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If US politics is rigged, can we build a new civic internet?
81 Plays3 days ago
What if the problem with American democracy isn't that the system is broken, but that it's working exactly as intended, just not for you?
Travis Misurell, founder of FiNC (Future is Now Coalition), has spent years watching civic tech efforts try to fix democracy by building better tools. Every one of them failed. His argument: they got the sequence wrong. You don't build the technology and hope a movement follows. You build the movement first and let the technology follow.
In this episode, Travis walks us through the FiNC framework — the Digital Politics Hub, the Up/Down lens, the citizen survey, and the long-term vision of a citizen-owned civic internet where no billionaire, party, or corporation can ever take control. One share per person. No exceptions.
But we also push on the harder questions. If the system is rigged by design, what does building inside it actually accomplish? When AI aggregates open-ended citizen responses into actionable insights for candidates, what gets lost in that translation? When you surface every candidate with equal presentation, are you being neutral or are you making a choice about what equivalence means?
Travis comes back to the same place: intention. Not left or right. Not the policy. The intention. Whether a candidate is in it for you, or in it for the people writing the biggest checks.
FiNC is betting that if citizens can actually see that distinction clearly enough, the rest follows.
It's an ambitious bet. This is the conversation around it.
Learn more about the Future is Now Coalition:
Mentioned:
• • OpenAI donating to stop Alex Bores’s campaign for NY congressional seat
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:08
Speaker
Yo, yo, yo, this is Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, the tech podcast about humans. I am George Kay, and a little peek behind the curtain, we record the intros after we do the interview.
Guest Introduction: Travis Mizrel
00:00:20
Speaker
But George A. can't be here, he's out of town, but he did join us for the interview. So, what do we have today? Today, we have Travis Mizrel, who is...
Think's Mission: Eliminating the Middleman in Democracy
00:00:30
Speaker
the founder and leader of Think, the future is now coalition. And Travis is trying to do something that more than 15 civic tech efforts behind him have failed to pull off, which is cut the middleman out of American democracy.
00:00:46
Speaker
It's not about the left or the right. It's the middleman, the money, the gatekeepers and the media manipulation, particularly with algorithms that decide who you get to hear about before you vote.
00:00:59
Speaker
Their premise, their hypothesis, there are candidates out there who genuinely want to represent you. So why have you never heard of them? That's the question they're trying to answer. Everyone from the county school board all the way up to the federal government.
Building a Movement Before Technology
00:01:16
Speaker
What makes Fink different, Travis argues, isn't the technology. It's the sequence. Build a movement first, then build the tech that follows. We get into some really nitty-gritty details, and as you know, with Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, we pressure test the idea pretty hard.
00:01:32
Speaker
So this is the conversation about what it takes to rebuild a civic internet from the ground up.
00:01:43
Speaker
Travis Mizerell, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Addressing Political Degradation
00:01:48
Speaker
All right. So you are here as the founder of the Future Is Now Coalition. This is a very different guest for us in terms of using technology to address, what shall we say, political degradation. So um you have said that you have watched A lot of different civic tech efforts try to fix ah the problems with American democracy as it is today. You've seen those fail.
00:02:17
Speaker
What was it in those failures that made you think that the problem is not necessarily just a technological one?
Movement vs. Technology: Finding Purpose
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, so in in my research, they ah they had some great features. A lot of them are are ahead of what we where we are at at this moment technologically. But the problem is that they're they're trying to show themselves as a tech company,
00:02:41
Speaker
um that's like trying to make it easier to vote. And so there's not a deeper purpose around it of like, we're we're both kind of a hybrid of a movement and tech. um Like in no way we'd even call ourselves a tech company. we are ah We're a movement first, we're people first.
00:03:00
Speaker
Like, yes, we're building technology, but it's the same way as like, you know, if you're using an app to order groceries, you don't you don't consider your grocery store a tech company. they There's still a grocery store, even though they have an app. You know, nowadays, everyone has apps, everyone has websites.
