Mission Economy
A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism
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4.2 • 14 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2021 Porchlight Business Book Awards, Big Ideas & New Perspectives
“She offers something both broad and scarce: a compelling new story about how to create a desirable future.”—New York Times
An award-winning author and leading international economist delivers a hard-hitting and much needed critique of modern capitalism in which she argues that, to solve the massive crises facing us, we must be innovative—we must use collaborative, mission-oriented thinking while also bringing a stakeholder view of public private partnerships which means not only taking risks together but also sharing the rewards.
Capitalism is in crisis. The rich have gotten richer—the 1 percent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 percent of the world's wealth—while climate change is transforming—and in some cases wiping out—life on the planet. We are plagued by crises threatening our lives, and this situation is unsustainable. But how do we fix these problems decades in the making?
Mission Economy looks at the grand challenges facing us in a radically new way. Global warming, pollution, dementia, obesity, gun violence, mobility—these environmental, health, and social dilemmas are huge, complex, and have no simple solutions. Mariana Mazzucato argues we need to think bigger and mobilize our resources in a way that is as bold as inspirational as the moon landing—this time to the most ‘wicked’ social problems of our time.. We can only begin to find answers if we fundamentally restructure capitalism to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by innovation that tackles concrete problems from the digital divide, to health pandemics, to our polluted cities. That means changing government tools and culture, creating new markers of corporate governance, and ensuring that corporations, society, and the government coalesce to share a common goal.
We did it to go to the moon. We can do it again to fix our problems and improve the lives of every one of us. We simply can no longer afford not to.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Economist Mazzucato (The Value of Everything) calls for a "massive rethink" of capitalism and the relationship between the public and private sectors in this stimulating yet wonky guide. She contends that wealth inequality, inadequate health care, the "rising tide of populism," and other social ills are the byproducts of forces that have warped capitalism, including the prioritization of shareholder profits over long-term investments and the belief that governments can only fix market failures, instead of playing an active role in shaping the economy. Mazzucato sketches the history of the U.S. space program in the 1960s as a model for the "boldness and experimentation" necessary to solve the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, and refutes arguments that the private sector is inherently better at spurring innovation than the public sector. She notes, for example, that an Obama administration loan was crucial to the success of Tesla, and that a 1980s BBC computer literacy program led to the founding of a leading software development firm and the creation of a low-cost computer used in classrooms around the world. Mazzucato's line of argument occasionally gets lost in a blizzard of buzzwords, but she unearths a plethora of intriguing case studies to back up her claims. Policy makers will want to take note.
Customer Reviews
A new tomorrow
Mission Economy looks at a new way of improving capitalism through public and private collaborations and partnerships, just as we did to put a man on the moon. It offers a shared mission oriented economy to replace the greed based economy of today. As the times change, the economics of the times must also change.