Changing the Narrative of Wealth

Am I tough enough a strong and stable leadership? Total rubt. Hell yes, I'm tough enough. Shut Fidge. Not another one. It's the politics show cast Mariana Manicato is prorofessor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at the University College London and author of the Common Good Economy A New Compus. By actually having goals, whether it's on health and wellbeing, climate, preserving water across all our sectors, that means the state has to be confidence unless you have common goodood at the centre than the way we interact with steel, the way we interact with Palantier, the way we interacted with the so called Nissan deeal at the time, it by design becomes a problem. This idea that somehow regulation is bad for innovation is completely misplaced. And the fact that today in space, for example, many astronauts are complaining that they can't see anything. It's full of debris. It's become a playground for the rich, estate is often giving water rights to whether it's Pepsicola and Heiser Bush, right drinks companies. U and if they don't put in the contract in order to get the concession from the state that you're expecting something from the company, then of course, you'll get a parasitic contract. If the state didn't actually create the right contract from the beginning, It's part of the problem. unless you know what the state is for to be driven by public purpose, public value common good economics, of course we're going to get very problematic contracts. unless we have a different story of where wealth comes from, and that collective value creation, It's not surprising them that we get everything else wrong. Professor, can you talk to me about the common good? What do you mean by that Sure. So I mean that we'd have a lot of a good washing becausecause there's lots of goals that economies set themselves, whether it's around reducing inequality, achieving growth had in cl, you know combating the biggest problems of our time regarding water, biodiversity, climate change, and yet. the underlying economic theory that we use to do good in the economy is not good. It's very corrective. So we even talk about public goods as corrections for something the private sector doesn't do. So what I mean by is going back to deep political philosophy in the times of Aristotle, where the common good was an objective, not a correction. So he talked about the telos, the goal, but where the police, not the police, but the police, the community matters as much as the goal. So the Telos and the police. And so I believe that within Economic both theory and practice, what we're missing is precisely that. We don't have an objective outcomes oriented economy. We're just correcting for market failures. And we don't spend enough time in designing contracts in a pre distributive way. In other words, from the beginning, instead of waiting for redistribution, to get all the relationships right along the way, whether that's capital and labor public and private civil society organizations in the state. We'd have very messy contracts which create problems, and then we correct for market failures. Can you talk about that a bit more in depth actually, because I know that you'll do this day in and day out, but for some people, it wouldd be the first time they're hearing this. So correcting market failures and the concept of public good. Why is that different to searching for a common good? Okay. So in economics, we believe in markets. I think often it's actually confused. The word the private sector of business is often confused with markets, but we can get to that later The theory, which I comebat, says that markets work great until they don't. and when they don't, we have to correct them. Now, we might correct them due to what's called positive externalities. In other words, when there's something good that we want to be invested in, but the private sector doesn't invest in it, because of and I don't want to go into too much technical terms here, but due to the non rival and non excludable of that good. In other words, you can't appropriate the profits from it because the spillovers are so great. so you get under investment then we expect the public sector to invest in that thing, whether it's clean water, defense systems, basic research The opposite are negative externalities when the private sector does too much of what's called a bad, let's think of pollution, not including the cost of pollution inside their kind of budgets. And so we tax them, say a carbon tax. That's again, the state correcting for a problem in the economy in how the market works.her'rerecting for positive externalities like public goods orr whether you're correcting for negative externalities through a carbon tax, my point is you're always in correcting mode. It means you're always too little too late You're always exost, not ex anti, and also a bit depressed, right? Be you're always thinking that something's going to not work. So I sometimes joke that I walk into governments as an economist and I come out as a life coach therapist because that kind of negative, right that markets might fail. And so we need government to correct for that. And what's striking is that the word Public good. twow words, one is good is so corrective And so it's not even a theory of the public or of the good. It's a theory of what the private sector is not doing that then creates a gap. That's why you might hear even in big global circles like the United Nations that we have a financial gap So the current estimate is that there's about seven trillion dollars in gaps for the financing of the sustainable development goals that every country, including the UK, signed up to in twenty fifteen. So if you're just filling a gap in your mindset that you just need more money as opposed to what kind of money do we need perhaps more patient long term finance through say, public banks instead of quick finance through how financial markets are currently structured? Even