00:03:15
Speaker
um So it's really about the purpose behind it. And like our purpose is to bring accountability and transparency into government and um and build a system. Yes, it'll be easier to vote, easier to choose your, make your choices. um But the core of it is actually building more representation and accountability.
00:03:35
Speaker
Okay. um So I wanted to jump right into it, but let's give you a moment here. If you could give us the two minute elevator pitch to our listeners.
00:03:45
Speaker
What is it that you are doing that is both movement and
Creating a Citizen-Owned Civic Internet
00:03:49
Speaker
technology? And then we will also dig into those ideas. Yeah, sure. So, ah so think futures now coalition. um If you look around you, the the economy is brutal. People are exhausted, broke, angrier at each other than ever. You know, it feels like everything is coming apart.
00:04:05
Speaker
And and what what what no one's saying out loud is that it's not a coincidence. It's it's what happens when money, power and influence pile up in fewer and fewer hands.
00:04:15
Speaker
um In politics, we're giving that pile up a name and we call it the middleman. um So there's big money, party gatekeepers, and the media manipulation. And really they decide whoever gets to be heard ah long before we we ever vote. They choose like how elect how much visibility a candidate gets, how electable the a candidate appears to be, and ultimately help like they they form our decision on who we're gonna vote for.
00:04:43
Speaker
um So we're building ah a system around them to skip, to to bypass the middleman, cut out the middleman. You know, think of it it um as like a civic internet, a space owned by citizens, not not advertisers.
00:04:56
Speaker
um No algorithms rigging your feed to to keep you outraged. No small groups controlling the story. Just a place where you don't need millions of dollars to be seen. And, you know, we already have an internet for everything else. So we need to build one that's like truly fair level playing field for democracy. And so that that's where we're at.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
Why the Political System Needs Change
00:05:16
Speaker
Well, Travis, I'm really pleased to meet you man. ah What you're doing is absolutely amazing. I think it's something that we have needed to do for our communities for a very long time, especially given like what's happening with data centers, what's happening with protecting our environment, protecting our children, just protecting our way of life. So I'd love to see kind of how you're leading way with that.
00:05:38
Speaker
so you know, I think we're kind of aligned. You describe the system as rigged, not broken. And I would agree with that. i mean, that's a meaningful distinction, right? Because because broken implies that it needs fixing.
00:05:49
Speaker
Rigged implies someone benefits from it staying exactly as it is. And I think anyone who has looked at the news objectively in the last, don't know, decade plus would most certainly agree with you.
00:06:05
Speaker
So who are we actually talking about when you say rigged and and be real with it? Yeah, so it's really, it's the special interest, the lobbyists, it's it's those funding the candidates right now. um Most of the money that funds their campaigns are big donors. um And so that's a big part. and And again, it goes back to what we call the middleman. So that's that's the big money side is like the special interest, big money going in, um,
00:06:33
Speaker
They, I mean, the candidates now, they don't, they don't go for your $5, my $10, your $8. They go for like thousands at a time, sometimes hit million. um And so that's the biggest one. um And then the other one is the media itself. um You know, right now it's ah just a handful of companies own all the media that we watch on TV and,
00:06:54
Speaker
and So the ah the media has also this control. So just it's it's really this concentration. Those with the most money and the most influence choose how much money candidates get, how much visibility they get with the media, and then they already own those that are already in power. So then those trying to come into power have this huge battle that everyone basically has some kind of conflict of interest. um And we wanna be clear, it's both Democrats and Republicans. It's not it's not a partisan thing. the The special interests have money in in everyone's pockets.
00:07:28
Speaker
And sometimes in both at the same time. Yeah, yes, yeah, literally, yeah. um and And so like one one of my main examples is with healthcare, It wouldn't matter if the majority is Democrat or Republican, as long as both sides are getting millions of dollars from private health insurance and big pharma.
