 We were looking at maybe how can we replace or improve government functions with blockchain technology? We found that's kind of a niche that there's not many people looking at right now But there's a whole lot of potential and we're trying to really dive deep into that and become a leading figure in the blockchain movement through that Welcome to building tomorrow a show that explores the ways tech innovation and entrepreneurship are creating a freer wealthier And more peaceful world as always I'm your host Paul Matzko and with me in the studio Aaron Powell director and editor of libertarianism.org And joining us today is special guest Phil Hanschild Phil can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself what you do where you work? Absolutely, so I work at the Idaho Freedom Foundation I'm a policy analyst here and we look at state issues here in Idaho I'm looking at ways that we can make a more prosperous Idaho ways that we can make it a better place to work live or raise a family We're particularly interested in reducing dependency on governments and holding special interests accountable here in the state Cool, and so the Freedom Foundation was it founded? How recently who founded the IFF? We are just entering into our 10th year So we found about 10 years ago our founder Wayne Hoffman who's still our CEO and president Found that there was a lack of free market leadership here in the state So we've been been working since then we're able to have a lot of impact here in the state and able to produce some great free market ideas and See them making Idaho a better place So we're having you on today to talk about blockchain tech which is not something Typically associated with state-level think tanks and not something like somewhat surprising coming out of an Idaho State-level think tank. So how what how did you get involved in blockchain tech? so About six months ago here at the office. We were all pretty interested in cryptocurrency. It's about how the time everything was booming We were all kind of buzzing here around the office saying oh, what do you invest in today or what are you looking at? So we're looking at what cryptocurrency was doing what it was capable of And at about the same time we were kind of really looking at this 10th year How are we gonna start making a huge impact not only here in Idaho? But try and export stuff to other states. How can we have these new ideas that can make a change for the better? So we kind of combined our interests and we were thinking okay. Well, what about blockchain and government? We're seeing a lot of states implementing regulatory policy looking at how they're gonna regulate crypto currencies or Manage smart contracts. We were looking at maybe how can we replace or improve government functions with blockchain technology? We found that's kind of a niche that there's not many people looking at right now But there's a whole lot of potential and we're trying to really dive deep into that and become a leading figure in the blockchain movement through that So blockchain right now is used chiefly for currency and most Governments I'm pretty sure that the state of Idaho is probably not that interested in setting up a competing currency to the US dollar so what is the value of blockchain specifically for state governments and I guess How is blockchain or the things you might use it for how is it a better tool than say just a state-run database? I'm saying that's one of the the biggest challenges that people have with understanding and seeing the ways to implement blockchain is How does it differ from a normal database? And in a lot of cases? I think We've fallen prey to this and I think a lot of other people have too Is a lot of the things that we think it could do really could be done equally well by a normal database? It just hasn't I think the key Feature that blockchain allows for is for that distributed network. So no single agency would be the one running something when you have a blockchain network one concern that We have is information sharing across agency if you put information out there you want to maintain some security over that as an individual And blockchain allows you to keep control of your information and you can limit who has access to that while still allowing multiple parties to access it It's like that's the key feature that is new and is innovative and allows for a specific use for government Let's say it's interesting to me because I when I think of One of the advantages of a distributed ledger. It's that it's actually kind of provide for transparency where while the while the actual blocks The contributors to the blockchain are pseudo pseudo anonymous not truly anonymous, but pseudo anonymous The actual information in there is is transparent anyone can see it in the blockchain so I Tend to think of that the use for the state being a way of providing Transparency to citizens or I suppose to anyone on the blockchain So it's interesting to hear of it as a device used to allow State agencies to control the flow of information rather than seeing it as a way of promoting transparency of the state itself I think so I think actually what I was talking about kind of limiting what you're sharing It's actually talking about that as an individual So okay, if I fill Hans child I'm gonna provide this information to the Department of Labor for example It doesn't have to be that they get all of it and then they can share it all with the Department of Health and Welfare I maintain control of my individual information and I can limit who I give access to As far as the public transparency aspect that is another huge key piece to it as well Been talking with folks