Mariana Mazzucato: The Value of Everything - making and taking in the global economy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ค. 2024
- IIPP Director Mariana Mazzucato speaks on new book about the concept of value, with audience Q&A chaired by Paul Mason.
www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public...
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
Website: ucl.ac.uk/iipp
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Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight.
In modern capitalism, value-extraction is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. From companies driven solely to maximize shareholder value to astronomically high prices of medicines justified through big pharma's 'value pricing', we misidentify taking with making, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed.
Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in her penetrating and passionate new book The Value of Everything, if we are to reform capitalism - radically to transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Which activities create it, which extract it, which destroy it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic - that works for us all. The Value of Everything reignites a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.
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Rethinking Public Value and Public Purpose in 21st Century Capitalism is a lecture series presented by UCL’s new Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose in collaboration with the British Library.
www.bl.uk/events/rethinking-p...
Featuring luminaries from the worlds of arts, economics, architecture and design and policymaking, it considers the role of the public sector in today’s capitalist world and asks what partnerships are needed to address societal and technological challenges? How can public spaces be designed to create more democratic participation and new forms of learning and exploration? Does public necessarily mean free? Can the digital revolution create a new type of public realm?
Speakers include Richard Rogers, Stephanie Kelton, Jayati Ghosh, Lucy Musgrave and Mariana Mazzucato.
one of the most informative, and rapid fire discussions of economics i've ever seen.
Mariana Mazzucato is amazing (in lots of different ways :)
Why was nature (with its living ecosystems) excluded from the analysis as the primary producer and the most essential value creator? Economic thinkers like Gandhi and Schumacher mentioned these issues. Rethinking Economics should not be left the the exclusive club of economists who protected the industrial paradigm (humancentric, mechanistic and reductionist worldview) and resisted to change for almost 80 years; it must be a multi-disciplinary affair including natural and human sciences like biology, anthropology, sociology and psychology.
The thing is the objectivity of science is very much an illusion based on political biases. A big reason why nature often isn't counted is because there is a strong tradition of celebrating the conquest of nature by man.
Wow… so happy to discover this, I am also working on parasitic capitalism, promoting an interest-free bank.
Pure Genius
A brilliant inspiring hurricane that I'm looking forward to trying to think about and understand better.
6:48 not just taking(extracting) but making(creating) value but also with a purpose. with a menaingful direction! Indeed! short termist companies exist everywhere!
Brilliant.
A good supplement for the viewer would be the lectures of Michael Hudson.
I like the idea of a mission (like the Moon Shot) to review and revise our concepts of economics and esp. policies
Wonderful presentation! ... I'll see you after this place burns down and when we are trying to rebuild it... with a clean piece of paper...
i just bought your book and i am facinated with it unfortunatly i have several dificulties to understand much more, but i will keep reading it and looking for answers since the concepts you talk about there are very interesting for me, i heard here you were talking about economic theory, i would like to ask you where can i find about that, where is the best place for me to start reading that subject, thanks a lot. and congratulations.!
YASSS !! #Economics
Final comment: it should be mandatory to involve the philosophy of a subject to better understand both the path dependencies and the potential future improvements (as well as Plato there is also Aristotle - maths and logic). In this regard MM understands the reliance on NPV, CBA etc., yet because she is an economist, a subject that has only one provable theory - the Perfect Market - which BTW does not exist, she does not yet have an actual solution, however she might if she were prepared to collaborate with other equally intelligent people of different political persuasions on delivering public value solutions.
Add Marx to that.
She talks a lot without forming a whole lotta comment.
Refreshing view points!
The value of everything
Outstanding discussion! How about giving your speakers on-body microphones, must be your first time doing this.
First class lecture. Should be compulsory for all votors
the talk helped me to understand the book
Exactly so.., the introduction is the accurate assessment of the loss of confidence in the capitalist system that functions on "business confidence", mutual respect and reasons to trust.
The Prisoners Dilemma
We are all prisoners of the principle, so if it's value-extraction instead of value-creation, then whistleblowers are treated as betrayers of the system, ie conversely, ..against the principle of trust betrayal that characterises ruthless extraction and hoarding of values, real and imagined.
