November 11, 2021 • 41 mins
Baratunde learns more about experiments in digital democracy. He speaks with Pia Mancini, cofounder of Open Collective, a platform empowering collectives and mutual aid groups with new transparent, decentralized financial tools that make local grassroots efforts more feasible than ever. It is a powerful example of how the use of technology can change the power dynamics and help people citizen together where they live and across the globe.
Guest: Pia Mancini
Bio: Democracy activist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation.
Online: Open Collective website; Pia’s website; on Twitter @piamancini and @opencollect
Show Notes + Links
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We are grateful to Pia for joining us! Follow her @piamancini on Twitter, or find more of her work at Opencollective.org.
ACTIONS
PERSONALLY REFLECT
Cultivate Optimism
Take a moment to reflect on when you feel most positive, most optimistic in your week? What are you doing, who are you around, what media/info sources are you consuming? Work on adding more of these elements to your weekly routines. The world needs more clear-eyed optimists for us to reach our collective potential. It’s hard to citizen when you’re only cynical.
BECOME INFORMED
Who in your life needs Open Collective
Take a moment to wrap your mind around this NEW community infrastructure that is truly revolutionizing the way local initiatives and groups work together around the world. We bet you know of a local project or informal group that could benefit from it! Take the time to learn more https://opencollective.com/. Also check out Pia’s TED talk, How To Upgrade Democracy for the Internet Era, for more about her beliefs and journey.
PUBLICLY PARTICIPATE
Join in with other locals
Support open-source and move away from private mega-malls like Facebook by adopting the Signal app, an open source, end-to-end encrypted, not-for-profit messaging platform. And if you use open source to build the product that is making you money, give back to open source, because open source is not free. It was paid for by someone else's time. So make sure you give back to the developers.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah. Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a
podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
(00:34):
It's October and a group of thirty or so revolutionaries
in Buenos Aires, Argentina are poised to infiltrate a seemingly
impenetrable fortress the government. And as they approached the palace
of the Argentine National Congress, they told with them the
symbol of their movement, a twenty foot tall wooden Trojan horse.
(00:59):
M yeah, a Trojan horse like from Greek mythology. And
if you need a little refresher on that story, it
goes like this. During the Trojan War, the Greek's built
this giant Trojan horse as a gift to the Trojans.
(01:20):
Little did the Trojans know that the Greek warriors were
actually hiding inside the horse. When the coast was clear,
the Greeks emerged and totally sacked the city. Now, these
(01:51):
Argentine citizens they've got the same plan to sneak into
Congress and disturb the political order from the inside. They
are Partio de laded or in English, the net Party,
as in the Internet. There are a new political party
in Argentina tackling one of democracy's biggest problems. Our democracy
(02:14):
has remained the same for the past two hundred years.
We're twenty century citizens interacting with nineteenth central institutions. Today
we can speak for ourselves in almost every aspect of life,
but we can only tell our governments what we want
once every few years, and in between elections we must
(02:35):
remain silent. Partito de laded is running for seats in
Congress and they have a very different platform. They created
an app called democracy Os where citizens could cast their
own votes on legislation. If elected, the Partio de Larded
(02:56):
representative would vote according to how citizens have voted on
the app. The candidates are themselves the trojan horse. If
they get into Congress, they would sneak every voice on
democracy Os into Congress with them. Citizens wouldn't have to
wait for years to speak, they'd have a say on
every piece of legislation. As the party pulls this trojan
(03:22):
horse through the streets. Children run alongside the procession. An
excited crowd gathers when it comes to a stop at
the doors of Congress. The party chance when you can
network awaken who it was very powerful in the crowd
(03:47):
is pa Mancini, one of the leaders of Partito de
lad It's hard to make change happen, but we must
move from protest to construction. Her word that October would
be just the beginning of a lifelong pursuit to empower
citizen voices. Since then, Pia has put her imagination to
(04:08):
work building technologies that help people organize around the causes
that matter to them. And now eight years later, she
isn't just trying to rewire broken systems from the inside,
She's making whole new systems entirely. Pia has developed this
platform called Open Collective, and with it she's putting economic
(04:32):
power in the hands of communities all across the globe.
So how does somebody go from protesting at Congress's doorstep
to building a new economic infrastructure and whatever happened to
Partido de Laded. Pia Mancini tells us her story after
(04:52):
the break. Yeah, hello, so nice to see It's so
(05:15):
nice to see you tube A welcome. Thank you. So
let's start with the basics. Can you introduce yourself and
what you do. I'm PM and Chinni and I'm co
founder and CEO of Open Collective and i am the
(05:35):
mother of almost six year old who studied elementary yesterday.
So it's very exciting. Are you excited about the school?
I am excited. The amount of like relief and exhaustion
in your voice, I believe you are exactly what is
open collective. Open Collective at the core is an open
(05:58):
finances are transparent finances platform that lets you fundraise and
spend money for your community and full transparency and repair
that with a global network of legal entities. That what
they do is they hold the money for those communities
and they deal with reporting and taxes and government so
(06:19):
communities can focus on what they do and not focus
on talking to accountants and lawyers. You say this is
for communities. Who is Open Collective for more practically? Can
you get specific? Yes? So we are mostly working with
two large ecosystems, the open source ecosystem and the solidarity economy.
(06:43):
So we are helping both open source projects across the
world to fundraise like as an open source software projects. Yeah, absolutely,
So open source communities open source software projects are in
general faults around the world who are coming to other
using a platform like gi hub for example, to create software.
(07:05):
Companies and users want to support these open source projects.
They want to give them funding so the maintainers can
keep working on them because you know, otherwise it's volunteer time.
But they don't have word to send the money. So
imagine Google trying to send five thou dollars to a
papal account in Ukraine that will get flagged real quick,
(07:27):
real quick. So it's easier for Google to send funding
to the open Source Collective, which is one of the
non for profits we created. We have a network of
three hundred non for profits around the world and we
give fiscal sponsorship and you know, an umbrella organization to
the open source projects. We currently have three thousand projects,
three thousand open source projects. Yeah and yeah, okay, this
(07:52):
is a good moment for me to just established in
your definition in terms what is open source? Yeah, so
open source essentialist software where you can see how being made,
all the lines that constitute its code, and you can
copy and using whichever way you want. You can grab
(08:13):
a part of it, you can rehash it. It's like
a mash up. This is different from what it's called
proprietary software. That is software that is locked by the developer. Right,
So Microsoft makes proprietary software because they don't want anyone
to compete, to use their technology and compete. So proprietary
software is almost like having a patent on your technology.
(08:36):
And open sources just free, open technology for anyone to use.
Open source enabled the startup revolution. Mm hmm. So you
mentioned open source projects. What's the other type of community
that you're supporting. Yeah, the solidarity economy totally appurely. Look,
it's mutual aid groups, land trusts, giving circles, social move
(09:00):
men's right, covid hit. A lot of people pulled money
together to support each other. They wanted to support their
neighbors by food for those who could make it. All
of those mutually groups groups are coming together to support
each other. Where who's going to receive the money? Are we?
