggles/contradictions at play?
--Vietnam’s state response to COVID is lauded at the introduction, but this is tepid since the Western imperialist worldview trivializes Vietnam in terms of “socialist threats” unlike say Cuba (not mentioned) or China. China receives the following:

Today, China, the leading authoritarian economy, remains weighed down by inefficient and heavily indebted state industries, a banking system with huge ‘zombie’ loans, an ageing population, and the massive task of shifting the economy away from excessive export dependency and towards greater domestic consumption. To be fair, it is making progress, and has real ambition about greening its economy, with over $1.7 trillion being invested as part of its five-year plan. But a central planning model is not likely to be one that will be able to take on the bold reforms to public and private collaboration that this book envisages. [emphases added]

...When your entire book is supposed to de-mystify state policies, this imperialist liberal use of “authoritarian” is embarrassing. Ideologically, imperialism is somehow not authoritarian (well, it’s not acknowledged to begin with). Mass foreclosures (yes, including under liberal hero Obama) and homelessness is somehow not authoritarian; the dispossessed in the richest Western cities have the freedom to be shelter-less and seek relief in opioids, after all.
...But even on a technical level, to just slap on the label of “central planning”... do Western imperialists ever stop and think how modern China with its 1.4 billion people can even function with just “central planning”?! This goes back to Western caricatures of Asiatic/Oriental despotism. Consider: Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
-For a light intro (i.e. Ted talk) on China state policies: https://youtu.be/s0YjL9rZyR0
-Deeper: Vijay Prashad is essential for amplifying Global South perspectives: https://youtu.be/8-m-DZHLNGs

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

We had it and we lost it. According to Mariana Mazzucato, the USA showed precisely how to energize and motivate an entire country and its economy in the 1960s. Today’s USA shows no signs whatsoever of that spirit. It is everyone for themselves, and public institutions have become liabilities instead of levers. Mazzucato’s The Mission Economy is a delightfully positive, thoroughly thought through, universal solution to what ails capitalism. It is an object lesson in solutions hiding in plain sight.

It was President John F. Kennedy who, fearing the USA was falling behind the USSR, suddenly pledged to land Americans on the moon before the end of the decade. He acknowledged this would be risky and expensive, but he knew in advance it would send the US economy in all kinds of new directions. Some 400,000 people worked on the project. It led not only to major advancements in information technology and computers, but even to management methods as companies found they needed to communicate freely with competitors and their own employees. The economy boomed. And men walked on the moon.

Today, Mazzucato says, we desperately need a mission like the moon landing to not only give the economy a focus, but also to solve major overhanging problems the country cannot address through individual or corporate action. It/they would leverage the intellects and creativity out there, take the country in bold new directions, improve productivity by inventing new processes, and also create whole new industries and markets along the way.

Basically, there is no downside to remaking the economy through missions of moon landing scale.

She gets right down to business; it’s one of the things that makes this book great. Usually, there is a long, hundred page history of the issue for those new to the planet, followed by a short, pie-in-the-sky conclusion that will not work. The Mission Economy dispenses quickly with the single story of the moon mission, and gets right into the mechanics of replicating that success in numerous fields such as climate change, healthcare, ending poverty and several others. It is a pleasure of positive vibes. From an economist, not a dreaming-in-Technicolor futurist. Make that a superstar economist.

Mazzucato uses government agencies (horror!) to manage various aspects of the missions she describes. Government agencies have the talent and the money to give the economy the boost it needs. They have the bench strength, the institutional memory and the network connections to coordinate major missions across numerous fields and sectors of the economy.

It has been government, after all, that continually funds risky bets, creating new industries where none existed, and bailing out companies as needed.

This, she says, reveals a large problem America didn’t use to have: the socialization of costs. In America, if a business fails, the government eats the loss. If it succeeds, it shares none of the profit. Profits are privatized, losses are socialized. If the government were to share in the success of its investments, it could invest more often and in bigger projects. Instead, the conversation is now always about budgets, interference in private affairs, and incompetence. And as always, freedom. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.

At the same time, business leaders rely massively on government aid. She points out that Tesla, the poster child for private industry innovation, got $465 million in loan guarantees to get itself launched, and its founder, Elon Musk, has since obtained $4.9 billion in public subsidies for his various companies. Musk is off and on now the richest person in the world. But the American government is not participating in his success. Mazzucato says “Instead of government going to the moon, it’s more as if in recent decades it has been taken for a ride.” She calls instead for the socialization of investment.

Since the Reagan-Thatcher era, government has become the problem, not the solution. But as succeeding administrations have slashed government budgets and outsourced more and more activity, the results have been dismal at best. The outsourcing has cost far more rather than saving any money. Government employees get paid less than private contractors, and private contractors also require a profit. Private enterprise cannot perform as effectively as government agencies. Going private means the achievements of government have fallen to essentially nothing.

Instead of building on the success of the moonshot to create a permanent, virtuous circle of talent in government agencies, the US has discouraged it, stripped it, crippled it, and then blamed it for not performing. Eloquently, Mazzucato says “a government that lacks imagination will find it more difficult to create public value.” An understatement visible to all who live in the country.

Another problem is capitalism itself. Mazzucato says there are four reasons capitalism has led to the crippling point: 1) the short-termism of the financial sector 2) financialization of business, 3) climate emergency, and 4) slow or absent governments. She says markets are focused on the next quarter, on investing in financial products not major new developments. Companies are all about pleasing shareholders with stock buybacks, a dead end investment of its funds instead of expanding its business. Only bold government could mobilize a moonshot in this choking atmosphere.

America is all about freedom from government. It should only be there to bail out markets when greed leads to a crash. It’s only there to correct market failures, but it should be about shaping markets and creating new ones, like an outer space industry in the 60s.

Instead, Americans must wait for rich individuals to start new businesses. The result is slow going: “Our lethargic transition pace, globally, is a lesson in what can happen if government leaves the market to sort out problems and abstains from assuming its entrepreneurial role in society,” she says.

This is of course, not news. She says John Maynard Keynes wrote of it in his “1936 magnum opus The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. There, he identified three major tasks to be undertaken in order to save capitalism from its own demise: ‘parting with liquidity’, ‘euthanizing the rentiers’ and ‘socializing investment’.”

Throughout the book, Mazzucato draws on her own rich and varied experience advising governments around the world. She has refined the concept into mission maps that lay out the approaches needed to tackle various moonshot scale problems. Because nothing is simple or straightforward. Relationships need to be defined and refined. The direction of communication, process and production is interconnected and needs to be reversible. Unintended consequences, side issues and peripheral developments all need to be accounted for, preferably in planning. It’s laid out clearly in her mission maps.

She doesn’t lack for ideas, either. Mazzucato has mission maps for climate change, plastics remediation, health care, poverty- everything government is not addressing, when it is really the only entity that can. A green new deal could employ millions while finally solving pollution issues. That is, if government stepped up to drive it. Because industry can’t.

The Mission Economy suffers from nothing. It demonstrates clear thinking, straightforward language, actionable points, roadmaps, and results where it has been tried. It is a lovely, uplifting and positive experience to read. Yes, we can tackle these intractable problems. And yes, we can actually thrive in doing so rather than suffer with austerity for doing nothing but destroy the government – the very agent that can lead these massive efforts. Mazzucato’s reputation for straightforward thinking and explanation of complex economic principles is fully on display in The Mission Economy.

“Mission-oriented thinking cannot be based on the status quo. The mission attitude is not about picking individual sectors to support but about identifying problems that can catalyse collaboration between many different sectors. It is not about handing out money to firms because they are small or because they are in need, but structuring policies that can crowd in different solutions (projects) by multiple types of organizations. It is not about fixing markets but creating markets. It is not about de-risking but sharing risks. It is not about picking winners but picking the willing. And it is not simply about setting the ‘rules of the game’ but about changing the game itself so that a new direction can foster change – change towards a green transition and/or the digitalization of a population.”

