The Value of Everything, Mariana Mazzucato
The Value of Everything, Mariana Mazzucato
6 Rating(s)
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The Value of Everything
Who Makes and Who Takes from the Real Economy

Author: Mariana Mazzucato

Narrator: Randye Kaye

Unabridged: 12 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/11/2018


Synopsis

The Value of Everything argues that American companies have for too long been valued according to the amount of wealth they capture for themselves rather than for the value they create for the economy. In fact, Pfizer, Amazon, and other companies are actually dependent on public money, spend their resources on boosting share prices and executive pay, and reap ever-expanding rewards without offering the market value.

In her previous work, The Entrepreneurial State, Mariana Mazzucato argued that public investment has been the most significant driver of innovation and product development. The iPhone as it exists would not have been possible without government-sponsored technology like Siri and Touch ID. Yet Apple today, like numerous other companies, is engaging in a massive repurchase scheme, and for the first time has prioritized value-extraction practices such as spending to boost shareholder profit—the very initiatives that funded their software.

If private companies continue down this path, they will succeed in diminishing the size of their largest and most successful investor—the state—and will destroy powerful opportunities, shrivel markets, and depress wealth.

About Mariana Mazzucato

Mariana Mazzucato holds the RM Phillips chair in the Economics of Innovation at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) of the University of Sussex. She is the author of The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Daniel on August 16, 2018

Capitalism has a problem - and that is to confuse price with value. So not only we think a $6 apple must be nicer than a $2 one, we also think that someone earning $100k must be better than one earning $60k etc. Firms are also told to only maximise shareholder returns (a.k.a. ever lower Price/earnin......more

Goodreads review by Dan on May 23, 2018

Mazzucato's observations and conclusions won't surprise readers who've read more than one or two works of contemporary critical theory. But the fact that she is writing in a different register and for a largely different audience matters a great deal in this case, and I found the book very rewarding......more

Goodreads review by Louis on September 08, 2019

A very disappointing book. Since it was billed as a refreshing alternative to free market capitalism, I was excited to see an academic take on what sustainable left-leaning policies look like, rather than the typical left-wing media take that relies heavily on moral obligations but fails to offer pr......more

Goodreads review by Wick on February 14, 2025

One of the best economics books I’ve ever read. I’ve read a mountain of economics books, at least over 50, and this is easily top ten. In The Value of Everything, the author takes you from the history of economics of how value was defined and how it has become deranged today into an enormous financia......more

Goodreads review by Tony on July 07, 2018

Mariana is a post Keynesian, hence relies on observations of actual economic behaviour rather than doctrine and illogical theoretical assumptions (as did Keynes in his writings) and some of this book follows Keynes' discussions in his General Theory. She debunks the classicists in a comparable fashi......more