venture capital, which is often celebrated for being high risk finance, in one of my first books, The Erepreneurial State, I showed how actually it's not very high risk. They come in after the public sector invested in the high risk capital intensive areas. That means we shouldn't just talk about risk finance, we should better understand why it is actually that we've required money to invest in the early, high risk capital intensive phase of technology. And why is it then that by not admitting that, we end up socializing risks and privatizing rewards? But in the new book, what I try to do is go beyond the entrepreneurial state which I wrote about in twenty thirteen, emission economy which created some waves because, you know governments like the current one in the UK took on some of the ideas and then didn't actually follow through. The current book says, well, it's not a coincidence that we're getting it wrong design we're getting things wrong because we just think about doing good as correcting as opposed to an objective. I wanted to ask you if you thought the common good was compatible with the Americanation. And you talk a lot about the individual par. How does that work? look state success in Manchester, which is there is I think a miscception about the commment is just about like collectiveess, collective that and not respecting individuals such to us. every individual like a lot of social housing forory andess social is that managed struck compes whether it not care health systems, but also places these centers, community centers. Al also like c for usar hor the floor I've seen this in my own part at Landid Camden. You might we our in the leand' a little stairware, which of us in mental health seraters, public library part community center. G to the moon people delivering security. That is not delivering innovation. The challenge is complex They failed the population The government had to send them mill has also se work that I really do that circco has to get' terrible in London a lot of that has to do withers deserve a certain kind of treatment that they're not using and there's unfortunately kill someone el was in death are the collectified reses that we do to allow adies which provid to allow their own cl unless you have again a compiceivigual reliv is to flourish to navigate to he about that for sucks. when we talk about startups and entrepreneurs with a very massy situation, chunk ofth by theation which is literally not value cos st of the w why of my most exciting you projects is on car climate scientists Ninghill the cost Brazil across different cities is greater than the cost. that example is also true with social activities It cost undernderfunded prison. underppreciated justbody is educating andest even though that social related dermin wellation young people are failed. the people ten even those steel bands all of them l of that if you look at how to value the system fail them to investing in those systems with not the sous cost and reinvestment notot only ing human beings in question, but also for on to bring theation value creation narrivative to how we understand everybody's ability to become creative and to flourish and especially heartbreaking bunk that a big state, small state individual versus collective That's what. It was a fantastic frameagine a fantastic conn. I it certainly has done r well with slogans to hand it a gasator to fulfilled. I mean I don't think it the fact that general ministers or prime ministers or civil servants aren't trying relying that on to rightide away with some wisdomnology a slogan. to think of. Now we're talking about road for twenty eighteen to do is to say let'sop talking about, for example S sovereign might not be an issue creative and during good timees as where as you saw problems it for all sectors. Sovereignt And that means government have much more services in terms of how to design have a private part, whether it's personal outcomes or more data service. is really guarantee actational incentives. going to the moment, for example, it's not just air anyways It required also all sorts of masnutrition and material exactly so So go to that? Butsol. Yeah. I mean, how would glad about it? I've just written a whole article about it. So that required government would have mission oriented rememberment. goals often twenty. The goal was not government outcome to solve those problems And it was interest sense that accessible very low contracts with hum that should have care not just asking subsidies but willing enable to work. even if we don't care about humanans product, we should That's not what we vaccine do think say cominment it's a global p sector. So main problem is had sustainability and asked the whole economy that was a problem and only one vaccineM call it was agricult that was given on universe seventy percent the m how we collaborated on vacine thats the government how does we have a very confident relationship v instead of saying here researchers said hold on work with research so problems.reitedic personse and your airbusataostly happen to people. Let's make sure that the contract with AstZeneica is conditional on sharing them knowled and by price and costs slow so it can be accessible in Africa and we we don't end up having to send over expired vaccines out of charity, which is what end up happen many people the world have So that idea of starting with what is the goal and then structure the innovation oation because to say to become a good goal. the wor Oorent need to be a compet. That that was a good example of trying to do five element with talent. navigate what's the goal? Gobal capital It is in the five elements are of the governments first purpose and direction that would be ideally not just that's not clear. the that already opens are lot of problems. and one Scond sayicipate one to worI needs to solve. I X Y and is it much more partic. to make sure that the ofasses are again out of the not b of the particular case badly designed. We