The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy

by Mariana Mazzucato

John Locke (1632–1704). His concept of individual entitlement–‘just deserts’–to the product of work was based on a production system where individual labour was more important, and was easier to identify, than it is today when collective contributions have been central to technology-driven growth. This point was made by Herbert Simon (1916–2001), who made his name in the study of organizational decision-making, and who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. ‘If we are generous with ourselves,’ Simon considered, ‘I suppose that we might claim that we “earned” as much as one-fifth of our income. The rest of the patrimony [is] associated with being a member of an enormously productive social system, which has accumulated a vast store of physical capital, and an even larger store of intellectual capital–including knowledge, skills, and organizational know-how held by all of us.’79 Ignoring this collectively produced social system, certain individuals feel justified in earning a much higher proportion of a nation’s income than their own contribution warrants. But, more specifically, it has affected policies on taxes, patents and prices, thus fuelling the dynamics of inequality.