Mariana Mazzucato continues her review of the economic myths of recent decades. In The Entrepreneurial State, the professor of Innovation Economics at University College London showed the power of the visible hand of the State compared to the invisible hand of the market. She stressed that state intervention is decisive for innovation and that with the current ideology we would not have the internet. Not even iPhone: the State financed the technologies that make it so intelligent.
Then, in The Value of Things, he asked who creates value in the economy today. He claimed that a small elite has seized almost all the gains from the globalization economy under the justification of being very productive. We must review, he says, whether they create it, extract it or destroy it in a world where industrial companies can spend more profits on buying back shares than on their future: on “creating value for the shareholder,” although perhaps it is extracted. Finally, in Mission Economía he saw capitalism paralyzed and believed that the State should rethink its role and look again at the long term. He condensed it into proposing missions, as Kennedy did with the mission to reach the Moon, an incredible example of public-private collaboration.
And in that context comes The Great Deception, a torpedo to a group of actors who have taken advantage of the decline in skills suffered by dismantled states that have stopped investing in their own capacity and companies that only look at the short term: the sector. of consulting. The poor governance of companies and the State has caused short-termism to prevail over investments for progress and has emptied them of knowledge and vision.
McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group y Bain
And success is not guaranteed: in January 2021, France had vaccinated 5,000 people against covid. Germany, at 316,000. McKinsey had been at the forefront of rolling out the vaccination plan. The book features failed smart cities in the heart of Africa, corrupt ties in South Africa, consulting firms that work for the British treasury and market sensitive information... And most people don't even know they are there. In the climate crisis, he adds, they provide the appearance of commitment from companies without the obligation to take action.
Mazzucato believes that the sector's income does not correspond to its contribution and that public sector organizations can create value, but their competencies must be rebuilt. The idea of the third way of a government that “directs more and rows less” did not understand, he says, that the less an administration rows, the less it learns, the less productive it is and the less it can direct.
