Mission Economy

4.5

“Experts in the mission boards were selected to make the choice and give legitimacy to that choice. The risk is that there is little appetite to make choices as everyone defends their own corner” p. 117

“All this brings us back to the point that social missions are harder to fulfil than purely technological ones because they combine political, regulatory and behavioural changes” p. 146

“Greek political philosophy had a strong sense of public service and the duty of the citizen to engage in public affairs. This was seen as necessary to avoid tyranny, so much so that the ancient Greeks used the term ‘idiotes' (ιδιώτης) to denote those who did not operate in the public sphere; to put it harshly, if you were only concerned with the private sector, you were an idiot” p. 169

“Data is created collectively, and is increasingly central to the ability of citizens to access their rights to education, health and ser- vices like public transport. Finding ways in which to make sure that we govern data creation to benefit the common good is thus central to the ability to govern inclusive growth” p. 198

I will happily agree, that I may not have consumed the content of this book properly, as I was listening to it. Digesting a book like this, was probably better done by reading.

That being said, I find some flaws in the Mission Economy. The whole narrative is around the moon landing and how that serves as the epitome for how a government should run a mission driven project. Besides that a good part of the book is unnecessarily spent on retelling the successes of NASA, it is just one example for just one country, the USA.

The type of problems that Mazzucato suggests to be solved through a new kind of capitalism (climate change, gender inequality etc) are happening on a global scale. Living in Singapore, I am not entirely sure if her proposition can be used outside of the USA or the EU. I would've found her case to be stronger had she also addressed the application of governmental moonshots in China and India.

The book was also rather repetitive and difficult to follow (again, maybe the audiobook). A well written article would've perhaps served just as well.

Insightful I found the notion of pre-distribution of wealth, where governments draft conditions in contracts for subsidies/loans with the private sector as to ascertain profits will benefit the public as well.