[00:00.000 --> 00:01.660]  Sure, I can also wait.
[00:06.630 --> 00:09.190]  Are people still waiting to get here?
[00:13.630 --> 00:20.710]  Okay, I'll wait a couple minutes to let people get off the elevator.
[00:21.810 --> 00:23.510]  Hi, my name is Sai.
[00:24.030 --> 00:27.550]  That is actually my full name, in case you were wondering.
[00:28.610 --> 00:31.090]  So, I've started a few different things.
[00:31.450 --> 00:36.950]  The one I'm going to be talking with you today about is called Make Your Laws.
[00:37.890 --> 00:46.430]  Now, just as a brief premise, the style of my presentation here is not going to be the, like, full sage.
[00:46.430 --> 00:49.390]  I'm going to give you a lecture with the slides and the fanciness.
[00:50.010 --> 00:53.730]  I didn't think it was really appropriate to this kind of audience.
[00:54.390 --> 00:56.510]  So, it's going to be a little bit more discussive.
[00:57.590 --> 01:03.870]  I'm going to go over a number of things that just come up very frequently or that are helpful for understanding the concepts.
[01:04.190 --> 01:07.210]  But I'm going to leave a lot more time for Q&A than as usual.
[01:08.770 --> 01:15.870]  So, if you have short questions, like, for me to clarify something or whatever, it would take less than a minute for me to answer.
[01:15.870 --> 01:20.130]  Just shout it out, preferably after I finish a sentence.
[01:21.570 --> 01:28.910]  If it's a longer question or you want to make a point or whatever, hold it until after I finish and we'll talk about it.
[01:30.350 --> 01:36.050]  And if you're going to be twittering this or whatever, hashtag MYL, make your laws.
[01:36.470 --> 01:36.650]  Anyway.
[01:39.370 --> 01:43.430]  So, make your laws is a project for liquid democracy.
[01:43.730 --> 01:45.590]  And I'll define that in a second.
[01:45.870 --> 01:55.070]  And it's trying to basically take over legislatures in a gradual process through entirely legal means.
[01:55.830 --> 02:00.950]  And you might be wondering, well, why is my first major talk about this at a hacker conference?
[02:01.950 --> 02:10.970]  And the answer is, we want to get people to make the platform.
[02:11.990 --> 02:13.470]  I'm the lead developer.
[02:13.830 --> 02:16.230]  I am an experienced developer.
[02:16.510 --> 02:18.110]  But I can't do it myself.
[02:18.110 --> 02:23.610]  As I'll show shortly, there's a lot of very interesting subcomponents.
[02:24.450 --> 02:28.990]  And there's a lot of problems that need to be solved.
[02:29.390 --> 02:33.810]  Not before it can be done at all, but as part of doing it.
[02:34.010 --> 02:50.170]  And I think it's actually first important to appeal to sort of the maker side of activism, as it were, rather than necessarily to people who want to get a very specific policy passed, more than work on the platform itself.
[02:52.110 --> 02:57.150]  So, the current governments that we have are fairly flawed.
[02:57.310 --> 02:59.830]  And I think we all know the reasons.
[02:59.830 --> 03:12.510]  I'm not going to name particular parties or policies, but they're de facto controlled by entities that don't really have the interests of the general public primary.
[03:13.410 --> 03:24.910]  Even when they're relatively idealistic, their own political objectives often get in the way of serving the public.
[03:24.910 --> 03:34.270]  So, for example, one policy that you're never going to see Republicans or Democrats support is real empowerment of third parties.
[03:35.890 --> 03:42.810]  Even if they believe that, you know, this particular policy agenda is a good one, it would harm both of their parties.
[03:42.810 --> 03:50.810]  And so, since they, between the two of them at least, they have a super, super majority, it's not going to happen if you rely on them.
[03:52.710 --> 04:09.090]  So, what our approach is to do is to sort of hack the existing structure to do things that are entirely legal within the letter and the spirit of the law, but aren't necessarily what were anticipated.
[04:09.490 --> 04:15.150]  So, for example, using a super PAC to fight super PACs and to promote transparency.
[04:16.470 --> 04:21.950]  So, first, let me go back and explain sort of the basic concepts involved.
[04:22.130 --> 04:25.570]  So, what kind of government is the United States?
[04:25.830 --> 04:26.050]  Anyone?
[04:29.360 --> 04:30.760]  Oh, good, good.
[04:30.980 --> 04:33.140]  So, we are a representative democracy.
[04:33.140 --> 04:42.460]  So, people often loosely call this a democracy, just like they loosely call UK, which is a monarchy, a democracy.
[04:43.200 --> 05:00.260]  So, I think the essential component that people refer to when they call something a democracy is a government that at least tries to be for the people and by the people, and that believes that power resides and originates from the general electorate rather than from the Queen.
[05:01.400 --> 05:04.900]  The UK is perhaps transitioning in this regard.
[05:06.220 --> 05:10.940]  A direct democracy is a very old concept.
[05:11.720 --> 05:22.620]  And it's the idea that every single citizen can and maybe has to vote on every single issue that's presented.
[05:23.400 --> 05:28.200]  Now, in the Greek Senate, for example, that is a significant bar.
[05:28.380 --> 05:38.680]  A citizen for the Roman Empire, for the Greeks, these are very limited social classes, quasi-aristocratic.
[05:40.100 --> 05:43.000]  Most people were not necessarily citizens.
[05:43.100 --> 05:45.640]  Most people can't bear the duties of this.
[05:45.640 --> 05:48.480]  And there are also just practical limitations.
[05:48.900 --> 06:09.880]  So, for example, you can't get a million people in one room, let alone have them all have a reasonable discussion about what policies to have, let alone if you're using sort of the discussion and moderation practices that are really appropriate for direct democracies or small communities,
[06:09.880 --> 06:14.860]  like a consensus-based approach where it's strict consensus and anyone can block.
[06:15.200 --> 06:22.440]  That breaks when you get above on the order of 30 people because somebody starts process drawing.
[06:24.560 --> 06:37.420]  There are also just limitations that are sort of pragmatic on the individual because not everybody has the time, the interest, or the expertise to participate in every single issue.
[06:38.640 --> 06:41.380]  And you have problems of turnout.
[06:42.480 --> 06:44.420]  People are not even like...
[06:45.000 --> 06:53.520]  A great turnout in the United States for one election a year is what percentage of the population?
[06:54.420 --> 06:54.920]  Right?
[06:56.420 --> 06:57.140]  30?
[06:57.620 --> 06:58.740]  If you're lucky.
[06:58.740 --> 06:59.460]  If you're lucky.
[06:59.760 --> 07:16.240]  And that's for one vote, let alone if you're talking actually running the legislature, where you have votes every single day, you have votes on specialized things, you have votes on general things, that's never gonna happen.
[07:17.900 --> 07:24.020]  And another issue is sort of related to that, which is participation is a privilege of class.
[07:24.500 --> 07:39.820]  The people who can afford to go to a PTA meeting, who can afford to take time out of their lives to go to a city council meeting, and sit through a couple hours of boring ass procedural stuff before they can give their thing about what they want to get done,
[07:40.080 --> 07:47.960]  are highly privileged people, or people who are taking a very significant personal cost in order to participate.
[07:47.960 --> 07:58.320]  And I think it's sort of... it's a congratulatory thing to them that they're willing to take such high cost to participate.
[07:58.560 --> 08:02.440]  But I don't think that's reasonable to expect, and I don't think that's how it should work.
[08:02.660 --> 08:09.120]  So, a compromise that has existed in our government and in many other governments is the representative democracy.
[08:10.340 --> 08:23.620]  So, instead of everybody going to the Senate, you elect someone who's going to go and ride on horseback to the city hall, or to the state council.
[08:24.300 --> 08:25.900]  I got those backwards, didn't I?
[08:26.460 --> 08:31.540]  And represent your views for you, and you trust them to be your advocate.
