Little Fish Podcast

Think you live and work in a free-market economy? It’s a delusion. From the United States to Australia, and whether about beer, banking or Big Tech, consumers have been sold a turkey. Monopoly and oligopoly corporations dictate our choices, how much we pay for products and services and how little we earn. After more than a generation of monopolies rising and regulatory capture, faux free-market capitalism is getting the scrutiny it deserves. Will the 1 per cent continue to resist reform or embrace it? In this podcast, The Myth of Capitalism co-author, Denise Hearn and Little Fish host, Sandy Plunkett discuss how capitalism can get its groove back and work for the 99 per cent. “If we define capitalism as competitive free markets, that is not the capitalism that exists in today’s universe… we are in a situation where most industries are dominated by a handful of very large companies. Beer and airlines and banking, most people are aware of those. But what we found is that (concentration of industrial power) is i

Hopes for a landmark US/China trade deal in March are likely to fizzle; but the first quarter of the 21st century will be about an escalating tech cold war between rival superpowers. With nothing less than global domination the goal, is there anything left for anyone else?  We kinda confront a choice between two worlds, neither one very appealing: Silicon Valley’s world where data are available indirectly to the highest bidder because everything is essentially about advertising revenue; and a Chinese model in which the priority ultimately is maintaining the power of the Communist party and your data are available on-demand to Xi Zinping. That’s not a great choice. Niall Ferguson; renowned global economic historian; Snr Fellow, Hoover Institution In this episode. Little Fish presenter and digital economy pundit Sandy Plunkett talks with international economic relations expert, Niall Ferguson about the a very 21st century problem – the geopolitics of “Big Tech.” Battle lines have been drawn around AI, big data

  “This is a power we’ve never seen before in the world … someone with an algorithm that reaches into 2 billion people’s brains at the same time and is the platform for most political discussion for most people, makes the Carnegies and the Rockefellers look impotent by comparison.” Anand Giridharades, author, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World The Internet has changed the lives of four billion people on the planet in profound ways; but not as we may have hoped. Power and wealth are becoming more concentrated at the very top; traditional jobs are being decimated; people’s online and offline privacy has been invaded and abused; and elite global and business leaders seem tone deaf to the growing concerns about the future of work and civil society. In this podcast, LittleFish presenter, Sandy Plunkett and global experts in computing, social science; economics and venture capital explore the implications of a system gone wrong and ask, what’s next for the Internet; for the handful of giants