all these things out in the NHS. third sharing how. I think sharing knowledge th is sharing reversal it's not very transpare, transparentcy and accountable element. We don't know who's doing what it comes to getting wet and How do we make door the economy? So Eon Musk is signed in such a way that not only resp an entrepreneurial Friday that took on but is all the road for again transansparentity conflicts of interest I know there's many conflicts of interest. We at le itities because we't admit even when we allow we send and others just to bash you know government coverage of one big letter, know his own ping links of interest in terms of present what he follows doesn't work. a huge amount of time. we don'tive getting the right kind of Cneiaac and others we also socialize the rewards with the position What is the goal being sought? whether's how we're filling ourselves here with us in how we U hydrological cycles so water proper And how we' going to work with to the financial crisis to solve the problem the timees direct conf and with roundition theoly continent. In this case, that sure have to do with privacy and they called ar also making sure that the government ultimately foster also more ineable to think about Dante in the fure Whas if all the knowledge remains in the companyation age, the government that I wrote about consultancy for energyes But also they gave out a lot of guarant relant loans on the privateE the Department of Energy based guarant like when we pest Deloe, but also five million for pestil trace That why I like way that cylinder And everyone knows that story because it became another kind of government bashing exercise. saying government doesn't know what it's doing. whyy is it investing comp the same amount of money close to what I was saying An guaronrp that government has ultate successful that was learning at the st how it was told how do we govern AI for good and not for bad It's contract designed. They said Cent has actually don't pay five Cologne. We want three mill. the reason they are is the salarary makeakes no sense. Why would you three mill shres in a company that's not doing one in the US? They should have said you do pay back both people which are either in university or even in the public lab, like Dark nine or nice for share space agentsine where that money had they said If you look you will get three m tax agents access massive O in the case of ninetying work three million or also or how the stock market are law currently in the back rround of a magaz business company. So No again, it's just always socializ on risks, privatizing awwards. So unless financialization basically, then you might say, think about actually the government anyiesing and this great company testl is' that what it's supposed to do? sorry No price earning' supposed to do is not fuel profit price earnings ower ear andon deices and have better dation to the liver by people on planet and intern allow the puby today to way up the benefits of that then we end up match between dision and the really contacts because the st doesn't want innovor funds to be raised. That also by the way, we only allow to an innovor a military industrialolish proble money comes out of the there, then we don't not get all that was driven by her early stage high r end capitalist of theublic investor much more guide large language, not just how to early speech reing, but how to make sure we all govern the rewardser case start the benefits the US taxpayers. If you don't then from the beginning start questioning what's happening with the data, How is privacy being The green transition shouldn't be think probably heard startind also in terms of the taxes was paid by these comp theives which ultimately have relied on tax dollars and then didn't pay instead of the emissions And then that's quite remarkable how little taxes was paid probably the one that was closest to. talk about investment. So emissions are supposed to start with challenge like climate mess, which turn it into very hard as clear as And I think one of the things that's not important about atough But especially makingact talent. As I said, from university would have not happened public in terms of er public lab And last think is almost the all the governmentverI whether there's procurement loans and so on. kind top down experimentation towards an initial accomplishctor as suppose to have. The growth mission wasn't correct, right? That's just growth. Everyone wants growth. You don't have growth just by calling Tonyth mission growth as a result much the actual public and private sector investment, which mean the ut has been low makeides. Sure.iding' missions are very importanted and so like sciences, but they didn't really put them at the center of an industrial strategy. If we had unregulated, it wasn' very clear and they want to actually take the medicine to achieve those food that kill us goals. And the fact that there were one wasn't regations just ended up being about enery as opposed to sustainability. So L how, for example, he's put in a large order position pressure that Brazil at the center of government that we were putting into our la things that weren' like that the way they inter that regulation, b regulation is completeitionitionalized that the cent of fact that' being the l for use carbon astronauts are complaining that as an example it's the loolistical sector. which shows a of unregulated space hizers. It's ob not clear what the mission in Germanyround the UK for the rich basically play conional the tobacco works of material front and early stage research. They did that to repurpose that is recycle across the whole supply chain. That fosters growth.. it means is to train your workers to how to win r g and innovates glal space station. If instead you're just subsidizing or saving the steel a way that you' allowing this kind of the day inertial situation where the pub would incoment is to sayve the daycomy your profits that later and then we it sure