Mission Economy

A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

De: Mariana Mazzucato

Narrado por: Lexie McDougall

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.

Interesting but AI read?

I had to give up on it when the narrator pronounced Nike as Nyk (no final e) and read a list so incompetently that headings were undifferentiated from the items, leading me to believe the voice was computer-generated. And poorly so.

Provocative ideas well documented.

Mazzucato‘s book develops new ways of tackling society’s problems based on a comprehensive overview, long range thinking and some good old ideas from the past. She extrapolates from the Apollo moonshot program’s approaches and success to attacking more substantial society issues in a participatory way. I found her book very stimulating.

Interesting read

Interesting read discussing private and public partnerships, the use of consultants, and the benefits of government spend.

MIXed Review

While I totally agree with the author's basic thesis, I found her continuous use of acronyms and initialisms to be confusing. With an audiobook, it would be helpful to MIX abbreviations with the words they signify.

l like this book

we need a follow up to this book in the future with all what's going on.