An economist and a politician take differing views

When cobalt is extracted from a mine in Congo to make electric car batteries, Tesla makes a profit, and someone in Europe enjoys cleaner air and celebrates their lower carbon footprint. But the local community is left traumatised by contaminated drinking water, skin diseases and birth defects, and a damaged ecosystem. Or take Silicon Valley. Much of the technology that fuelled it was financed by the state. Now, artificial intelligence relies on billions of users who unwittingly feed it with their data and content. Yet those people see nothing of the financial rewards, which are pocketed by the small number of owners and investors, who today make up many of the richest one per cent that own nearly half the world’s wealth.

Italian-American economist Mariana Mazzucato (pictured) shows that the global economy we have today is extractive by design – of natural resources, time, labour. Borrowing a metaphor from biology, it’s parasitic: there is benefit on one side, but cost on the other. Mazzucato argues it doesn’t have to be this way. It could be symbiotic: instead of just a Band-Aid from the state to fix injustices caused by the economic system, the principle of the common good could be built into the structure of the market itself. Mazzucato, who teaches economics at University College London and advises governments and international agencies, is known for her previous books, Mission Economy and The Entrepreneurial State, which make a case for the role of the state in encouraging innovation and guiding the economy towards outcomes that benefit society.

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