David Wineberg

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

We baby boomers experienced (cognizant of the phenomenon or not) the cultural norms and the kind of community purpose that animated the 1960's space/Apollo program (and put humans on the moon) morph or shift or devolve, in our lifetimes, as Mazzucato suggests, "from community obligations to individual rights." Against that backdrop, Mazzucato's pitch is that we (desperately) need to rethink capitalism (and, for that matter, economics), such that we get "the economy to work for societal goals, rather than [tolerating a] society [that] work[s] for the economy...."

She's right (and she's not alone). But it's a tough sell.

Taking a step back, I couldn't wait to read this when it came out, and, although I didn't love it, and portions left me cold/unmoved, it's well worth reading, makes a number of incredibly important and thought-provoking points, and adds great value to the ongoing discussion about how to rethink (among other things) economics and government (and, yes, capitalism) as we confront vexing, daunting challenges, ranging from climate change and income inequality, access to technology and innovation, to, of course, public health.

Primary takeaway: I'd recommend the book even if you only read Part I (the first quarter - 56 pages). I found it thought-provoking, cohesive, and compelling. My (personal) frustration with much of the rest of the book was that I felt it suffered, in part, from the bloom coming off the rose (or the over-reliance) on the Apollo Space Program (e.g., the moonshot) as an anecdote, case study, or animating theme. In the author's defense, she specifically spoke to my frustration - that daunting, challenging, seemingly impossible technical challenges are still, in some ways, easier to solve than "wicked" societal problems, the latter of which requires active engagement of the public, citizens, or the people.

I particularly enjoyed Mazzucato's frequent references to the U.N. SDG's (or sustainable development goals). My sense is that these are far more part of the governance equation, discussion, and nomenclature in international institutions and outside the U.S. than in DC or the 50 State capitals (and that's a shame). Like many in my world, I share her respect for DARPA (the Internet?, GPS?), but for the kind of folks who geek out on innovation, DARPA (or, for that matter, Big Safari) history, policy, and practice, this seemed rather light fare.

Quirky perspective/apples & oranges: While it's not fair, it's still a fact that most of us are incapable of reading/consuming books and ideas in a vacuum; rather we compare them to what we've read before. While it's significantly heavier - by any measure - I much preferred Tirole's Economics for the Common Good - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., which I realize may simply not be as accessible as Mazzucato's riff. No, they don't plow exactly the same ground, nor do they sing the same song, but .... Maybe the better comparison is Raworth's Doughnut Economics, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., which (at least to me) preached a more clear and cohesive message. (Best I could tell, while Mazzucato points to Raworth's work, she didn't mention Tirole....) Approaching these issues more broadly, I probably also preferred both Dan Rather's recent What Unites Us, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., and Robert Reich's The Common Good, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., both of which, of course, are far more US (as opposed to UK & US) centric. But, ultimately, these are all very different books....

[Jakub Dovcik · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many interesting theoretical points so cluttered with basic descriptions of the most well-known problems of today, detached from the reality of policymaking.

When this book came out in late 2020, it has been a few years into Mariana Mazzucato's campaign for mission-oriented innovation policies around the world. She wrote a report for the European Commission, the UK Government and various other national and regional governments around the world (experiences to which she refers in the book). The book compiles the overall case for it, yet somehow it still feels too detached from the actual reality of policymaking and innovation policy.

In early chapters, Mazzucato describes the Apollo mission - which is one of the most fascinating parts of the book - and the technological and scientific spillovers it produced (although she seems to buy into the Kennedy myth around Apollo, whereas both the early funding in the late 1950s, for missile systems as well as space research, and then continuation in late 1960s has been a pet project of Lyndon B. Johnson - who, however, did not make such colourful speeches).

She follows that with a description of today's problems and the crises of capitalism - the usual topics and descriptions - following a "debunking of myths" about the state and the economy. Here she, however, goes beyond the usual strawmen of market fundamentalism and focuses on questions like outsourcing in government, which I found truly captivating.

Did you know that in 1970 the public sector in the UK employed 47% of all architects, whereas now it is less than 1%? (p.46) In 2019, the UK government has spent 464 million pounds on Big Four consultancies, in addition to the NHS spending more than 600 million on consultancies annually (p.44). The hollowing out of the state capabilities means not just that the government spend a lot of money on consultants with higher per-hour salaries than the civil servants (who are often left with the actual implementation of the policies), but also that the capabilities and knowledge are not kept within the state bureaucracy and policy recommendations are often off-the-shelf solutions that disregard local conditions or informal knowledge. The results are suboptimal for everyone, well, except the consultancies.

These are the two best points the book makes - firstly, the need for directionality in government operations and especially innovation policies. Governments are more static and reactive than you would probably assume - and in the sense that people would not be doing their jobs, but rather that their jobs are defined as an area of expertise and not a question to be solved. In places like my homeland Slovakia, most government organisations do not have KPIs or targets, so their work is not set as a means of progressing towards some policy goal or objective.

Secondly, the need for capacity and capability building within governments in developed economies. If we expect or want to expect the government to undertake sophisticated projects and set ambitious goals, we need it to be able to actually have the means to do so. The book makes this case really well and that is where the example of NASA works really well. I also really enjoyed the conceptual differentiation between "market fixing" and "market shaping", as an attempt to make the states to be much more entrepreneurial in their undertakings.

Where the book really lacks, are the "how to" sections. Mazzucato acknowledges that present-day missions and in particular those she recommends, are much more complex (or rather as she calls them "wicked"), than putting a man on the moon, but does not actually provide a pathway towards accomplishing them. Sure, she states how there is a need to be more inclusive and participatory in today's policymaking, to create cross-departmental teams and have a review and goal-adjusting process. But then it is again her usual shtick of DARPA-funded research producing today's ubiquitous technologies that will solve modern problems.

The constant references to Apollo's mission get quite tiring, and her diagrams and explanations of past projects she did with the European Commission, Camden Borough Council or the Scottish government are too brief and extremely generic. There is a complete lack of explanation, of how these missions will actually work and how they can be actually successful projects with results, rather than bureaucratic exercises.

On the "how to pay for it side", Mazzucato builds up to some larger reveal, only to leave the reader with the Modern Monetary Theory, which is even harder to believe when within the same page she calls Paul Ryan (former Republican Speaker of the House) a Senator from Wisconsin (I know, a small detail, but she is American and few people have been in the past decade more present in the public discussion about tax policy than the former Chair of House Budget and Ways and Means Committees). Not even mentioning that MMT can hardly function in any country other than the United States.

The biggest problems of the concept of missions in the present-day functioning of economies and states are, as anybody that has worked on innovation policy will surely tell you, that the opportunity costs these huge projects entail extreme political costs. One can structure the functioning of the governments more dynamically, along with Edith Penrose's theory of dynamic capabilities of the firm or more as market-shapers in the development of budgets, but making Apollo-level missions would be way too costly, even using all non-essential procurement in an innovative fashion (which again, I am a huge fan of).

But statements like "If this means making mistakes along the way, so be it. Learning through trial and error is critical for any value-creation exercise." just limit the viability of implementation of any missions beyond what is generally just solution-oriented financing in science and research. Governments have social responsibilities, through their bond prices influence interest rates and individual administrations can almost never allow their endeavours, costing large sums of money to be seen as just trials, especially when the results are so uncertain.

The lack of thorough analysis of the actual political and economic costs for missions makes this book a source for too easy enthusiasm and slightly primitive "policy ideas" for people that do not really understand policy cycles or how governments have to function to do their basic jobs.

