The error in Mazzucato’s thinking
Given that Prof Mazzucato has a new book out there are fawning encomia all over the place. The Guardian:
‘Make people dream’: how to build an economy for the common good
Economist Prof Mariana Mazzucato says governments must ‘get back their mojo’ and believe they can change the world
Some details:
She also warns governments that “pre-distribution” – ensuring that citizens get a fair share in the state’s investments from the outset – is better than attempts at redistribution through taxes and benefits.
We have an example of that. There was a British attempt at touchscreens as there was an American. The American one funded by Darpa, which funds the technological exploration and then leaves be. The British one had civil servants - as civil servants, not individuals - owning a piece and thereby being able to dictate terms and conditions upon licensing and so on. The British attempt failed precisely because the civil servants simply would not work with commercial reality nor at commercial speeds.
No, predistribution is not better.
Her beloved Arsenal won the Premier League shortly before our interview, sparking a spontaneous gathering at the team’s north London stadium that she saw as an outpouring of community spirit. For Mazzucato, if we are to save ourselves, the place to do so will be in public places, in the fun of carnivals, in the community spaces where the common good is expressed, though not always articulated.
OK.
Arsenal FC also run children’s football teams and training sessions around north London, an example of the common good in action. “My kids all used to play [at nearby pitches] there on Friday nights, and I used to almost cry when I’d go there. You just see hundreds of kids and their parents, lots of them from the local estates, and I used to think, imagine if this was normal, imagine if this was everywhere, people had a place to go,” she says. “It’s not that it would solve crime, but I literally would bet that if you made a kind of Marshall plan investment in soccer pitches, public libraries, public pools, and made it beautiful, you would see health benefits and lower crime and a lower cost to the state. We shouldn’t just do it because it’s good for people – which is the reason to do it – but it also costs you less, ultimately.”
Observing that Burke was right - the Little Platoons get on with making the world a better place - as a reason for the State Lanyards to coopt everything is not good logic.
She points to work in Camden, north London, turning food banks into food cooperatives, where people can pool resources to buy food in bulk at lower prices. “Just literally the facial expression that I’ve seen in women – it’s mainly women who use it. There’s a Somalian women’s food cooperative near here where they just feel good. Look at people walking into a food bank – they don’t feel good. It just goes to our human soul.”
Burke again. SPAR has existed for near a century now and that’s exactly what it is. A method for small groups to combine and thus reap the economies of scale. Hardly a reason to nationalise everything is it?
But to skip from the details to the main problem:
“If there’s no purpose or direction, then what the hell are we doing? And who sets that purpose? It has to be co-created through real participation, not tokenistic,” she says. “[We need] an objective-oriented economy, where how we all relate to each other matters as much as what we’re doing.”
That very idea of there being a purpose, a direction which needs defining, is that very problem. There is no purpose to society other than that the members of it get to do more of what they wish. That’s it. Who gets to define it - undoubtedly the sort who would turn up to a meeting on a wet Tuesday November night in a place with no beer - is a secondary point for us. That there is anyone trying to produce that destination, that plan, is the category error for us.
Government is to do the things that need to be done collectively and which cannot be done individually. There aren’t many of those. And producing a plan which validates human lives and efforts isn’t one of them.
Smith’s warnings about “men of plan” is about something a little different, businesses being built upon foundations of sand and hope. But the warning applies to these grand plans for society as well. There is no thing we are trying to do with society other than live in it. To have a plan about it is a category error.
Tim Worstall