00:07:46
Speaker
They're not going to fix the health care the way we need it, because they're the like health care is the number one industry that gives the most money in from ah from lobbying to candidates. And like they're doing that because they know if we actually fix health care, it's going to cut into their profits. And so they they'll spend millions of dollars every year and they know they'll get a return on that investment by us not reforming health care.
00:08:09
Speaker
So that's that's the bottom line is like, you know, it it almost doesn't matter if you're voting left or right. It matters like don't vote for somebody that has a conflict of interest in the industry that you care about.
00:08:20
Speaker
Yes. Okay. Yes. I take your point there. I mean, I think we have a number of examples um where candidates who get a lot of small money donations, the $5, the $10 get crowded out by, you know, they may be polling very well. And then somehow at the last second,
00:08:39
Speaker
huge PAC money flows into the the rival. um Or we even see currently, you know, Alex Boras, the candidate for in New York, who's speaking out about AI and pretty much open ai has declared like open season on him in terms of the amount of spending against him, which just seems like...
00:08:58
Speaker
That's not a fair fight. um So we've diagnosed the problem, which I think is self-evident, but I think you put it into ah a good metaphor here as the middleman. Walk us through what Fink looks like from the citizen side, right? Say I land on the digital politics hub for the first time. What happens and what would i walk away with?
Vision of a Transparent Political Hub
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So right now it's it's ah it's still in development. It's still in more more of its infancy at this stage. ah However, the the vision ah that would be a few months down the line is that you you log on, ah you put your zip code in, you'll see all the candidates side by side, everyone Democrat, ah Green Party, like all the third parties, independent, Republican. Everyone's side by side. um And then ah you you see their, ah like what not not only like what are their policies are, but then do they deliver on their promise promises? And um it'll take a little while to build an algorithm for that because there's a lot of complexities to promise. But um like having ah an actual like democracy score based on like how often do they actually fulfill their promises once they're elected?
00:10:09
Speaker
um We're also going to aggregate um the the money data of like who's funding their campaign, what money is that industry coming coming from. um so again, going back to the transparency angle and accountability, we wanted to basically like a citizen could just log in see who's even running in their in their district.
00:10:30
Speaker
Um, but then they could just very cleanly see what are their conflicts of interest? How consistent are they? Like the bottom line is like, are they there to serve you the citizen or are they there to serve the big interest, the special interests and big money? And like, we want to make that as simple as possible, user friendly as possible for the average citizen. um You'll be able to dig in deeper and deeper if you want, but we want it to be very simple. Like this is their democracy score. These are the policies you care about, but these are the money. This is the money they take. That might be a conflict of interest between the two. um
00:11:03
Speaker
so really streamlining um the the transparency, like having everyone's skeletons, and the the skeletons in their closet are open for everyone to see basically. um And I think it sounds like it's also trying to elide the left-right distinction.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like we go very much into that the that we all need to see the system as up versus down. um If people still need to see left and right, that's fine. We're not here to adjust that.
00:11:30
Speaker
But the bigger issue up versus down. Upserving candidates are the ones that serve big donors, people above them in power and money. um And then down serving are like the grassroots candidates. And so we want that to be a clear distinction, even if you're going to still vote only vote left, only vote right, but like still see it up and down, it'll make a ah world of difference, like completely change everything if if people could see it that way.
00:11:54
Speaker
The up-down lens is central to how you want people to reframe politics. Stop asking left or right. Start asking whether a leader serves power or serves people.
00:12:06
Speaker
But serving people is
Ensuring Genuine Representation
00:12:08
Speaker
exactly what every politician claims to do. For example, both a socialist and a libertarian can claim to do that. You know, and and you know for me, like this resonates with me because I've always thought it's not an issue between left and right, black or white or brown or whatever it is. It's it's an issue between rich and poor.
