Mariana Mazzucato Thinks We Need More Moonshots

“They changed it to outcomes-oriented procurement, and they started to ask themselves, what are the outcomes that we need? We need to figure out how are the astronauts going to go to the bathroom, right? Which, by the way, was just a problem again with Artemis, the toilet.”

“these massive economic rents, and I call them rents, not profits. So excess profits and excess of what these companies actually did, because we privatized all the rewards from this massive social and collectively created value in this area. They have so much money, right? Trillions, not billions, trillions, the salaries they are paying to the top researchers in universities, both public and private universities, and to people who used to work in the NASAs, the DARPAs, the COFOS in Chile, they are going now to work in these companies. And that hemorrhaging of talent, of top research expertise, I don't think people are talking about this enough.”

“the biggest conflict of interest being that they have no incentive really to make government better later because they wouldn't have no contracts. It'd be like having a therapist your whole life. That therapist is probably not very good.”