[08:31.860 --> 08:41.740]  And you say, okay, you're gonna represent all of us, and then you can have 50 people in a room, or maybe 200 people in a room, but not, like, whole cities of people.
[08:42.700 --> 08:44.720]  Of course, this has some problems.
[08:45.800 --> 09:06.500]  One is that when people think about it, they suffer from the myth of, like, the sage representative, where, you know, they think this person is going to think deeply about the issues, is gonna study every bill in detail and consider how it's gonna best work out for their constituents.
[09:06.500 --> 09:09.180]  And that is pure bullshit.
[09:09.680 --> 09:11.660]  That's not how it works.
[09:12.060 --> 09:13.980]  In modern U.S.
[09:14.700 --> 09:19.700]  Republic, the representatives typically vote in party blocks.
[09:20.880 --> 09:32.160]  Maybe they read a couple percent of the bills that actually come up, and for the rest, they just trust their party to tell them how to vote.
[09:32.380 --> 09:38.940]  Or they vote on sort of broad ideological grounds, namely, the other side proposed it, therefore it must be bad.
[09:40.540 --> 09:42.840]  And I don't think this is plausible.
[09:43.120 --> 09:53.780]  And even if you have a representative who's going above and beyond, who's really committed to being a great representative, they just can't follow everything.
[09:53.780 --> 09:55.520]  It's not physically possible.
[09:55.720 --> 09:57.940]  They cannot be an expert on every single issue.
[09:58.160 --> 10:05.400]  Even people whose full-time job it is to be policy wonks, they have one domain.
[10:05.660 --> 10:07.500]  Maybe two if they're crazy.
[10:07.680 --> 10:09.280]  But not everything.
[10:09.880 --> 10:13.240]  And a representative's tasked with being a wonk on everything.
[10:13.240 --> 10:14.480]  It's just not sustainable.
[10:17.180 --> 10:23.400]  And I think sometimes you even find that some of them are outright hostile to the idea of being informed.
[10:23.540 --> 10:48.360]  Like, I don't know how many of you saw the SOPA PIPA hearings, where one of the people deciding on the future of the Internet is basically openly mocking the idea of knowing a lot about computers, and this is the person whose task it is to decide what the policies should be,
[10:48.520 --> 11:00.960]  and what the policies should be for, like, DNS service, and doesn't know how DNS service works, and doesn't realize how doing this is gonna break DNSSEC, and it's gonna break all these other things.
[11:01.260 --> 11:02.200]  It's a problem.
[11:03.720 --> 11:28.480]  Another aspect of the problem is that what is intended to be a way for them to be isolated from, you know, the whims of the general population, where supposedly they're going to be sort of in office, and they get a couple years so that they are not gonna be swayed to all the politics of the day,
[11:28.480 --> 11:34.400]  to random fads, is false, at least now.
[11:34.720 --> 11:43.680]  If anything, politicians have a maximum future outlook of four years to their next election, right?
[11:44.120 --> 11:45.840]  Maybe six if you're in Senate.
[11:47.200 --> 11:54.740]  And you don't get, generally, politicians thinking, what is the impact of this policy gonna be in 50 years?
[11:55.080 --> 11:58.100]  Even if it's a sacrifice in the next couple years.
[11:58.340 --> 11:58.700]  Why?
[11:58.800 --> 12:05.560]  Because they're gonna be running for reelection in a couple years, and that's their cliff.
[12:05.700 --> 12:10.080]  They've got impressed by that point, and if something is a longer-term policy, they lose.
[12:10.340 --> 12:12.600]  And so you get shorter-term decision-making.
[12:13.660 --> 12:18.580]  You also get a problem with a subversion of who they represent.
[12:18.580 --> 12:31.760]  So right now, the best-case scenario is you have a politician who represents roughly 52% to 60% of the voters in their district.
[12:32.360 --> 12:33.820]  The ones who voted for them.
[12:34.040 --> 12:34.900]  The rest of them?
[12:35.260 --> 12:36.920]  Tough shit, right?
[12:37.860 --> 12:39.640]  Your vote is being used.
[12:39.840 --> 12:44.940]  Your representation is being used to support the things you directly oppose.
[12:45.140 --> 12:46.980]  And you can't do anything about that.
[12:48.820 --> 12:54.860]  Now, Make Your Laws tries to change this.
[12:54.940 --> 12:57.360]  Our goals are really pretty simple, and it's in the name.
[12:57.560 --> 13:00.480]  We wanna help you make your laws.
[13:01.620 --> 13:03.760]  Now, there are a few ways we can do this.
[13:04.120 --> 13:10.240]  One is an answer to the democratic and republic forms of government, which is called a liquid democracy.
[13:10.780 --> 13:13.900]  It's also called a direct democracy with transferable proxy.
[13:13.900 --> 13:15.960]  It's also called a delegative democracy.
[13:16.480 --> 13:18.380]  We prefer the term liquid democracy.
[13:19.880 --> 13:26.740]  A liquid democracy is a system where every single voter can vote on every single issue if they want.
[13:26.900 --> 13:29.480]  They have all the powers that they would have in a direct democracy.
[13:29.820 --> 13:33.200]  However, they also have the power to proxy their vote to someone else.
[13:33.800 --> 13:37.180]  And that person has the power to proxy it further.
[13:37.400 --> 13:38.440]  And so on and so on.
[13:39.740 --> 13:44.520]  The first person in this proxy change who actually votes gets to use your vote.
[13:45.140 --> 13:48.720]  You can also split your votes among multiple people at the same tier.
[13:48.720 --> 13:53.320]  So, for example, if you trust two people equally, they both get half a vote.
[13:53.640 --> 13:57.420]  If one of them doesn't vote at all, then the one gets a full vote.
[13:57.800 --> 14:01.840]  If you're representing, you know, 500 votes, then 250, 250.
[14:02.780 --> 14:05.560]  You can also limit them by category.
[14:05.720 --> 14:17.240]  So, for example, maybe you trust your friend Bob to be really knowledgeable about gun issues and to protect your right to have a concealed firearm, but you don't want him voting for you about abortion rights.
[14:18.540 --> 14:20.480]  It's an entirely plausible scenario.
[14:20.480 --> 14:21.640]  We would let you do that.
[14:22.460 --> 14:27.940]  One scenario for how this chain would work is suppose that you don't really follow politics that much.
[14:28.120 --> 14:32.300]  You have values that you want representative, but you don't have the time.
[14:32.500 --> 14:39.980]  So you could proxy your vote entirely to your close friend, Alice, who does follow politics.
[14:39.980 --> 14:42.640]  Now, Alice is not a policy wonk, per se.
[14:42.760 --> 14:43.440]  She just knows.
[14:43.800 --> 14:44.880]  So she follows the news.
[14:45.080 --> 14:46.480]  She knows who the players in the field are.
[14:46.640 --> 14:59.160]  So she, in turn, proxies your vote and hers to the ACLU for civil rights, to the American Medical Association for medical issues, to the NRA for gun issues, and so forth.
[14:59.880 --> 15:04.880]  Maybe to some popular bloggers who are, like, for women's rights issues specifically, et cetera.
[15:06.320 --> 15:12.360]  They, in turn, so the ACLU, for example, has lawyers and legislative analysts.
[15:12.660 --> 15:19.140]  And the ACLU as a body proxies their votes to some specific expert on some very narrow topic.
[15:20.500 --> 15:25.860]  And then that expert gets to aggregate all these votes and use them on a given issue.
[15:27.000 --> 15:30.060]  So these proxies are essentially trust relationships.
[15:31.360 --> 15:34.660]  Now, there are some security properties that need to be present in them.
[15:35.200 --> 15:37.560]  At least for the purposes of voting, per se.
[15:37.700 --> 15:39.440]  There's an exception I'll get to in a bit.
[15:39.940 --> 15:42.580]  Which is that these proxies are one-way private.