00:12:24
Speaker
As long as we're fighting each other, the game stays rigged. So how does that lens help someone make that distinction in practice on a specific candidate that they're looking at in their you know local elections?
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so we we use that exact distinction all the time. So like progressive socialists on one side, libertarian on the other side, those are kind of like the the cleaner sides of of the spectrum. um Like our biggest thing is like, number one should be the intention of the candidate. So like, we're not, we're not here to say, oh, socialism is going to be the answer or libertarianism is going to be the answer. Like, cause we don't know. and no No one knows exactly how this should play out. And we're not here to force citizens in a direction. um But we're here to show that like, it's about the intention. If somebody is intending to do right by their people, they want the, they want the most people be the happiest and the healthiest at the most efficient way possible.
00:13:21
Speaker
um That's what we care about the most. And um you know Maybe socialism wouldn't work, but it's better to have somebody that intends to do right by you rather than giving you lip service, promising you the world, but all they're gonna do is serve their big donors and then they don't give any they don't care about you at all. um So that's the distinction that we wanna push into the world. From there, we want the world we want the best man to so to to play out and like if citizens have all their choices and they're not being manipulated into a false choice, um
00:13:54
Speaker
you know let it let it play out. you know Maybe there'll be some states that go more libertarian, some go more progressive socialists, and you know we see what works, what doesn't, and we we learn and evolve from there. you know It's not gonna be perfect overnight, but like another thing I'll say is like even if it's like half the half Congress is is socialist, half Congress is libertarian, they would still find plenty of stuff to put together. They would put like, you know, legislation, money and politics, rank choice voting. They would they do a lot of campaign finance reforms. So like it's it's that intention, even if you're even if you don't have the votes in Congress, but everyone has the intention to make the world a better place, it would get better. it wouldn't just keep getting worse the way it has been for the last decade or more.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I think maybe the way you're explaining it is the tech helps surface that intention in a ah scoring mechanism rather than like yeah ah vibes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You need receipts to show like how, how legitimate is someone.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah. And so on the on the candidate side, um it's my understanding that you also have a citizen survey, right? It's open-ended questions that allow citizens to
AI's Role in Synthesizing Citizen Concerns
00:15:02
Speaker
voice their concerns.
00:15:04
Speaker
I think it's important that it's open-ended versus multiple choice, right? if Multiple choice is easy to score, but it can kind of like... dilute the nuance of ah people's concerns. like They just got to like pick of four choices.
00:15:18
Speaker
um And then it's my understanding that you run a lot of those responses through AI to help synthesize insights. I think LLMs are a very good analyzer of of content. I mean, that's what the attention mechanism and the transformer architecture is supposed to do.
00:15:32
Speaker
um But as as a podcast that says we are a tech podcast about humans we do want to center the human and so can you speak a little bit more about what the AI is like doing with those answers and and what may or may not get lost in trying to you know run a bunch of answers through a large language model.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, so you already touched on some of the open-endedness is the the idea is that some people might have concerns that are just very local, some could be national, but yeah, just keeping it completely open-ended, which direction is a citizen gonna go?
00:16:10
Speaker
um And yeah, the the the pure, you know I know we have to be careful with AI, it's very controversial right now, people don't all trust it. um So keeping that always gonna be very transparent.
00:16:21
Speaker
um But really the the the pure, point of the AI is just to aggregate the concerns, you know, so like if like 10 million people let let out their concern right now, humans don't have the ability to process all that information to say, okay, this is how many people want X, Y, z Um, but AI can, um so we want it to be like, you know, people could say like pretty significantly different things. And then we want AI to say, okay, so at its, you know, 10 million responses, like 5,000,
00:16:53
Speaker
met mentioned something about farming and 10,000 are concerned about the money in politics and 40% it was local, 20% was state. you know So it'll be able to break down open-ended questions into analytical data that can be pooled together.
