Guest 2

Moving away from that standard model where corporations just extract value.

And this is the core conflict.

The moment consent becomes currency, you risk making privacy a class good, something only the wealthy can afford, essentially.

That's really the heart of it.

We're at this crossroads.

Is privacy an economic asset?

Something you trade?

Which, okay, if it is, it needs heavy regulation to stop coercion.

Or is it something else?

Something non-transferable, inalienable maybe, to protect quality even if, well, even if that denies some people needed income.

Precisely.

We have to look hard at both sides.

Well, yeah.

The current system is often called surveillance capitalism.

Absolutely.

Your sources point to something like $200 billion annually extracted from user data.

And the people creating that value, they get basically nothing meaningful back.

That's the starting point.

People like Jaron Lanier, the computer scientist and economist E. Glenn Weil, they talk about data dignity.

Meaning individuals should get property rights over their data and crucially get paid for how it's used, how it fuels AI and all these services.