You know, it's a group of neighbors who's gonna put
their own personal bank account. It's kind of weird, rights awkward,
(09:23):
and it's also it might have implications for your tax reporting.
And so we give these communities the open collective platform
plus a five C three kind of as a service. Yeah,
so they can be up and running, receiving money without
tax the actual received for their donors in like a day.
(09:44):
So we are kind of radical administrators, right, we kind
of which usually doesn't go together. Radical and administrative are
very rarely said. I know, I know. We abstract the difficulty,
the awful boring bits of having to raise and manage money,
because we think it's very unfair that if you want
(10:04):
to just pull money together, or if you just want
to try an idea, or if you don't know yet
what you want to be in the world. Maybe you
want to be a club, Maybe do you want to
be a non for profit. Maybe you're just testing an idea.
Why should you pay up front the costs of having
equity or having hierarchical structures that then it's very difficult
(10:25):
to transition out of like why why are we doing this?
And so the kind of metaphor that we use we
say that communities are circles in a world that is
made for triangles. Communities are circles in a world made
for triangles. Yeah, so we kind of need to, you know,
twist a little bit so we can fit into what
the system understands is a legal entity. Here's the question
(10:49):
of why open. What's the open part all about? Everything
is transparent by design, so you know at a glance
who gave money to a community and how that community
spending the money. Philosophically, I don't think that transparency generates
trust per se, because you know, because if everything is transparent,
(11:10):
what's there to trust? Right? You just see it, right,
Like trust kind of gets generated when you accept that
someone is doing something without you having to see that necessarily.
But transparency helps a lot in situations where trust takes
a lot of time to build. Give me an example
of a collective that has benefited from this open transparent funding,
(11:35):
legal administrative support. One of the first collectives that really
showed the quick impact that we could have was called
Meals of Gratitude. Meals of Gratitude Okay, late February or
March last years, so very very early on, they realized
that they needed to feed first responders in the pandemic,
(11:55):
and so they were like scrambling to you know, figure
out how to buy all of these meals for folks
working around the clock in hospitals. And it went from
zero to a gazillion in like three days. Suddenly we
were like pushing I don't know how many thousand meals
a day, and I'm like, I'm so grateful that we're
able to do this. Another one, more recent is we
(12:20):
were able to get to families of open source developers
from Afghanistan out of Afghanistan. So open source is not
something that Taliban understand. You didn't see that coming. I
just open source is not something to Taliban understand. I mean,
(12:40):
that's that's beautiful. Continue so, but I mean it's very
risky for developers working in open source because they're collaborating
with you know, foreign powers or whatever the narrative is. Yeah,
and it could be the CIA exactly. They're just doing
code on something in English. And this is terrifying. And
(13:01):
so we needed to very quickly raise money to get
these two families out and we spent up a collective
and in nothing we had, you know, raise enough money
to get both families off to Pakistan. Wow, it feels
very disruptive. Pierre M Look, I have to say that
it is. It's it's been amazing, especially for me last
(13:25):
year personally, to see all of these different groups just
coming together, and we were able to deploy millions of
dollars two communities across the United States and across the
world because we were like already set up for this,
and the growth last year has been surprising. Our goal
(13:49):
right now is finding ways of moving money from the
center to the fringes. I think it's absolutely unfair that
only corporations, whether for of you no nonprofit, but corporations
are incorporated in a territory toy. You need to be
in a territory, which is insane. They have hierarchical structures
or or vertical triangles. Triangles, only triangles can receive money.
(14:15):
That's unfair. Because the hard work that communities are doing
to improve the state of the world, it's incredible. We
have more and more open source projects that are employing
or contracting their maintainers filter and so we are creating jobs.
This is putting the community as a new economic unit,
(14:37):
the community as a human you know, an economic unit
that is able to hire, to raise money, to spend
to do everything that we give for granted that corporations
can do without having to become something that they're not.
Where did all this come from here? How did you
(14:59):
come up with the idea for open Collective. So it
wasn't my own idea. Probably a collective. There you go,
you get it, you get it. My co founder, Savior,
and both had experience where we went through this particular
pain of needing to put money to do what we
wanted to do and not being able to do it
(15:21):
because of bureaucratic hurdles. We are coming from very different contexts,
like my experience was in politics, his experience was in
the startup movement in Belgium, mine in Argentina. Were like,
if the two of us are going through the same
there must be other people going through this, and so
we started thinking about how to solve this problem and
(15:43):
Open Collective was born in two How did you get
into politics in the first place? Goodness, My family was
always very let's say, argumentative. I can't see that at all.
How did that show work? That at the dinner table?
Was that on the way to school? What does it mean? Oh?
My god? The dinner table? The dinner table and then
(16:06):
arguments in the morning for who got to read the
newspaper first, and one section of the newspaper and then
you know, arguing about what we were reading. And my
dad and I. We were very similar in a lot
of ways, and then we thought politically very differently, so,
you know, and so I grew up in an environment
where politics was very much part of our lives, and
(16:29):
I studied political science because I was interested in power dynamics,
and I was interested, like maybe because of my father.
I hadn't thought about that. Having a second, it's okay,
if you want to lay back on a couch, take
some deeper, we can go there. Breakthrough happening, And and
(16:49):
then there was a bit of of a moment where
something kind of clicked. I was campaign managing for a
friend of mine who then became mayor of this craft
quite loud, large city outside of Monte Sides. And I
don't know, this was maybe twenty ten something like that. July,
which is winter in Argentina and it gets pretty cold,
(17:11):
and so we were visiting a neighborhood talking to folks
and we went into this barn and it was stuck
up to the ceiling with matrices and construction materials and
things like that. And don't, like, great, are we gonna
build things or housing for folks in need here in
the area? What's the plan? How are you doing this?
I was so excited, and he looks at me like
(17:32):
literally like if I was from another planet. He looks
at me, He's like, are you crazy, PI, elections are
next year. This are staying here, And I'm like, wait,
what are we keeping this until elections because that's what
we used to get votes? And then it just clicked
and it wasn't that my friend was corrupted. It was
just that the system is what it is. And I'm like,
(17:56):
what am I doing here trying to get someone elected
to be mayor of a city where this is going
to still happen because the system is not going to change.
It's just gonna eat him up and chew him out
when they're done. And so at the same time, I
run into this absolutely crazy bunch of people doing a
(18:17):
different type of political party called the net Party and
Party lad. So that's how I got more into politics. Yes,
and how was that approach different from everything you just
described as not ideal? So alert was a hack. Essentially,
(18:39):
we wanted to influence the way decisions are made in politics,
and so we created democracys. Hold up, wait a minute,
I'm walking this path with you, and I'm like, okay,
first year that political system. Got it, join a new
political party. Got it. So then we started democracy OS.
