“The truth is, as prime minister, I was too fearful of the Murdoch media beast. That’s just the truth of it. I could pretend that I wasn’t, but I was,” Kevin Rudd
This is a pretty big statement coming from an ex-Prime Minister if Australia, isn't it?
News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, has a massive share of the Australian media ownership and when it comes to print, over 50% of the readership. In every sector of print, television and radio - they are the largest. That is a massive percentage, which is why someone like Kevin Rudd who's career and effectiveness depends on the opinions of others, was scared, as the ability to blanket message is enormous and that level of reach will drive the other sources to follow suit, in order to to attract their own readers - having a pile on effect.
Market share of Australian newspaper companies by 'average issue readership', 2019-20:
Percent market share by revenue for top four companies in Australian media sectors:
However, when it comes to online news sources, the situation starts to change a little, because as more people turn to digital media, News Corp readership continues to fall. There are more sources available and many of them are going to increasingly be from decentralized sources.
Market share of online news companies with a significant Australian presence by 'unique audience', September 2020
It is the decentralized media that I find interesting of course, as it is going to bring in dynamics that are going to challenge the powers that have controlled the currents for so long. Not only that, much of it isn't going to need to "profit" in the same way as the centralized forms, because they will be built upon decentralized economies that are able to fund themselves through decentralized finance mechanisms. This fundamentally changes everything digitally and in the real world, as people will move on incentive and what we are doing is putting incentive into everything through tokenization.
Wealth isn't decentralized through the spread of wealth, it is through the form that wealth takes, meaning the currency or tokens of wealth. With decentralized economies increasingly adding interoperability, the form of wealth can expand massively, while still being aligned practically across the globe, without any middleman management that has complete control over the gateways. This changes society.
Not only do people act on incentive, but governments have to act with what they are able to extract from the people or, through the debt they print to lay a burden on the people. When the wealth is in a form where they can't do this, they will actually become what they are meant to be - public servants. They will have to serve the public, they will have to answer to the public, they will have to get their support from the public. The shape this will take has many possibilities, but what governments will increasingly have to do is the same as what many companies increasingly have to do - keep their people happy.
We are entering into an era of life where many streams of conflict are going to meet, as old systems clash with the people who have been disenfranchised and diminished by the system itself. People want change, but power never wants to give itself up willingly in order to increase the well-being of people who it is largely blind to. There is a reason that everyone has a social security number, as it is easier to deal with numbers than each person as an individual who has a unique set of needs.
Even the best governments have to work on averages and when there is as much complexity as we have, each application of an average is going to leave a large percentage of people excluded or unable to have agency in that realm. For some things this is possible without doing much harm, for example when it comes to building roads. But for other things like healthcare, it can be highly biased and get out of shape as profit-seeking behavior influences outcomes, causing increasing exclusion for those who are the most vulnerable.
As I was saying to someone today, if we want a better world, we have to reward better behavior and this is impossible to do when the tokens of wealth are in the hands of people who are earning on activity that bypasses the need for community benefit. Decentralized finance allows for the creation of wealth in a similar way to what the banks do now, but it doesn't suffer the same problems of that wealth being pooled into a very few hands in a very small location. Instead, it allows anyone, from anywhere, to take part And these anyone's will support activity that is personalized to themselves. If value does start to pool too heavily in one area, it will be considered "overbought" and decentralized investors go elsewhere.
I am not sure hw everything is going to play out with precision, but I am quite confident that the disruption coming to all industries is going to be monumental and that most in this world, whether rich or poor, do not yet understand the scale of change that this is going to create. The news centralization is just one area that has been highly concentrated, but most industries have only a few large players in them that have the ability to continually increase barriers of entry through their access to funding due to their size.
Once the fortress is built, gaining entry over the walls is difficult, so it has to be undermined so the walls collapse. A decentralized economy is the undermining of every wall that has been built on the old system and the organizations of that system that will survive, are the ones willing to bring down their own walls and join the new economy.
How many will?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]