I think a good example to use that many would understand is the subscription model being added to cars. It greatly increases the amount of money those cars make but the vast majority of consumers intensely dislike it. Yet it is still pushed on them regardless.
It is something that increases profits against the will of consumers.
The economic model is quite relevant to the new vision introduced by Klaus Schwab almost 50 years ago, is exact from 2019 is exactly what this Harvard is citing its motivation a refreshment of the Davos Manifesto in 2020: all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation Value is defined in a very special way. not material, commodity, value money wealth, this abstruse notion of value or wealth that includes leisure time, relationship quality, beauty of nature and all other kind of abstract that come in under well-being economies and ecological accounting (you own nothing but you are happy) The Corruption of Stakeholder Capitalism.
In the biology and anthropological literature there are meticulous Sciencing articles on how predatory dominance and competition between intersystem/internecine use or abuse limits population dynamics. Economics is part of the research field of the whole world ecology and the Form following Function true nature of relative-timing resonance bonding.
Legitimacy and Legality are the continuous connection concept requirements of justification for valuation in proportion to net utility, metastability, the opposite POV to war mongering.
I'd like to hear her talk about Austrian economics. 55:35 Umm what?
1) iteratively redefine "value" collaboratively. (therefore bring into the discussion real needs of our current global issues of humanity.) 2) reevaluate public services & private service with this. (creating a feedbackloop to restructure the output of companies, tax, labour, data and other services in society..) 3) create new parterships & cooperation models to radically adress these challenges (creating tons of value with it while solving isssues of humanity & serving with meaningful jobs).
Interestingly Confusius actually wrote a labour theory over 4000 years ago. Which in basic terms went like this: Farmers are the most productive as they produce crucial value from nothing. Craftsmen are moderately productive as they take something from a less useful state to a more useful state. Merchants are the least productive as they only take a useful thing from point A to point B.
10:00 Good question : is earning more means more productive?
Chaotic and complexity theory using non-linear equations is vital. Questioning equilibrium
When centralized planning, typically led by individuals with advanced degrees from prestigious institutions, relies on extensive statistics and a cadre of experts, the outcome often contrasts with market-driven approaches. Returning power to the market tends to result in higher rates of growth and a more rapid decline in poverty. The inherent nature of consequential knowledge, being diffused widely, benefits the masses who lack access to specialized expertise. This shift enables broader participation, fostering a dynamic environment where the cumulative knowledge of millions can drive progress and alleviate poverty at a swifter pace.
She’s my new favorite economist. Just ordered her new book. This is absolutely good innovative thinking.
Lady of Power (Think different)
You should evaluate economists based on the quality of their arguments, not their legs. But they're great, I give you that, this conference is much, much more enticing then listen to Varoufakis while he's on swimming trunks.
Fifth comment: Patent Box was introduced in UK by GO and was clearly a tax avoidance ruse for large firms operating in the EU, however had it been expanded as was intended, it could have benefitted SMEs and startups. MM concentrated on the former without ‘seeing’ the latter.
No one understands SMEs
@@anhaicapitomaking8102 Disagree, although it’s a multivariate problem that is predicated on circumstances.
The new concept
what is value? which is the definition of value? do we all have the same meaning for value?
David Graeber's 2001 book on value provides a very useful definition. He says there are three kinds of value, but people tend to pick one and reduce all the others to it. There's economic value, linguistic value (cultural difference: the value of a word in one culture versus another), and values (ethics). This is a very useful rubric. Capitalists and Marxists tend to reduce value in their analyses to economic value, and this creates a cynical view of human nature (as power, as though everyone's out for themselves). The anthropologists favor linguistic value but one must be careful to not leave power out of it (a naive relativism or romanticization). A centrist political and liberal view (analytic philosophers) tend to assume people can make ethical decisions without being swayed by culture or economics. The three domains are separate, and they shape each other. The climate crisis is caused by capitalists' reduction of all value to economic value.
Music is an interesting example. Music is strong on cultural and ethical value, but it usually gets worse when these are subsumed to economic value (bland pop music). So, musicians are "productive laborers" to the extent that they promote cultural and ethical values. But from the perspective of standard economics, musicians lack value unless they are pop stars making lots of money. But we should be able to see this is a rather faulty way of viewing their value.