(19:03):
What is this democracy operating system? Yeah, so please explain, okay,
got it. So democracy OS is a platform for citizens
to read on legislation that was translated from a political
and legal jargon that no one understands, you know, because
(19:24):
that's that's the hack of the lawyers. You make a
human readable version of legislation. Yes, you got it, and
so um so we did that, and then it was
a platform for citizens to vote how they would like
their representatives to vote. Right, And if they felt they
couldn't vote themselves or something because they didn't have time,
(19:44):
they didn't want, they didn't understand, you know, they knew
someone else who might know better whatever, they could delegate
that vote on this other person. Right. So, if there's
a healthcare piece of legislation, and you know folks that
work in the healthcare system, but they will never access
the lobby power to influence legislation because they are healthcare workers.
(20:06):
But you trust them, you know that you would like
them to vote for you, so you could delegate your
vote on them. And that makes sense. I mean, there
are people who I use right now informally right, you
know a lot more about this, tell me how I
should vote? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there's a technology that
(20:28):
helps citizens weigh in and even delegate their authority on
certain topics based on the expertise and their networks. Yeah,
that's that's that's exactly right. And so we created this
and we were like, it would be great if government,
you know, Congress, use this. And so we were like, hey, Congress,
do you want this? And they're like, no, thank you,
(20:48):
go play outside. Surprise surprise exactly, and the like that's
the door, you know, and we're like, okay, great, So
how on earth do we become valid stakeholders in this
conversation our own ears? Do we get them to pay attention?
And so we're like, okay, let's do what they do.
Let's build a political party. But we run for elections
(21:12):
with this idea that if we got a seat in Congress,
we would only vote according to the decision made on democracys. Ah.
So that was a hack stakes, sir high. I mean,
I've heard of campaign promises, but that's a different level
of commitment. Yeah. For the political establishment in the you know,
(21:36):
Bueno scilence, it was like, wait, what you're gonna do
what And did you end up getting a seat? No,
we missed that seat for not a lot. It was
very close. We pushed the bars so far of what
was perceived as doable. You know, we almost made it.
(21:58):
And we're like a crazy band of folks with software
saying like, we're not gonna about what we think, We're
gonna about what people decided on this platform. And then
it was after the campaign, I think one of the volunteers,
the developers working on the Democracy OS platform centers and links,
thaying like, have you faults seen this? It was democracy
(22:21):
is translated to French used in Arabic to discuss the
constitution in Tunisia, and we had no idea what was
going on. The developers, they're looked for online voting, they
run into democracy s. They did their own copy of
(22:42):
Democracy o S and they were using it themselves to
discuss the Tunisian constitution. That for me was like mind blowing.
It felt like there was a emergent need because if
something was being used at the same time in monoside
is in Tunisia for the same purposes, the world needed
(23:03):
this and the world was ready to use this, and
I became kind of focused on using democracy or as
in different contexts, or we use it for in Mexico
and the City of Mexico, for the constitution in the
center of Mexico, for like a piece of legislation in
Sri Lanka with the candidate in Colombia for the referendum.
The tools that we're putting out there were being picked
(23:25):
up by the same type of groups in different languages,
different purposes, different places. At one point, democracy was translated
into thirty different languages, and we didn't do them. And
so I think that that's what really bulls me from
open source and technologies. This ability of creating tools that
you don't control and that you just released into the
(23:49):
world and people use for me is it's beautiful. Yeah,
we'll be right back. Where in your path did technology
(24:13):
become a tool you would use for all of the
system's power political thinking, Well, we felt that technology was
the missing piece and how citizens could have agency. We
felt that technology was what made evident that the system
was unbelievably closed. Because it's not that they didn't have
(24:36):
the tools to open up, they just didn't want to
do it. They chose to hold on to the status
School up because they want to stay in power. Mm hmm.
What did this experience do broadly, I mean the experience
of being rejected by the systems of power. You're trying
to change the experience of finding power through of the people,
(25:00):
through technology, through community organizing. What did that experience due
to your understanding of how power works. I think that
we are very naive and we thought that you could
change a system from within. We thought that if we
could get there with the right tools and the right
people and the right hacks, systems could be incrementally rewired
(25:25):
until they worked better. And I guess what we missed was,
at the end of the day, power wants to stay
in power, right, the start of school is never going
to devolve power because they want to remain being the
start of school. So there's all of these like awful
ego game that happens while they're like, Oh, you're so amazing,
(25:45):
you're doing great things. Participate to democracy, come with us,
and there they change a little bit for everything to
remain the same. And I think we hit a wall there.
We were missing how conservative power is, even if they
think progressive, or even if they say they're progressive, because
it's just the system will do anything that the system
(26:05):
can to self perpetuate, and we didn't realize that. So
if you cannot transform the current system, how do you
build an alternative that is appealing enough that you crystallize
it in a way that inspires people. You build bridges
to bring faults over? Right, what tools do you have?
What sund boxes to play around with? New systems can
(26:25):
you build? Because you need to experiment and how do
you live through that? Right? Like, I'm very American. It's
the country I've known the most. That's the country I've
been in my whole life, and many of my ancestors
going back many generations. But I sometimes get attached to
this idea of a democratic experiment. It's a sandbox, you know,
(26:48):
it's everything you just described. Um, So trying things, experimenting
is absolutely ingrained in the DNA of the process, you know,
the democracy more of a process in product anyway. Yeah,
you know, one of the main things when we were
campaigning for the net Party that we got from people
was like, what am I going to decide? This fear
(27:11):
that we have in us that we can't really make
decisions because we don't know, you know, because only those
in power, no or whatever. We've spent such a long history,
thousands of you being told that we couldn't be part
of this decision making process, that we've inherited this notion
that we can't participate, and now we believe it right.
We believe that we're not able to and so we
(27:34):
need to live through decision making. We need to lead
through building new institutions. We need to experience that to learn.
There's there's no teaching how to decide and fail, and
so what some boxes can we build so we are
able to fail in our experimentation with new forms of
political institutions, new forms of democratic arrangements. So a lot
(27:57):
of my time shifted towards thinking alternative systems right and
what alternative systems need. And I kind of focus very
strongly on open collective because it's an alternative path of
having economic power and building around the territory. If you're
a global network of climate activists and you don't know
where you need to incorporate, we got you. It's fine,
(28:20):
don't worry. You don't need the territory, We'll do that
for you. And so open Collective has that kind of
ingrained in it right of like building outside nation states.