just about open data policies You want you can require that all financial information all budgets are posted on a blockchain and Then there's no changing it or you can't change it, but everybody will know that when how it was changed So that's key feature of it as well How does for us a state-run blockchain like this or you know a blockchain that's meant to be used by state agencies How does the I guess? mining economy work Because so for a for traditional blockchain you incentivize people to secure the blockchain to you know verify transactions maintain records by then paying out a Portion of transaction fees or you know giving them some newly created tokens on a regular basis So then you can you can get more and more people adding to the network and you know The whole network becomes more robust the more people are using it What's the incentive here or is this would would only state agencies or state computers act as minors in these situations Or are there incentives for like me to contribute computing cycles on my Mac at home to Verifying transactions on a system like this And that has been one of the biggest sticking points for us here at the office is we're kind of pondering and Going through these projects trying to get all our bases covered and meet all the key aspects Figuring out how you're going to monetize the system is is pretty challenging How do we incentivize people to be the minor to secure the system and make sure that the network is robust like you said? One thing we lead for is having public agencies do it For example with the public notices that we've been talking about every different entity or every different agency could be a separate node on the network that's securing it and we would also love to see private actors so we've kind of Thought about creating a token to manage this part of it depends to on each use case I don't know if necessarily you could have one blockchain that covers all government use cases for So yeah, that's been something we're looking through and trying to figure out What's the best way to do that to make sure that people have incentive to be securing the network and they have those incentives to Make sure that it works what we step back a second I think all three of us have been looking at you know the the stuff that's on the outline and know that we're gonna be talking We're talking about public notice requirements, but for our listeners When I say public notice requirement or a publishing mandate for state documentation and notifications What is that and how does it currently work? So so public legal notices they go they go by in some states public notices some states legal notices I'm what they are the required in all 50 states And generally the most common thing that people come across is name changes. So if I want to change my name I'm gonna go to the court. I'm gonna get that court approval and then they're gonna say that I have to go to the newspaper in my county or in my state and Post it for four weeks and say what my name is now what I'm changing it to Sometimes why I'm doing so So you have the same kind of things for public agencies to Here in Idaho for example when a county or a city or some other Agency when they want to have an auction and they want to sell public Items then they have to post it in a newspaper for a handful of weeks when they set their budget For the year they have to post that in a newspaper So it's it's these statutory requirements for a set amount of postings in a newspaper is what they are Are they buying these ads in the papers? exactly it's so it's price fixed so Here in Idaho, it's about six and a half cents per line of type That goes in the newspaper. So some of them if it's a real short notice. It's only ten twenty bucks or so, but if you're Putting in a treasurer's notice or putting in your budget for the year at times. It's three four hundred dollars So it's pretty substantial and especially for smaller agencies smaller counties It takes up an enormous sum of money across the state in total It takes up anywhere from three million to five million based on our estimates It's it's difficult because you've got to talk to every single agency and find out okay. How much did you spend on it this year? Does this just makes me wonder if if We embraced another system for this a more efficient system whether it's blockchain or something else Would we run into the small-town newspapers lobbies? fighting to keep this from changing That that is exactly actually what happened earlier this year. So we were we were working on this public legal notice issue At the beginning of the year come legislative session. We were just looking at giving them the opportunity to post it online there wasn't really much more specificity than that rather than posting it in the newspaper and It was killed and I think you could say it was in large part due to the newspaper lobby You have a lot of public officials who really care about how much their local newspaper likes them because people read it sometimes the You know 70 year old Voters who comprise the single largest like block of voters who turn out for local elections They're reading their local paper. You better not anger them. Yeah What's interesting though? I mean I suppose it's a matter of The question is why is this policy in place like a public notice policy? It's not primarily meant to be a subsidy for a legacy media system. It's meant to promote transparency the idea being that These laws were passed in a time when the overwhelming majority of literate Americans were subscribers to newspapers And this was a way of letting them know what the government was doing on their behalf. So if the goal is, you