What could work in the 1950s and 1960s, with the economy functioning in a completely different manner (higher taxes, maturing technologies developing rapid advances in productivity and lower levels of social spending) and Cold War essentially writing blank cheques for any research linked to military objectives, needs to be rethought for today's world, definitely more thoroughly than Mazzucato did in this book.

It is not that I would not agree with Mazzucato's assessments (I mostly do) or that I would not think that governments should be more ambitious and goal-oriented (they definitely should). Rather, this theory and analysis need to be brought closer to the reality of policy formulation and budget development (in any country) and thought out more deeply on the implementation side. Otherwise, it can be easily disregarded as a call for central planning of innovation or irresponsible waste of public money on projects too detached from present-day reality. Getting rid of endless and repetitive descriptions of problems would also help to make the book more readable.

[Kin · Rating 4 out of 5]

สนุกมาก ครึ่งแรกพยายามหักล้างมายาคติเกี่ยวกับบทบาทของรัฐต่อตลาด ครึ่งหลังเสนอว่าจริงๆ เราไม่ควรมองรัฐเป็นศัตรูของตลาด เพราะในสถานการณ์จริง รัฐสามารถและเคยทำหน้าที่เป็นผู้ลงทุนและรับความเสี่ยง ไม่ใช่เพียงผู้แก้ไขปัญหาเมื่อตลาดทำงานบกพร่อง พัฒนาการของอินเตอร์เน็ตไปจนถึงความสำเร็จของบริษัทเทสล่า เหล่านี้ล้วนแต่อาศัยเงินทุนจากรัฐหรือในแง่หนึ่งก็คือเงินสาธารณะ และเป็นผลของนโยบายของรัฐภายใต้ความร่วมมือกับภาคส่วนอื่นๆ ของระบบเศรษฐกิจ การปรับบทบาทใหม่ให้รัฐทำหน้าที่เป็นผู้ผลักดันเศรษฐกิจและกำหนดภารกิจที่ต้องบรรลุ (เลือกเป้าหมาย เลือกผู้ชนะ) จึงอาจช่วยให้ระบบเศรษฐกิจปัจจุบันมองเห็น "ผู้มีส่วนได้ส่วนเสีย" มากกว่า "ผู้ถือหุ้น" aka better capitalism

[Reyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capitalism is, indeed, in crisis. But the good news is that we can do better. We know from the past that public and private actors can come together to do extraordinary things.

Mariana Mazzucato (1968) is één van de toonaangevende economen op het internationale forum. In Mission economy stelt ze de keerzijde van het kapitalisme aan de kaak, die volgens haar het gevolg is van een verkeerde rolverdeling tussen overheid en bedrijfsleven. Het vertrouwen in het bedrijfsleven om maatschappelijke problemen op te lossen is volgens Mazzucato onterecht. Privatisering en het uitbesteden van overheidsprojecten hebben niet geleid tot meer efficiëntie, maar juist tot hogere kosten, slechtere dienstverlening, selectievere aanbesteding en een systeem waarin beloningen ten goede komen aan de private sector en de risico’s op last van de samenleving. Doordat bedrijven in de huidige, op winst gerichte economie ieder voor zich werken, scheppen ze bovendien nieuwe maatschappelijke problemen, variërend van overbevissing tot ruimteafval. De overheid is in wezen de enige organisatie die in staat is om grootschalige publieke projecten aan te pakken, aldus Mazzucato.

Wat Mission economy onderscheidt van andere boeken over dit onderwerp, is dat Mazzucato zich richt op de taak waarvoor de overheid staat. Door te verwijzen naar succesvolle overheidsprojecten uit het verleden, zoals de New Deal van Roosevelt en de missie van Kennedy om een man op de maan te laten landen, wil ze laten zien dat het mogelijk is dat overheid en bedrijfsleven gezamenlijk voor verandering zorgen. Wat innovatie mogelijk en succesvol maakte, zo stelt Mazzucato, was “leadership by a government that had a vision, took risks to achieve it, put its money where its mouth was and collaborated widely with organizations willing to help”. En passant gaat ze daarbij in op de spin-offtechnologie die voortkwam uit het Apollo 11-project en de samenleving als zodanig ten goede kwam.

Uiteindelijk komt Mazzucato tot zeven principes voor een politieke economie, die ik schandalig kort door de bocht samenvat als: (1) Het bedrijfsleven, overheden en de samenleving zijn samen verantwoordelijk voor het creëren van waarde. De overheid staat niet in dienst van het bedrijfsleven, maar is medebepalend voor wat van waarde is door publieke doelen na te streven. (2) Het overheidsbeleid moet niet gericht zijn op marktfalen, maar op het scheppen en vormgeven van markten. (3) Om gemeenschappelijke doelen te bereiken moeten organisaties gericht zijn op samenwerking in plaats van concurrentie en in staat zijn om zowel de lusten als de lasten te delen. (4) De overheid moet zich bovenal afvragen wat de samenleving nodig heeft; het kostenplaatje zegt lang niet alles. (5) Als het creëren van waarde de uitkomst is van een gemeenschappelijke inspanning, dan moeten de opbrengsten ook eerlijk worden verdeeld. (6) Beslissingen van aandeelhouders moeten alle partijen ten goede komen. (7) Alle betrokkenen moeten in staat zijn deel te nemen aan grote beslissingen. (Of andersom geredeneerd: de samenleving vraagt om actieve burgers die betrokken zijn bij het publieke debat.)

Mission economy blinkt uit in optimisme. Het biedt naast kritiek ook een alternatief, al gaat het slechts om een begin van een omslag van een cultureel, economisch en sociaal ingebed systeem. Mazzucato erkent dat sociale missies, zoals het tegengaan van armoede of het klimaatprobleem, veel meer vragen dan een technische missie als de maanlanding. De passages over het implementeren van missie-gedreven projecten vond ik meer weghebben van een ‘doeboek’ voor ambtenaren, al waardeer ik de poging om ook dit aspect te betrekken. Al met al biedt Mazzucato vooral veel inspiratie voor politici, ambtenaren, economen en wie er verder maar luisteren wil.

The task is neither to pick winners nor to give unconditional handouts, subsidies and guarantees, but to pick the willing.

[Nick Lucarelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of an orbit around the stratosphere than a flight to the moon.

Starts off with a weird pro-socialist/Marxist dig at modern day capitalism that has elements of truth. She paints the government as an unheralded innovator that doesn't benefit from its successes in private investment (eg Tesla) but is left to bail out its failures; the private industry as exploiting workers by paying each other and not their workers (a masked argument for paying workers in shares); and civil servants as being unfairly constrained to perform a job rather than innovate and take risks like their private counterparts. However, her arguments don't jibe with the rest of her thesis and sit out of place in this otherwise well structured book.

Mazzucato has a fascination with the wartime space-race mentality that engulfed America in the 60s and argues that this is how we should approach and tackle modern day problems: allowing government agencies to enlist private companies across multiple domains to achieve a common goal, and reap the rewards (incidental and planned) together. Perhaps she has only spent time in America and England and been scarred by the over-privitisation of government, as this is essentially the Australian model of working. Her denigration of consulting firms as bloated fat cats that take away from the development of civil organisational memory is also hypocritical as she names several consulting/advisory boards she has proudly been a part of.

She is also a subscriber to Stephanie Kelton's MMT as a way to pay for the substantial costs / blowouts involved in these wartime missions, which for me is an acknowledgement that this is not a feasible solution to big government in the long term. I do agree however that governments need to play a bigger role in setting a level playing field, directing the market via incentives towards common goals, and stepping in where those incentives are not strong enough (eg supplying public goods). However, her vision of the government as a nimble, entrepreneurial, risk-on, cash-splashing, visionary jack of all trades is idealistic at best and fanciful at worst, even if her thesis that the public and private sectors can learn from each other holds merit.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is mainly about how governments can cooperate in modern business to evolve capitalism for everyone's benefit. 'Cooperate', not 'support' as Mazzucato claims that govt role is not just to eliminate the obstacles, but also possibly to add value.