I guess one of the things that I learned is like,
if you can't beat them, make them absolute. If you
can't beat them, make them absolute. Yeah, you can't beat
(28:44):
the nation state. You cannot, right, So stop trying. Build
around it until it becomes obsolute, build around it until
it collapses, until decades on something different. It's gonna happen,
it's gonna evolve into something else, or it's going to
decay into something. But the nation states weren't always here
and they're not going to be here always, right. There
a social construct, and so I very tired of being
(29:08):
forced to think of the territory and the nation state
as the vector that organizes power. So a lot of
the work that I do has to do with how
we abstract that layer out. Mm hmm. So so here's
an here's another question for you. The way we practice
(29:28):
technology and the way we practice democracy. What is that
relationship historically and where do you see it going? It's
very interesting. So technology used to be you know, main frames,
a prabatory, and I guess it became open and collaborative
and it doesn't have borders, and the Internet really really
(29:48):
scaled that to a whole new level, and so democracy
is being more in the open, democracy is being more
on a global layer like the Internet is means that
the planet becomes like a new jurisdiction. We all come
together as peers that share the commons. That is a planet,
(30:11):
and it doesn't matter where on Earth you are born,
you have agency over certain decisions that impact all of
us globally. So the main example of that are the
easy one is climate change. Right, Why on earth are
we letting nation states have any say on climate change
when they're really the ones who should decide our citizens
(30:33):
that are coming together as a global network because there
is no such thing as a nation for climate change,
it doesn't matter, right, there are no borders are meaningless,
and we now have that parallel between the Internet creating
this global network and the global democratic institutions that we
(30:56):
can create on top of that. Now, owners ship is
not trivial here, right, as much as we try to
forget about it and denied they are you know, the
cables under water are controlled by someone the Internet infrastructure.
So I think technology still needs to decentralize a heck
(31:17):
of a lot more to be able to be the
truly support system that a global democracy needs. Yeah, earlier
you talked about the fear many of us have when
it comes to exercising our own power. Why should I
get to decide? I don't know enough, I'm not expert enough.
(31:39):
What do you have to say to people who hear
this conversation and are not excited but are terrified. I
think we've accepted this idea that we can't participate because
we've never done it. And I am not saying it's
gonna work well. Every time we're likely to make that decision,
(32:00):
they can't be worse decisitions, and once the governments are
making it's a low low bar. But even then, I
think we should start small. And I think that cities
are very powerful, are really great grounds or sundboxes for
us to learn how to citizen. I truly believe most
(32:22):
people are descent and are good people, right, I honestly
believe that I think the vast majority of humanity are
just good people. We're mostly you know, living in a
system that benefits are elevates. You know, they're not so
good people. But at the end of the day, most
(32:46):
people I think are good and they will do the
decent thing when it comes down to it, and I've
seen it happened over and over and over, and so
I think we need to start building paths to make
real decisions. And participatory budgeting is a really good like
tool that we can use because it's an inexpensive way
(33:07):
to learning how to have agency and see what happens
to you. And if you know, deciding it's not your thing,
will find someone else that I can decide for you
and that you trust enough. But it's your choice. It's
your choice. I love that you know. P You mentioned
participatory budgeting, and I know some people don't know what
(33:29):
that is. Basically this process where community members decide how
to spend part of a public budget, giving them power
over actual money. And I know there's thousands of cities
around the world, including my city in l A that
if used this to decide budgets on all kinds of things,
it's really beautiful. What other types of infrastructure do you
(33:50):
think we need? Your obviously very invested in open collective
around legal financial administratives and a radical administrative what other
pieces of the puzzle and messing. I guess what we're
missing is a space where we can large number of
people like in the millions, right, can come together from
different countries around the world and decide on something. There
(34:13):
was a really cool project that someone was trying to
fund raise for an organized that it was gonna pull
something like a billion dollars and they were going to
try to get I think three hundred million young people
from around the world to vote on a participatory budgeting
process for that billion dollars. And I think that the
(34:34):
money and the participatory budgeting aspect was the least interesting one.
The most interesting one was building a network of three
hundred million young people that have collaborated at scale outside
a nation state. I think networks changed the world. And
once you have that network and it's formed, you have
(34:54):
that global social fabric you can build things with that
that is going to bring about so much change into
the world. So we need to build this global social tissue.
You're you're ridiculous, and I mean that in the most
(35:14):
complimentary way possible. Pia, you have given me so many
more reasons to be optimistic. Thank you for pushing our
thoughts to new places, thinking literally outside of our borders,
threatening some powers that be and uh and being fun
in the process. Really appreciate you. Thank you, thank you,
(35:35):
Thank you for having me and for listening. One thing
I admire so much about Pia is her courage to
just try. Partido de laded didn't win the election, and
(35:56):
that's okay. The goal was just to try. They wanted
to see how far they could go, how far they
could push our perception of what's even possible, and in
that attempt they succeeded. Other folks around the world took
democracy os and they ran with it, mashing it up
for their own democratic experiments, pushing the bar even further.
(36:20):
And they were able to do that because Pia and
her friends took the first step. Even though it may
not always seem like it, there's no lack of beautiful,
imaginative good intention people in this world. Some might want
to help their neighbors, Some might want to challenge the
political establishment with their own trojan horses, literal and metaphorical.
(36:44):
Whatever it is that matters to you, it's worth trying.
Pia is a powerful reminder that we can use tech
to unlock more than money. We can use it to
do all the things we believe. Citizening means to show
up and participate, to invest in relationships. I mean, that's
(37:04):
happening beyond the boundaries of the nation state thanks to
technology to understand power. That's what creating a new economic
model is all about, and all to support the collective
and open collective. It's not too late to make a difference.
We can try from within the current system. But if
(37:25):
that fails, we can build something new. As Pia said,
if you can't beat them, make them obsolete. Next week
we go to Taiwan where a group of civic hackers
succeeded in infiltrating the government and they change the system
entirely from the inside out. We have this digital public
(37:49):
infrastructure that functions the same as the town hall so
that they're not forced to deliberate about important civic topics
in the digital equivalent of Nike ups like Facebook. Next time,
Audrey toime H. Pia got me so fired up. I
(38:21):
hope she did the same for you, because it's time
for some action. Let's start nice and easy with something
you can all do by yourself, no special equipment necessary.
I want you to think about when you feel most
positive or optimistic in your week, what are you doing,
Who are you around, what media are you consuming? Now
(38:43):
work backwards from that, do more of those things that
make you feel good. I promise. I'm not trying to
be a life coach here. I just think the world
needs more optimists for us to reach our collective potential.
And it's hard to citizen when you're only cynical, you're
something else. I want you to try visit open collective
(39:03):
dot com just understand it more. I think of it
as a combination of Patreon meets Kickstarter meets easy to
use accounting software watch ps ted talk is called how
to Upgrade Democracy for the Internet Era and learn more
about her beliefs and journey. Then think about a local
project or informal group, maybe a mutual aid society that
(39:26):
could benefit from Open Collective and tell them about it. Finally,
and then we're getting real warmed up here. I want
you to consider supporting an open source project of your
own while moving away from private mega malls like Facebook.
Now that doesn't mean you have to go start a
software company. It just means start using something like the
(39:49):
Signal app instead of Facebook. That's an open source, encrypted,
nonprofit messaging platform which was initially launched by the Forward Foundation.
And if you use open source to build your produc
up that's making you money, then give back to the
open source community. Just because this open source doesn't mean
it's free. It was paid for by somebody's time. You
(40:09):
know where you can find some great open source projects
to support over at open Collective, dot com, Boom Full Circle.