[15:42.940 --> 15:50.320]  So you know how your proxy voted, but your proxy does not know who you are.
[15:50.320 --> 15:57.420]  They know, in aggregate, how many people they represent, with some fuzz to prevent, like, timing attacks.
[15:59.140 --> 16:03.080]  But they don't know, like, any given person proxied to them.
[16:04.440 --> 16:07.240]  And proxies are generally going to be public proxies.
[16:07.400 --> 16:19.720]  So to get the power to be, like, publicly listed as a proxy, to have more visibility, things like that, they give up the privacy of their vote, at least on the issues that they proxy.
[16:19.720 --> 16:26.400]  They can also have a separate place where they can, you know, do their other stuff that they don't want to be public about.
[16:26.480 --> 16:26.800]  That's fine.
[16:27.840 --> 16:32.460]  And in turn, anyone that a public proxy proxies to has to also be public.
[16:32.660 --> 16:33.100]  Right?
[16:33.220 --> 16:34.460]  Once it's public, it has to be public.
[16:37.860 --> 16:42.500]  The use of your vote is also always something that you can review and override.
[16:43.320 --> 16:47.400]  So if someone uses your vote, you get a notification.
[16:48.900 --> 16:53.900]  That cannot happen more than, or less than a week before a final deadline.
[16:54.940 --> 17:02.200]  So if your proxy decides to, you know, use your vote on some given issue, we send you an email and say, this is how your proxy voted.
[17:02.800 --> 17:05.620]  You authorized to vote that way by default.
[17:07.060 --> 17:08.900]  And if you want to, you can override it.
[17:09.040 --> 17:11.280]  If you think, you know, this isn't what I signed up for.
[17:11.860 --> 17:15.720]  Or, you know, I agree with them generally, but on this one, what the hell were they thinking?
[17:16.700 --> 17:18.600]  Or if you just want to review it, you can.
[17:19.640 --> 17:21.920]  So you never give up power.
[17:22.040 --> 17:24.900]  Whereas in a representative system, you give it up.
[17:24.900 --> 17:31.200]  You vote for Senator Bob, Bob gets to make your decisions for the next couple years.
[17:31.420 --> 17:35.460]  Whether you like it or not, you don't get to do anything with it.
[17:37.080 --> 17:39.920]  There's also a difference in vote origination.
[17:40.560 --> 17:44.340]  So for example, as I said, only voters get to vote per se.
[17:44.540 --> 17:58.540]  So in order to get a one unit of vote, you have to prove to us that you are a human being, who is a unique human, who has legal identity that is permitted to vote.
[18:00.700 --> 18:03.200]  However, we're fine with you having pseudonyms.
[18:04.020 --> 18:06.780]  You can have synonymous accounts, however the hell many you want.
[18:08.000 --> 18:10.040]  They don't have to be tied to your legal name.
[18:10.180 --> 18:13.280]  They can be if you want, in which case they're not pseudonymous, they're just screen names.
[18:15.780 --> 18:19.920]  But your pseudonymous accounts do not get a vote of their own.
[18:20.260 --> 18:22.320]  They can proxy for others, however.
[18:23.780 --> 18:39.660]  So if you want to have a pseudonym that's going to be sort of an active political activist on something that maybe you don't want to tie to your legal identity for social issues, like you're a closeted Republican, for example, and you're speaking out on gay rights,
[18:40.280 --> 18:43.080]  that's a great example where you want a pseudonym.
[18:44.220 --> 18:46.700]  It's just fine that you're talking about it.
[18:47.780 --> 18:53.880]  It's just that if you want to be able to vote on something, you have to convince other people to give you your vote.
[18:53.880 --> 18:57.280]  And this also prevents sock puppets because it's one vote per person.
[18:57.500 --> 19:07.100]  That means it's one maximum of one participating account per discussion per human who's involved.
[19:07.340 --> 19:11.940]  So if you want to create 10 sock puppets accounts, most of them are going to have zero votes.
[19:12.240 --> 19:12.940]  So who cares?
[19:13.140 --> 19:14.300]  They'll get filtered by default.
[19:17.780 --> 19:27.120]  Now, there's one split in sort of how proxies would specialize.
[19:27.380 --> 19:31.160]  So there's a couple different roles that a proxy plays.
[19:31.420 --> 19:34.600]  One role is to be a policy wonk.
[19:34.840 --> 19:43.860]  To participate in in-depth discussions about what should be the policies, what are the factual backgrounds of things, etc.
[19:44.200 --> 19:47.760]  And not necessarily, you know, being a great public communicator.
[19:48.760 --> 19:50.020]  If they're both, that's great.
[19:50.240 --> 19:53.100]  But, you know, really knowing their shit on some particular policy.
[19:53.260 --> 19:56.020]  So that people can trust their opinions on that issue.
[19:56.760 --> 20:14.180]  Another role, however, is as a public advocate, is as someone who is a generalist, who finds those specialists and knows why they can be trusted, and can help explain their ideas to the general world, who can help convince other advocates to change their positions on issues,
[20:14.540 --> 20:19.260]  to be sort of an advocate for their constituency and to their constituency.
[20:19.560 --> 20:28.520]  Because remember that in this system, you immediately lose your power if people lose faith in you.
[20:28.600 --> 20:30.240]  There's no no-confidence vote.
[20:30.400 --> 20:33.500]  You're always under a no-confidence vote.
[20:33.500 --> 20:37.280]  So if you want to retain your power, you have to make sure your constituents back you.
[20:37.540 --> 20:40.100]  If you want to change their minds on something, that's great.
[20:40.660 --> 20:45.400]  If you've changed your mind on an issue, I think that's something that actually is a very interesting case.
[20:45.500 --> 20:47.200]  We shouldn't consider that flip-flopping.
[20:47.900 --> 20:59.140]  If someone has, you know, changed their mind, like one prominent advocate of against gay marriage for non-religious reasons, for civil reasons, he recently came out in favor of gay marriage.
[20:59.140 --> 21:11.320]  And I think this is an example of someone who can really speak better than people who have always been for gay marriage, to the people who are against it.
[21:11.860 --> 21:13.260]  And vice versa, it happens.
[21:14.220 --> 21:18.300]  So these people who are sort of in the edges are more effective communicators.
[21:18.500 --> 21:20.660]  And that's part of the job of a really good proxy.
[21:24.600 --> 21:30.380]  So, yeah, so there's a strategy that we have about going about it.
[21:30.480 --> 21:35.840]  So as I said, if we relied on politicians to let us do this, it would never happen.
[21:36.540 --> 21:47.440]  And you may have seen other talks or other ideas where the premise is, well, first we're going to get this constitutional amendment passed, and then things will be great.
[21:47.440 --> 21:51.240]  Or first we're going to vote everybody out of office.
[21:51.860 --> 21:54.500]  And that's not going to happen.
[21:56.300 --> 22:04.340]  So our strategy is we're going to start small perhaps, but we're going to start so that we always have teeth.
[22:05.460 --> 22:10.300]  So you're probably familiar with the like survey sites and petition sites.
[22:10.300 --> 22:20.320]  The White House runs one where you can log on and you can say, you should do X, and you sign your name to it.
[22:20.620 --> 22:30.900]  And the most you can expect out of it, for 99% of cases at least, is they say, thank you very much, f*ck off.
[22:31.460 --> 22:39.920]  Except they say that in much more polite terms that is spun nicely to appeal to people or at least not seem as if they're telling you to f*ck off.
[22:40.080 --> 22:41.260]  But basically that's the idea.
[22:41.360 --> 22:47.720]  Unless, of course, they were going to do it anyway, in which case they say, look at our responsiveness to our electorate.
[22:48.940 --> 22:56.980]  So take a look at, for example, a very popular petition on White House's petition site was a policy about marijuana.
[22:57.640 --> 23:03.340]  And, of course, the White House did not respond positively to that, despite a very large support.
[23:05.780 --> 23:07.920]  So, I think that's kind of bullshit.