company. So by actually having using weselfalth and well they had in climate no excess preserving water ac no sectorscess pro confidence in the how it relates idea is A are benefing from massa involence. We're're any sector of We're going to work unfortunately. and this is by the sector actct how dislace outcomes wereed political deberation We havet had life ch confidident more than they should contributionists. And when labor collect effort because they were wored. Wh went my book called The Value of Everything, about by ground. I don't think they that narrative on its head. The comp they didn't actually say this ist other business friendly. mission is about working well with business on goals matter to have progressive government to each other in terms of all the contrates this idea of what we're even trying to do from the start, then you canition and this fixing later. And as you say, it might get so later that you can no longer govern the back into the state. And the same as well I think Fud is not nationaliz. But it's a constant back and forth, nationalization, privatization and as opposed to that's aerm publicare and accountability, but the first thing is common good. O we could wideeran is even would it receive a public interest subsidies and so on. So unless an example just unless you have deal not nationalizingriizing how do to make deal government away that the seftware talent here gets away pound of the so money on deal at time Iroving design becomes a probleising energy efficient I almost only work then G for know stimulating the previous government' prorofits instead of stimulating investments during the previous government, solutions to a problem. By the way, for example, this you can even see the GDP, right? That's needed. Pe people say G across the world areatic and it isver basic thent way that we're ext divided up by the ground is water unless you can gover up by how to sustainability target it will end up just kind of overly And you can do it underping certain tgets of natural resources. not where you are that se details, but the point is even just a basic good se in terms of again labor more sustainable globable income. And this is what I would have looked at level as aggressive government. That means to haveital the capital around equity sustainability. Otherwise we're not going to have a plan. We end up on the system around profits rising that would have beenov fall that sector the question investing profit. not just financializing profits. How can that be justust giving evident hayouts to that profits are rising buyb Well investment is falling, where things like it's coming from? Working conditions. So this ide that energyation supplyancializ cororate's how the government relates where something like seven hundred billion dollars And you wrote a lot of papers on this and buy valedors T boost stock prices that idea of sharing executive ris and rewards. That sharing something all aggressive government comes away way that government labor government, good relationship shouldarily be fun. I talk about not just about def much more rigorous with their words. smallall state, but for biologists is when they use the word ecosystemfits or they won't use it in a neutral such a way that they' say workingion take ecosystem sainable supply chains. mutualistic or symbiotic and actually innovation equation creative to differentiate this kind ob just kind ofcriate one of the biggest proble again that you. You're thinking of water parasan for us the business sector all benefit. veryery large energy government subsid,son cent so on pharm, but not necessarily f their heart And it's not necessarily business as small that the government's not asking a relationship for any man like during COVID it was two hundred million And would to bear it to biological metaphor. that' then wear what the state is getting back for. That's a government mistake during the same period, France for exam tra. Yeah. exxactly. Whereas in France, because Renault and Air France were partially mistance or fact thatack the support Burnals gotten during conventitional This is high risk. actually invest in investmentank, and we saw who bore the risks it seems straightforward, doesnn't it when the poet like that his confidence would I think probably unless it's one that is accompanied by whose story, that's why Iand the value of everything the state does pick up an American quote that storytellers rule the world unless we have to and it wealth comes from there and that's for valance of world. that's not governed by water proble differently. everything it goes beyond nationalization or privatization the fact that eighty percent of industrial wastewater is not recycled J just means you have a really silly contract because the state is often giving water rights to whether it's Pepsic Cola and Heiser Busush, right drinks companies. U and if they don't put in the contract in order to get the concession from the state that you're expecting something from the company, then of course, you'll get a parasitic contract So that's not about nationalization or privatization. It's making sure that whether it's the companies benefiting from the water rights, like drinks companies or the water utility before allowing them to have a private contract like Tam's Water, there should be very strong conditions attached to what that company needs to be doing, for example Of course, investing in the infrastructure, so we don't end up with sewage as we have in our rivers and seas, which is a crime. But if the state didn't actually create the right contract from the beginning It's part of the problem So my work has never been about defending the state. It's about saying, unless you know what the state is for to be driven by public purpose, public value comm and good economics, off course we're going to get very problematic contracts. Happy Sunday, Sean. Oh, thank you. I'm just back from Mass and I feel refreshed. I actually didn't go to Mass today, but I did want to