Speaking of dot com, We've got our own with links
to all these actions and more at how do citizen
dot com? Follow us on Instagram? At how do Citizen
tag us in your post about supporting a collective? Be
(40:29):
a circle in a world dominated by triumphs? How do
Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of I Heart
Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are Me,
barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusaf. Our senior
producer is Tamika Adams, Our producer is Ali Kilts, and
(40:50):
our assistant producer is Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cohne is our editor,
Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Laie as
our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional music
for season three by Andrew Clawson. Original composition for the
Trojan Horse story by Sam Paulson. This episode was produced
and sound designed by Sam Paulson, with additional production help
(41:13):
from Darwin Knicks. Special thanks to Joel Smith from I
Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at dust Light Productions. Okay,
now for the real question for you, which which crypto
should I be getting into
Yeah. Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a
podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
(00:34):
It's October and a group of thirty or so revolutionaries
in Buenos Aires, Argentina are poised to infiltrate a seemingly
impenetrable fortress the government. And as they approached the palace
of the Argentine National Congress, they told with them the
symbol of their movement, a twenty foot tall wooden Trojan horse.
(00:59):
M yeah, a Trojan horse like from Greek mythology. And
if you need a little refresher on that story, it
goes like this. During the Trojan War, the Greek's built
this giant Trojan horse as a gift to the Trojans.
(01:20):
Little did the Trojans know that the Greek warriors were
actually hiding inside the horse. When the coast was clear,
the Greeks emerged and totally sacked the city. Now, these
(01:51):
Argentine citizens they've got the same plan to sneak into
Congress and disturb the political order from the inside. They
are Partio de laded or in English, the net Party,
as in the Internet. There are a new political party
in Argentina tackling one of democracy's biggest problems. Our democracy
(02:14):
has remained the same for the past two hundred years.
We're twenty century citizens interacting with nineteenth central institutions. Today
we can speak for ourselves in almost every aspect of life,
but we can only tell our governments what we want
once every few years, and in between elections we must
(02:35):
remain silent. Partito de laded is running for seats in
Congress and they have a very different platform. They created
an app called democracy Os where citizens could cast their
own votes on legislation. If elected, the Partio de Larded
(02:56):
representative would vote according to how citizens have voted on
the app. The candidates are themselves the trojan horse. If
they get into Congress, they would sneak every voice on
democracy Os into Congress with them. Citizens wouldn't have to
wait for years to speak, they'd have a say on
every piece of legislation. As the party pulls this trojan
(03:22):
horse through the streets. Children run alongside the procession. An
excited crowd gathers when it comes to a stop at
the doors of Congress. The party chance when you can
network awaken who it was very powerful in the crowd
(03:47):
is pa Mancini, one of the leaders of Partito de
lad It's hard to make change happen, but we must
move from protest to construction. Her word that October would
be just the beginning of a lifelong pursuit to empower
citizen voices. Since then, Pia has put her imagination to
(04:08):
work building technologies that help people organize around the causes
that matter to them. And now eight years later, she
isn't just trying to rewire broken systems from the inside,
She's making whole new systems entirely. Pia has developed this
platform called Open Collective, and with it she's putting economic
(04:32):
power in the hands of communities all across the globe.
So how does somebody go from protesting at Congress's doorstep
to building a new economic infrastructure and whatever happened to
Partido de Laded. Pia Mancini tells us her story after
(04:52):
the break. Yeah, hello, so nice to see It's so
(05:15):
nice to see you tube A welcome. Thank you. So
let's start with the basics. Can you introduce yourself and
what you do. I'm PM and Chinni and I'm co
founder and CEO of Open Collective and i am the
(05:35):
mother of almost six year old who studied elementary yesterday.
So it's very exciting. Are you excited about the school?
I am excited. The amount of like relief and exhaustion
in your voice, I believe you are exactly what is
open collective. Open Collective at the core is an open
(05:58):
finances are transparent finances platform that lets you fundraise and
spend money for your community and full transparency and repair
that with a global network of legal entities. That what
they do is they hold the money for those communities
and they deal with reporting and taxes and government so
(06:19):
communities can focus on what they do and not focus
on talking to accountants and lawyers. You say this is
for communities. Who is Open Collective for more practically? Can
you get specific? Yes? So we are mostly working with
two large ecosystems, the open source ecosystem and the solidarity economy.
(06:43):
So we are helping both open source projects across the
world to fundraise like as an open source software projects. Yeah, absolutely,
So open source communities open source software projects are in
general faults around the world who are coming to other
using a platform like gi hub for example, to create software.
(07:05):
Companies and users want to support these open source projects.
They want to give them funding so the maintainers can
keep working on them because you know, otherwise it's volunteer time.
But they don't have word to send the money. So
imagine Google trying to send five thou dollars to a
papal account in Ukraine that will get flagged real quick,
(07:27):
real quick. So it's easier for Google to send funding
to the open Source Collective, which is one of the
non for profits we created. We have a network of
three hundred non for profits around the world and we
give fiscal sponsorship and you know, an umbrella organization to
the open source projects. We currently have three thousand projects,
three thousand open source projects. Yeah and yeah, okay, this
(07:52):
is a good moment for me to just established in
your definition in terms what is open source? Yeah, so
open source essentialist software where you can see how being made,
all the lines that constitute its code, and you can
copy and using whichever way you want. You can grab
(08:13):
a part of it, you can rehash it. It's like
a mash up. This is different from what it's called
proprietary software. That is software that is locked by the developer. Right,
So Microsoft makes proprietary software because they don't want anyone
to compete, to use their technology and compete. So proprietary
software is almost like having a patent on your technology.
(08:36):
And open sources just free, open technology for anyone to use.
Open source enabled the startup revolution. Mm hmm. So you
mentioned open source projects. What's the other type of community
that you're supporting. Yeah, the solidarity economy totally appurely. Look,
it's mutual aid groups, land trusts, giving circles, social move
(09:00):
men's right, covid hit. A lot of people pulled money
together to support each other. They wanted to support their
neighbors by food for those who could make it. All
of those mutually groups groups are coming together to support
each other. Where who's going to receive the money? Are we?
You know, it's a group of neighbors who's gonna put
their own personal bank account. It's kind of weird, rights awkward,
(09:23):
and it's also it might have implications for your tax reporting.
And so we give these communities the open collective platform
plus a five C three kind of as a service. Yeah,
so they can be up and running, receiving money without
tax the actual received for their donors in like a day.
(09:44):
So we are kind of radical administrators, right, we kind
of which usually doesn't go together. Radical and administrative are
very rarely said. I know, I know. We abstract the difficulty,
the awful boring bits of having to raise and manage money,
because we think it's very unfair that if you want
(10:04):
to just pull money together, or if you just want
to try an idea, or if you don't know yet
what you want to be in the world. Maybe you
want to be a club, Maybe do you want to
be a non for profit. Maybe you're just testing an idea.
