Michael Roberts — The world’s scariest economist?

Mariana Mazzucato is one of the world’s most influential economists, according to Quartz magazine. She has won many awards for her work. She is an adviser to the UK Labour Party on economic policy; she “has the ear” of radical Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she advises Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Elizabeth Warren and also Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon. And she has written two key books: The Entrepreneurial State (2013) and the The Value of Everything (2018).

Mazzucato is considered radical, even ‘scary,’ by many mainstream economists and conservative politicians. This is because she has highlighted the important role that the state and governments have played in delivering innovation in technology and in advancing productive investment. The idea that the state can be a leading force in innovation and investment in useful activity is anathema to the right-wing neo-liberal ‘free market’ views of the majority of mainstream economists and politicians.…

Mariana Mazzucato is a fellow traveler with the MMT economists and has collaborated with Randy Wray.

Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economist
The world’s scariest economist?

Michael Roberts

Andre Damon — Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis visits Google and Amazon

The censorship algorithms rolled out by Google no doubt figured prominently in Mattis’ discussions with tech executives. The nominal purpose of his visit, however, was to integrate Silicon Valley firms even more closely into the booming and lucrative business of waging war.

On Thursday, Mattis met with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the tech giant’s headquarters in Seattle.

On Friday, he spoke at the headquarters of Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DUIX), a Defense Department unit located two miles from the Google campus in Mountain View, California. Among the unit’s advisors is Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Mattis said the Pentagon’s partnership with Silicon Valley via DUIX would make the US military “more lethal and more effective” than ever before. DUIX awards military technology contracts to US hi-tech firms.

The operation has already awarded more than $100 million in contracts for 45 pilot projects in areas such as artificial intelligence, autonomous machines and outer space. Its web page encourages technology firms to “tap into a $100+ billion market.”

The entrepreneurial state at work.

Here's on project:

Even more important to the Pentagon than the utility of the tech giants in waging war abroad is the use of their communication infrastructure to shape public opinion and block the expression of antiwar and oppositional sentiment. A major player in this sphere is a think tank called Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Jigsaw is headed by Jared Cohen, a former State Department advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

Jigsaw’s most prominent project is a web commenting censorship system called “Perspective API,” which it calls “a new tool for web publishers to identify toxic comments that can undermine a civil exchange of ideas.”

Developed in cooperation with major US newspapers, Jigsaw has already been implemented to flag comments for deletion in the New York Timescomments section. This week, WikiLeaks noted that a comment containing the language “The CIA armed Islamists in Syria, killing thousands” would be flagged as 66 percent “toxic” by Perspective API. A comment declaring that “the US government is wonderful” is labeled zero percent “toxic,” while “the US government is corrupt” is flagged as 71 percent “toxic.”…

The goal: Control of the population through control of the narrative.

In a study titled “Social media, the vital ground: Can we hold it?” published in April, the Army War College noted, “The impact of social media on the media environment has been widely recognized, as has the ability of extremist and adversarial organizations to exploit the media to publicize their cause, spread their propaganda, and recruit vulnerable individuals.”

It went on to conclude that “Social media will increasingly have a direct impact on virtually all aspects of military operations in the 21st century,” and that the military had to expand its control over social media, “in particular, its use in deception and Psychological Operations (PSYOPS).”

Control over online communication will become increasingly significant amid what one Defense Department report published last month warned was an “increasing chasm between governments and their governed over the basic right to rule.”

That report concluded, “Today, all states are experiencing a precipitous decline in their authority, influence, reach and common attraction,” as populations are presented with “myriad alternative sources of political alignment or allegiance.”

Yet another report, published last year, warned that growing international antagonisms were leading to an intensifying crisis of “social order.”

It concluded that states “now all wrestle with one another over competing interests while standing on quicksand—threatened” not only by national rivals, but by “the fragile and restive social order they themselves rest on.”

As the danger of a major new war mounts, free and unfettered access to information becomes increasingly vital to the mobilization of the working class in opposition to the war plans of the capitalist ruling elite. We call on all our readers to share WSWS articles on social media and sign up to join the fight against Google’s censorship of the Internet.

WSWS
Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis visits Google and Amazon

Andre Damon

See also

Insurge Intelligence
How the CIA made Google

Why Google made the NSA

Nafeez Ahmed

Jan 22, 2015

Business Insider

14 cutting edge firms funded by the CIA

Paul Szoldra
Sep. 21, 2016

Rutger Bregman — Look at the phone in your hand – you can thank the state for that

Take the driving force behind the digital revolution, also known as Moore’s law. Back in 1965, the chip designer Gordon Moore was already predicting that processor speeds would accelerate exponentially. He foresaw “such wonders as home computers”, as well as “portable communications equipment” and perhaps even “automatic controls for automobiles”.

And just look at us now! Moore’s law clearly is the golden rule of private innovation, unbridled capitalism, and the invisible hand driving us to ever lofty heights. There’s no other explanation – right? Not quite.

