Mission Economy summary

Does the financial sector really create value? In the UK, 90 percent of bank loans support real estate and financial assets. In other words, finance is primarily financing itself – and not society.

And it doesn’t stop there. Around the world, more and more businesses are becoming financialized. Rather than focusing on creating quality products or rewarding workers, they prioritize shareholder value above all else. Widening inequality is just one of the consequences of this.

There’s no doubt about it: putting a man on the moon was an extraordinary feat. And it was one that required visionary and purposeful leadership from public officials.

It wasn’t just the workers at NASA and the private companies it hired that needed leadership. Leadership here was about inspiring the entire nation, the entire world. And it succeeded: people everywhere became deeply involved with the project, and children dreamed of becoming astronauts and scientists.

What kind of missions do we need today? The aim of getting a man on the moon was so simple and yet so incredibly ambitious. That’s what made it brilliant. But today, the challenges we face back on Earth are so great that some more grounded missions are called for.

In 2015, the United Nations compiled a list of 17 sustainable development goals for the world – issues like ending poverty, developing sustainable energy, achieving gender equality, and combating climate change. And if we’re looking for missions for today, they’re an excellent place to start.

In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world adopted a whatever it takes approach. This showed just what can be accomplished by huge, focused collective effort. But it also drew attention to the vast systemic problems we face today.

Every year the UK government decides the size of the public health grant – which is how much money local authorities get for health care. In the five years leading up to the pandemic, this figure decreased by almost £900 million in real terms. As for the US, they initially had to fight Covid with far too few ventilators, because of a botched outsourcing project that had delivered none at all in 13 years.

Some of the missions we need are very specific, like cleaning up the oceans or fighting Covid. But, as we’ve already started to explain, other missions are more about a shift in attitude.

Say we’re on a mission to create a green city. Who gets to decide what that city looks like? It’s only fair to ask the people who’ll be living there – and to carry on asking them as the city develops. For these kinds of missions, ongoing participation with people is vital. They won’t work with a top-down approach that assumes that businesses – or governments – know what’s best.