Why should you pay up front the costs of having
equity or having hierarchical structures that then it's very difficult
(10:25):
to transition out of like why why are we doing this?
And so the kind of metaphor that we use we
say that communities are circles in a world that is
made for triangles. Communities are circles in a world made
for triangles. Yeah, so we kind of need to, you know,
twist a little bit so we can fit into what
the system understands is a legal entity. Here's the question
(10:49):
of why open. What's the open part all about? Everything
is transparent by design, so you know at a glance
who gave money to a community and how that community
spending the money. Philosophically, I don't think that transparency generates
trust per se, because you know, because if everything is transparent,
(11:10):
what's there to trust? Right? You just see it, right,
Like trust kind of gets generated when you accept that
someone is doing something without you having to see that necessarily.
But transparency helps a lot in situations where trust takes
a lot of time to build. Give me an example
of a collective that has benefited from this open transparent funding,
(11:35):
legal administrative support. One of the first collectives that really
showed the quick impact that we could have was called
Meals of Gratitude. Meals of Gratitude Okay, late February or
March last years, so very very early on, they realized
that they needed to feed first responders in the pandemic,
(11:55):
and so they were like scrambling to you know, figure
out how to buy all of these meals for folks
working around the clock in hospitals. And it went from
zero to a gazillion in like three days. Suddenly we
were like pushing I don't know how many thousand meals
a day, and I'm like, I'm so grateful that we're
able to do this. Another one, more recent is we
(12:20):
were able to get to families of open source developers
from Afghanistan out of Afghanistan. So open source is not
something that Taliban understand. You didn't see that coming. I
just open source is not something to Taliban understand. I mean,
(12:40):
that's that's beautiful. Continue so, but I mean it's very
risky for developers working in open source because they're collaborating
with you know, foreign powers or whatever the narrative is. Yeah,
and it could be the CIA exactly. They're just doing
code on something in English. And this is terrifying. And
(13:01):
so we needed to very quickly raise money to get
these two families out and we spent up a collective
and in nothing we had, you know, raise enough money
to get both families off to Pakistan. Wow, it feels
very disruptive. Pierre M Look, I have to say that
it is. It's it's been amazing, especially for me last
(13:25):
year personally, to see all of these different groups just
coming together, and we were able to deploy millions of
dollars two communities across the United States and across the
world because we were like already set up for this,
and the growth last year has been surprising. Our goal
(13:49):
right now is finding ways of moving money from the
center to the fringes. I think it's absolutely unfair that
only corporations, whether for of you no nonprofit, but corporations
are incorporated in a territory toy. You need to be
in a territory, which is insane. They have hierarchical structures
or or vertical triangles. Triangles, only triangles can receive money.
(14:15):
That's unfair. Because the hard work that communities are doing
to improve the state of the world, it's incredible. We
have more and more open source projects that are employing
or contracting their maintainers filter and so we are creating jobs.
This is putting the community as a new economic unit,
(14:37):
the community as a human you know, an economic unit
that is able to hire, to raise money, to spend
to do everything that we give for granted that corporations
can do without having to become something that they're not.
Where did all this come from here? How did you
(14:59):
come up with the idea for open Collective. So it
wasn't my own idea. Probably a collective. There you go,
you get it, you get it. My co founder, Savior,
and both had experience where we went through this particular
pain of needing to put money to do what we
wanted to do and not being able to do it
(15:21):
because of bureaucratic hurdles. We are coming from very different contexts,
like my experience was in politics, his experience was in
the startup movement in Belgium, mine in Argentina. Were like,
if the two of us are going through the same
there must be other people going through this, and so
we started thinking about how to solve this problem and
(15:43):
Open Collective was born in two How did you get
into politics in the first place? Goodness, My family was
always very let's say, argumentative. I can't see that at all.
How did that show work? That at the dinner table?
Was that on the way to school? What does it mean? Oh?
My god? The dinner table? The dinner table and then
(16:06):
arguments in the morning for who got to read the
newspaper first, and one section of the newspaper and then
you know, arguing about what we were reading. And my
dad and I. We were very similar in a lot
of ways, and then we thought politically very differently, so,
you know, and so I grew up in an environment
where politics was very much part of our lives, and
(16:29):
I studied political science because I was interested in power dynamics,
and I was interested, like maybe because of my father.
I hadn't thought about that. Having a second, it's okay,
if you want to lay back on a couch, take
some deeper, we can go there. Breakthrough happening, And and
(16:49):
then there was a bit of of a moment where
something kind of clicked. I was campaign managing for a
friend of mine who then became mayor of this craft
quite loud, large city outside of Monte Sides. And I
don't know, this was maybe twenty ten something like that. July,
which is winter in Argentina and it gets pretty cold,
(17:11):
and so we were visiting a neighborhood talking to folks
and we went into this barn and it was stuck
up to the ceiling with matrices and construction materials and
things like that. And don't, like, great, are we gonna
build things or housing for folks in need here in
the area? What's the plan? How are you doing this?
I was so excited, and he looks at me like
(17:32):
literally like if I was from another planet. He looks
at me, He's like, are you crazy, PI, elections are
next year. This are staying here, And I'm like, wait,
what are we keeping this until elections because that's what
we used to get votes? And then it just clicked
and it wasn't that my friend was corrupted. It was
just that the system is what it is. And I'm like,
(17:56):
what am I doing here trying to get someone elected
to be mayor of a city where this is going
to still happen because the system is not going to change.
It's just gonna eat him up and chew him out
when they're done. And so at the same time, I
run into this absolutely crazy bunch of people doing a
(18:17):
different type of political party called the net Party and
Party lad. So that's how I got more into politics. Yes,
and how was that approach different from everything you just
described as not ideal? So alert was a hack. Essentially,
(18:39):
we wanted to influence the way decisions are made in politics,
and so we created democracys. Hold up, wait a minute,
I'm walking this path with you, and I'm like, okay,
first year that political system. Got it, join a new
political party. Got it. So then we started democracy OS.
(19:03):
What is this democracy operating system? Yeah, so please explain, okay,
got it. So democracy OS is a platform for citizens
to read on legislation that was translated from a political
and legal jargon that no one understands, you know, because
(19:24):
that's that's the hack of the lawyers. You make a
human readable version of legislation. Yes, you got it, and
so um so we did that, and then it was
a platform for citizens to vote how they would like
their representatives to vote. Right, And if they felt they
couldn't vote themselves or something because they didn't have time,
(19:44):
they didn't want, they didn't understand, you know, they knew
someone else who might know better whatever, they could delegate
that vote on this other person. Right. So, if there's
a healthcare piece of legislation, and you know folks that
work in the healthcare system, but they will never access
the lobby power to influence legislation because they are healthcare workers.