Apart from the theory itself, it's not a very good book - when it comes to the author's writing skills. Even if I was honestly interested in the topic and picked the book voluntarily I struggled to keep myself engaged as the book felt monotonous and done poorly when it comes to exciting the leader.

Don't get me wrong - it doesn't mean that it's all theory or concepts w/o any examples to back them up. There are examples, e.g. the author frequently refers to NASA's coop with private companies or ARPA's role in global innovation. But the execution is really lacking.

When it comes to the key concept (effectiveness of being mission-driven and preferring moonshots over evolution for govt-driven programs) - it's interesting enough to read through, I encourage you to do so and make your own mind. There are some things I totally do not agree with (e.g. reasons why we were able to send people into space while we fail to solve general social problems), but again - I value the author's opinion and I think it's worth of your time to get familiar with it.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato, is an interesting book looking at ways that governments can shift economic and political thought to encourage greater economic stability, while combating major global issues like Climate Change and Post-COVID-19 recovery. Mazzucato uses the U.S. government's investment in the Apollo missions as an example where massive investments in government programs for a singular purpose, getting to the moon, and building up US space power, had massive positive spillover effects. These included the creation of all sorts of new and important technologies, such as ballistic missiles and 747 jets, massive improvements in research and development, and education and skill, which had positive knockoffs on the economy as a whole, and the successful completion of the program.

Mazzuccato looks at the state of modern government, and sees some issues. Public tenders for consultancy firms are expensive, outsource knowledge from government bureaucracy, and are more expensive than completing projects in house. Massive consultancy firms, like KPMG and others, control many public tenders, from building new hospitals, to designing road networks or improving public organizations organizational systems. They often come in over budget, or fall through on projects, leaving the taxpayer on the line for the mistake, while the consultancies profit. Under the auspices of New Public Management (NPM), and macroeconomic theory, many modern public servants have a business focused mindset - governments are only to correct market failures, and ensure a level playing field. The market will take care of the rest. This is clearly a false dichotomy; the global recession in 2008, and continued economic stagnation in Western economies, points to something deeper. Namely, that Western governments are not taking the role of innovators and risk takers, which would then direct the economy. They are instead, letting things play out - much to the detriment of Western economies, where income inequality is soaring, work is increasingly precarious, and goods and services are increasing in price. This stagflation was an accusation leveled at the socialist style economics of the 60's and 70's, and has reared its head again in the Reagan-era economic world. Clearly, business alone is not the answer.

Mazzucato argues for something more. The author posits seven pillars for governments to build to create a more participatory economy that will succeed in the coming years. First, governments need to encourage values creation by ensuring a collective effort between societal actors (civil, political and market) to encourage value creation without cheerleading free markets and creating blind spots in policy. Second, market shaping needs to occur; some of the biggest private successes, such as Silicon Valley, were incubated as government investment programs - they would not exist without said investment schemes. Markets are not the innovators, they are inherently conservative and risk averse. If markets are to improve, and Western nations are to continue to drive innovation and invention, then continued market shaping needs to occur, including picking winners, infant industry subsidies, and investments that favour bold thinking and success, over established markets with low returns. The third is about organizational change, including building and improving public bureaucracy to ensure it favours society over market stability only. Both are important and intertwined, but favouring one over the other leads to disaster. Parasitic relationships between consultancies and governments need to end, and public bidding and tendering needs to change in order to bring in new companies, encourage in-house organization resiliency within bureaucracies, and dispel the notion that business is more efficient than government - it is clearly not. The fourth pillar is financing. Much public discourse is spent on debt and debt reduction, and voters then decry the lack of investment in infrastructure in a nation. A strange hypocrisy exists in this discourse. Governments by definition should prepare for the future, and invest in long term goals that are outside of a voting cycle, and focus not only on present stability, but future stability as well. Distribution/inclusive growth is the fifth pillar, encouraging governments to ensure a better distribution of income by tackling inflation, increasing the power of individual and collective action and participation, and ensuring a fair distribution of resources through taxation and employment/education programs. The sixth pillar is partnership and stakeholder value, a key concept that ensures greater participation of voices that are historically unheard, and to ensure that projects benefit not just investors, but all stakeholders that will conceivably be effected, as best as possible. Finally, Participation is the last pillar, and is about building new forums for political power, and empowering existing ones. Some interesting concepts in and out of this book include impowering trade unions, adding Indigenous liaison's to projects in development (that one is a Canadian focused addition from me), and so forth.

This was a fascinating book that challenges the neo-conservative New Public Management (NPM) styles that are prevalent within public policy circles in the modern world. It seeks to challenge the assumptions that governments exist to create a safe space for the market to operate. Instead, it challenges policy makers and voters alike to think long term, and about larger issues, like environmental degradation and Climate Change, inclusivity in politics, fairer distribution of goods, services, and incomes, and so forth. These issues will challenge governments in the future, and may lead to political and economic instability. The risks are real and varied, and systems will change to meet these challenges, whether it is guided or forced. Mazzucato argues that we should guide in policy initiatives to focus on these risks, instead of relying on last minute solutions from markets that are not prioritizing public well-being, but market efficiency. A good book, and one to read for those looking for a well thought out policy piece.

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

A plea to give up the myths of the passive neoliberal in favor of an activist state that sets explicit goals and understands the complex systems in which all productive activity are embedded.

[Luis Almeida · Rating 3 out of 5]

A premissa é bastante interessante mas o livro é um bocado aborrecido. Repete-se imenso e por alguma razão a tradutora adora a palavra "amiúde". Dos 6 capítulos que tem, apenas o 4 e o 5 realmente me interessaram em que o 4 fala da Missão Apollo e o que foi preciso para levar a humanidade à Lua e o 5 fala de como podemos usar isso como exemplo para problemas reais do mundo atual. O resto pareceu só palha a tentar explicar algo com muitas palavras e pouca substância. Por exemplo, "fazer as empresas pararem de pensar em lucros de curto prazo e fazê-las pensar a longo prazo para o bem das partes interessadas" é algo que nunca foi explicado concretamente pela Mariana como é que atingiriamos esse patamar. Talvez seja através de mudanças sociais e de cultura? Só gostava de uma explicação por parte da autora jÁ QUE ELA REFERE ISSO 300 VEZES NO LIVRO E AAAAHHHH ELA REPETE-SE TANTO. Also dava pra perceber desde bastante cedo que ela era MMTer mas por alguma razão ela só referiu isso no último capítulo??? É que eu acho que para ter uma visão melhor do mundo ideal dela, enquadrar isso com a MMT seria muito mais fácil. Mas pronto o livro até foi okay mas com uma premissa assim com tanto potencial, podia ser muito melhor

[Flo! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty fun book, but if you have already read 'Entrepreneurial state' and 'Value of everything', then you don't need to read this one. The point that the author wants to make, is that government should be more mission-oriented and not just muddle around and let markets do the work. I fully agree with that and this book does summarise the whole thought-process behind it. For that, the book uses the Apollo Project as a government-set mission, of which the story descripted in the book is very interesting. However, besides that description of the Apollo Project, this book doesn't offer something new that we haven't read from the author already and that does disappoints me.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde hace muchos meses he venido pensando que no existe alternativa al capitalismo. Parece que no existe una manera de parar esa máquina de movimiento perpetuo que es la generación de riqueza, riqueza que se distribuye inequitativamente y paradójicamente, genera pobreza.

La pandemia nos demostró que pese a ser un mecanismo en apariencia eficiente, no es en absoluto bondadoso. Tan solo dos meses de frenar su movimiento aplastante, causó una crisis de empleo que terminó por ahondar las consecuencias negativas de la COVID-19.

