In my recent post on Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics I promised you a review of Mariana Mazzucato's Mission Economy. I got to the top of the library queue for it this week and I know you're all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for it, so here it is....
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism was published just this year. In reviewing her previous book I wished she would get more specific about what we should do in response to the analysis, and she has answered my wish! Mission Economy provides an outline of the "mission" framework she has used in her advisory role and as chair of various European economic bodies.
Her archetypal mission is the US's effort through the 1960s to put a man (not a woman, of course!) on the moon. Announced by President Kennedy in 1961, this mission was highly ambitious, required significant resources and a large amount of creativity and innovation, was led by a government body empowered to direct its own processes and systems in service of the goal, and required government and private actors to work together. The result of the process was not only a successful moon landing (the value of which, in itself, seems to me rather dubious) but a number of highly practical technical spinoffs that have given us mobile phones, the internet, GPS systems, miniaturisation of electronics, and so forth which we use every day.
The key question of the book is, if we could do this in the 1960s, why do governments struggle so badly to respond to similar challenges in the 21st century? Although she doesn't use the term 'neo-liberalism' she talks about how governments have positioned themselves more and more as dealing with 'market failure'. The market, in this view, is the primary driver of the economy and of society, and markets are inherently more efficient and effective allocators of resources than governments. Hence, governments should largely stay out of their way, only intervening when the market fails - for instance, to introduce regulations limiting pollution, or to correct fluctuations in the financial market - and then as little as possible.
Even areas that have previously been provided by governments, like electricity, roads, telecommunications, public transport and health care, are increasingly delivered by private providers through government procurement contracts, privatisation and public/private partnerships. This was supposed to result in better, cheaper and more responsive public services but it hasn't, and in the meantime governments are shorn of capability and end up in thrall to their private partners. This means we end up with governments that either sit by wringing their hands about problems but doing little to fix them, or step in with some highly specific, more or less random and often misguided initiative that a lobby group persuaded them to adopt.
Mazzucato wants to see governments return to the kind of capability and sense of purpose which animated to moon mission. Her focus for the 21st Century is not some new space adventure, but the Sustainable Development Goals. This set of seventeen goals was adopted by the United Nations in 2015 and sets a series of ambitious but measurable targets to improve human wellbeing by 2030.
Each goal is a complex story in itself. Goal 1 is ending poverty, Goal 5 achieving gender equality, Goal 13 stopping climate change, Goal 16 about access to justice and protection of human rights. Each of the 17 on its own is something humans have been struggling with for decades, even centuries. Clearly achieving them will not be easy.
The UN has helped focus these goals by providing measurable targets for each. For instance, Goal 1 aims to eradicate extreme poverty (people living under $1.25 per day in 2015 dollars) and halve poverty according to its different measures in various societies. Goal 5 aims to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, eliminate violence and exploitation against them, end harmful practices including child marriage and female genital mutilation and so forth. Goal 13 acknowledges the targets and frameworks of the UNFCC.
Some of the targets are more specific than others. Sadly none of the gender equality ones have concrete numbers beside them and none of them mention the due date. On the other hand, some targets are very specific. Goal 3, which deals with health and wellbeing, has goals like "by 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births" and "by 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents".
This kind of ambitious but specific set of goals is just what Mazzucato has in mind as a mission. There is a specific aim, but one that is not so simple as to make success certain. The problems are complex and require many people and organisations to contribute. And the horizon is long-term - we still have ten years to get there. We won't achieve any of these goals by leaving markets to function or by simply fixing market failures. We need bold government leadership which brings others along, mobilises resources and allows for risk-taking and learning along with way.
To illustrate what she means, she talks about a number of projects she has led or participated in for the EU and the UK and Scottish governments based around these goals and targets. Each one has a Mission Map which summarises the stakeholders, issues and possible contributors to a solution. For instance, Goal 14 is to "conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development". Its first target is "by 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution". This in itself is not sufficiently specific to drive action - what pollution? Reduce by how much? So in her work with the European Commission she led them to adopt something more specific - "reduction of 90% in plastic entering the marine environment and collection of more than half of plastics present in our oceans, seas and coastal areas by 2025". The mission map that emerged from this is shown below.
This mission provides a framework for governments, private corporations and NGOs to work together to design and implement solutions. There are a lot of moving parts here and there is room for some of the solutions to come to nothing while others deliver the goods. There is also plenty of room for spin-offs into other areas. AI technologies that help to reduce or remove plastics can be adapted for other uses. The social innovations which reduce plastic use can also reduce poverty and improve health. The goals are big enough to produce the unexpected.
In a book of just over 200 pages it would hardly be possible for Mazzucato to flesh out the details of each of these missions, and we only see a few of them in overview. The details, in any case, are not the point. The process is the point. To devise and implement a set of ambitious goals like this, each country and each sector needs to do the mission planning itself, combining its capabilities to set the specific targets, engage the stakeholders, build strategies and go forth and multiply. This is how we achieve bold missions. It doesn't happen by enabling the market to function 'efficiently', shrinking the size of government or assuming that growth will fix everything. Nor will it happen with rapid, short-term government projects with small goals and little risk.
If we were to take this mission approach, we might fail. It was highly possible for the Americans to miss their moon landing target. We might miss the climate target set at the 2015 Paris conference. We might only succeed in halving the number of people in extreme poverty. But we will be moving in the right direction, maximising our chances of success, improving the lives of real people and, if we do well, discovering solutions to other problems along with way. If Armstrong and Aldrin had not walked on the moon, we would still have the internet, mobile phones and GPS.
Let's at least give it a try!
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