For years, Moore’s law has been almost single-handedly upheld by a Dutch company – one that made it big thanks to massive subsidisation by the Dutch government. No, this is not a joke: the fundamental force behind the internet, the modern computer and the driverless car is a government beneficiary from “socialist” Holland....

The Guardian
Look at the phone in your hand – you can thank the state for that

Rutger Bregman

Jean-Claude Worms — Science And The Entrepreneurial State

The title of this post is adapted from Mariana Mazzucato’s book “The Entrepreneurial State,” published in 2013, and in which she successfully – at least in my view – debunks a number myths that modern capitalism has impressed upon most of us concerning the role of private entrepreneurs in innovation. I am attempting below to link that discussion with the need for public investments in science.

I hope I will be forgiven for extensively quoting from Mazzucato's brilliant work.

SCIENCE IS RISKY

This statement is true inasmuch as science cannot really guarantee a return on investment, at least not in financial terms within a predictable timeframe. It does not serve this purpose. Science is a “public good, difficult to appropriate” (Mazzucato 2013).

Science Connect

Science And The Entrepreneurial State

Dr. Jean-Claude Worms

Capitalism in the Time of Trump? — Lynn Parramore interviews Mariana Mazzucato

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of the Economics of Innovation at the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex and author of The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths, has made a passionate case for the government’s active role in the economy —sending the old laissez faire notion that markets can run themselves into the dustbin where it belongs. In a new book co-edited with Michael Jacobs, Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, she offers a bold new vision for contemporary capitalism that works for the people and the planet. What chance does this vision have in the age of Trump and Brexit? Mazzucato shares her view.

INET
Capitalism in the Time of Trump?
Lynn Parramore interviews Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics, University of Sussex

Mariana Mazzucato — An Entrepreneurial Society Needs an Entrepreneurial State

Innovation-led growth can square a circle that is challenging modern capitalism: how to generate sustained and sustainable economic growth, built on high-value, well-paying jobs. This is at the core of entrepreneurial societies, and it is a good objective. The problem is how to get there. Although many countries have set the goal, few have achieved it.

The reason for this elusiveness lies in widespread misunderstandings about how innovation-led growth has been achieved in the past. These misunderstandings have allowed the wrong narratives to drive policy making, with individual entrepreneurs and companies as the central characters of the story. Left unchallenged, this narrative leads to counterproductive policy making and a distribution of rewards from growth that doesn’t reflect the actual distribution of risks.

An entrepreneurial society needs an entrepreneurial state, one that through visionary and strategic public investments, distributed across the innovation chain, can create animal spiritsin private businesses. Entrepreneurs then see growth opportunities, and business investment follows.

Harvard Business Review
An Entrepreneurial Society Needs an Entrepreneurial State

Mariana Mazzucato | R.M. Phillips Professor in the Economics of Innovation at SPRU University of Sussex, UK

Mariana Mazzucato — No more nudges – only an entrepreneurial state can give us a green revolution

Signals and nudges to the private sector will not get us where we need to go. If we are to have a green revolution, characterised by the kind of sweeping and widespread technological changes that characterised the IT revolution, then we need to learn the right lessons. More nudging is fudging it. Instead, states around the world must act boldly and courageously to tilt the playing field in the right direction.

Battling climate change requires efforts on multiple fronts: pushing and pulling, not nudging, both on the supply side, such as investments in R&D and innovation, and on the demand side, including changing consumption and investment patterns, and enabling diffusion and deployment.

Green innovation requires not only massive amounts of private spending on R&D, piloting and deployment, but also public investment and public sector agencies willing to take on risks in the most capital intensive and high risk areas. This public support should not be limited to basic research but must extend right along the innovation chain, as I have shown was the case with the IT, biotech and nanotech revolutions.…

But, but but, the government has run out of munnie according to POTUS.

Green Alliance Blog
No more nudges – only an entrepreneurial state can give us a green revolution
Mariana Mazzucato | RM Phillips professor in the economics of innovation, SPRU, University of Sussex

Mariana Mazzucato — Everything You Should Know about Government, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

When you argue that the role of the state in the economy is more than a ‘facilitator’, a ‘de-risker’, a regulator, a spender or an administrator–you will get a big reaction. After all, these assumptions have been at the heart of economic policy in countries around the world for the last half-century or more. We like to pretend that the state is at best useful for fixing different types of market failures – an idea that justifies the need for the state to fund basic science, a classic ‘public good’.

But the reality, as I explain in my work on The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs private sector myths, the state has actively shaped and created markets, not just fixed them. It has done so by being an active investor along the whole innovation chain: not only in basic research but also even in downstream areas like applied research and early stage financing of companies. Ignoring this key market shaping and market creating role (not only market fixing) is having today two effects: (1) it is hurting future innovation possibilities (making some countries think they can simply use public money to indirectly incentivize private sector investment), and (2) it is contributing to the increase in inequality.…

Must-read.

Evonomics
Everything You Should Know about Government, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
Mariana Mazzucato | RM Phillips Professor in the Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex, SPRU