[23:08.260 --> 23:11.360]  And I think it's a waste of people's time.
[23:11.360 --> 23:17.640]  It burns people out when they've already burnt out a lot of trust in the political process.
[23:17.980 --> 23:21.500]  And you need real teeth to accomplish what you want.
[23:21.500 --> 23:26.320]  So, we have a few highly toothful ways of operating.
[23:26.760 --> 23:37.120]  So, one, which is what I'm working on right now, and is sort of the first thing, just because of timing, you might note what month this is, is campaign finance.
[23:38.760 --> 23:50.540]  So, right now a lot of interest are paid for by wealthy corporations or wealthy individuals who finance political campaigns or who finance voter initiatives.
[23:51.600 --> 23:55.460]  And that's great for promoting their interests, but I don't think it's great for promoting yours.
[23:56.500 --> 24:04.640]  And there is a collective action problem, which is you might have, you know, 50 bucks to lay down on some issue.
[24:04.940 --> 24:07.220]  And 50 bucks alone isn't going to cut it.
[24:08.240 --> 24:19.280]  However, if you and a thousand of your friends in your network lay down 50 bucks on an issue, then we're starting to talk about serious money.
[24:20.340 --> 24:25.540]  I don't know if you look through the amount of money that PACs contribute to various things.
[24:25.780 --> 24:30.240]  If you go to, I think, opensecrets.org is the one I'm thinking of, if it's right.
[24:30.440 --> 24:34.420]  They have a really good breakdown of how various entities spend money.
[24:34.640 --> 24:40.740]  It's not as high as you might think, except for independent expenditures, but I'll get to that.
[24:42.000 --> 24:43.500]  So, that's one aspect.
[24:43.500 --> 24:48.420]  And there's a lot of things that we can do to add pressure to it.
[24:48.540 --> 24:52.260]  So, for example, we could do what's called an earmark.
[24:52.660 --> 25:08.140]  So, generally, if you give us monies, I should say us, we are a triad of nonprofit corporations, a 501c3, which is what you probably normally think of as a general nonprofit, tax-deductible contributions and all that.
[25:08.140 --> 25:15.160]  A 501c4, also called an advocacy organization, sometimes very loosely called a super PAC.
[25:15.300 --> 25:18.480]  It is not a super PAC by formal definition.
[25:19.040 --> 25:24.600]  Those organizations are the ones you typically see sponsoring ballot initiatives and things like that.
[25:24.880 --> 25:37.100]  They're also the ones that you see being the anonymous shell corporation that forwards Karl Rowe's wealthy contributors money to his super PAC because they're not required to report donations.
[25:37.300 --> 25:38.180]  And I'll get to that in a bit.
[25:38.720 --> 25:44.880]  And finally, we have a 527 hybrid super PAC, which is the full formal thing.
[25:45.040 --> 25:46.280]  It has to report...
[25:46.280 --> 25:47.940]  I'll elaborate this.
[25:47.940 --> 25:54.540]  So, you can donate through any of these various things.
[25:54.540 --> 26:07.700]  If you want to donate to a politician, for example, and you tell our PAC, I want to donate 50 bucks to Bob for Congress, we are required to hand that over to Bob for Congress committee in 10 days, legally.
[26:08.440 --> 26:11.340]  Our 11 CFR 1106, if you want to look that up.
[26:12.980 --> 26:16.480]  Yes, I've been reading the regulations extensively recently.
[26:18.900 --> 26:30.880]  So, one thing we could add to this, and this is actually part of an opinion I'm going to be asking of the FEC because it's not entirely clear currently, is we could say...
[26:30.880 --> 26:33.840]  So, you remember SOPA, PIPA, how that all went down?
[26:34.100 --> 26:45.240]  So, we could say, suppose that SOPA is on the table and you want to donate $50 to oppose SOPA, but you don't know how your representative is going to vote yet.
[26:45.240 --> 26:57.280]  So, you could tell us, I want to give $50 to my representative if they vote against SOPA, and I want to donate it to their opponent if they vote in favor.
[26:57.920 --> 26:59.580]  This is a earmark.
[26:59.820 --> 27:05.620]  It's a contingent earmark, which the FEC has previously ruled is acceptable in certain circumstances, at least.
[27:06.940 --> 27:12.060]  And then we could publicly say, okay, we have this much money on the table for this outcome.
[27:12.320 --> 27:15.320]  These are who will get what if that happens.
[27:15.600 --> 27:18.120]  And this is who will get what if the other thing happens.
[27:18.360 --> 27:25.340]  And I think this is a bit of a lever, shall we say, for getting people to vote the way you want.
[27:27.180 --> 27:31.640]  Another way that we can influence things is through voter initiatives.
[27:31.860 --> 27:40.260]  So, right now, I don't know if you've experienced this, but voter initiatives are signed by literally people on the street, collecting signatures on a clipboard.
[27:40.520 --> 27:42.500]  They get $1 to $4 a head.
[27:43.100 --> 27:45.060]  And it's a really expensive process.
[27:45.060 --> 27:46.860]  We can do this online.
[27:47.500 --> 27:53.180]  There are some legal obstacles because of how the way the laws are written, but there are ways around them.
[27:53.320 --> 27:53.700]  We're hackers.
[27:53.880 --> 27:57.320]  We can think of creative solutions to poorly written code.
[27:59.800 --> 28:03.620]  So, for example, personally a fix in California.
[28:03.760 --> 28:05.660]  It turns out to be a problematic thing.
[28:07.360 --> 28:12.640]  We can do things that sort of work together with politicians to provide a carrot and a stick.
[28:12.640 --> 28:17.720]  So, the carrot, of course, is money for your political campaign.
[28:18.540 --> 28:30.720]  Information about your constituents who will be pleased to vote for you and will dedicate themselves to getting people to vote for you if you obey their wishes.
[28:31.340 --> 28:34.680]  Shocking idea, I know, but it might happen.
[28:37.620 --> 28:40.000]  And so, these are sort of two paths.
[28:40.000 --> 28:52.880]  Eventually, what it will lead to is our having dedicated representatives who just say, I'm going to try to advocate to you, but ultimately I will obey whatever you guys vote.
[28:53.760 --> 29:02.040]  And now this may seem far-fetched, but actually there are currently two politicians running for office on this platform.
[29:02.740 --> 29:08.420]  One is Jeremy Hanson in Vermont, who's running for state senate.
[29:09.040 --> 29:12.400]  The other is Phil Dodd in Florida, who's running for U.S. senate.
[29:13.240 --> 29:18.540]  Or, I think Jeremy might be running for state representative, if I'm forgetting that.
[29:18.780 --> 29:18.920]  Sorry.
[29:20.660 --> 29:22.740]  So, it's not unheard of.
[29:22.840 --> 29:23.360]  It's possible.
[29:23.360 --> 29:26.080]  And we are working with these guys to build a system for them.
[29:27.020 --> 29:33.320]  So, our principles are a little bit different than the principles of our users necessarily, because we want to reach everybody.
[29:33.580 --> 29:38.220]  So, we, unlike our users, are very strictly non-partisan.
[29:38.460 --> 29:52.460]  So, if you want to pass a bill that says gay couples should have to pay taxes and may not get married and may not have health care and may not have visitation rights, okay, we'll help you pass that.
[29:53.000 --> 30:05.960]  If you want to pass the opposite and say, you know, insurance for gay people is mandatory and they must be allowed to marry and so forth, great, we'll help you pass that too.
[30:06.240 --> 30:14.980]  How effective you'll be at passing it will reflect not our beliefs, but how effective you are at convincing people to support your policy.
[30:14.980 --> 30:21.860]  And so, this way we can remain neutral to things that aren't directly part of our own goals.
[30:22.340 --> 30:23.780]  However, we do have goals.
