Professor Mariana Mazzucato

Like how do you create a laboratory within a government, even a local government, that actually explicitly welcomes risk taking, experimentation and trial and error to learn how to do things better.

And one of the ways that I say in the book we learn better is by working with people and not at them.

So I'm glad you put it that way because it's yes and no.

So first of all, the whole first bit also tackles a very specific thing in neoclassical economic theory, which is how we talk about good.

So public goods, two words, one is good.

It's just, it's not even a theory of good.

It's a theory of what the private sector is not doing.

So it's a negative theory.

It's a not.

It's not a yes, right?

So if the private sector is not investing in clean water, the state should.

In basic research, the state should.

In national defense systems, the state should.

These are all public goods due to the non-excludable, non-rival characteristics.

So that's boring.

That would have, you know- It's not boring.

Exactly.

I mean, boring meaning I could go on and on and your listeners are like, okay, whatever.

So markets work and when they don't, we expect the government to come in and fix it so that the concept of public good

is itself a correction.