Só value would be what some commission or bureau determines. And we will all fund this with our tax dollars. What if I do not share de same ideas? Will I be exempted?
In the end it is always the same thing - it is about power to some people and less freedom for everybody else.
🌹🌹
She gave short shrift to the Physiocrats, who actually got it mostly correct. All economic value comes from the use of energy, specifically to lower entropy in one form or another. The Labour theory is good as a way of accounting partially for that entropy reduction in more qualitative lumped terms. The best economist on where value comes from is not Mazzucato but Steve Keen.
Storytellers rule the World- schöner Hinweis auf Plato (Homer/Odyssee)
Bill Haywood. Bill Haywood, byname Big Bill Haywood, in full William Dudley Haywood, (born February 4, 1869, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.-died May 18, 1928, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.). He was a leading member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or “Wobblies”) in the early decades of the 20th century. N.B. the first quote she uses in her power point demo, was supposedly made by Haywood in 1929. In that quote, probably made 10 or so years earlier, Bill was attempting to make the point that labour produced the wealth, by mining the natural wealth, gold. The capitalists owned the social product of their labour and sold it, commodified for sale with a view to profit in the market. Capitalists didn't produce wealth. Capitalists don't produce commodities. Capitalists don't create surplus value, labour does. That was Bills point. Mazzucato uses him to make her points about value being produced by workers, capitalists and the State, an absurdity Big Bill would have sneered at.
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"Gobbledigook talk for five minutes without saying what value is and where it comes from. Mason kindly tries to get her to clarify but she fails. And she has written a book on value! Her only point is that government creates value (yes but what sort?, not value as profit). She ignores any contradiction and goes on to praise Keynes not Marx for her value approach."
full: thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/07/26/the-worlds-scariest-economist/
Third comment: using Goldman Sachs as an example of “flawed capitalism” is a lazy argument, albeit that GS does/did believe it was so smart that it could do anything in the pursuit of money. Would have wanted to see a wider perspective of wealth creation and value creation and capture. Targeting Facebook was a good example, but MM failed to explain or even rationalise the digital economy and its massive effect on GDP and GVA through intangible assets and therefore value.
Fourth comment: public and societal value should always be the aim of innovation (MM might want to channel Jack Ma), however MM did casually acknowledge that profits/rents also fund innovation and that consumers/purchasers set the price of value. No mention of Schumpeter and his theory of creative destruction resulting in innovation and therefore value creation, perhaps because he is not enough left?
One interesting aspect to also consider is what if features are pushed onto products against the will of consumers? A good example of that is the subscription features being added to cars.
They increase the profitability so that should mean they increase the value but the consumers don't want them. However they are attached to a product that they do want. While the subscriptions are the best example you also have the fact that newly build basic cars are impossible to find nowadays and a ton of luxuries are added which pushes the price up substantially. Many consumers don't actually want those features and would buy a car without it but the manufacturers just don't offer those.
@@MrMarinus18 That's called incremental innovation, which is perfectly valid as Apple has proved in recent years, but not disruptive as its earlier products were.
@@2smoulder I know it's called that. But it's actually a conflict of producer and consumer.
It's not that the consumer wants it. It's an attachment that they have to pay for cause it's attached to something else they do want.
@@MrMarinus18 That’s actually the wrong way round as any good marketer will tell you ie persuade the prospective consumer that they ‘want’ it, even though they don’t ‘need’ it.
@@2smoulder I know but that doesn't really break my argument.
Which is that the whole idea of the consumer dictating the market is wrong. It's the power of marketing and the means of production that allows capitalists to dictate to consumers.
First comment before getting into MMs lecture: never have the extreme left Mason introduce you, since this sets the wrong tone for what you want to say to the many; and as an academic always acknowledge those to the right of yourself (which for most is the centre) who have valid theorems from which you draw your ideas of value creation and competitive advantage.
Shut the fuck up.
Regards,
the Right
I don't think Mason is 'far left' any more - the world has moved on since the 2008. He is in line with the Many, not the Few.