know transparency, I think there's your argument for for changing the system making it transparent once again because right now I Think you said in the article you sent It's something like only 10 percent of Idahoans are subscribed to a newspaper So it was actually it was a nationwide statistic I was looking at it saying fewer than one out of ten Americans have a newspaper printed it So there there's like 30 million newspapers printed daily in the US So which I mean also close to 400 million people here in the US It's a pretty small number of people and then if you limit that to the people who actually read the legal notices section of their newspaper It's just it's infinitesimally small in the fire a journalist trying to hold to account my local counsel or sheriff or whoever Or someone you know in some other small town I'd have to go try to track down the back copies of that newspaper if they still existed Try to find it on microfilm try to scroll through may it be a real hard process to access that information If you if it wasn't right in front of your face whereas if something's on a blockchain you can in Theory go through and search that much more easily and anyone could who's on the blockchain could do that, right? Let me just I mean it seems one obvious Concern that is if if part of the argument against putting this stuff in the newspaper is that only one in ten or fewer than that of Americans Get a newspaper I'm certain that far fewer than one in ten Americans know how to browse a blockchain explorer So so it seems like you'd be hiding you potentially be hiding the data even more So Yes, that's true Most people don't know how to look through a blockchain if you just put a bunch of data in front of me I wouldn't know how but you have API so application programming interfaces Which allow and it's the same way we can look at Google Maps or something like that We can post it on any website and then you can go through and then it's just like a typical database. I could search Here I could search Boise in the system and look at every legal notice that Boise submitted or I could type in Ada County or If I wanted to search it by auctions or bids then I could Limit my search of that so then at that point it would be just like searching with a Google search or something like that You could also have it ripped so that it's automatically posted onto Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites So there'd be a whole lot more ways to access it than there currently are Which is that one newspaper in your county some do post it online some newspapers do But it's certainly not all of them that do so it's kind there It's kind of scattershot as well trying to find that central place to find them So so I can imagine a system where you know, Idaho Bucks the all-powerful local newspaper lobby and passage of legislation like this creating a system that costs Less than three to five million dollars. So there's cost savings They require as part of legislation all the agencies to who currently You know fulfill their public notice to do so on the blockchain They use that money to incentivize say you have a program where it incentivizes non agency node creation You could you know, so I can imagine this whole system being enacted They could require an API to make it easy for the general public to access the information in the blockchain So I suppose next step is why Idaho, right? This is a project of the Idaho Freedom Foundation for the interests of Idaho why Idaho rather than say New York or Texas Why is your state a good place to try this out? I think there's a handful of reasons for that One we're a small state which some people look is a liability, but we really think that's a benefit It means we're nimble. It means we're flexible And we're constantly trying to find new things to do and ways to improve as a state I mean, I probably could guess that the newspaper lobby in Idaho isn't quite as powerful as the newspaper lobby in New York or something like that where they have far larger newspapers We have a growing tech population here in Idaho I'm here in Boise. It's kind of an interesting dynamic where some of our biggest employers are tech companies Idaho is not seen as a tech hub But it is definitely a growing aspect here and part of that means that people are looking for new ideas We have a Pretty conservative populace Who's interested in ways that we can reform government and especially ways that we can eliminate subsidies to private industry So I think that's a really big benefit that Idaho has is the fact that we're small and we're interested in government reform Going back to the the question I asked earlier about that, you know, why blockchain? So for what we've just described With posting of public notices What specifically with the benefit of writing this on to either a new blockchain that we've set up or, you know, via smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain versus say The state setting up a wiki Or, you know, hosting the wiki on Google or amazon cloud server because you're still gonna have to I mean one issue is blockchains are Anyone can write transactions to them, you know, anyone who has has a node set up can write a transaction to them But and then the other people have to verify it, but you precisely don't want that with Public notice, right? Like you you don't want me to be able to make up Random name changes or whatever else and post them to this thing. So you need to verify Make sure it's legit Make sure that anyone who's reading through the transaction knows that everything they're seeing is legit So in this I guess in this specific instance, what's the benefit of Doing it with a distributed