watch the mass in Italy You can watch them? Oh of course you can. Sometimes I like to really get in tune with my Italian rootes and so I'll use a VPN just to have a little looks see onene of the streams of mass over there. Do you know what they also have over there is a twenty four hour live stream of Padre Pio's grave Wow, canan you watch that from anywhere I don't think so. I think you have to be in Italy. Oh well there you go. Yeah. so if you want to watch that, you could choose NordVPN as well. Perfect. Yeah. They can do that by going to nordvPN d. com forward slash joe Sunday. because it's your Sunday service Jo Sunday. That's right. If you were to take out a two year plan, you can get four months free. and if you hate it in your first thirty days, you could You get all of it back. You get all of it back. Oh, come on, this is a deal ossible to turn down. Yeah And now for the rest of your Sunday, if you're going down the pub If you're going down the park, if you're going anywhere with a non secure WiFi service Perhaps it's good time to lock into a VPM. Yeah, yeah, prrotect your data out there. You don't know who's looking. It might be us. We might be looking. I'm always looking at your data Always wherever you are. It's somethingound quite uncomfortable, isn't there about using an insecure Wiifi network Who's having to browse on this? What if you're abroad? What if you're staying in someone else's home? What if you' staying in a hotel Whose wi is that? And what are they getting? And what are you looking at? you're worried about other people looking? Well, you don't even have to be worried about what you're looking at. It could be any of your personal information just taken out You know, when I'm using my online banking, people don' need to know Mm That's for me. secret. Me God and my bank Eespecially on a Sunday, a Joe Sunday That is usually when I check my online bank account On a Joe Sunday. I just think what on earth have I done night before? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah certain time of the night where I go, o, I'll get it. Oh line up, I'll get it. That probably is already on a Sunday. That usually happens to me on the early hours of the Sunday. Oh really? I've just sort of moved my going out time a bit earlier. have you I' like a mid afternoon I depart from the house and then I can come back by performing. Oh, that's nice. I like that. Yeah, it's quite nice, really, you know, inune with the licensing laws and all that Well, that's right. And then you're also going to be up bright and early for mass on Sunday like I was today. But I tell you what I'm going to be out and about. We're watching the football this week. And you know what I'm going to be using when I'm in those pubs EPN A NordVPN. NordVPN dot com forward slash Joe Sunday. The four months free on the two year plan and you can wipe it if you're not happy in the first thirty days There's also a link in the description, of course. so if you need any more information, just go down there and you'll see it Mr Speaker, I am a gouna. It's theitic show cast There's an addiction arguably in this country to those ote unquote, parasetic contracts. I mean, even if you look at sort of a marker of success in Manchester, which is the nationalization of the buses, they're not actually nationalized. They are in part you know, it's sort of like very blare PFI Yeah. I mean, why always we say like a lot of social housing, right? That in theory, it's social in public, but it's being managed by companies that have shown not to care And represents with developers But also like Circo, G for S. I mean, what's absolutely striking is that they keep getting the contracts after failing miserably You might remember in the London Olympics where GRS was supposed to deliver security failed I mean, how hard is that? Go to the moon is hard, delivering security for the Olympics. It's a challenge. It's complex, but they failed. So the government had to send in the military, look at the record that CERCO has on prisons. terrible And you know, prisoners deserve a certain kind of treatment that they're not getting and there's a rise in deaths, for example, among youth offenders in prisons due to the very bad way in which prisons are being managed So unless you have, again, a compass and I talk about these five different elements is needing to navigate how the state interacts with the economy, then you end up with a very messy situation, which by the way, costs, if we talk about costs, the state much more. pick up the best after Climate scientists often talk about this that the cost of inaction, doing nothing. is greater than the cost of action, but it's also true with all social problems. It costs more to imprison teenager than to properly educate and invest in all their social and economic determinants of well being. So many young people are failed and even you know those committing crimes, not all of them, but many of them are victims. If you look at how they were brought up, just the systems that have failed them, investing in those systems and not seeing them as a cost, but an investment. Not only for the human beings in question, but also for the economy, it actually costs less There was referenceced actually in the Allan Milbourne report, I don't know if you saw it that came out last week, Yeah about young people not in work or It's heartbreation. Yeah. very much and In that light, can you talk to me about Palantir Do you imagine that that's a Will that be a healthy relationship for the UK? to hand over the NHS data to a Well Well we've seen that in general, the degree to which the UK is overly reliant on US tech companies, by the way, with some of the technology actually haven'ving been developed here, justust think of Deep mind, right? was developed in this country and then sold off for pennies actually to Google. Then we end up also with a huge issue around sovereignty, which might not be an issue during good times, but as we saw during COVID or during