00:17:10
Speaker
um so that's really the point of the AI. We don't want it to do too much of it. We don't want to do any of its own like thinking and like ideas. It's really just to aggregate like the consensus and see like where do most people, like how many people have a certain concern out of these answers. um So that's ah that's what we're working with. and um And we'll keep evolving the AI as AI itself evolves just to make it as as accurate as as possible. um you know It's it's you know certainly not perfect yet, but um it's still this way of doing it, like you said, instead of having a multiple choice is still so much significantly better than just just doing A, B, C, D. yeah um
00:17:52
Speaker
So yeah, so that's that's the goal.
Citizen Ownership and Avoiding Corruption
00:18:12
Speaker
The long-term vision is citizen ownership. And I love that. I love that so much. One share per person, no exceptions. Your share is not more valuable than mine. That's a compelling restraint on paper. And I think a lot of people have talked about it for a long time. and They've attempted it at certain points in history that, you know, have gone the way of of being compromised externally, generally speaking, or by the corruption of humanity's own being.
00:18:38
Speaker
So I do think, like I said, like ownership without governance is just a promise. And that's the promise we've had to deal with in the entirety of the system. What's the actual mechanism that keeps Fink from becoming the new middleman, from becoming the new corruptor?
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, good question. um So first of all, there's going to be, once once we're at a certain stage, we're going to break off into two entities. The technology is going to be the citizen owned and what we're going to call digital democracy at that time. um And so like you said, everyone gets one share and you can't sell your share. It's either you never opt in, you get no shares or you opt in, you get one.
00:19:18
Speaker
um So that's gonna be locked tight where like there's no way like ah a billionaire, a billionaire comes in and like buys all these shares, like we have to legally cut that out.
00:19:30
Speaker
um So the technology itself is actually gonna separate from us as Fink and the the people are basically gonna run it. it's It's kind of like the share gives you like a voting right to choose who's running that technology. but So so they would basically choose like ah a president of digital democracy and like, ah you know, basically like a C-suite kind of a system of, you know, who's running the technology, who's keeping them accountable, who's making it more like keep evolving it to be more and more representative of the people. Uh, what Fink is doing on our side, we're, we consider ourselves the referee. Uh, so we're here not to sway anyone left or right. We want to, we want to like help promote this new system, this new way of doing politics. Um,
00:20:19
Speaker
But like, we're going to, once we get to that point, we won't really even be part of the technology and we wouldn't even have ah ah so an ownership stake, like other than us having one citizen share like everyone else. So it's kind of like we're almost in building a prototype and then handing it to America to own. And then once it's stable enough, like just completely let go of it, let it keep evolving through through the this the citizen system And and then us as a referee, we're just on the outside kind of influencing, like getting people to getting more people involved, getting more like our goals at like the the the perfect world would be that 100 percent of citizens use digital democracy to see all their choices and and make their their their civic decisions.
00:21:04
Speaker
um And so, ah yeah, so that' that's us as as the referee. um And so we' we can't be the middleman. The technology is the middleman. And that's the key. Or I should say that the the the technology replaces the middleman. Fink is never the right the middleman. We're just a referee promoting this new technology and promoting the replacement of the middleman.
00:21:28
Speaker
Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Let me change tack here um and get a little bit more operational, right? So as I understand it, Fink surfaces candidates side by side with equal presentation, right?
Challenges of Candidate Presentation
00:21:40
Speaker
And that's part of that implicit claim that ah all these candidates are legitimate options worth equal consideration, right? We've removed the algorithmic media, we've removed the gatekeeping and we have removed ah the influence of money, dark or otherwise. Right. I think I feel like Citizens United just made all the money, all the money. But um so how do you think through kind of where the edges of that principle are? Because I think
00:22:08
Speaker
In the main, it sounds good, but for an example, should an election denier or conspiracy theorist sort of be positioned equally with a voting rights advocate? Is there a potential for false equivalency?
