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

by Mariana Mazzucato

So the state-owned BBC is thought to serve the public good when it makes documentaries about giraffes in Africa, but is questioned if it makes soap operas or talk shows. State agencies can often fund basic science due to the ‘positive externalities’, but not downstream applications. Public banks can provide counter-cyclical lending, but they cannot direct their lending to socially valuable areas like the green economy. These arbitrary distinctions reflect a narrow view of the economy which often results in a public actor being accused of ‘crowding out’ a private one–or, worse still, delving into the dangerous waters of ‘picking winners’: the state is only supposed to do what the private sector does not want to do, rather than have its own vision of a desirable and achievable future.