En ese contexto emergieron un sinnúmero de interrogantes y de miradas divergentes al capitalismo, pero ninguna pasó de ser una simple opinión o un reclamo urgente, como los que tenemos muchos; afortunadamente la profesora Mariana Mazzucato nos entregó en “Misión: Capitalismo” una perspectiva juiciosa, conectada con lo teórico, pero sobre todo con lo humano, desde la cual se propone y analiza una propuesta para repensar el capitalismo.

Su libro toma como ejemplo una de las tareas más ambiciosas que la raza humana se puso como meta, la cual fue poner un hombre en la Luna. La profesora se pregunta ¿qué pasaría si a todos los problemas del planeta le pusiéramos la misma energía, compromiso, voluntad y, sobre todo, ingente cantidad de recursos que lograron poner con éxito al hombre en la Luna? La respuesta casi que se cae de su propio peso: lograríamos resolver las desigualdades y podríamos tener una esperanza de vida superior que la que, como raza, vislumbramos hoy.

Uno de los primeros análisis que realiza Mazzucato es el papel del Estado en este contexto. Y para ello se dedica a desvirtuar lo que ella considera mitos. Uno de ellos es que el Estado es por definición, ineficiente y que en cuanto tal, debe reducir su tamaño y promover la solución de problemas mediante la empresa privada. Allí subyace un error fundamental, pues mediante la analogía del Moonshot se puede demostrar que un papel más activo y responsable del gobierno puede promover innovaciones en los mercados que terminarían por solucionar problemas fundamentales.

Otro mito que se desvirtúa es que los gobiernos deben tener un papel que se reduce a la regulación de los mercados, lo cual para Mazzucato es erróneo: los gobiernos deben además promover la creación de estos.

Pero la principal enseñanza subyace en el hecho de que es necesario cambiar la manera como asumimos y lideramos las problemáticas sociales. Es imperativo asumir cada problema como una misión que involucre a toda la ciudadanía, por ejemplo, de un país. De este mismo modo, sugiere la profesora que la gente debe tener una participación más activa y exigir que los gobiernos tengan cifras claras y datos que le permitan una aproximación más efectiva a la solución de necesidades sociales.

No obstante, el valor de las ideas desarrolladas, hay una moraleja aún más relevante. Por estos tiempos en los que el mundo atraviesa por crisis de diversa índole, Colombia lo está pasando muy mal. Se advierte una evidente crisis de institucionalidad, lo cual, sumado al déficit de la balanza comercial que venimos arrastrando hace unos cuántos gobiernos, por decisiones egoístas y equivocadas, hace que se sienta un fuerte aire de desesperanza. Así pues, Misión: Economía nos advierte que debemos recuperar la esperanza, siendo este el punto de partida.

De ahí en adelante, asumir las problemáticas sociales como misiones ambiciosas y trascendentales es fundamental, pero, sobre todo, promover un drástico cambio de pensamiento: es necesario pensar en el bien común, pues por más de cien años la idea que más se ha instalado en la mente de todos es que la riqueza se crea “solo para los accionistas”. Hay que promover la riqueza para las partes interesadas y ¿quiénes son las partes interesadas de los problemas sociales derivados de las inequidades del capitalismo? Todos, todos nosotros.

Si bien subrayé casi cada página del libro e hice muchas notas, el asunto de la creación de riqueza es uno de los temas a trabajar desde lo teórico y lo práctico, pues en palabras de la autora y ante la potencial llegada de un contexto más halagüeño habría que ver “si la economía (de un país) tiene capacidad productiva para hacer un buen uso del dinero que se crea y pone en manos privadas”, pero sobre todo que “no existe razón alguna por la que la mentalidad de <> no pueda aplicarse a los problemas sociales.

La buena noticia es pues, que sí hay esperanza. La mejor noticia aún es que Mariana Mazzucato es uno de los referentes teóricos en Economía del actual gobierno colombiano. Ojalá le prestemos la debida atención para que la frágil esperanza naciente, no naufrague en la cacofonía de la retórica actual.

Chapeau.

[Vanya Prodanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Концепцията за бъдещето на световната икономика, която представя, е надъхваща и вдъхновяваща. Докато четеш и може да си представиш колко по-добро би било бъдещето ни ако се насочим в тази посока, но... за мен това е просто красива приказка, мираж, утопия.

Книгата е писана в началото на пандемията и се усеща как вярва, че човечеството може да излезе от пандемията променено и да поеме по нов, по-добър път... Е, не стана точно така. Имахме невероятната възможност да променим начина, по който работим, и се прави всичко възможно да се върнем към остарелите и откровено вредни начини на работа. Та, това не ми дава надежда, че правителства, частният сектор и обществото могат да се обединят около обща цел.

Идеята за ориентирана към мисия икономика звучи като невероятен начин да се извадим от дупката, в която се намираме, но си признавам, че съм доста скептична. Много вяра има в човечеството авторката, аз не толкова, а и сравнението с мисията до луната не е много добро, защото като количество хората са били много малко тогава, а днешно време сме твърде много. И, в кой свят правителства и 1% най-големите богаташи ще се навият, милите, от билионери да бъдат милионери. Горките, ще умрат от глад. :Р

Та, прекрасна концепция, но нереализуема. От друга страна обаче всичките тези неща, за които говори, чудесно може да приложиш към собствения си живот и кариера, така че е чудесно четиво за личностно обогатяване.

Да не пропусна да спомена, че само началото и краят на книгата са написани достъпно за средностатистическия читател, останалото е като правителствен документ - трудно за разбиране и скучно. Книгата имаше нужда да е по-достъпна цялостно, не само части от нея.

[Ciprian Bujor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read, especially in these interesting and challenging times.

[Aaron von Conta · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this book for an assignment - and it turned out the most disappointing thing since Stephanie Kelton's "The Deficit Myth". However, there is a really interesting set of ideas at the basis of the book - they can be roughly structured in 5 core theses:

Thesis 1: There are complex societal problems (i.e. problems affecting the entire society), which "require (...) social, organizational and political innovation." They must be solved by "getting the public and private sector to truly collaborate on investing in solutions".

Thesis 2: The agents in the free market (i.e. the private sector) take decisions within a given regulatory framework, based on profit metrics. The decisions are not inherently aligned with the complex societal problems at hand, if the problems do not manifest themselves (sufficiently) in the profit metrics, or the regulator framework.

Thesis 3: It is therefore the task of the government to identify (together with "the people") the relevant societal problems, to define visionary goals, and to facilitate/coordinate the achievement of these goals.

Thesis 4: The way to coordinate the problem solving is for the government agents to be acting as informed risk takers in a mission based economy (i.e. outcome focused) involving public and private entities.

Thesis 5: Provided the correct problems are identified and implemented, this would "restructure contemporary" capitalism and "result in a more sustainable and just society".

So Theses 1-2 are self evident. Theses 3 and 4 are a proposition building on 1 and 2. Thesis 5 is a bit of an outlook what the author believes how an implementation would manifest. So much for the interesting part of the book.

The sad part is that instead of developing the points of thesis 3 and 4 in a neutral and logical kind of manner, the book spends quite some pages on thesis 2 and sadly enough even more pages on preaching thesis 5.

As an example for what I mean a quote from page 141:
"Such bold policies need clear framing, along with mandatory changes to the status quo. For example, for the European Green Deal to succeed, governments need to redesign financial instruments broadly. This includes directing public banks, (...) towards fuel[l]ing funds for _green_ projects; getting the central bank to use financial regulation to reward _green_ banking; using structural funds (...) to foster _green_ infrastructure rather than simple "shovel ready" projects; and restructuring investment funds and funds for small and mid-size enterprises to focus on rewarding the most innovative companies that provide _green_ solutions."