ledger versus Yeah, a wiki So I'll go I'll go through why why blockchain why we think that's the best solution and then I'll jump into how we think we've solved the As you could say that the nonsense posting problem Um, so there's three key features of blockchains. They're they're permanent. They're distributed and they're immutable So they can't be changed And those kind of tie up perfectly with the three necessary features and public notices that they're They're permanently stored so that if you want to go back, you can see what your government was doing for 100 years back If that's what you're looking at They're widespread and they're easily accessible by a large amount of the population Which as we were talking before newspapers aren't anymore And then you have to have that third party notice So you can't just have your local city Posting it on their website because they might change it or you don't really have any proof that they did post it um, that's something that newspapers provide currently where they They'll provide the entity giving it to them a slip essentially that they can then take to the court if the court asks later and say Hey, look, we did post this. Here's when we did it. Here's what it said Um, and here's the dates that it was published Um, so blockchain allows you to do all three of those things effectively and we think more permanently and more distributed With providing more widespread access to a greater portion of the population than newspapers do currently Um, so that's why we lean on blockchain as being the solution there I mean as far as uh preventing kind of the nonsense notices I always say If I had this place where I would create a permanent notice I might post that my birthday is coming up in august and I'm interested in receiving items from amazon bedbath and beyond in target um, so you have to be able to prevent somebody from doing that because Uh, there certainly would be people and it would take away from the need for and the use of legal notices when you don't have any that matter um So what we do is we'd have kind of a public private hybrid where anybody can access that information Um, so that's kind of the public face of it And the private face would be that you have to have your your posting key If you if you want access to it as a as a posting node You have to get given access And that's where we're kind of looking at ways that you Verify who's giving the access One that we've looked at is a consensus approach. So you look at all the public entities that are on there currently They would then verify whether or not somebody requesting access to post is a public entity Um, the second option is you have one central figure. Um here in Idaho. We looked at maybe it's the state controller's office Um, they're essentially our state auditor Maybe they give a posting key to the public agencies that want to post Um, so that's how we would limit Who can post on it ensure that it keeps the legal notice aspect to it Have you talked with any politicians about this? I mean the the fear, you know, one one fear you have is um This is politicians tend to not understand tech Super well, you know, I mean the internet is a series of tubes Um And and blockchain is tech that even People who understand tech sometimes have trouble understanding So I mean, I guess have you brought this in front of anyone? Has there been a reaction to it? So going back to why Idaho, I think this is actually one of the things that it's really beneficial Is we've had a lot of people express interest in this I mean it makes sense for most every government agency because it's a way for them to save money I just state agencies alone spent about 1.25 million dollars Last year So they're really interested in reforming it. So we have Several county officials who have said they'd love to work with us on implementing stuff Some highway districts and some state agencies So we definitely think there's enough interest and we're actually working with a company here in Boise to develop a Private blockchain for this purpose so that we can begin testing it out and hopefully bring it to our state legislature and say hey It works and here's how we can save money for our taxpayers Do you have a target goal for how much you like when you go to them? You say we can save you money What kind of savings are you promising? We we don't have a number at the moment. We don't know exactly what it'll cost to develop this and we actually we We developed kind of a proof of concept for hardly anything. It was Based on kind of a template that this Boise company already had and they spent a couple hours putting it together and it's it's functional So really it would be Incredibly minimal. I think I've heard estimates from a couple companies We are looking at bids from them and it was about I think they said about $50,000 and they could put something and get it up and running in the state So it's it's dramatic cost savings over what we're currently doing So let's say this takes off and this works in Idaho And the government moves over to it for all public notices Is this something where in the long term? The the best like next steps would be every other state embracing it and then we have you know 50 public notice blockchains being run, you know in by the citizens of 50 different states or would Would the the long-term goal be say one at the federal level that then everyone makes use of Is there a benefit to one versus the other? So we're kind of hoping that we can start something here that could then be spread to every state and the federal government if they're interested So there's one single blockchain running all of this So we are talking with some