00:22:23
Speaker
Um... Yeah, I mean, some a lot of that is like when when we get into a bigger stage, there's gonna be a lot of focus groups and asking citizens some some of the edge cases. But um we do need to lean more towards freedom of speech because it's like soon as soon as somebody's policing who has visibility, then then you have a new middleman. Yeah.
00:22:43
Speaker
What we're kind of leaning towards is like, so for example, if a candidate is like spouting outright false facts, um we might allow them to say it, but there might be like a banner warning that like, like you know these questions these you know, these facts might be questionable and like, you know, have kind of warning, maybe even have a reference that people can like fact check. um So we're kind of leaning in that direction. ah Like definitely if somebody's like, you know, in spite of violence and and like the those kinds of extremes, that then then they're cut out. um
00:23:16
Speaker
But ah I mean, it's really about, you know, if if somebody's not, shouldn't be gaining the visibility, it's just, you know, just make sure it's super transparent and the and then the negative stuff about that candidate should be just front and center along with everything else.
00:23:30
Speaker
yeah I mean, I would say like this has kind of been the ah I ask that more as a devil's advocate. I mean, the simple truth is that in the American system, I mean, hell, in any Western democracy, you can ah like crazy people can show up all the time and have for centuries. Right. You can always have the the nutball.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, and um and also, like, you know, we we also don't want it to have, we don't want citizens have choice paralysis either. So, ah like, you know, early on in the election cycle, you'll, you know, maybe maybe there's like 30 or even 50 candidates running now that there's more opportunity to run. ah But we want a process where it starts it starts cutting down. It's just that the middleman is not choosing it to cut down. It's really the citizens, you know, who's gaining traction early on, who's not. And, like,
00:24:25
Speaker
just build it in a way that it's not the, it's the citizens deciding who doesn't stand a chance, who should kind of fade into the background, you know, with healthy algorithms and, and, um and just polling and and different. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would, it's safe to make the argument also that sometimes the big money I think gives undue level of quote unquote legitimacy to nutball candidates, right? They, they get sort of pushed forward because either they want to force a primary or they want to do something like both the DNC and the RNC have been guilty of funding extreme opposition candidates just to like tilt the primary. Right. Which is like not at all what was envisioned by the founders of this country.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You're targeting a nationwide presence by November 2026.
Nationwide Presence by 2026
00:25:23
Speaker
So, I mean, you're going after the midterms, you're going after the now. We're recording this in June.
00:25:28
Speaker
That's a short runway. What does real traction actually look like for you between now and then? and you know, what would tell you if it's not working? ah It's really getting to the point it's it's right right now it's a big awareness stage. So it's just getting to the point where people really understand what we're doing in bite sized pieces, getting excited about it. And ah it's really, it's really about social media going viral. um we're we're We're heavily engaged on social media, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.
00:25:59
Speaker
um And so to us, a big success is just generally gaining social media traction and then funneling people to the hub. um Right now we're just asking people to add their name on the hub, answer the couple questions if they're willing. um It's really proving demand for what we're doing. um And then from the demand, it both, ah that that in itself gives us credibility. It gives us more media attention.
00:26:24
Speaker
ah where We want to build a network of independent media and independent journalists to kind of replace that middleman with with like a decentralized form of of of media. Yeah.
00:26:36
Speaker
So it's really gaining um citizen traction. And then from there, we believe that like even even getting into like, you know, cracking into the hundreds of thousands of views and such, um just certain there's certain key players out there. It could be everything from from like the libertarian and progressive sides, like a Bernie or AOC, it could be like a Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:26:58
Speaker
um even on podcasting could be like a Joe Rogan. um There's so many people that, ah you know, they already have millions of followers and if they get on board with what we're doing, it'll it'll just bring so much more awareness. And that's what we call a breakout moment is like, yeah It gets viral enough, then there's certain key players kind of exponentially grow it. And then everything everything kind of just snowballs from there. um So we really just believe that there's like, there'll be an exponential growth. Cause you know, like like I said in the beginning, people are in pain. People are, everyone's saying like, there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be a better way. And we're pretty much here to say like, we have a better way. we We don't have all the answers, but we have a better way to surface the answers in this world, you know, by cutting out the middleman.