While the quote may fit into a speech at a green party rally or in an iteration of the game "how often can you say green in one sentence", the above also contains at least one false statement (the ECB is not responsible for financial regulation - https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-ec... ), more fill words than bearable, and meaningless (but well sounding) word shells (or can you tell me ad hoc what a "green solution" is?).

Anyway, at least the author remains humble to some degree (p. 142):
"In addition, a green transition will not happen without the revolution this book is advocating in how governments operate and how the relationships between public and private organizations are structured."

[mylogicisfuzzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mission Economy suggests an ambitious, bold and progressive way of tackling major global challenges of the 21st century. Its central idea is that governments should actively shape markets in order to meet challenges such as climate crisis: setting clear goals and instigating public-private partnerships that encourage innovation, risk taking and collaboration for the good of society as a whole. Mazzucato uses the Apollo program to illustrate how this approach would work. The mission – i.e. sending a man to the moon and back, required US governmental agency and businesses to work together to find solutions to complex problems. While cost and risk were high, the mission also hugely benefited society in the long run, not least in the technological innovations that have since found many practical uses from water purification, landmine removal to firefighting equipment, to name a few.

This mission based approach to solving the myriad of problems we face today, from digital divide to social care, from responses to global pandemics to climate emergency also necessarily requires rethinking of capitalism to primarily serve public good rather than private interest, to consider social benefits as value rather than just cost. It requires governments to bring back innovative, big thinking into civil service and letting it run public-private partnerships rather than outsourcing public services to private interests, which are primarily guided by profit. We are all currently experiencing the disastrous effects of years of public service cut-backs and austerity – the failure of the outsourced test and trace system to effectively test and trace Covid infections in the UK being one of many examples. So, things must change and Mazzucato’s way forward is admirable and compelling.

However, I wasn’t fully convinced that it would work when applied to some of the big problems facing society today. There is no doubt that capitalism is in crisis but is there enough collective and political will to change it to serve common good? Mazzucato gives examples of recent projects she has been involved in, working with European Commission and Camden Council on tackling climate change but the outlines of the missions given in the book are somewhat nebulous. How have these been practically implemented and how are they working out in real life? Still, Mission Economy does offer solutions rather than just highlight problems and the solutions put forward are inspiring as well as inclusive.

Three and a half stars, which I am rounding up to four because it advocates positive change and I’d like to encourage people to read it.

My thanks to Penguin, Allen Lane and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Mission Economy.

[José Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the book, Mariana Mazzucato argues extensively about how to effectively change capitalism from its current short-termist shareholder oriented model to a long-termist stakeholder value creation model. She argues that the role of governments must be reimagined, and further more government relations with the private sector and society at large must change as well, and above all let the state recover a sense of purpose.

Professor Mazzucato describes how the myriad of global challenges we are facing - recovery from a global pandemic, social inequalities (including the digital divide) and the climate crisis - call for rethinking the role of the state and public institutions and that these institutions should be mission-oriented, dynamic, un-politized, and that they need to be measured through public value metrics beyond traditional cost-benefit analyses to better reflect the necessity of risk-taking and value creation.

Professor Mazzucato narrates the story of a succesful historical example (NASA´s Apollo program) and draws lessons for readers - particularly policy makers - to embrace the magnitude of challenges and move away from the traditional notion of the state as an inefficient player in the global economy to an active market-shaper and investor of first resort (contrary to lender of last resort as we have seen the roles of many governments around the world). In other words, make the economy work for the people and not the other way around.

It also includes a call to action to embrace mission-oriented challenges such as NASA's Apollo program to tackle wicked issues -issues that require not only technological innovation but also wide social, cultural and systemic changes - in order to address the climate crisis, net-zero by 2050 and the global sustainable development agenda.

The book has a very uplifting tone about the opportunities of moving towards mission-oriented institutions and value creation for all, and it does not leave the lessons in the theoretical side but is full of practical examples and principles to implement them. Very recommended read for anyone tackling massive challenges that require systemic innovation measures with spillover effects and cross-sector collaboration.

Review by an ESG & sustainability professional.

[Jack Dalrymple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book that looks at the lack of ambition in current political leaders and the opportunities to overcome this. Using the moon landing story to highlight what is possible, Mariana advocates for outcome focused budgeting, making government departments more agile and risk taking, thinking of government as a lender of first choice as opposed to last choice and rethinking about capitalism as a tool to broader societal objectives.

Cool takeaway was how much existing innovation rely on government and public private partnerships. Elon musk companies have received 5 billion in government subsidies and loans which highlights how important gov has been in space X and Tesla. Yet often times reward is privatised and risk is socialised.

[Risalat Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for any policymaker in the 21st Century. Mazzucato is one of the most visionary thinkers about how to reorient our economies towards a more just and sustainable future. Time is running out - and the more people run with her ideas presented in this book, the better off we'll be.

[Jaguar Tiririca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ingen av vanskelighetene vi opplever, er uunngåelige. De er en følge av måten vi har valgt å styre systemet vårt på."

Dette er en solid bok, som jeg håper beslutningstakere verden over leser. Jeg er absolutt ikke enig i alt, men boka kommer med mange gode betraktninger og stiller store spørsmål.

Hvordan kan økonomien og staten omstruktureres for å nå våre mål som å stoppe klimakrisen, minke ulikhetene og skape verdier for det felles beste?

Denne boka prøver å ta for seg disse spørsmålene, og kommer meg mange gode ideer til hvordan staten kan ta en større rolle i å styre samfunnet i en retning for det felles beste, fremfor profitt for private og at staten kun er der for å "redde økonomien" når vi får våre jevnlige finanskriser og stadig flere andre kriser. "Statens mål bør være å fungere som katalysator i hele samfunnet." "De trege endringene globalt viser hva som kan skje hvis staten overlater til markedet å løse problemer og ikke påtar seg pådriverrollen i samfunnet".
Slik som tittelen antyder, er USAs månelanding brukt som et stort eksempel på hva en stat kan få til med det Mazzucato kaller en oppdragsorientert tilnærming. Oppdraget til USA var å få enn mann til månen og trygt tilbake på jorda innen 10 år. Dette gikk veien, og "med på måneferden" har samfunnet fått med seg veldig mange nyttige ting. Blant annet kameratelefoner, joggesko, trådløse hodetelefoner, bærbar datamaskin m.m.

Mazzucato kommer også med kritikk i mange retninger. Hun kritiserer; banknæringen for å nesten utelukkende investere i finansmarkeder fremfor faktisk produktive ting; dagens patentordning; selskaper for at de bruker mye midler på tilbakekjøp av aksjer; all investeringen i og subsidieringen av fossilbransjen, til tross for at alle vet at vi må finne bærekraftige alternativer; fordelingen av verdiene som samfunnet som helhet skaper. Samt staters stadig større bruk av konsulentselskaper og nedbygging av egen kompetanse. Pluss mye mye mer.

I siste del av boka tar Mazzucato opp flere forbedrings- og endringsområder i økonomien. Dette kapitelet inneholder absolutt relevante råd og passende kritikk. Men jeg syns ikke hun drar det langt nok. Ting skal fortsatt skje innenfor en voksende kapitalisme, som gjør at en tenker på grønn vekst. Det er helt sikkert flere som vil tjene mye penger på grønn omstilling, men å fortsette med et fokus på vekst kan gi inntrykk av at Mazzucato ikke har tatt inn over seg hvor radikalt samfunnet, økonomien og livene våre må endres viss vi skal takle klima- og ulikhetskrisen.

[Rick Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a very interesting concept, and I really admire any economist with just the slightest flicker of creativity in their soul. Which Mazzucato seems to have.

