Governments Are Not Startups | by Mariana Mazzucato & Rainer Kattel - Project Syndicate

The result of all these trends is an odd distortion in our perception of what governments can and should do, and a stunted imagination in relation to what it could be.

Outsourcing in itself is not a problem as long as governments remain capable, risk-prepared and have foresight; and as long as the underlying ‘partnerships’ with the private sector are truly designed in the public interest. The irony is that so much outsourcing has damaged governments’ abilities to structure contracts. In March 2020, in an echo of

What if government, instead of being viewed as cumbersome while the private sector takes the risks, bears the greatest level of uncertainty and reforms its internal organization to take such risks? Imagine the transformation: from a bureaucratic top-down administration to a goal-oriented stimulator of new ideas from the ground up.

That there are two philosophies does not necessarily mean that one is right and one is wrong: the reality is we need both. Some problems are best solved by human ingenuity, enabled by the likes of Microsoft and Apple; others by collective action. That, though, gets at why Google and Facebook are fundamentally more dangerous: collective ac