Reddit reviews The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

There is an economist and author I like called Mariana Mazzucato and she responds by pointing out that Silicon valley's tech giants would not exist if the government had not invested in technologies like the internet. She also makes a case that the government should extract patent royalties from these tech firms which could be used to fund research.


I also think that you can point to the runaway success stories of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China which developed at a double digit growth rates for decades using "leftist" interpretations of Capitalism.

In the 70's the difference between an average CEO's salary and the salary of his employees was around 30:1, these days its more like 350:1 because decades of deregulation and privatization has moved billions of dollars of public wealth into private hands. Do some reading on distribution of wealth and where some of big guys actually made their money.

Recently, I came across the book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato, and I was struck by the incredible novelty of this book really.

As someone who has worked in both the public and private sectors and in organizations both large and small, I have seen firsthand just how inefficient large corporations can be, as well as how much power they can wield. I also know firsthand that every major corporation could not have risen to its current position without the support of a government, either in the form of direct or indirect investment.

For example, Apple's Siri was originally developed at the Stanford Research Institute. Although SRI now takes money from the private sector, it has always received the majority of its funding from the US government. In the USA, recipients of SNAP (aka food stamps) benefits are a significant source of revenue for the major food companies. Defense contractors rely exclusively on the federal government. Pharmaceutical companies would never invest in new drug targets without the NIH funding basic research first.

So many people believe that government is inefficient and only private, for-profit institutions can deliver goods and services efficiently. Why is this belief so prevalent in the USA?

This is a fantastic book defending the mixed economy. I'd classify this book as center-left. It praises the moderate Republicans of 1945-1980. And it's about how a strong public sector, working with the private sector, created the middle class after WWII.

And this book goes into how government investment in basic and applied research (the sort of research the is fundamental but not readily apparently profitable) led to our modern economy. Again, a center-left book.

Well, it's available on Google Books free preview, but the pages cut off right before this diagram. Also, I'm not going to pay $12 just to see if there's any additional information then what's already contained here.

But, to give you an example, one only needs to look at the Wikipedia page for Li-On batteries to see that that specific invention, while probably funded in part or whole by the DoE, was not an invention of the DoE. So many people, from around the world, contributed knowledge and expertise to create it. It's not a DoE invention.

The State, especially the US State, is one of the primary catalysts for scientific research, but to say that huge corporations and university systems contribute nothing to that landscape is false. They all take and iterate and innovate on each other, and they all fund each other. Looking at scientific articles and reading their funding sections and delving into their cited references points that out.

To some degree, yes. The book I cited (The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato, http://amzn.to/2oMBDsb) has further examples as well - it's actually the point of the book (I might add there are some things I disagree with in the book but it is very interesting). Hell, being public research is, well, public, one could argue that it's absurd not to use it.

You may want to read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurial-State-Debunking-Public-Private/dp/1610396138/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500788947&sr=8-1&keywords=Entrepreneurial+state

> Nope.

Straw man. It's not about the legality of slavery, but its execution.

> The personal computer?

based on federal researches.

> The smartphone?

based on federal researches

> What about Edison's inventions?

based on Edison ;)

> Yeah, like picking wheat from fields?

For example. And less harmful than the working conditions under capitalism.

> Under capitalism, kids dropped the sickle and picked up books.

nah, more like destroying their lungs in the textile industry.
Remember: We are not talking of today's industrialized countries.

Edit: Formatting

Paul Romer tem um nobel de economia por "Paul Romer has demonstrated how knowledge can function as a driver of long-term economic growth. He showed how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas. Romer’s central theory, which was published in 1990, explains how ideas are different to other goods and require specific conditions to thrive in a market."

uma das milhares de fonte q eu poderia citar éc essa aqui https://www.amazon.com.br/Entrepreneurial-State-Debunking-Public-Private/dp/1610396138

> Because they can use the State, insulating themselves from having to provide value at all.

Then that seems to undermine your entire point. That the State has no subjective value to you personally, is wholly irrelevant to the fact that businesses and corporations love it to secure their economic advantage over others. (i.e. States have tremendous value contra your original claim)

> Ooh, this'll be good.

> Sat on the backburner until Xerox got a hold of it.

> Seriously. This is a google search away.

> AT&T[1]

> Did Alexander Graham Bell secretly work for the government, or something?

> Chalk's International Airlines began operation in 1919. Prior to this, St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line operated for about four months, carrying around 1200 passengers during its time, in 1914.

Learn your history.

> Investing 101: No investment is without risk.

Wrong. Ever since the end of the Cold War, economists have understood that the mechanism by which the US government stimulates production is essentially by creating a State guaranteed market for industries and R&D alike.