That said, this reads like backfilling data to match an idea rather than looking around at what we have and allowing an idea to come forth. It’s like a thought experiment that somebody spent too much time on. I don’t think the idea works and I don’t think the authors support of It is very convincing. Using an example of the space race carves off significant portions of social and overall societal changes that have happened. It also seems to put the cart before the horse in that uniting people behind a shared vision is something that leadership did during the 60s as a sort of magic feather. I just finished a ridiculously long biography of LBJ and our leadership during the space race did not believe in a space race being an overall social good. It was more of a political cudgel to unite people behind at the expense of other things. Like civil rights. Cynically it could be said that people knew there wasn’t some grand mission during the space race and it really was only a self-serving tool to help keep people in line. Uniting the country around moonshots and similar such items seems to be a bit of Icarusian folly.

[Bjorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mazzucato refines the argument from The Value of Everything, with less economic theory and more arguments for why and how the current economic system can and needs to be reformed like, now. Using the Apollo project as a recurring example of how it can be done is a great move even if it brings up a few questions. In the end it's more of a call to action than a how-to manual - the job needed to do this is SO humongous, and she wisely doesn't give too much air to the arguments some people will inevitably make, and in the end the book feels both inspiring, exciting and scary af.

[Rodrigo Casanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mazzucato’s vision of a bold, mission-driven state is incredibly inspiring, especially for Europe, where ambitious policies like the Green Deal are already taking shape. But it raises important questions: Can European governments realistically take on such transformative roles given the challenges of bureaucracy, political fragmentation, and resource constraints? The idea of co-creating markets with the private sector is powerful, but how can it work across the EU’s diverse political and economic landscape? Would love to hear thoughts or examples of where this has succeeded in Europe!

[Gregory Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mariana Mazzucato's thesis is that capitalism as we know it now has some challenges - which are well understood I think - and that government has fallen into a self-limiting role doing little more than tinkering with economic regulations, and that's no longer enough, when we need a war footing to tackle the grand challenges of our age such as climate crisis. Mazzucato believes in rethinking government for the twenty first century in order to reshape capitalism. That's a proposition I agree with. The role of government should be to set market-shaping mission oriented goals; and to invest in private and public innovation: like NASA did with the Apollo mission and DARPA did with the internet. Government should become a risk-taker (again) with improved contracting to create true public private partnerships that work symbiotically towards a common goal, and achieve value distribution to all stakeholders not just shareholders. Mission Economy fits together nicely with a read of Stephanie Kelton's The Deficit Myth, about Modern Money Theory, which Mazzucato mentions late in her book.

[Lawrence Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mariana Mazzucato is hitting right in the sweet spot of my particular grievances with modern governance and modern capitalism. There's a lot of good to take away from this book but from my vantage point in the future in 2025 (this book was published in 2021), some issues strikes me as devastatingly naive.

The back and forth on Modern Monetary Theory, the essence of money/currency, and whether or not debt is something to actually be concerned about when it comes to governing is exhausting to read through. Mazzucato did well to cover this well trodden Keynesian thinking with the phrasing that basically amounted to "as long as the money created out of thin air is put to good efficient use on good projects that can provide a good return on investment, no inflation should happen". Clearly, that was not what happened with the trillions of dollars sunk into COVID relief and other big spending bills during Biden's presidency. It's a bit disappointing to see Mazzucato, who so clearly understands the flaws of classical/Austrian economic thought in assuming humans act only one way as an economic actor, fall into similar traps in her analysis of government. Yes, if government was good at doing government stuff, then we'd be in a better place to try out MMT with less risk of high inflation and resulting political backlash. But that's not what we're working with in real life. The fallout from Trumps second term has likely destroyed and reversed much of the progress Mazzucato was touting on climate, equity, and other social issues.

Of course, we are not good at doing government, which is functionally the whole reason Mazzucato wrote this book. I'll give her this: she is very good at pointing out the flaws of modern governance and capitalism. We are seeing the rise of similar thinking now with the "Abundance" talk in the US. She did an incredible job laying out the Apollo missions as the ideal example of how government can lead private innovation. I loved a significant chunk of this book because of these sections. But from my vantage point in 2025, I am overcome by a dreadful feeling that there are more fundamental underlying problems here.

Americans just don't trust anymore: not their government, not their institutions, not their news, not their family or friends, not their community, if it doesn't align with their preconceived notions. That kind of social schism could be healed with the right kind of charismatic leader (Trump may be charismatic to many but he is definitely the wrong kind of leader), but I do not see anyone in the public eye who could (or more importantly, would want to) step into the public eye in this way. Mazzucato's dreams of citizen engagement, public inputs on societal projects, stakeholder value, and many other concepts sort of shrivel up and die if we don't have the fundamental trust of a unified nation. Maybe these efforts would build trust once instituted. Maybe it wouldn't work. Maybe America is genuinely too individualistic to care about community, to care about the nation as a whole. There are signs of course that this is changing. It has been fascinating to watch some of this struggle play out in the MAGAsphere: the elite capitalist technocrats who want everything and everyone to be as efficient and logical as possible so they can economically profit versus the poor/working class nationalist populists who want to transform the country into a proto-Christofascist confederacy so they can socially benefit. A rather exclusionary and socially devastating community, but a community nonetheless.

I am curious to see if an Abundance agenda/ Mission Economy can be implemented by anybody anywhere in the United States, and what the societal results may be. So far, and infuriatingly for some, the best candidates seem to be Texas and Florida, which have low taxes, low barriers to building housing, and are currently the only two states that are proceeding with high speed rail projects (California is failing at building one). For sure, both states have their own incredibly unpleasant pathologies, but their performance in standard of living and cost of living are what people want at the moment (I cannot blame them, housing costs are ridiculous across the Northeast), and they are voting with their feet by moving to them as well as other states with similar policies. Mazzucato's book is an interesting idea on getting government to work better, and I see no reason why inefficient states and local governments can't start with their own mission-oriented reforms first.

A recommend from me, with some caveats, to anyone interested in economics and governance. It's certainly a worthy take to have: both capitalism and government suck and both need to change. I do hope this particular idea catches on in the popular imagination.

[Random User · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m struggling to find reasons not to give this book a one-star rating. The only thing keeping me from doing so is that I fundamentally agree with the idea of mission-oriented projects. Unfortunately, that agreement is not enough to overlook the book’s many flaws. Mission Economy is a textbook example of a well-intentioned but intellectually shallow work—full of claims that sound convincing at first glance but collapse under scrutiny.

1. Misdiagnosing the Problem

Mazzucato begins by arguing that New Public Management (NPM) is the root cause of neoliberal capitalism, blaming it for creating overly cautious administrators and perpetuating the myth of lazy bureaucrats. She counters this by pointing to examples like Apollo and DARPA, suggesting that bureaucracy can indeed innovate. While I agree that bureaucratic ideology can change, Mazzucato’s framing is simplistic.

Her claim that capitalism is to blame for bureaucratic stagnation is historically weak. Public management has rarely revolved around government as the sole market shaper. The British Empire’s House of Lords, for instance, served as a balancing force between private and public interests—there was no strict dichotomy. The fundamental transformation came with the New Deal and the rise of the managerial class—a layer of middle managers, civil servants, and academics that mediate between markets and the state. The issue is not “capitalism vs. government” but rather how management itself has become the dominant mode of organisation. Any libertarian would laugh at the notion that American healthcare is capitalist—it functions only because government regulations shape the market.

2. Misunderstanding Organisational Dynamics

Mazzucato insists that governments can and should innovate, and I agree. But she attributes failure primarily to market ideology and a lack of “mission cohesion.” This misses the deeper structural issues. Following the Manhattan Project, for example, the Atomic Energy Commission received substantial funding and was established as a mission-oriented agency. Yet, it failed largely due to organisational decay and ossified leadership. When the visionary leader departs, such institutions often devolve into oligarchies.