00:27:44
Speaker
Truth. I think... movements are organic, right? They take a lot of time. You can have those breakout movements. But one thing that internet organizing has taught us since the Arab Spring is that while it is easy to come together very quickly, i think the harder part is to sustain over time. I think a lot of analysis of the Arab Spring and where it kind of fell apart was, if you compare that to say the civil rights movement, it took a lot of time to build support with boots on the ground.
00:28:19
Speaker
ah Even like even organizing local labor unions, right? it It's you have to do a lot of human interaction to build the trust over time so that when a inciting incident or a big event occurs, I don't know, Selma, ah what have you, that.
00:28:39
Speaker
you have the energy to keep it going. Whereas when in 2012, when we saw the Arab Spring, it's it's really easy to flash mob sentiment through. But then if you don't have like the organizing principles and the infrastructure, it kind of falls apart, especially when the hammer comes down. so I guess my question is, what do you believe is true about this moment right now?
Seizing the Moment for Political Change
00:29:01
Speaker
As you have said, people feel this, that it is very clearly a vibe that things are breaking or that it's rigged, the deck is stacked, whatever the metaphor is.
00:29:11
Speaker
But why this moment versus sort of the last 15 attempts, as you point out, to try and address this problem? Why is this moment ripe, I guess? Um, well, it's both the moment and the strategy are both very different. So the the the moment is just like, you know, i know a lot of people are specifically just ah like focus on Trump specifically, but then others see it as like, it's, it's, it's way bigger than Trump. It's, it's been, you know, over the decade or more. Um,
00:29:40
Speaker
So we're just at this such a significant breaking point. We've never, at least not in our lifetime, i guess, from maybe at least a millennial perspective where like you go anywhere and like there's just this air of like doom and gloom of like everyone is unhappy and everyone knows things are falling apart. And like it just it feels, you know, like again, maybe an older generation, you know, remembering like the Great Depression or something might might have ah a matching gloom to some extent. um But it is a uniquely gloomy moment. um It's just that, you know, the transition from the older ages to the digital age has just been a very ah hard system, a switch, because like the digital age and the Internet by design is more is automatically more decentralized, more more democratic.
00:30:30
Speaker
um But the powerful have been manipulating it in every every moment they can, you know, so like their their algorithms are are meant for for their benefit and not not democracy.
00:30:41
Speaker
um So that's the the moment is is right. Just that it's it's like the darkest before the dawn kind of a situation and people, it's like like and another example is like for the first time in in like modern history, more people identify and are actually registering as independent rather than either of the two parties. And that's like- That would never happen. Yeah.
00:31:02
Speaker
And I think we've also seen enough whiplash between elections, right? where Where do young college educated go in one election and then they might swing in the other election, i think is indicative of just, i don't want to say grasping at straws, but searching for options.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's it's just been, it's it's very clear now, like people don't expect like, oh, everyone's so upset about Trump and then some, the Democrats are actually gonna save them. Like it's it's so clear that Democrats don't have a vision of like what what the future should even look like.
00:31:35
Speaker
But yeah, so I would absolutely say that this is a unique situation um of of how dire it was it is. Like even five some years ago wouldn't have been ripe yet um for for where where we're at. And just people people just so ready for change and just ready for something big and different. um So that's the big piece on that side. um but it tell them Sorry, sorry to interrupt. I also think one of the things that I'm most excited about is if the user experience is smooth and easy enough, that people can once again get jazzed about their particular candidates. Because I think one of the big problems that we have since really like the culture war started in the
00:32:20
Speaker
in the nineteen ninety s is like a false nationalization of interest, right? Like people used to really care about like what was their senator, their congressperson doing for their district.