(20:06):
But you trust them, you know that you would like
them to vote for you, so you could delegate your
vote on them. And that makes sense. I mean, there
are people who I use right now informally right, you
know a lot more about this, tell me how I
should vote? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there's a technology that
(20:28):
helps citizens weigh in and even delegate their authority on
certain topics based on the expertise and their networks. Yeah,
that's that's that's exactly right. And so we created this
and we were like, it would be great if government,
you know, Congress, use this. And so we were like, hey, Congress,
do you want this? And they're like, no, thank you,
(20:48):
go play outside. Surprise surprise exactly, and the like that's
the door, you know, and we're like, okay, great, So
how on earth do we become valid stakeholders in this
conversation our own ears? Do we get them to pay attention?
And so we're like, okay, let's do what they do.
Let's build a political party. But we run for elections
(21:12):
with this idea that if we got a seat in Congress,
we would only vote according to the decision made on democracys. Ah.
So that was a hack stakes, sir high. I mean,
I've heard of campaign promises, but that's a different level
of commitment. Yeah. For the political establishment in the you know,
(21:36):
Bueno scilence, it was like, wait, what you're gonna do
what And did you end up getting a seat? No,
we missed that seat for not a lot. It was
very close. We pushed the bars so far of what
was perceived as doable. You know, we almost made it.
(21:58):
And we're like a crazy band of folks with software
saying like, we're not gonna about what we think, We're
gonna about what people decided on this platform. And then
it was after the campaign, I think one of the volunteers,
the developers working on the Democracy OS platform centers and links,
thaying like, have you faults seen this? It was democracy
(22:21):
is translated to French used in Arabic to discuss the
constitution in Tunisia, and we had no idea what was
going on. The developers, they're looked for online voting, they
run into democracy s. They did their own copy of
(22:42):
Democracy o S and they were using it themselves to
discuss the Tunisian constitution. That for me was like mind blowing.
It felt like there was a emergent need because if
something was being used at the same time in monoside
is in Tunisia for the same purposes, the world needed
(23:03):
this and the world was ready to use this, and
I became kind of focused on using democracy or as
in different contexts, or we use it for in Mexico
and the City of Mexico, for the constitution in the
center of Mexico, for like a piece of legislation in
Sri Lanka with the candidate in Colombia for the referendum.
The tools that we're putting out there were being picked
(23:25):
up by the same type of groups in different languages,
different purposes, different places. At one point, democracy was translated
into thirty different languages, and we didn't do them. And
so I think that that's what really bulls me from
open source and technologies. This ability of creating tools that
you don't control and that you just released into the
(23:49):
world and people use for me is it's beautiful. Yeah,
we'll be right back. Where in your path did technology
(24:13):
become a tool you would use for all of the
system's power political thinking, Well, we felt that technology was
the missing piece and how citizens could have agency. We
felt that technology was what made evident that the system
was unbelievably closed. Because it's not that they didn't have
(24:36):
the tools to open up, they just didn't want to
do it. They chose to hold on to the status
School up because they want to stay in power. Mm hmm.
What did this experience do broadly, I mean the experience
of being rejected by the systems of power. You're trying
to change the experience of finding power through of the people,
(25:00):
through technology, through community organizing. What did that experience due
to your understanding of how power works. I think that
we are very naive and we thought that you could
change a system from within. We thought that if we
could get there with the right tools and the right
people and the right hacks, systems could be incrementally rewired
(25:25):
until they worked better. And I guess what we missed was,
at the end of the day, power wants to stay
in power, right, the start of school is never going
to devolve power because they want to remain being the
start of school. So there's all of these like awful
ego game that happens while they're like, Oh, you're so amazing,
(25:45):
you're doing great things. Participate to democracy, come with us,
and there they change a little bit for everything to
remain the same. And I think we hit a wall there.
We were missing how conservative power is, even if they
think progressive, or even if they say they're progressive, because
it's just the system will do anything that the system
(26:05):
can to self perpetuate, and we didn't realize that. So
if you cannot transform the current system, how do you
build an alternative that is appealing enough that you crystallize
it in a way that inspires people. You build bridges
to bring faults over? Right, what tools do you have?
What sund boxes to play around with? New systems can
(26:25):
you build? Because you need to experiment and how do
you live through that? Right? Like, I'm very American. It's
the country I've known the most. That's the country I've
been in my whole life, and many of my ancestors
going back many generations. But I sometimes get attached to
this idea of a democratic experiment. It's a sandbox, you know,
(26:48):
it's everything you just described. Um, So trying things, experimenting
is absolutely ingrained in the DNA of the process, you know,
the democracy more of a process in product anyway. Yeah,
you know, one of the main things when we were
campaigning for the net Party that we got from people
was like, what am I going to decide? This fear
(27:11):
that we have in us that we can't really make
decisions because we don't know, you know, because only those
in power, no or whatever. We've spent such a long history,
thousands of you being told that we couldn't be part
of this decision making process, that we've inherited this notion
that we can't participate, and now we believe it right.
We believe that we're not able to and so we
(27:34):
need to live through decision making. We need to lead
through building new institutions. We need to experience that to learn.
There's there's no teaching how to decide and fail, and
so what some boxes can we build so we are
able to fail in our experimentation with new forms of
political institutions, new forms of democratic arrangements. So a lot
(27:57):
of my time shifted towards thinking alternative systems right and
what alternative systems need. And I kind of focus very
strongly on open collective because it's an alternative path of
having economic power and building around the territory. If you're
a global network of climate activists and you don't know
where you need to incorporate, we got you. It's fine,
(28:20):
don't worry. You don't need the territory, We'll do that
for you. And so open Collective has that kind of
ingrained in it right of like building outside nation states.
I guess one of the things that I learned is like,
if you can't beat them, make them absolute. If you
can't beat them, make them absolute. Yeah, you can't beat
(28:44):
the nation state. You cannot, right, So stop trying. Build
around it until it becomes obsolute, build around it until
it collapses, until decades on something different. It's gonna happen,
it's gonna evolve into something else, or it's going to
decay into something. But the nation states weren't always here
and they're not going to be here always, right. There
a social construct, and so I very tired of being
(29:08):
forced to think of the territory and the nation state
as the vector that organizes power. So a lot of
the work that I do has to do with how
we abstract that layer out. Mm hmm. So so here's
an here's another question for you. The way we practice
(29:28):
technology and the way we practice democracy. What is that
relationship historically and where do you see it going? It's
very interesting. So technology used to be you know, main frames,
a prabatory, and I guess it became open and collaborative
and it doesn't have borders, and the Internet really really
(29:48):
scaled that to a whole new level, and so democracy
is being more in the open, democracy is being more
on a global layer like the Internet is means that
the planet becomes like a new jurisdiction. We all come
together as peers that share the commons. That is a planet,
(30:11):
and it doesn't matter where on Earth you are born,
you have agency over certain decisions that impact all of
us globally. So the main example of that are the
easy one is climate change. Right, Why on earth are
we letting nation states have any say on climate change
when they're really the ones who should decide our citizens
(30:33):
that are coming together as a global network because there
is no such thing as a nation for climate change,
it doesn't matter, right, there are no borders are meaningless,
and we now have that parallel between the Internet creating
this global network and the global democratic institutions that we
(30:56):
can create on top of that. Now, owners ship is
not trivial here, right, as much as we try to
forget about it and denied they are you know, the
cables under water are controlled by someone the Internet infrastructure.