[30:24.000 --> 30:31.200]  So, for instance, you're entitled to your opinion and you're entitled to try to make laws to support your opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
[30:31.480 --> 30:37.380]  So, if you make a factual empirical statement on our website, we reserve the right to redline it for fact checking.
[30:37.660 --> 30:48.180]  If you make a position statement that's just full of factual errors, not we disagree strongly with your beliefs, but factual errors, we'll put a fact check meter next to it.
[30:48.760 --> 30:50.260]  That will not be under your control.
[30:50.360 --> 30:52.020]  That will be under independent review.
[30:54.140 --> 30:56.480]  We need to care about security and privacy.
[30:56.700 --> 30:59.460]  So, for example, we're identifying people's legal identities.
[31:00.360 --> 31:03.560]  There's ways to do this in relatively secure fashions.
[31:03.560 --> 31:05.580]  We still need to store it securely.
[31:06.220 --> 31:19.820]  There's cryptography involved in being able to publish a publicly verifiable proof of how people voted in the aggregate that doesn't let you determine how people voted in a given particular situation.
[31:21.100 --> 31:30.100]  And we're committed to being transparent, so entirely open-source, except we're prohibited by contract or law or some bullshit like that.
[31:31.820 --> 31:33.560]  And non-profit as well.
[31:33.800 --> 31:41.100]  So, we might have salaries, for instance, if you're working full-time, but we don't have shareholders.
[31:41.100 --> 31:43.540]  We're not trying to make money for people.
[31:43.700 --> 31:45.640]  We're just trying to get shit done.
[31:47.440 --> 31:52.320]  So, there are some very interesting problems to solve in doing this.
[31:53.480 --> 32:00.820]  So, one thing I should preface this with is, I guess, managing your expectations a bit.
[32:01.080 --> 32:03.260]  This is not going to be a perfect system.
[32:04.940 --> 32:12.320]  My aim, humble as it is, is to be better in every way than the current system.
[32:13.380 --> 32:15.000]  I think that's enough.
[32:16.120 --> 32:19.560]  But some people think, you know, well, it has this flaw.
[32:20.040 --> 32:25.900]  My response is always going to be, does it have a flaw that is worse than the current system?
[32:26.060 --> 32:28.720]  If yes, I consider that a very serious concern.
[32:29.320 --> 32:32.760]  If no, I think it's something to optimize, but not a killer.
[32:34.120 --> 32:36.980]  Obviously, if you think of any flaws we can optimize, let me know.
[32:41.780 --> 32:42.220]  Louder.
[32:42.220 --> 32:43.260]  Do you have a
[32:46.760 --> 32:50.740]  subject that is that accessible or a similar type of disability?
[32:53.380 --> 32:55.860]  I think I'll address a couple of them.
[32:56.300 --> 32:58.040]  And if I don't, please let me know.
[32:58.260 --> 33:07.960]  I was also wondering, how do you determine each, you know, what kind of subject, what kind of legal policies and how it affects, is this non-law?
[33:09.180 --> 33:09.660]  Right.
[33:10.860 --> 33:15.780]  So there are, so how do you categorize laws so that people can do category limitations?
[33:16.000 --> 33:18.500]  There's actually a couple of proposals we're considering about that.
[33:18.740 --> 33:24.760]  One is we can just do that ourselves, because we're committed to being non-partisan, et cetera.
[33:24.960 --> 33:26.200]  We're sort of a neutral party.
[33:26.960 --> 33:32.720]  Another thing we could do is allow third parties to categorize things as sort of categorization services.
[33:33.480 --> 33:39.580]  And then you can subscribe to their categorization service, and you can trust whoever you want to categorize things however you want.
[33:39.900 --> 33:41.560]  But we'd be the default trust.
[33:42.900 --> 33:47.440]  And that's a matter I'm happy to talk about, but it's a bit detailed.
[33:49.100 --> 33:54.940]  So one issue, for example, is online voting.
[33:55.240 --> 33:57.560]  So, some things are private.
[33:57.800 --> 34:01.320]  So, for example, like I said, your vote itself should be forward private.
[34:01.540 --> 34:03.200]  Some things are not private.
[34:03.200 --> 34:05.380]  And we will not pretend that they are private.
[34:05.580 --> 34:11.020]  So, for example, if you donate money to a campaign, we are mandated by law to disclose that.
[34:11.260 --> 34:18.620]  I think we're also mandated by ethics to disclose that, even if it's below the standards that the Law currently requires us to do.
[34:18.780 --> 34:24.180]  We would do anyway unless you specifically ask us not to and to make you anonymous.
[34:24.840 --> 34:36.100]  We would respect that to the extent that we're able to, but by default, we need to be open about things like money transfer and things like how proxies behave.
[34:36.680 --> 34:39.880]  We need to have verified identities.
[34:40.040 --> 34:41.300]  Now, this is a complex problem.
[34:41.420 --> 34:47.200]  I should point that all these bullet points that I'm mentioning here, these are full projects unto themselves.
[34:47.740 --> 34:49.440]  So identity verification.
[34:49.960 --> 34:52.960]  One method, I've been talking recently with Experian.
[34:53.300 --> 34:59.780]  What they have is a giant f*cking database of everything you have ever done, pretty much.
[35:00.140 --> 35:10.180]  And what they can do is sell to us at about a buck fifty a pop, a list of eight questions that are multiple choice for you to answer.
[35:10.840 --> 35:12.680]  We show those questions to you.
[35:12.880 --> 35:13.580]  You answer them.
[35:13.800 --> 35:15.000]  We give them back...
[35:15.000 --> 35:18.080]  the answers back to Experian along with the name and address you told us.
[35:18.580 --> 35:22.220]  And they tell us, are you the person you claim to be?
[35:23.140 --> 35:27.340]  Who else might be a plausible close match?
[35:27.480 --> 35:33.620]  Like if the name didn't quite match, then they'll tell us other people that are similar at your address or something, so we can manually do that.
[35:34.380 --> 35:38.840]  But in any case, it helps prove to a reasonable degree that you are who you say you are.
[35:39.500 --> 35:54.140]  We can take scan of your formal identity, like a driver's license or passport, and couple that with like a webcam of you saying, hi, my name is X, and my username is Y, and I intended to do this.
[35:54.280 --> 35:58.620]  And you can cross-correlate their picture on camera with a picture on the driver's license.
[35:59.080 --> 36:01.880]  And there are security issues that I'm sure you're thinking of.
[36:02.080 --> 36:03.760]  That's why it's a complicated project.
[36:04.880 --> 36:08.060]  There is the security cryptographic proof that I mentioned.
[36:08.340 --> 36:10.740]  So there's a couple of projects that are working on this.
[36:10.900 --> 36:11.800]  One is Helios.
[36:12.320 --> 36:13.700]  Another is Verificatum.
[36:13.840 --> 36:15.400]  Another is Agorasyudiana.
[36:16.640 --> 36:22.140]  The problem is you want it privacy preserving, so you don't know who voted for what, unless they're a proxy.
[36:23.020 --> 36:25.020]  It should be auditable in aggregate.
[36:25.460 --> 36:30.620]  You want people knowing the voter list, which is not private, who participated, it's not private.
[36:30.820 --> 36:36.960]  And knowing the outcome to be able to prove cryptographically that you're not lying about what the totals are.
[36:38.020 --> 36:39.540]  And voter verifiable.
[36:39.780 --> 36:48.080]  So the individual should be able to prove to themselves, if not necessarily to other people, that their vote was counted the way they thought it should be.
[36:48.860 --> 36:50.920]  Another thing is proxy honesty.
[36:51.080 --> 36:57.260]  So something people bring up frequently is vote trading or selling out.
[36:58.840 --> 37:14.140]  Now, really, it's kind of hard to sell out when people are always inspecting your votes and always have the power, before your use of their vote takes effect, to nullify it and override and just deprive you of your power.
[37:14.360 --> 37:18.960]  So if someone tries to f*ck you over, their power just evaporates uselessly.
