MAZZUCATO, Kattel, and Ryan-Collins start from a full-scale attack on neoliberal conceptions of markets to advocate a new approach to the role of government in the economy. They locate market fundamentalism at the root of the worse disasters of our times: growing inequality, financial crises, and a worsening climate. Many of these charges against neoliberalism are by now familiar. But two things stand out as original and powerful in their critique: the challenge to neoliberalism’s limited role for government as a market-failure fixer, and the conception of the state as a risk-taker.
On the neoliberal view, the legitimate realms of state intervention include areas such as defense, public health, and clean air. These involve problems of collective action that private actors and markets cannot solve because of free riding: a universally desired societal outcome cannot be achieved because of inherent failures of cooperation. Imagine a simple example. If apple farmers get together and decide to hire a plane to seed clouds so that rain rather than hail will fall on their apples, some farmers are certain to free ride. Since rain cannot be made to fall only on apples of the dues-paying farmers and hail on the apples of the others, the job will have to be done by state agricultural services, and the costs will have to be covered by taxes that all will be required to pay.
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