Guest essay by Eric Worrall
College of London Economist Mariana Mazzucato thinks the entrepreneurial spirit of government employees should be harnessed, to solve big problems like plastics pollution and climate change.
Fixing climate change, poverty and ocean plastic requires a ‘Moonshot’ approach, economist Mariana Mazzucato says
ABC Radio National
By Belinda Sommer and Richard Aedy for The MoneyNearly six decades ago, President John F Kennedy’s famous “Moonshot speech” rallied the US public behind the Apollo mission to send astronauts to the Moon.
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Leading economist Mariana Mazzucato isn’t the first to ask why, if humans can land on the Moon, they can’t also solve some of the huge challenges here on Earth such as climate change, poverty or a plastic-free ocean.
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Her answer? Governments should adopt the “mission-oriented approach” of the Apollo project.
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“The reason I think it worked is because NASA was very confident,” she says.
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Professor Mazzucato contrasts this with modern governments, where consultants are thick on the ground.
She points to the UK, where Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew accused the British civil service of becoming “infantilised” by an “unacceptable” reliance on expensive consultants.
He said public servants were being deprived “of opportunities to work on some of the most challenging, fulfilling and crunchy issues” such as Brexit and COVID-19.
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Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-02/mariana-mazzucato-government-changing-capitalism-climate-mission/100036000
I tried working as a government employee. Generous pension scheme, job security, on paper it looked really appealing. But I can’t take the tedium. I like to fix problems. But nobody fixes problems in government service, and nobody wants to fix problems, because fixing problems is a threat to job security. Fixing problems reduces the number of work hours required to fulfil the department’s responsibilities.
There are exceptions, islands of excellence. In my experience well managed police departments are usually run by former operational police officers, who genuinely care about the quality of support people on the front line receive. Electricity utilities used to be staffed by people who cared – until Western governments made their job impossible. Wartime governments hire people who fix problems, because the threat of imminent invasion tends to focus people’s minds. And of course, occasionally great projects like the Apollo Moon Landing can fire people’s imagination to such an extent, people set aside personal convenience for the greater good.
Is solving the alleged climate crisis a project which fires people’s imagination like the moon landing? I doubt it. Climate action consistently appears at the bottom of people’s lists of priorities. Most serious engineers I’ve met think the climate crisis is a joke. Those engineers and scientists who do believe, who care enough to try, quickly learn the task is impossible with anything resembling current technology. Even for those who believe, solving a future problem simply does not carry the immediacy and emotional punch of working to plant a flag on the moon, or stopping a military invasion.
Calling for a renewable energy Apollo project to make renewable energy viable, with current technology, is like calling for the world to be powered by magic – and about as unlikely to produce a worthwhile outcome.
Update (EW): Chris Hanley has posted one of my favourite analysis of why the renewable revolution is a pipe dream.
So,
The Moon Shot, we knew there were rocket engines. From quite a while back.
So, the Manhattan Project, we knew there were self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions, from quite a while back.
A Moon Shot based on nothing at all is not a moon shot, it is virtue signalling based on no scientific principles. What we DO know is, both solar and wind are very low-density energy and also extremely random, clouds, deadspells for the wind, never going to change.
But We Must Try Harder!!!
Goodness Gracious me, Sense-Free
Moon
Entrepreneurial spirit includes the concept of failure. You try something, sometimes expensive. If you get it wrong, you lose money. If you lose enough you go bust.
This concept is unknown in government because you can always get more ‘other peoples money’ (OPM).
To the dedicated government employee, this is a wonderful concept. OPM allows you to exceed you best/worst possible dreams.
To the tax payer, it is scary.
“The entrepreneurial spirit of government employees should be harnessed?”
Well if that sentence doesn’t make you laugh nothing will.,,,,😄
Funny that she wouldn’t notice that the “moon shot” was not based on economics.
Good point.
“….the entrepreneurial spirit of government employees” – the original oxymoron!
maybe she should stop and listen to them??
[. Climate action consistently appears at the bottom of people’s lists of priorities. Most serious engineers I’ve met think the climate crisis is a joke.]
Ha ha, I thought it said Pro Big Government Economist Calls for a Renewable Energy Loonshot.
“College of London Economist Mariana Mazzucato thinks the entrepreneurial spirit of government employees should be harnessed, to solve big problems like … climate change.”
An economist promoting the most ineffective and costly method to solve a non existent problem …
Monty Pythonian !
… and next week boys and girls we will show you how to harness cats to pull a three-furrow plow…
I’m sure there’s an appropriate Mencken quote….
If we compare the budgets of the privately-funded space programs in the US and their results, the only one that has made little progress with six times the money is NASA. Governments are really bad at research and problem-solving, partly because they aren’t spending their own money. If our members of Congress were paid based on how balanced the budget was, it would look pretty good, instead of the current situation.
Most people overlook that one reason the Apollo program was a success is that the key leaders in charge were veterans of World War II and had learned both command and control and a “get things done” attitude. In addition, they had many bright scientists and engineers working for them. A surprisingly many were very young. These were the generation brought up in the economic boom after World War II, when science, engineering, and progress were at the forefront of American culture. The science and technology of the atom bomb had won the war, we were breaking the sound barrier, and many people, particularly young men, were inspired to study engineering and science — REAL science, not tree-hugging stuff like environmental science.
Frankly, even if I thought this was a good idea, we simply don’t have the right type of people to do it.
There’s another reason why the Apollo project worked, Brian, it’s called Coaches Law which states:
“In order to win the High School high jump meet it is better to have one six foot jumper than six one foot jumpers”
We had Werner Von Braun to head up the project. When asked during his confirmation hearings why he was so sure (that confidence thing again!) that we could beat the Russians to the moon he replied ” Because Our Germans are better zan zeir Germans, I know zem all.
I rest my case
Cheers
Mike
“Calling for a renewable energy Apollo project to make renewable energy viable, with current technology, is like calling for the world to be powered by magic”
Or unicorn farts; or unobtainium fueled reactors….
Apollo was NOT a government project. It was accomplished with the private sector.
My mother worked for a gov (welfare) agency for a time. Their department was charged with distributing some 1.5 million $ in a small jurisdiction. The budget for the innane – no insane number of bureaucrats to administer that paltry sum was close to $3 million! And 95% of the staff would spend 75% of their time to make more work for themselves to justify increases in budgets. The people supposedly served rarely benefited from the self perpetuating hydra headed serpent that is the nature of all bureaucratic monsters!
“entrepreneurial spirit of government employees”
In what parallel universe does this exist?
OT: For some weird reason, I keep getting a “subscription fault” on THIS post only. No others…
multiple browsers too
I just tried subscribing and unsubscribing, worked OK for me. Maybe try clearing your browser history and cookies, see if that helps.
Tried again just now on a different computer, still getting “Subscription Fault”. Weird. Guess I’ll have to miss the conversation on this one.
Thanks for checking!
Fixed.
The only moonshot that should be done with respect to energy policy is more funding of next generation nuclear power, which already has at least half a dozen companies with designs and build plans. In the US we’ve, given a couple of companies 50M a piece seed money to get reactors built by 2028, and they’ve raised a lot of private sector money as well. Probably for a paltry $ 2B, we could accelerate these plans. See, we just save 9.998T by not having to do a Green New Deal.
“But nobody fixes problems in government service, and nobody wants to fix problems, because fixing problems is a threat to job security. Fixing problems reduces the number of work hours required to fulfil the department’s responsibilities.”
Absolutely 100% true. I used to be a government worker too.
And yes, there are exceptions, but most people don’t like it when you rock the boat – especially if it means they might have to put in some extra effort.