[37:19.060 --> 37:21.160]  So it kind of changes the incentive structure there.
[37:21.380 --> 37:22.920]  However, this can be assisted.
[37:23.200 --> 37:31.760]  So for example, we can detect, well, the way you voted is anomalous either with respect to your own behavior or with respect to other things that this user supports.
[37:32.040 --> 37:33.740]  So we're not going to override it ourselves.
[37:34.000 --> 37:40.480]  But we will send the user a big warning message saying, this looks weird.
[37:40.700 --> 37:43.260]  You should pay special attention and review it.
[37:46.260 --> 37:49.000]  So another issue is policy authorship.
[37:49.180 --> 37:52.860]  So the other major thing people bring up a lot is tyranny of the majority.
[37:53.840 --> 38:03.120]  So first off, I would say, like my standard was before, this problem exists in the current system and it is very bad.
[38:03.380 --> 38:08.940]  And the way that has historically been worked out is not through the legislature.
[38:09.160 --> 38:12.580]  I don't think it can be intrinsically solved through any kind of legislature.
[38:12.800 --> 38:19.320]  The reason is you need to commit to principles and rights that you put outside of your control.
[38:19.600 --> 38:28.640]  And the way you do this is a constitution with provisions for rights that shall not be abridged and a separate judiciary that enforces that.
[38:28.840 --> 38:36.440]  So if you want to then pass a law that says black people and white people are not allowed to marry, you can pass that law.
[38:36.560 --> 38:43.000]  It'll be struck down unless you first strike down the part of the constitution that preserves this right.
[38:43.060 --> 38:45.420]  You could do that, but you're not going to.
[38:45.560 --> 38:46.720]  And it's a lot harder to.
[38:47.260 --> 38:50.000]  And it's a lot more transparent that you're being an ass.
[38:51.700 --> 38:54.860]  So this is sort of a way to keep yourself honest.
[38:57.080 --> 39:02.240]  And you should also have, I think, higher bars than currently exist for modifying state constitutions.
[39:02.360 --> 39:05.080]  So I don't know how many of you have looked at California's constitution.
[39:06.100 --> 39:07.360]  You might want to sometime.
[39:08.140 --> 39:15.620]  My friend of mine named Yoni pointed this out to me at one point, which is, the California constitution is crazy.
[39:16.000 --> 39:20.980]  It's got all sorts of random crap in there that really should be just regular law.
[39:23.400 --> 39:25.380]  Constitutions really should be like the U.S.
[39:25.480 --> 39:27.260]  Constitution, where it's about two things.
[39:27.500 --> 39:33.760]  Meta law and principles or rights that can be broadly applied.
[39:34.040 --> 39:38.420]  Or things that you want to commit to so you don't make a law about that.
[39:39.020 --> 39:40.740]  Other stuff should be regular law.
[39:42.340 --> 39:43.500]  So that's a disclaimer.
[39:43.660 --> 39:46.140]  I'm not a complete fan of the California process.
[39:46.920 --> 39:51.560]  Another is, you're not going to have a single Internet-wide law.
[39:51.920 --> 39:53.500]  Internet is not a jurisdiction.
[39:54.560 --> 39:56.300]  Laws exist within a given jurisdiction.
[39:56.540 --> 40:00.440]  And they should be supported by the people in that jurisdiction.
[40:00.660 --> 40:02.360]  Those are the people you need to vote for it.
[40:02.560 --> 40:04.800]  And laws are going to be different state to state.
[40:04.980 --> 40:06.740]  You don't like this, but it's a fact.
[40:06.900 --> 40:08.540]  Some states are more liberal than others.
[40:08.660 --> 40:10.540]  Some cities are more liberal than others.
[40:11.380 --> 40:18.380]  One place might want to say, every citizen is required to own a gun and to have training in it.
[40:18.520 --> 40:19.940]  Others are like, guns?
[40:20.220 --> 40:21.220]  You want to have guns?
[40:21.960 --> 40:26.340]  And this varies just by what people want.
[40:26.580 --> 40:29.220]  The discussion can be global, but the decisions are local.
[40:30.040 --> 40:31.820]  There are issues of public fora.
[40:32.020 --> 40:33.040]  We need moderation.
[40:33.500 --> 40:38.800]  We need to have it be so that trolls don't get very far.
[40:39.180 --> 40:41.220]  In part, we can do this by proxy power.
[40:41.500 --> 40:44.600]  So the more proxy power you have, the more people you represent.
[40:44.760 --> 40:47.380]  Presumably they believe what you say.
[40:47.580 --> 40:51.380]  If they didn't, you wouldn't be empowered to speak on their behalf.
[40:51.560 --> 40:56.740]  So this is one way to have sort of an easy way to cull the fire hose.
[40:57.240 --> 41:01.800]  And you can also have things like Stack Overflow has graduated privileges.
[41:02.460 --> 41:06.520]  So if you behave nicely, we reward you with more privileges on the site.
[41:07.580 --> 41:09.560]  We need to do neutral fact checking.
[41:09.680 --> 41:12.080]  Now, this is not as easy as it might seem.
[41:12.260 --> 41:16.440]  For one, determining what facts are is not entirely always clear.
[41:16.760 --> 41:24.860]  Making sure that it's neutral, that people trust it, even when it's about controversial issues, like say evolution, is also very difficult.
[41:25.100 --> 41:29.160]  Because you need to be trusted for people to give a shit about what you say the facts are.
[41:31.140 --> 41:34.320]  And the authoring process is sort of a gradual thing.
[41:34.420 --> 41:40.960]  You can't just jump right into like drafting a full legal bill.
[41:42.340 --> 41:44.940]  Then people get sort of attached to that particular thing.
[41:45.100 --> 41:47.720]  It gets hard to talk about the actual details involved.
[41:48.080 --> 41:51.300]  There's sort of a gradual policy authoring process.
[41:51.520 --> 41:55.400]  Don't have time to get into it right now, but I'd be happy to talk about it afterwards.
[41:57.680 --> 42:00.140]  So there have been similar systems done.
[42:00.400 --> 42:03.920]  So I mentioned a couple people in the U.S. who are trying.
[42:04.380 --> 42:10.840]  Americans-elect did try to have sort of a publicly nominated presidential candidate.
[42:12.780 --> 42:14.260]  And they failed.
[42:14.580 --> 42:18.120]  The reason they failed is they required buy-in upfront.
[42:19.220 --> 42:21.960]  And they required a large amount of buy-in.
[42:22.160 --> 42:23.380]  And that just doesn't work.
[42:23.480 --> 42:25.640]  Like I said, you need to build gradually.
[42:27.300 --> 42:35.800]  I think it was like 20,000 votes people needed to support a given candidate distributed well across all of the states.
[42:36.540 --> 42:40.440]  I'm not remembering the details exactly, but it's on that order of magnitude.
[42:41.100 --> 42:43.000]  And they just didn't... they didn't meet it.
[42:45.300 --> 42:48.140]  So some legal context.
[42:49.160 --> 42:52.140]  There are some questions about electronic signatures.
[42:52.480 --> 42:56.340]  So as I mentioned in California, there is a recent case, Nii versus Slocum.
[42:57.000 --> 43:08.380]  Nii is a guy who founded a company called Verifirma, which makes a signature software for the iPhone where you can sign on your iPhone and that would be committed to the electronic version of the document.
[43:08.940 --> 43:15.880]  Basically, the appeals court, Supreme Court hasn't mentioned anything about it, but the appeals court said, no, it has to be ink on paper.
[43:16.120 --> 43:16.440]  Too bad.
[43:17.060 --> 43:23.280]  Even though it's well established that everything else, except for the electoral code, electronic signatures are fine.
[43:23.640 --> 43:29.820]  By contrast, in Utah, digital signatures for ballot initiatives have been approved.
[43:30.420 --> 43:32.920]  And it's a matter of how exactly are they going to be regulated.