folks in utah about being able to work with them I mean, this is one of the challenges of trying to figure out. How do we verify new public entities to join the blockchain because if it's A central figure here in the state of Idaho There's no real reason why they should be the ones verifying people in other state So that's kind of why we were looking at the consensus-based approach of having the majority of Agencies on the network verifying any new one So we're hoping that it could it could spread to states and go go to utah go to arizona go to mississippi And see it growing because then the easier it is to access public information The easier it is to hold your public officials accountable And so if you have one central place one clearing house where you can go to access information across all the states I think it's more effective in addition to you could Start with legal notices and we figure you can start adding meeting minutes there So anytime a public meeting is held you could post the agenda post the minutes and post the notices for that meeting You can include budget information any financial data So really it opens up to store a lot more public information and make it far easier to access for the public Well, there's a very The brand dice the springport justice brand dice and laboratories of democracy Angle to it which you start up you try it in one state and if it works other states will Naturally see the advantages and adopt it. So I like that model for sake of time How won't we move to one of your other ideas? And I know you have a whole a number of ways you're seeking to apply blockchain technology But you wrote an essay recently for national review. You and jane welkerson Calling for replacing On the I think it was a on a national level, but replacing welfare With blockchain smart contract enabled tax deductible private charity. Can you walk us through that idea? Yeah, so if legal notices is kind of our starting point. This is kind of the the big fish. We're hoping to fry This is a lot bigger scaling up from Public notice to replacing welfare state is is audacious. Yeah Yeah, definitely, but hey figure we might as well go big here and see what we can accomplish because we think there is a lot of potential So so we just kind of started with the premise that the government doesn't need to be the one that handles welfare or charity We we feel like we've kind of we've relegated private charity to our government agencies both at the federal level and the state level through their public welfare programs And we're seeing problems with that kind of in in a lack of civil society seeing problems in mismanagement of funds So we're thinking okay, how can we eliminate? the government role in connecting donors and recipients of charity and we were looking kind of is been most known as eliminating the intermediary in banking for example So with bitcoin or ethereum, you don't have to have that bank to verify Your transaction you're able to do that right from me to you Um, so it's kind of we're kind of seeing the same thing with charity that we can give Rather than having to give our taxpayer dollars to the State government who gives it to the federal government who gives it back and it kind of goes through the stream and ends up with a recipient I think we can we can build that civil society and build that community by giving it directly to that recipient So that's kind of what we're looking at and what we're hoping that we can begin to implement here in the next couple years So I have questions, I guess about the details of this because it's I mean, it's a cool sci-fi idea, um, I it it's and it seems like It's a very libertarian Almost libertopia sort of thing that that is really exciting To get you know to reproduce this social safety net Without needing the state's involvement in a purely privately funded way Um, and it is it's embracing civil society because then it's all of us funding each other as opposed to funding the government that then hands bits and pieces of it back to us but the I mean one of the roles the government plays in the welfare system is verification So it you know through your you have to file taxes and through that the government has a pretty good sense of how much money you made And it sees, you know, there's reporting on your paychecks. And so on a you know Throughout the year the government has a pretty good sense of what your income looks like and and so because of that it can know With a decent degree of certainty whether you say qualify for welfare But with the blockchain and with the you know as as Paul said at the beginning this anonymous net Nature of it or you know, we could even be totally anonymous in some cases It's harder to know How much money I make, you know, so are we looking at you know Aaron got this year so many bitcoins into this address But I could have other bitcoin addresses that I've been accumulating money into You know to make it look like I qualify for welfare And then relatedly we all have social security numbers Which is how the government knows that the person who reported this tax is the same person that we're going to send the money to But the the nature of a crypto economy makes that sort of verification harder as well. So those are those are the two immediate things that strike me as fairly large hurdles to getting a purely blockchain and smart contract based system off the ground Yeah, I think it's often one of the biggest challenges with blockchain as well as While the information on the blockchain might be verified and secured You don't have any way of knowing that the information on there is correct to begin with Or of plugging all that information in