Reuters’ Big View interview with Mariana Mazzucato argues that economics should move from diagnosing market failures to designing missions and institutions that create the common good. She says the core problem is a long-standing wrong way of thinking about the economy—especially the public sector’s role, the overuse of consultants, and weak public-private partnership—rather than a sudden recent breakdown.
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This episode is a structured interview about Mariana Mazzucato’s book, Common Good Economy: A New Compass, and her broader critique of mainstream economics. Her central thesis is that the economy should not be understood mainly through market failures, static trade-offs, or government as a passive fixer. Instead, she argues for a “mission-oriented” and “common good” framework in which public and private actors co-create goals, share knowledge, share rewards, and are held accountable for outcomes. The key move is to stop seeing the state as merely filling gaps after markets fail and start seeing markets themselves as outcomes of public-private relationships, institutional design, and direction-setting. She gives several examples to support this. …
Near term, the useful read is that policy debates around climate, industrial strategy, and public investment are likely to focus on execution quality rather than slogans. The immediate risk is that mission rhetoric gets used without real capability or procurement reform.
Over the next few months, the setup is for mission-based policy to gain credibility only if governments can show measurable delivery and crowd in private investment. If they cannot, the framework will remain a persuasive narrative rather than an investable shift.
Structurally, the transcript argues for a more coordinated capitalism in which the state shapes markets and shares risk, rather than merely cleaning up failures afterward. The long-run implication is a regime where public value, not just growth or shareholder return, becomes a central organizing principle.
The economy has been framed wrongly for a long time, not just broken recently.
Her core diagnosis is structural and long-running rather than cyclical.
Climate, pandemics, and water stress require co-governed public-private solutions rather than either side acting alone.
She repeatedly says these are collective problems needing shared governance.
Public policy should shape markets and set outcomes, not just repair market failures after the fact.
This is her repeated critique of mainstream economics.
When did things go wrong in your view — in terms of the challenges like climate change, inequality, technological progress, and powerless governments?
Matsucato argues things didn't go wrong at a single point; rather, how we've thought about the economy has been wrong for a long time. The core problem is the wrong kind of partnership between public and private actors — since the 1980s, government has been seen as at best fixing market failures, leading to reactive, gap-filling approaches instead of co-governance through collective intelligence. She draws on biology to contrast parasitic vs. symbiotic ecosystems as what's needed.
What is the common good?
Matsucato explains the common good is an old concept in philosophy — Aristotle's telos (goal) and polis (community) — but in economics it's treated lazily: public goods theory is about correcting what's missing, not about good as an objective. She traces Eleanor Ostrom's commons theory as a correction to government failure. She proposes complementing these with five elements: purpose and directionality, participatory decision-making, sharing knowledge, sharing rewards, and transparency/accountability — a compass for navigating 'doing good' without common good washing.
Who should decide whether we go to space or pursue other missions, and how should those decisions be made?
The guest says space decisions should be made by scientists, NASA, the president, and other relevant authorities, while earthly missions should be decided together. She argues that missions need consensus and co-creation so they stick and are not just tied to one politician or minister.
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