[43:34.940 --> 44:01.900]  Something you might be curious about for super PACs is there's a distinction between direct contributions, so you give money directly to some political committee, independent advertisement or spending about that politician, and non-contribution spending or non-federal spending or issue-only spending.
[44:02.000 --> 44:02.920]  These are separate things.
[44:03.120 --> 44:06.160]  And there's this big disclosure loophole, like I said.
[44:06.760 --> 44:09.140]  So what are we doing about that?
[44:09.740 --> 44:14.080]  Well, we're a PAC, or at least we will be shortly.
[44:14.260 --> 44:19.000]  We just filed for incorporation of the...we filed for incorporation of the others a couple months ago.
[44:19.080 --> 44:21.380]  The PAC only got filed for incorporation a few weeks ago.
[44:21.760 --> 44:27.980]  Very shortly, we're going to be filing as an officially registered federal hybrid super PAC with the FEC.
[44:28.320 --> 44:33.240]  What that means is we have standing to ask the FEC for binding advisory opinions.
[44:34.000 --> 44:37.540]  One of those opinions is, how are we to report our donors?
[44:37.820 --> 44:40.680]  We want to report our donors, unlike all these other people.
[44:40.960 --> 44:41.900]  Tell us how.
[44:43.280 --> 44:48.780]  There are other things like, how should we accept anonymous contributions of goods?
[44:49.220 --> 44:52.540]  Like certain cryptographic currencies you might be thinking of.
[44:54.740 --> 44:58.100]  Another is, what are the limits on foreign national donations?
[44:58.820 --> 45:02.780]  There are sort of negative limits in place right now, but it's not very clear.
[45:03.200 --> 45:04.280]  There's a bunch of things.
[45:04.300 --> 45:07.680]  If you're interested, I can tell you a lot about FEC policy.
[45:08.980 --> 45:11.720]  But yeah, ask me afterwards.
[45:12.640 --> 45:17.480]  So where we're at now, like I said, we're asking the FEC for opinion.
[45:17.700 --> 45:19.660]  Simultaneously, we're making a donation site.
[45:19.840 --> 45:25.860]  The idea is basically you'll be able to give money to any political entity that is legal for you to give money to.
[45:27.720 --> 45:31.700]  And make sort of a Kickstarter for initiatives, as it were.
[45:32.820 --> 45:39.640]  And a way to democratize the financing of these politicians and the initiatives.
[45:40.040 --> 45:43.820]  Later on, we'll do petition signing entirely online.
[45:44.040 --> 45:46.800]  This is going to require test cases in the courts, unfortunately.
[45:47.900 --> 45:54.200]  Integration with political issues, so you can track what politicians are doing better or worse for your issues and give them money.
[45:54.800 --> 45:56.020]  Contingent on their behavior.
[45:57.680 --> 46:09.040]  Possibly running our own ads, dictated by you, paid for by you, run by us, so that we take care of all the accounting things and the regulatory issues, so you don't have to give a shit.
[46:10.540 --> 46:15.180]  And possibly acting as an umbrella for new PACs to sort of grow up.
[46:16.580 --> 46:18.560]  So we need a lot of help.
[46:19.500 --> 46:22.920]  I do a lot of things myself, but I can't do everything.
[46:23.280 --> 46:43.820]  So pretty much no matter what you do, if you're a coder, designer, lawyer, artist, an activist, cryptographer, an academic researcher, for social issues especially, moderators, community managers, people who are good for government liaisons, media, grants,
[46:44.340 --> 46:46.380]  anything like that, please talk to me.
[46:46.800 --> 46:49.920]  I'm sure I can find something that you would enjoy working on.
[46:50.540 --> 46:54.260]  If you want to see our code, it's on github.com slash make your laws.
[46:54.720 --> 47:02.540]  We've already started contributing to other projects, like the New York Times gem called Fetch, which interacts with FEC filings.
[47:03.440 --> 47:10.040]  So I guess my final point is simply, so people chant on the streets, this is what democracy looks like.
[47:10.460 --> 47:13.720]  Well, I would say this is what democracy looks like.
[47:13.820 --> 47:21.440]  We want to empower you to make your laws for real, and not just beg some politician to please let you do it.
[47:22.000 --> 47:22.860]  Just do it.
[47:32.460 --> 47:48.140]  I don't know if you've covered this before, but I guess one of the feature requests I would have for this project would be, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the GPLD3 creation process.
[47:48.140 --> 48:05.140]  One of the amazing things that FSF had was this commenting system, where you can take a look, you can have the proposed GPLD3 license body, and people can comment on those sections.
[48:05.400 --> 48:22.220]  So one of my feature requests that I've always had for multiple projects is, basically have a version control system for current laws that are trying to be passed, and integrate that with this commenting system.
[48:22.260 --> 48:22.480]  Yes.
[48:23.160 --> 48:28.000]  So that's actually one of the several projects I didn't mention, is Git for laws.
[48:28.740 --> 48:36.660]  That by itself, you might not realize it, but if you think through it, that's a major project, just unto itself.
[48:36.660 --> 48:47.140]  So you're talking about a simple markup language for laws that can be easily read, and that will hook all the necessary things so that it can be processed.
[48:47.880 --> 48:50.620]  You might not know, but right now there is no U.S.
[48:50.760 --> 48:54.880]  code in one place, because bills are in all sorts of crazy places.
[48:55.200 --> 48:57.520]  It needs to be integrated and compiled manually.
[48:57.520 --> 48:59.040]  It's a major pain in the ass.
[49:00.180 --> 49:01.680]  So this needs to be made.
[49:01.760 --> 49:02.780]  It needs to import things.
[49:02.920 --> 49:07.280]  It needs to be able to show diffs easily, because bills are basically commits.
[49:07.720 --> 49:09.480]  A bill is a commit to the law.
[49:10.660 --> 49:14.600]  And it's a great idea of how to represent it, but it needs to be made.
[49:14.840 --> 49:15.700]  And it's hard.
[49:16.080 --> 49:16.940]  Commenting system.
[49:17.540 --> 49:34.920]  Right now we're talking with a guy named Travis Kripplin, who made a system called Reflect slash Consider It, Consider capital I-T, which is sort of a way for people to discuss on things, and show that they understand what other people in the conversation have said,
[49:35.040 --> 49:37.200]  and summarize, and so it propagates up nicely.
[49:38.080 --> 49:40.980]  It needs work, but I think it's a really good start.
[49:41.740 --> 49:49.960]  And there are other aspects of the discussion system that we really want to nail, because it's part of why we're not rolling out immediately, because that part we want to get right.
[49:49.960 --> 49:54.360]  It can't be like ye generic news forum.
[49:55.320 --> 49:57.780]  It's going to have to rise a little bit higher than that.
[49:58.060 --> 49:58.120]  Yeah?
[49:58.520 --> 50:02.700]  How are earmarks, the way you described it, different than a bribe?
[50:04.000 --> 50:08.460]  They're different than a bribe in that, for one, they're not going to the politician.
[50:09.340 --> 50:15.700]  For two, it's really no different than core, highly protected political speech.
[50:15.700 --> 50:28.280]  Namely, you are very, very strongly protected if you say, I support slash oppose Senator Bob because he voted on this issue.
[50:28.460 --> 50:28.940]  No.
[50:29.280 --> 50:37.940]  You are highly protected if you say, therefore, I am going to donate 20 bucks to his reelection campaign, and all y'all should do the same thing.
[50:38.300 --> 50:48.720]  The only thing we're doing is making that transparent, and making it more aggregable, so it's more visible than it is now.
[50:49.520 --> 50:53.280]  What kind of pissing match?
[50:53.460 --> 51:00.520]  Well, if you can make that process transparent, what's to stop people from countering that?
[51:02.000 --> 51:07.900]  Well, for one, we wouldn't necessarily permit everybody to donate unlimited amounts.
[51:07.900 --> 51:10.320]  So we would have our own ethical policies.