energy crisis, unless you have sovereignty in these essential services and goods, then you have a problem. whether it wass personal protection equipment or data services, which are really, as people say the new oil. I think there's a problematic metaphor there. But anyway. Do you mean the sort of what AstraZeneca did with their vaccine? I'm not quite that. Yeah, exactly. So I mean so should I go to that or palent here? But anyay. Well Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you brought it up. I've just written a whole article about it COVID, we should remember that the goal the The goal was not the output, it was the outcome. It was not vaccines It was vaccines that were accessible globally even we should have cared that everyone in Africa was vaccinated, even if we don't care about humans, which we should, the vaccine came back, right? It comes back to bite because it's a global pandemic. So by making vaccines that were not producible in Africa, That was a problem and only one vaccine well, we call it the AstrozZeneca one, but it was Oxford University and AstroZeneca that collaborated on a vaccine called the Vaxrebia vaccine. It was because the Oxford University taxpayer funded researchers said, hold on We're researchers. We're getting money from the public purse, and we care about the public, meaning people. Let's make sure that the contract with AstraZeneca is conditional in sharing the knowledge and keeping price and cost low so it can be accessible in Africa. and we don't end up having to send over expired vaccines out of charity, which is what ended up happening in many parts of the world. So that idea of starting with what is the goal? and then structuring the innovation collaboration to be goal mission oriented That was a good example of trying to do that And with Palant here, the problem is what's the goal? what is actually the goal of the government in terms of what it's trying to do with that company, ideeally, not just one company, by the way, You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, but you might say, we want to work with AI companies to solve X, Y and Z and you make sure that the contracts are again, outcomes oriented. In that particular case opened up the NHS database to Palanter, and I think the contract is first of all, it's not very transparent the fifth element of a good compass, but also how do we make sure that it is designed in such a way that not only ress respects privacy but is also Again, transparent in terms of conflicts of interest And we know there's many conflicts of interest with the tech companies which even with some of the recent coverage of Tony Blair's letter and his own conflicts of interest in terms of the positions he's putting out and yet the huge amounts of funding he's received Larry Ellison and others, we really need begin with the position of what is the goal being sought, whether it's in the health system, whether it's in how we treat the hydrological cycle, so water, and how are you going to work with different companies to solve the problem with very transparent contracts and with conditions that in this case for sure have to do with privacy, but also making sure that the government ultimately is also more able to think and govern about AI in the future. Whereas if all the knowledge remains in the companies, the government, just like in the book that I wrote about consultancies, becomes overly reliant on the private sector. to do pretty basic things, like when we paid Deloitte one point five million a day for test and trace which by the way, they failed. So that lesson wasn't learned. Thereose an amazing videos that emerged of sort of Randos like piling up all of these test kits and ces. Oh ye Yeahah. Yeah yeah. I mean it was absurd. So what I always say is any contract that government has ultimately should make sure that there's learning at the center You know, how do we govern AI for good and not for bad? Well, it's very hard to govern something of all the top talent is actually going into five companies, and the reason they are is the salaries that are being paid by the tech companies in the US are multiples of what people would earn either in a university or even in a public lab like DARPA Oh or NSA space agency. but where did that money come from? If you look at the extent of tax evasion, massive, or in the case of Amazon exploiting the workforce, or also how the stock market currently interacts with many of these companies, which in the early stages benefit from what I would argue a financialization basically of how we think about growth and many companies that in the beginning have very high or sorry low price earnings, so sorry, high price earnings. so low earnings, high stock prices, and how speculation in clean tech, biotech, nanotech, internet AI today, the way we've set up This almost mismatch between finance and the real economy which then builds bubbles and allows lots of funds to be raised for companies which ultimately own innovation and this point I ofve been making. on and on was driven by early stage, high risk capital intensive public investment even large language models, early speech recognition. It was all that particular case, DARPA funded. by the U. S. taxpayer. If you don't then from the beginning start questioning what's happening with the data, how is privacy being protected How do we make sure again, the public purse is refunded also in terms of the taxes paid by these companies, which ultimately have relied on tax dollars and then didn't pay into the tax system? It's quite remarkable how little taxes paid by companies that relied so much on public investment we're again creating this mess, which is really hard to solve later. And I think one of the things that's not talked about enough this kind of hemorrhaging of talent. from universities both public and private. and public labs. And I think it's almost impossible to govern AI for good if you don't also have some of the kind of key innovators inside