So I think technology still needs to decentralize a heck
(31:17):
of a lot more to be able to be the
truly support system that a global democracy needs. Yeah, earlier
you talked about the fear many of us have when
it comes to exercising our own power. Why should I
get to decide? I don't know enough, I'm not expert enough.
(31:39):
What do you have to say to people who hear
this conversation and are not excited but are terrified. I
think we've accepted this idea that we can't participate because
we've never done it. And I am not saying it's
gonna work well. Every time we're likely to make that decision,
(32:00):
they can't be worse decisitions, and once the governments are
making it's a low low bar. But even then, I
think we should start small. And I think that cities
are very powerful, are really great grounds or sundboxes for
us to learn how to citizen. I truly believe most
(32:22):
people are descent and are good people, right, I honestly
believe that I think the vast majority of humanity are
just good people. We're mostly you know, living in a
system that benefits are elevates. You know, they're not so
good people. But at the end of the day, most
(32:46):
people I think are good and they will do the
decent thing when it comes down to it, and I've
seen it happened over and over and over, and so
I think we need to start building paths to make
real decisions. And participatory budgeting is a really good like
tool that we can use because it's an inexpensive way
(33:07):
to learning how to have agency and see what happens
to you. And if you know, deciding it's not your thing,
will find someone else that I can decide for you
and that you trust enough. But it's your choice. It's
your choice. I love that you know. P You mentioned
participatory budgeting, and I know some people don't know what
(33:29):
that is. Basically this process where community members decide how
to spend part of a public budget, giving them power
over actual money. And I know there's thousands of cities
around the world, including my city in l A that
if used this to decide budgets on all kinds of things,
it's really beautiful. What other types of infrastructure do you
(33:50):
think we need? Your obviously very invested in open collective
around legal financial administratives and a radical administrative what other
pieces of the puzzle and messing. I guess what we're
missing is a space where we can large number of
people like in the millions, right, can come together from
different countries around the world and decide on something. There
(34:13):
was a really cool project that someone was trying to
fund raise for an organized that it was gonna pull
something like a billion dollars and they were going to
try to get I think three hundred million young people
from around the world to vote on a participatory budgeting
process for that billion dollars. And I think that the
(34:34):
money and the participatory budgeting aspect was the least interesting one.
The most interesting one was building a network of three
hundred million young people that have collaborated at scale outside
a nation state. I think networks changed the world. And
once you have that network and it's formed, you have
(34:54):
that global social fabric you can build things with that
that is going to bring about so much change into
the world. So we need to build this global social tissue.
You're you're ridiculous, and I mean that in the most
(35:14):
complimentary way possible. Pia, you have given me so many
more reasons to be optimistic. Thank you for pushing our
thoughts to new places, thinking literally outside of our borders,
threatening some powers that be and uh and being fun
in the process. Really appreciate you. Thank you, thank you,
(35:35):
Thank you for having me and for listening. One thing
I admire so much about Pia is her courage to
just try. Partido de laded didn't win the election, and
(35:56):
that's okay. The goal was just to try. They wanted
to see how far they could go, how far they
could push our perception of what's even possible, and in
that attempt they succeeded. Other folks around the world took
democracy os and they ran with it, mashing it up
for their own democratic experiments, pushing the bar even further.
(36:20):
And they were able to do that because Pia and
her friends took the first step. Even though it may
not always seem like it, there's no lack of beautiful,
imaginative good intention people in this world. Some might want
to help their neighbors, Some might want to challenge the
political establishment with their own trojan horses, literal and metaphorical.
(36:44):
Whatever it is that matters to you, it's worth trying.
Pia is a powerful reminder that we can use tech
to unlock more than money. We can use it to
do all the things we believe. Citizening means to show
up and participate, to invest in relationships. I mean, that's
(37:04):
happening beyond the boundaries of the nation state thanks to
technology to understand power. That's what creating a new economic
model is all about, and all to support the collective
and open collective. It's not too late to make a difference.
We can try from within the current system. But if
(37:25):
that fails, we can build something new. As Pia said,
if you can't beat them, make them obsolete. Next week
we go to Taiwan where a group of civic hackers
succeeded in infiltrating the government and they change the system
entirely from the inside out. We have this digital public
(37:49):
infrastructure that functions the same as the town hall so
that they're not forced to deliberate about important civic topics
in the digital equivalent of Nike ups like Facebook. Next time,
Audrey toime H. Pia got me so fired up. I
(38:21):
hope she did the same for you, because it's time
for some action. Let's start nice and easy with something
you can all do by yourself, no special equipment necessary.
I want you to think about when you feel most
positive or optimistic in your week, what are you doing,
Who are you around, what media are you consuming? Now
(38:43):
work backwards from that, do more of those things that
make you feel good. I promise. I'm not trying to
be a life coach here. I just think the world
needs more optimists for us to reach our collective potential.
And it's hard to citizen when you're only cynical, you're
something else. I want you to try visit open collective
(39:03):
dot com just understand it more. I think of it
as a combination of Patreon meets Kickstarter meets easy to
use accounting software watch ps ted talk is called how
to Upgrade Democracy for the Internet Era and learn more
about her beliefs and journey. Then think about a local
project or informal group, maybe a mutual aid society that
(39:26):
could benefit from Open Collective and tell them about it. Finally,
and then we're getting real warmed up here. I want
you to consider supporting an open source project of your
own while moving away from private mega malls like Facebook.
Now that doesn't mean you have to go start a
software company. It just means start using something like the
(39:49):
Signal app instead of Facebook. That's an open source, encrypted,
nonprofit messaging platform which was initially launched by the Forward Foundation.
And if you use open source to build your produc
up that's making you money, then give back to the
open source community. Just because this open source doesn't mean
it's free. It was paid for by somebody's time. You
(40:09):
know where you can find some great open source projects
to support over at open Collective, dot com, Boom Full Circle.
Speaking of dot com, We've got our own with links
to all these actions and more at how do citizen
dot com? Follow us on Instagram? At how do Citizen
tag us in your post about supporting a collective? Be
(40:29):
a circle in a world dominated by triumphs? How do
Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of I Heart
Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are Me,
barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusaf. Our senior
producer is Tamika Adams, Our producer is Ali Kilts, and
(40:50):
our assistant producer is Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cohne is our editor,
Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Laie as
our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional music
for season three by Andrew Clawson. Original composition for the
Trojan Horse story by Sam Paulson. This episode was produced
and sound designed by Sam Paulson, with additional production help
(41:13):
from Darwin Knicks. Special thanks to Joel Smith from I
Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at dust Light Productions. Okay,
now for the real question for you, which which crypto
should I be getting into
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