How Capitalism Wastes Billions: Mariana Mazzucato's Tour De Force
The Owen Jones Podcast
Owen Jones
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Professor Mariana Mazzucato is one of the world's most exciting economic thinkers, and her new book - THE BIG CON - exposes how consultancy firms are eating up billions upon billions of pounds. You won't think of our economic system the same way again.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, please like and subscribe. I am delighted to be joined by the esteemed the brilliant professor mariana marzacato who has written yet another |
| 0:07.2 | Absolcorker the big con how the consultant in the industry weak as our businesses infantilises our government and warps our economies |
| 0:14.9 | Mariana for me is a go to person when I want to know about economics about how the economy works always one of the most important reference points |
| 0:21.7 | I would say of our time and so no no pressure there this book is so important because I think it just really explains |
| 0:28.4 | how modern capitalism works how the economy how it's evolved and changed its relationship with government the state the market all the rest of it |
| 0:36.4 | and because we hear so much about waste about public waste I think it's strict of context and meaning this book I think really shows what it actually all means |
| 0:45.4 | and yeah hi Mario sorry let's just start consultants consultancies we hear around a lot what have we talking about |
| 0:56.4 | so first of all just the household names you know Deloitte PWC or some young Bane McKinsey Boston consulting group |
| 1:05.4 | there is about kind of six to ten very large consulting companies and what the book looks at is the industry and the underlying business model |
| 1:15.4 | of the big consulting firm so it's just important to say that you know lots of different types of people consult you might have a head teacher |
| 1:23.4 | a nurse a doctor an academic consult based on their expertise in an area you know an oncologist might consult for another hospital |
| 1:31.4 | that he or she doesn't work in what we look at is an industry where there is this kind of irony that is called consulting but what they're actually consulting on |
| 1:41.4 | is often areas that they actually don't really have any expertise because the business model is not actually based on that expertise |
| 1:47.4 | it's based on helping risk averse governments who are fearful of making any mistake and that have often also outsource so much of their capacity |
| 1:58.4 | that they're actually addicted to having that capacity be consulted in and a business sector which is often too cowardly to own up to its own decisions |
| 2:08.4 | and prefer for some difficult decisions whether it's downsizing whether it's maximizing shareholder value |
| 2:15.4 | and engaging in massive share buyback schemes whether it's M&A operations to have those actually kind of rubber stamped by a consulting company |
| 2:23.4 | so we really call out all the different actors it's not really the big con in terms of blaming the consultants we're blaming the economy |
| 2:31.4 | we're blaming governments we're blaming businesses that have stopped again owning their own decisions owning their own capacity |
| 2:38.4 | and of course in a situation like the one we're in now where we have climate change where the IPCC report tell us you know every year |
| 2:47.4 | that we have very few years left until the problem is irreversible where we have new pandemics coming our way |
| 2:53.4 | as the permafrost melts more viruses you know will emerge we have all sorts of other problems like the digital divide |
... |
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