The Value of Everything

The award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato has been called the “world’s scariest economist.” Why? She challenges us to reconsider capitalism as it exists today. Focusing on innovation-led, inclusive, and sustainable growth, Mazzucato examines the critical - and misunderstood - role that governments play in fostering innovation. Her latest book, The Value of Everything, examines the difference between value creation, value extraction, and value destruction. She argues that to reform capitalism, we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from and which activities create it, which extract it, which destroy it.

[@InnerSunshine]

Really terrific, the first explanation I've seen or heard of why "value" and "values" are no longer discussed. She spells out how this happened, and why this happened, and how gangsters used the confusion to to claim "rent extraction" is "value creation."

[@jg-zz2se]

I want Mariana Mazzucato for prime minister 💪🏼

[@flaviot5226]

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.

[@Rob-fx2dw]

This woman is so full of herself that she can't see the elephant in the room. This elephant is the State itself which she puts forward as the driver of the economy when the facts are the State is not the driver of the economy. She puts monopolies as a negative factor in her argument but contradicts her argument by supporting the biggest monopoly in any economy. That is due to the reality of the economy itself where the State is the biggest monopoly but has no wealth itself but forces the private sector to pay for all of it's expenditures through taxation which include it's all of government's failures.
No bail outs of the economy by the state actually occur because the State has no wealth to bail anyone out. All it does is shift financial obligations around transferring losses from one industry to another or one entity to another as was evident in the GFC where the state moved losses from banks and other chosen businesses onto the taxpayers .

[@Christine-uw8yl]

Business benefits from goods and services provided by the government. If the private sector didn't pay tax then I'd argue there would need to be another mechanism for them to pay for the infrastructure they use (e.g. roads), the availability of an educated workforce (i.e. workers who are educated for free up to the age of 18), law and order etc. In this case, the government would have its own wealth, would that not be just tax by another name?

[@Rob-fx2dw]

@@Christine-uw8yl You are so blind sided that you say "business benefits from goods and services provided by the government.
The government taxes to get income to pay for things. Business do NOT tax government. The private sector does not just tax government. There is NO reciprocal situation at all.
Business must provide service to others to get income which government taxes and that transfer of tax is nothing to do with producing any goods or services and it is no good saying that it will later by spending the tax because that may not be the case at all and even then the spending just adds up to more pressure on prices that the private sector is forced to pay.

[@Rob-fx2dw]

@@Christine-uw8yl You have No argument that is valid because you have avoided any mention of cost of the provision of law.
Your argent about "Law and Order" is also rubbish that has been regurgitated since Law being a purely humanly devised construct does NOT precede order in the universe. Order precedes law and any argument that can't recognize that is just crazy garbage. Tell me where law precedes order if you can find an instance anywhere.

[@oksocialist]

@@Rob-fx2dw The government creates the currency. They don't use taxes to finance anything. They use taxes to create value in the currency. Your understanding of the role of government could be greatly improved by reading Stephanie Kelton's Deficit Myth, then maybe you will be able to understand the connection to value posited here by Mazzucato.

[@Rob-fx2dw]

@@oksocialist You are wrong. MMT is also terribly wrong in it's explanation. Their explanation does not add up or pass the test of reality.
Firstly all money today is fiat credit money created alongside an equivalent amount of debt. Money is purely financial instrument and a financial asset in one holders hands as well as a financial liability in another's hands. No financial asset (example like a loan which has mortgage and an amount credited to the borrower) cannot exist without financial liabilities held by another party.
The process of money creation is clearly laid out in the explanations of the Bank of England and other reserve banks like the Explanation of the Bank of Canada.
The facts are that Private banks create most of the money when they create loans for borrowers.
The reserve banks create the rest but do so only when the government treasury sells securities (Treasury Bonds) to it in exchange for that new money. Eventually All of the bonds mature and the government is forced to repay the reserve bank the money they borrowed and any applicable interest.
Who do you think would know what happens ? - some economist pushing theory that does not add up ? OR the actual institutions who every day create and lend the money?
Who would that be ?
This explanation of the reserve banks fits in with the explanation given frequently by the US Federal reserve which creates money to lend the US government. It has said many times that it is reducing it's balance sheet which is mostly the sum of Treasury bonds and it does this by either selling them to other bodies or gets paid out when they mature. This has happened many times in the last ten or more years because eventually all of those bonds mature and the funds to pay them out are taxed collected from the private sector.
You cab see the actual correct explanation of what happens by looking on the sites of the Bank of Canada and the bank of England or other sites by other institutions. Bank of England money creation :- www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Bank of Canada money creation:- lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/201551E#:~:text=Money%20is%20created%20in%20the,new%20loans%2C%20such%20as%20mortgages.