The problem there is that getting a conversation as equals is kind of difficult. Cause neo-liberal ideology has become so dominant it's treated as fact by many. So it's hard to actually talk if the other just think you are factually wrong.
A big reason why neo-liberalism became as dominant as it did was that it was able to cloak itself as politically neutral. As objective truths and facts that couldn't be disputed and that those that did were dreamers who weren't living in reality.
She did not explain what value is to her.
It is interesting that she cites Plato. His concept o “an essence” of something created much confusion in philosophy. That is because means something that does not exist independently, only in our minds.
In the same way, value does not exist, only relative prices, which reflect our preferences and needs, and offer x demand. Air is essential, but is free because is abundant.
They didn’t find the gold. They paid geologists for their time and expertise to find it. They didn’t mine the gold. They bought the mine after finding the gold by investing their money. They hired a miner for their labor and supplied the equipment the miner used. That’s why it’s belongs to the owner. Invest your money and use your brain and you can too.
“They” restricted the distribution to inflate gold prices. “They” damaged the environment transferring that liability to society, along with the health damage from such as arsenic released (see below). “They” manipulated governments to control the ownership of land, and permits that lowered labor costs, particularly where descrimination was the colonial foundation such as in South Africa. “Ownership” as with “value” is somewhat subtle construct. Note ‘pirates’ “own” the spoils from their raids, and so can you.
FYI. “Gold miners had a number of arsenic-associated health problems, including excess mortality from cancer of the lung, stomach, and respiratory tract. Miners and schoolchildren in the vicinity of gold mining activities had elevated urine arsenic of 25.7 microg/L (range, 2.2-106.0 microg/L).’
@@chrislubs1341 pirates steal. Miners and mine companies extract from a claim they purchased. What’s in that claim isn’t public funds. It’s their property. Government shouldn’t have any say in labor cost to begin with. Whatever market wages will bear should be the prevailing wage. Regarding exposure to dangerous chemicals and elements, every form of government, including socialism and communism has abused the individual in the search for betterment whether it was gold mining, gulags, radiation exposure, etc. You’re not going to find one without dirty hands somehow. And claiming to be more collectivist isn’t a cover for such activities
Google is my love believe me strickness is my id
a capitalist is a capitalist is a capitalist etc necessary Words (digital framing) 👺👏Göpel in ihrem neuen Buch versucht die Klassifizierung zu umgehen, ich bezweifele ein wenig, ob das der erfolgreiche Weg für eine UNINTERESSIERTE Masse ist
At the 51 minute part when the commentator asks what her definition of value is she can't answer.
She doesn't know what value is so she does the politician's trick to avoid answering by putting out some unrelated information she wants to get across instead of answering.
45:15 Government expenses are always nothing more than overhead. Government doesn’t create or facilitate creating wealth. Every dollar taken by government is a broken window fallacy it can use that dollar more efficiently than the individual or business that created that wealth
Can you see the link between this and Finance Industry: th-cam.com/video/biWEcpp_ukE/w-d-xo.html
@23:20 ... oh shut up! Neoclassical econ math is more akin to thermodynamics, not Newtonian physics. Hell, Newtonian mechanics gives you chaos theory, the _least_ '"equilibrium" stability theory based mechanics you can get. Kind of set off my bullsh*t radar there.
Notice that when Paul Mason asks her what she thinks value actually is (after about 51'), she evades the question. Problematic when you think about the title of her book. She is admirable in many ways, but she's oddly inarticulate on that key point.
I also noticed it. Quite concerning when she is actually questioning the value of everything.
Second comment: Any economist who does not acknowledge the contribution of Ricardo is not an economist. MM could barely mention Ricardo as one of her three great economic thinkers, proceeded to further explain Marx and Smith, but “forgot” to explain Ricardo other than to casually mention Rents. It seems that MM is so embedded in her echo chamber that she cannot bear to acknowledge non-hard left thinkers.
Read the book!
The real summary of this talk is the issue of Value. At 50. 06 the presenter asks her what her explanation of where value comes from:- SHE CAN'T ANSWER !!! !! - Pathetic idealism and critic of other theories but not able to define value or where value comes from.