[51:11.580 --> 51:15.020]  But if your pissing match is, like, how much can I raise?
[51:15.280 --> 51:22.400]  We would show, like, what is your amount base, right?
[51:22.560 --> 51:35.560]  So if one person shows, I raise a million bucks from two people, and the other person shows, I raised a million bucks from 5,000 people, how is that going to play out politically?
[51:38.240 --> 51:41.480]  Can you talk real quick about proxy voting and democracy?
[51:41.800 --> 51:46.480]  What are the constitutional effects of having somebody else vote for you?
[51:46.600 --> 51:48.520]  Are you talking about small elections, larger elections?
[51:48.700 --> 51:53.680]  Okay, so the question is, what are the constitutional effects of people voting for you in a proxy system?
[51:54.300 --> 52:01.140]  The short answer is, within an organization, it's obviously completely legal.
[52:01.380 --> 52:03.440]  Lots of corporations already use proxy voting.
[52:04.000 --> 52:11.240]  Yeah, so for the meantime, the liquid democracy would be entirely within Make Your Laws itself.
[52:11.660 --> 52:15.440]  And the way it would have power is through our footholds on the outside world.
[52:15.680 --> 52:20.360]  Once we have enough power outside, then we can sort of bootstrap it into the official system, per se.
[52:20.960 --> 52:26.380]  There are laws against something like donating in the name of another person.
[52:26.380 --> 52:29.120]  That's very definitely illegal, and we wouldn't let you do that.
[52:30.320 --> 52:30.760]  You?
[52:34.270 --> 52:35.090]  Yes, I have.
[52:35.350 --> 52:38.050]  Does it seem like something that would be compatible with their objectives?
[52:40.690 --> 52:46.350]  Have I heard of the seasteading movement, and would it be compatible with them?
[52:48.310 --> 52:56.650]  I don't want to comment on the seasteading movement, per se, simply because I have nothing to do with it, and I don't feel comfortable speaking for them.
[52:56.650 --> 53:04.070]  I do think that while they would not affect our laws, their idea is sort of to get outside of our laws, right?
[53:05.270 --> 53:11.650]  I think it would be compatible for any organization or any group that wants to run itself in a good way.
[53:11.930 --> 53:13.290]  And I think that includes them.
[53:14.590 --> 53:28.190]  Do you think that this monetary democracy idea is better than, say, Lawrence Lessig's voucher idea to get money out of the problem?
[53:28.390 --> 53:31.530]  So, actually, Lessig is one of the people we've been talking to as well.
[53:32.670 --> 53:40.690]  So, one of Lessig's major ideas is people... is democratizing the contribution base, right?
[53:40.830 --> 53:42.610]  Having a wider contribution base.
[53:43.090 --> 53:46.330]  It's not incompatible with the specific things that he proposes.
[53:46.490 --> 53:59.550]  So, specifically, he proposes, for example, everyone gets a $50 voucher as a democracy voucher, and you can spend that however you want as long as it's spent on political purposes, so that you don't feel like, you know, it's your money and, you know, oh no,
[53:59.590 --> 54:00.470]  you're not going to donate any.
[54:00.470 --> 54:06.850]  And, furthermore, that if you do donate your money, there will be state-backed doubling or tripling of it.
[54:07.150 --> 54:11.790]  And that there would be more stringent limits of the max of how much someone can donate.
[54:12.010 --> 54:14.390]  I think these are all completely compatible.
[54:14.670 --> 54:19.350]  And, if anything, would benefit from and to what we're trying to do.
[54:19.530 --> 54:21.130]  They're not, however, mandatory.
[54:22.330 --> 54:29.390]  And, I think a critical flaw with Lessig's plan is, he wants to first have this passed, and then fix the system.
[54:29.970 --> 54:31.690]  And, I don't think you can do that.
[54:33.110 --> 54:35.730]  It's, you need to gradually have the power.
[54:36.090 --> 54:36.310]  Yeah.
[54:36.570 --> 54:38.710]  But, we can bootstrap to that.
[54:39.130 --> 54:44.370]  If we gradually gain power, and then pass that, awesome, we have more power.
[54:46.450 --> 54:52.330]  So, how granular would this get in terms of, like, the, you said that people would put on, like, bills as they go.
[54:52.430 --> 54:55.970]  But, I know a lot of bills have writers that don't necessarily actually decline the bills.
[54:56.190 --> 55:03.010]  So, how would you be able to break that down and more categorize things?
[55:03.010 --> 55:03.270]  Sure.
[55:03.630 --> 55:05.870]  So, how would you granularize things?
[55:06.030 --> 55:06.910]  So, there's two answers.
[55:07.770 --> 55:10.670]  One, there's bills per se.
[55:10.950 --> 55:14.470]  You don't have any say in what gets proposed in Congress.
[55:15.150 --> 55:15.990]  Simple fact.
[55:16.470 --> 55:20.150]  You can say, if you do this, I will do that.
[55:21.170 --> 55:22.630]  That's basically all you can do.
[55:23.290 --> 55:29.490]  So, for stuff in actual Congresses, your granularity is whatever they give you.
[55:30.370 --> 55:32.450]  For our own internal policy making.
[55:32.650 --> 55:38.730]  So, the process that would lead up to us putting something on the ballot ourselves.
[55:40.510 --> 55:42.670]  I don't have time to go into the full details.
[55:42.830 --> 55:43.850]  Please talk to me afterwards.
[55:44.170 --> 55:49.670]  The basic idea is you use a lazy branching discussion system where you have...
[55:50.070 --> 55:52.750]  You basically say, what do you want the state of the law to be?
[55:53.010 --> 55:54.750]  Not like, how do you want to change the law?
[55:54.890 --> 55:58.670]  Because that's jurisdiction dependent and you can't have a global conversation about that.
[55:58.670 --> 56:00.790]  But what do you want the law to actually be?
[56:01.110 --> 56:05.510]  And then when you have real disagreements, then you branch.
[56:05.690 --> 56:09.790]  And you say, okay, so for this part of it, okay, here are the possible options.
[56:09.790 --> 56:12.250]  Here are, you know, why you might choose one of them.
[56:12.550 --> 56:14.950]  And then within that, there's more and more and more detail.
[56:15.910 --> 56:20.270]  So, I think, for example, one thing that people often see is irresolvable differences.
[56:20.270 --> 56:21.610]  So, abortion, for example.
[56:21.950 --> 56:27.610]  People often see, you know, people who support the right to abortion under any circumstances.
[56:27.910 --> 56:33.550]  And people who say, like, the right to abortion only if it threatens the life of the mother.
[56:33.870 --> 56:35.630]  That these are irresolvable positions.
[56:35.830 --> 56:36.870]  And that's just not true.
[56:37.510 --> 56:40.350]  They both support abortion in some circumstances.
[56:40.350 --> 56:46.130]  Therefore, they can collaborate on things like, what are the medical standards for performing an abortion safely?
[56:46.470 --> 56:51.030]  How can we make this easily available so that people don't have to do it in bad ways, et cetera?
[56:51.350 --> 56:56.490]  How can it be supported by insurance since you agree that some amounts, at least, should be supported?
[56:56.490 --> 56:58.470]  Now, obviously, they'll disagree on what.
[56:58.590 --> 57:00.730]  And that will be a branch of the policy.
[57:01.070 --> 57:04.030]  And one side or the other will win in a given jurisdiction.
[57:04.530 --> 57:10.710]  But we can at least make it so that, on as much as possible of the line items, you can collaborate.
[57:11.670 --> 57:14.070]  We're not going to get everyone to sing kumbaya together.
[57:14.710 --> 57:16.050]  But, at least in some parts.
[57:16.770 --> 57:18.270]  I think that's all I have time for.
[57:18.410 --> 57:23.190]  However, I know more of you want to ask me a bunch more questions.
[57:23.390 --> 57:24.490]  And I'm happy to discuss them.
[57:24.490 --> 57:25.290]  Right?