a star. I mean you have Oracles is what they're called That will plug information if you're looking at weather for example It you might have a certain website it draws the information from and plugs it into the blockchain So we weren't looking at necessarily turning everything into a blockchain based economy what we're looking at Is using a particular token Providing recipients or basically anybody who wants one with a wallet And that wallet would give them access to this call it charity token They would be able to receive to receive or give tokens Using their wallet they could use that token or that wallet rather on their phone to pay For goods or services at the store You develop a pointed sales system and we've looked at a couple and talked with a couple folks about Implementing those so it would allow you to do electronic payments at the store using this token and the key thing with that is that you can Manage who's receiving it and what they're allowed to spend it on and what purpose it can go for so For example, if you wanted to replace snap if you want to replace food stamps You could set the exact same parameters on the tokens that you give somebody You might give them a hundred dollars this month and they're only able to spend it on Snap eligible goods at the store Or like the woman infants children program. For example, they're here in Idaho. They actually give you a paper voucher It might say good for ten dollars of fresh groceries or good for one gallon of two percent milk And you and right now you take those paper vouchers to the store and you They take it off your tally and take it off your total and you walk away with your milk This would allow you to do the same electronically And it'll allow anybody to give that individual That good or that service via the blockchain token in theory it would make it harder like if it's a paper token I imagine you're going to have some issue with fraud and resale And and verification on the end that this was actually the paper token meant for this person and that it's actually being used For that purpose. So in theory it would would provide a more A certain way of guaranteeing that the funds are actually being spent in that manner Yeah, there's so many Biometric identification tools we have on our phones now I mean you could use facial recognition or you could use a thumbprint scan If you want to access your wallet on your phone and you want to pay for something at the store You might have to just take your thumbprint and scan it. That's the only way to open up the qr code They scan or something Sort of like in ways that we think it would be a major way to reduce fraud and trafficking and In welfare payments How would this be different from Giving everyone so like right now that state of virginia when I file my taxes if I get a tax refund They just give me a they send me a debit card That has you know my tax refunds worth of dollars on it for me to then use And and you know, you can you can limit I have a I have a Debit card hooked up to my health savings account and when I Scan that at CVS It knows that these are the things that I can pay for with a health saving account and these are the things that I can't So it just takes that amount off the bill and then I have to scan my regular debit or credit card for the rest So how how does the adding tokens to that system improve things versus just sticking with debit cards with dollar amounts Um, there's a cost factor to the debit cards with dollar amounts. Um, so for example, if I want to give um Money for fresh food to somebody that I interact with on the street or something Um, then I'm I'm not gonna be able to go to the store buy a visa card for him get that back to him This would allow me if we both have the application on our phone Or if he when we figured you could even print out on a piece of paper a qr code And that could work the same way as wallet For somebody that doesn't have a smartphone, which is an ever shrinking number these days it would allow me to Give him money right then and there and I can limit what it's good for I think a challenge a lot of people have when they're When they're giving money to individuals, they don't know what it's going to be spent on I know I've heard of Carnegie's gospel of wealth. For example, that's a hundred years ago He said there's there's no greater evil really than just giving money um To somebody who's trying to get out of an addiction or something like that as this would allow You to limit what you're giving it for and have some kind of security and control over what you're giving I mean it would allow somebody who's seeking help to be able to get that help in an easier fashion as well Rather than just buy a debit card or something like that. So in full disclosure, I'm I'm kind of on the uh, basic Bli basic living income Corner as a replacement for welfare And part of that is So mentioning, you know the Carnegie idea about harming the poor by letting them spend the money on whatever they want you know economists will often point out that in kind donations and Kind of targeted like where you can only spend this money that the state's giving you for welfare on certain things You can only spend it on medicine or these categories of food and not these categories that There's a problem with that because it leads to inefficiencies where you know someone They know that they need That at their local store that this particular product Is actually the thing that's going to best help them meet budget, right? They need a cup of noodles But there because some bureaucrat in Boise or in the case of a federal level, you know, dc Well, a cup of noodles has too much sodium. It's not good