00:32:35
Speaker
And now people argue on Facebook or Instagram about things that are happening like across the country. It like literally has nothing to do with where you live. And the people, the city councils, the though water rights board, like all the tiny banal stuff that isn't sexy and doesn't play well to national politics is actually the stuff that will affect your life, your real estate taxes, whether the data center gets built in your backyard, like all that stuff.
00:33:05
Speaker
is in that zip code, right? It's not really like the Senate primary in Alaska. Like that has nothing to do with somebody living in like, I don't know, Charleston, South Carolina.
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really great point. Yeah. So to to that point, yeah, that this new like digital infrastructure would empower everything local, state and federal at the same time. So yeah, people can can go back to the relevant issues um that that they care about and and directly affect them. Yeah.
Potential Impact on American Politics
00:33:36
Speaker
If Fink works exactly as design, meaning the platform scales, candidates get found, citizen engage, What does American politics actually look like you know like differently?
00:33:48
Speaker
how How is this going to reflect in what people can tangibly see in front of them and in their communities? Not the infrastructure, but the outcome. What's the world this is trying to produce? And walk me through what a day in that looks like.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, so it's really, like it it should all be about representation. a good candidate is one that is acting for their voters, that that actually voted for them. um Something where if if like a big if big money offered them $2 million, they'd say, oh, if I take that money, my voters are gonna see that and it's gonna hurt me my next election because it's gonna very clear on digital democracy or the digital digital politics hub.
00:34:30
Speaker
um And so, like, being having a second guess of any kind of money you're taking, making sure that their money is clean because now it's going to be ultra transparent. But, um yeah, like, it's not, ah again, as as I always say, not not about the left or right. It's it's about, like like, if... Like the the chances of a policy becoming a law should be a matter of how popular a policy is. It doesn't have to be a perfect correlation. You know, sometimes we don't always go for own self-interest. But like, I mean, right now it's something like if 90 percent of America wants something, the most would be a 40 percent chance of it enacting. And we see this. There are multiple issues that pull bipartisan
00:35:11
Speaker
And like yet nothing happens. Right. So that they're like known to be popular, but it's like the interests of the few versus the many, I guess. yeah Exactly. So that's what we want to see changed. And so whether it's big government, smaller government, taxes, whatever that that's for that's for the world to evolve. But.
00:35:30
Speaker
You know, we want it to be that the American people want it, you know, and and we'll make mistakes. We might vote and go one direction and and the intention was there, but the strategy wasn't or whatever and and the policies don't work out. And but if we live in a true democracy, it'll ever be it'll be self-correcting and ever evolving. So we'll learn from our mistakes and we'll vote better next time or even the candidates will learn better policies from from their mistakes.
00:35:53
Speaker
It goes back to that intention. If they're intending to do what's right for the American people, like it's not gonna be perfect, but it's gonna be way better than where we're at we're at today Travis, I want to thank you again for your time and attention. It's really exciting ah to have this conversation, to think about the ways we can harness technology, I guess, in a different, in a more human direction. So, ah yeah, really appreciate the time and attention and and coming on the show to share what it's about. If people want to learn more, ah where should they go?
Engaging with Fink's Platforms
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, so number one is add your name on our hub. So it's hub.futureis.org. Add your name there. And then you could also join our Discord from there. ah That's our our official online community. And check us out on all our socials. It's at futureis.org on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Whatever.
00:36:47
Speaker
Yeah, most things. yeah Awesome. Well, we will continue to watch with progress and hopefully ah we'll have you back on closer to 2028, which is going to be a wild year. Awesome. Well, thank you again, Travis.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me If you like this conversation, share it with friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for a weekly ballistic payload of snark, insights, and laughs.
00:37:11
Speaker
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00:37:23
Speaker
We'll catch you next week, but until then, stay real.