the public sector as we used to have mean, canan you even govern it at all though? I think, you know, a lot of the stuff that I'm reading a vote from Tony Blair recently. know his argument very much is actually you can if you get ahead of this, you can be in control of it. you can legislate for it. Sure. And you can drive innovation. I mean, what happened in say the life sciences sector in food if we had unregulated it then we would first of all be dead because we'd be taking medicines and eating food that kill us. And the fact that there were smart regulations meant that those companies in both food, beverage,, and healthcare had to innovate in order to make sure that we had that we were putting into our bodies things that weren't killing us. So this idea that somehow regulation is bad for innovation is completely misplaced. And the fact that today in space, for example, many astronauts are complaining that they can't see anything. It's full of debris. just shows how unregulated the space sector is, where it's not clear what the mission is,'s become a playground for the rich to basically again, play on the back of taxpayer funded early stage research. And or that it just becomes kind of pet projects. You know, do we go to Mars? Do we do this? Do we do that as opposed to how do we work together between the global space stations and the private sector actors in a way that emulates what we did back in the day in the nineteen sixties where what's really interesting and I wrote about this em Mission economy, NASA was so confident of its role. It also made sure that the companies weren't abusing the public sector. So they had no excess profits, not no profits, no excess profits, what I call rents in the contracts. The idea was you're benefiting from NASA investments. We're benefiting from you. We're going to work with all sorts of private sector actors to help us get to space, but we're going to do it in an outcomes oriented way, very clear mission And you're not going to earn more your contribution to this collective effort And that's why one of my books called The Value of Everything, I talk about collective value creation in this book, The Common and Good Economy, I bring these ideas together, the entrepreneurial state mission economy, collective value creation, but add the fact that unless we relate to each other and that all the contracts embody this idea of what we're even trying to do from the start, then you end up stuck in this fixing the mess later. And as you say, it might get so later that you can no longer govern the process. So what are you advocating for? Do you want a public register? Do you think if someone has been a private company has been allotted a huge sum of money by the government, you should be able to trace it online? Well, that's a good point in terms of transparency and accountability. A we clear on why companies are even receiving subsidies and so on. So it's unless you have know common good at the center, then the way we interact with steel, the way we interact with Palantier, the way we interacted with the so called Nissan deal at the time, it by design becomes a problem. because it almost only then becomes a question of stimulating profits instead of stimulating investment towards solutions to a problem. And by the way, this you can even see with GDP Many people say GDP is problematic and it is. However, even with basic GDP figures, you can divide it up by income, so profits, wages, interest and rents. You can divide it up by on the demand side, consumption, investment, government spending, and you can do it on the product side, national income and product accounts. I won't bore you with the details, but the point is even just with basic GDP, you will see that the labor share of global income is at one of the lowest levels it's ever been That means the profit share, the capital share is very high. and yet the investment share has been So we've ended up with a system where profits are rising, but investment is falling So then the question is How can that be How can that be that you know, profits are rising, while investment is falling, where are these profits coming from So this idea that we ended up with a very financialized corporate sector where something like seven trillion dollars has been used over the last ten years just to buy back shares. boost stock prices, stock options, and executive pay That should be something that a progressive government whether it's a labor goverment, a democratic government in the U. S. should really be focused about notot just about the deficit, the debt, you know, big state, small state, but how do you interact with business profits are reinvested. in such a way that we improve working conditions create more sustainable supply chains and also really driven by innovation creative destruction and not just kind of extraction. which again, whether you're thinking of Tem's Water, Carillion, the Circos, the twooreses, but also very large energy companies like Exxon very large pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer. in each one of these cases, you could use them as a case study where that relationship with government in the business sector was too extractive. And I would call too parasitic using again, biological metaphors that it's not clear what the state is getting back for that public subsidy. Well even in the case of JP Morgan potentially moving tou Hamlets with enormous business rates Right in order for them to be sort of the hub of Europe. Yeah or Goldman Sach, which after being bailed out you know then went on to present itself as this high risk investment bank and we saw who were the risks without any proper return actually to the public purse besides getting paid, you know, back what they lent the company. So unless it's all of this is a company by a new story, that's why I began the value of everything with the A Native American quote that storytellers rule the world. unless we have a different story of where wealth comes from