for you that you can only spend this on kale But the local people know their conditions. They know what is actually best for themselves Like so a certain level it requires a certain level of distrust to limit what people can use their cash to do I mean when I talk about economists talking about this, I think if folks like uh, tyler cowan or alex tabarak Um, in fact, I I imagine that like christmas at the the cowan household has to be relatively boring where and you know, you open the presents under the christmas tree instead of Like a truck like oh nope. Here's another uh, $10 bill or a cash grant instead of a present, right? So some of that's the the economist in me the the the person who enjoys economics in me talking um Wouldn't this proposed system like allowing people to put to more effectively put limits on how money is spent um Wouldn't that just introduce more such inefficiencies? How would you respond to to those concerns? Yeah, that's that's one of the biggest criticisms of the woman infants and children program versus the food stamps program Is that with wick? You're limited to a gallon of milk $10 of fresh fruit and a lot of people a lot of it goes to waste because They get it for free, but they don't really need it so they don't use it The problem we find there though is that it's not flexible So what we're looking at here is the ability for that individual interaction. You're able to talk with somebody and say, okay What is it that you need? What is it that will help you get out of the circumstance that you're in and you're able to tailor it exactly to that person's situation? So for example, we envision working with a couple non-profits here in the area and we've kind of been reaching out and talking with them where they They pair up every individual going through their program with a budget counselor They're essentially a case worker and they're finding, okay What what steps do you need to make to get out of this trap that you're in right now? And how can we help you get there? So if you can if you can limit it and say you're only going to have access to this $50 that i'm giving you if You verify that you have been attending work every day If you verify that you're sticking to the budget that you set for yourself You really you're empowering and incentivizing people to take the steps that they need So I think it really it it provides the flexibility that you don't have with the current system right now Um, like you said when you have bureaucrats who don't know everybody's individual situation It really isn't necessarily helpful I confess to being potentially worried about the privacy implications of all this because so one of the reasons that that wick is Can be so inefficient and it can you know say you you can get your A couple of pounds of vegetables, but that's not quite what you need at the moment is because the government doesn't know What you need at the moment so it doesn't have enough information about you to know that But if we need a system now where you know You have to meet with a counselor who then assesses what you need and then somehow that that has to get synced up with The the token distribution system or the token use system or the wallet then the government needs to be given Or or whatever if or whatever the central authority is You know setting those limits for you on an individual basis has to have access to that information And i'm you know Uncomfortable with that being the state for For all sorts of reasons, but we also It ends up Looking like the the same stuff that we get creeped out about with facebook, you know or the cambridge analytica Stuff that we that was in the news that you know, we have these these centralized private organizations that are gathering an extraordinary amount of Information about you that then is you know susceptible to theft or is susceptible to use by governments against people that The government doesn't terribly like so is there Is is this system does it raise more privacy concerns than What we already have And and how do we address Those especially in the ethos of blockchain and crypto is all about privacy enhancing I think Two things one we we're looking at taking this away from the state So the state wouldn't be the one managing these programs I mean they could they could use the same system to Manage a system that has the identical parameters to snap or wick for example But we're looking primarily at nonprofits or private individuals being able to use this as their own means of providing Charity to members of their community. Okay, that makes sense. So I think that that solves one concern that The state's not having a blaggy set with cambridge analytica and facebook There's still a concern with private individuals holding so much information over us In part of it with blockchain, you're able to control the information that you give so you might upload Your your proof that your pay stubs for example showing how many hours you worked whether And that might be a condition for you to receive your money and you might give that to your single Entity and allow them access to show that yes, you did meet the requirements But they wouldn't be able to share that information. They wouldn't it would be limited to that one interaction Think that would secure some of the information that way I mean too, and it's we think when it's private individuals and it's nonprofits and it's social charitable organizations that are doing it They're really searching for ways that they can most help individuals Get out of the situations there and there's a non-profit here in the area that actually had the opportunity to go through their programs and they When individual