She also ignores human capital. The average age of engineers in the Apollo program was 26—an extraordinary concentration of young, highly talented individuals. Mazzucato barely touches on how governments have failed to maintain such talent pipelines since. Her analysis would have benefited from recognising that innovation depends not only on funding and missions but also on dynamic organisational structures and incentives.

3. Ignoring Systems and Feedback

A recurring weakness is her disregard for systems theory. She pays little attention to how bureaucracies and public organisations have their own self-preserving incentives. History is full of examples—such as the U.S. Military Reform Movement and the “Fighter Mafia”—that demonstrate how organisational priorities can drift away from mission goals. When she presents charts showing how institutions should be structured for mission orientation, they read as naive and uninformed. Anyone familiar with cybernetics or systems theory would immediately notice the absence of a crucial element: feedback loops.

4. Overextending the “Mission” Concept

Mazzucato’s claim that mission-oriented frameworks can easily be applied to social problems is misguided. Unlike putting a man on the moon, social outcomes are far harder to define and measure. Data on social progress is abstract, relative, and susceptible to manipulation. Pretending that these can be governed with the same clarity as technological missions shows a lack of realism.

5. The Misplaced Role of Global Institutions

Finally, Mazzucato’s suggestion that organisations like the UN or other transnational bodies should define their missions completely overlooks the historical foundation of mission-oriented projects. The most successful examples—Manhattan, Apollo, and significant industrial policies—emerged from national security imperatives, not global committees. Her proposal divorces mission orientation from its original context and dilutes the concept into bureaucratic aspiration.

Conclusion

Mission Economy is built on a superficially appealing premise but falters in its understanding of history, institutions, and systems. It reduces complex political and organisational dynamics into ideological talking points. The result is a book that exemplifies why academic discourse is losing credibility: it presents confident assertions, weak evidence, and a lack of appreciation for how things actually work.

[Michael Erickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's interesting to come across a progressive take on the economy that doesn't just come out of the gate screaming, "capitalism=bad, we need socialism now!" and instead argues that the existing system can work towards progressive causes. It was even more interesting to have the past re-framed in a way to show that we have already done what the author is pitching for.

The central argument here is that the government (and while there are mentions of the UK and a few other countries, this is largely an American-centric focus) should be more proactive in engaging with private businesses. Rather than being the lender of last resort (see the '08 bank bailouts), the government should state a measurable and easily defined goal, then spur investments in pursuit of that goal with the idea that multiple different sectors of the market will follow afterwards. The primary example used through the book was the Apollo Program in the '60s, and it's hard to argue against the success of that approach - at least in that one instance, now after the fact and after knowing that it worked.

There's a lot of discussion from point A - how the market works now and why people have gripes about capitalism not working for them - and point B - how a mission-driven macroeconomy where the government takes a leading role would look. I do wish there was more discussion on how we get from point A to point B though. And some of the examples for future progressive missions like, "end hunger" or "the green transition" seem to me to be a little too nebulous to work when you get bogged down in definitions. Whereas the staple example of the Apollo Program had a mission of: get a man on the moon and return him to Earth alive. That kind of goal has a much more clean-cut answer when we ask ourselves, "did we accomplish what we set out to do?"

It may not have laid out an overall strategy as much as I'd have liked, but it did stimulate me into thinking about what a modern-day equivalent of a new Apollo Program that tackles a problem that was previously thought to be impossible might look like.

[Pablo Mejia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una argumentación bastante mediocre para promover la idea de un "estado no más grande, sino más eficiente". Estoy de acuerdo con la autora que los dos grandes retos del capitalismo son el cambio climático y la iniquidad social. Además estoy de acuerdo que los gobiernos deben modernizarse para asignar mejor el capital y distribuir los riesgos entre los agentes más preparados para asumirlos.

Es una narrativa atractiva, pero llena de lugares comunes que no ahonda en el diseño de incentivos (a los políticos/funcionarios no se les remunera por correr riesgos), la distribución de riesgos vía contratos e instrumentos financieros. El libro busca hilar su argumento sobre los avances tecnológicos que trajo el viaje a la luna para enfatizar que el sector privado goza de beneficios originados por el sector publico, pero es un argumento muy débil en mi opinión. Para Colombia sería insensato competir en la carrera espacial con países como India, China, Rusia y EEUU, donde las externalidades no superarían los costos de dicha audacia. Para Colombia sería mucho más sensato jugar a ganar en retos globales como el aprovechamiento de la Amazonia y acabar la guerra contra las drogas.

En cualquier caso, Mazzucato dibuja organigramas genéricos de agencias estatales como coordinadores centrales de la economía, que ya hemos visto que resultan siendo burocráticos, poco espontáneos e irresponsables fiscalmente (empezando por los Europeos a quienes se les extingue su ventaja).

Supongo que tendré que leer otros de sus libros para entenderla mejor, pero me abstendré de hacerlo por ahora.

[Axel Sánchez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Keynesianismo reformista para el siglo XXI dentro del contexto del capital financiero y bajo la amenaza del cambio climático.

No supera al capitalismo, pide mejorarlo, hacerlo más centrado en el bienestar humano y su propuesta es mediante la visión y metodología de las 'misiones', un tema que se repite ad nauseam a través de sus páginas.

La Misión en este libro, es centrar un objetivo primero, para luego administrar todo a su alrededor. No es sacar el cálculo previo, es establecer la meta, y acomodarnos para lograrla. Por eso pide abandonar a este capital de inversiones que invierte en: más capital de inversiones. El capital totalmente fetiche está lleno de estas operaciones que llevaron a la quiebra al mundo el 2008 y que hunden al planeta en un cambio climático. Por eso hay que pensar como hacer lo que debemos hacer primero, y acomodar el capitalismo a tal objetivo.

El título del libro pone un ejemplo de como esto pasó: el viaje a la luna. El modelo ideal es que la administración Kennedy buscó llegar a la luna como misión, y eso modificó la forma en que se trabajaba esencialmente del Estado. El Estado ponía metas, los privados las cumplían, se devolvía la mano, pero por sobre todo, se lograba el objetivo.

El libro ´propone que hay que superar este neo paleo ultra liberal neoliberalismo a la Milei de pensar que el Estado no es eficiente ni que hace nada, si no que hacerlo partícipe del capital de manera activa y no solo como corregido, así como lo fue con la NASA y todas las empresas estatales asociadas al viaje a la Luna.

Hasta ahí, bien uno podría decir. Sin embargo al menos hay dos puntos que me parecen críticos. Primero, todo esto fue posible desde la militarización imperialista excesiva de la guerra fría. En el libro si bien trata de decir "si pudimos en la guerra porque no podemos hacerlo en tiempos de paz" deja de lado completamente que LA condición para que eso pase es la guerra. El mejor ejemplo de un Estado que calza con el modelo de misiones es el proyecto que hizo la bomba nuclear. Lo mismo, nuevamente, la sed de destrucción y el complejo armamentístico gringo no es un mero factor en la ecuación.

Lo segundo que me llama la atención es que por alguna razón cuando habla de las críticas que reciben las misiones, por su gasto de plata, siempre son voces negras o racializadas las puestas como las piedras de tope. No se si será un tema de traducción pero siempre deja a las voces negras que alegaban que se gastaban billones de dólares en una misión a la luna, como los dejaban morir de hambre a ellos. Ella en varias partes del libro dice que ay que superar que las elites blancas tomen todas las decisiones como antaño pero siempre que pone un ejemplo de una voz crítica (que al final no tenía razón, bajo su argumento) son voces negras.

Igual hay que leer estas cuestiones porque al mismo tiempo que reformistas y que pasan por alto las estructuras del capital, son discurso que son vendible y muchas veces financiable o posibles de hacer a escalas menores.