individuals generally come to them when they're trying to break out of debt and One of the things they do is they take every credit card and debit card that you have and they make you go on cash And they you set your budget and you put it on your envelopes It's kind of a dame Dave Ramsey style and they're able to help people that way So they do limit the choices that people can make But they're doing it for their own good and they're doing it in order to help them Accomplish their own goals So a lot of the framing of the piece is this is we're going to replace state provision of welfare And I can imagine, you know in theory if this works That being a legitimate argument, right? But part of me wonders why Whether the approach is kind of like with public notices you start local you start with the road improvement authority or a local town council Then the state and then you worry about like, you know federal level provision um So like with the example you just gave You don't even really it doesn't seem to me like you would need to replace Idaho's welfare system with this Couldn't private flanther for flantherpers and charities Test this system on their own, right? Like they're already as long as they're giving benefits That charity is tax deductible Um, I why would you want to push for a state level trial or a federal level trial? I mean, couldn't you roll this out through a private charity like the one you just described first as a proof of concept Show that it works there and then propose it as a as a you know full bore replacement for your current, you know, Idaho welfare system That is exactly where we're kind of leaning at the moment. We're um In the process of working with a couple three nonprofits in the area two working with Um homeless members of our community and the third that I was mentioning earlier To see see how we can make it work best for what they do through their work If there's ways we need to tweak it ways we need to change it Want to make sure that it's practical and it's viable for their system So that we are hoping that we can do it entirely with private organizations prove that it works See the benefits and make sure that it's Thriving and then hopefully take it to the state where we're looking at the woman infants and children program originally because it's It's a fairly small program here in Idaho And it has some room for flexibility there Show how it works there and then hopefully from there Expand and expand and kind of keep taking those steps up to larger and larger I mean once we see it replacing welfare programs and with the same parameters and the same services To begin attaching a tax credit component or some way to incentivize people to donate because if we have these same services being provided Through these programs, there's no need for people to also be paying for public welfare Through their tax dollars. So for every dollar you might give to one of these programs that might take a dollar away from your tax burden So that's that's kind of the the end game is we're hoping that not only will this improve the efficiency because so often That's what new technologies do with government is they just make government more efficient at doing the same things We often don't want it doing And we're hoping we can really eliminate government entirely from the process We I often talk about the internet being example with education We have we have this incredible new technology through the internet Where I can take a class from mit or harvard right here from my office Yet we still have a k to 12 Education where we pick up kids at 7 30 in the morning put them on a bus drive them to one facility And then they watch a youtube video there on the internet Uh, we're kind of kind of missing the potential and the disruptive nature of it and the way to improve things when we Treat new technologies like that. So that's why we're really hoping we can Dramatically change things using blockchain Well, great phil I appreciate you coming on. Uh, you know, this is the exciting potential and we will watch I know we and our listeners will watch to see how this Unrolls in uh in Idaho with some of these kind of test cases and you know, so keep us updated with with how this goes Um, now you have some additional kind of components of your blockchain application to civil government Uh, do you want to mention those here? What's coming up down the pipeline? Yeah, so right now we've we've put out a white paper and then put out some articles on this welfare reform concept as well as the public notices Um, kind of in the pipeline we we're looking at a whole a slew of different Ways that you we can utilize distributed ledgers and blockchain technology and government Everything from land titling which there's a lot of research and a lot of a lot of money going into right now with Uh, uh, disoto and then uh The overstock CEO working on that There's voting systems that we're looking at ways that you can utilize that to secure voting. Um We're looking at business registries ways that we can make a kind of a one-stop shop for when you're registering or licensing a business There's a whole handful of different things we're looking at and we're hoping to have that out here the next couple months Provided to individuals across different states who might be interested in the work we're doing great Appreciate your time phil and for the rest of our listeners until next week. Be well Building tomorrow is produced by test terrible If you enjoy our show, please rate review and subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts To learn about building tomorrow or to discover other great podcasts visit us on the web at libertarianism.org