Guest
Santiago Siri
Santiago Siri, Founder of the Democracy Earth Foundation: Blockchain and Democracy
- Santiago Siri founded the Democracy Earth Foundation and previously created the Partido de la Red (Net Party) in Argentina, where elected candidates vote according to constituent wishes via software rather than personal judgment. - Direct democracy models like quadratic voting can improve consensus-building in governance; Colorado's lower house successfully used quadratic voting to decide on 107 bills affecting a $150 million budget. - Blockchain and decentralized networks offer censorship-resistant, auditable alternatives to traditional centralized voting systems by removing single points of failure (like corrupt identity registries). - Nation-states and geographical borders are legacies of 400-year-old information technology (the printing press); the internet and blockchain enable parallel ideological communities bound by protocol rather than geography. - Election interference operates via two channels: direct tampering with voting infrastructure and psychological manipulation through propaganda; the latter is harder to detect and more prevalent globally. - Technology cannot solve governance alone; education, information access, and cross-cultural empathy are essential to prevent manipulation and build trust in democratic systems.
Tales from the Crypt #3: Santiago Siri
- Santiago Siri's journey from discovering Bitcoin in Argentina's hyperinflation crisis (2011) to co-founding Democracy Earth, a liquid democracy platform using blockchain for voting and governance. - The Silk Road as a formative experience: Siri purchased substances online via the marketplace, which led directly to founding the Partido de la Red (Net Party) in Argentina with a friend after a psychedelic experience. - Liquid democracy as a hybrid between direct and representative democracy, enabling citizens to vote on issues directly or delegate voting power to trusted peers via blockchain tokens. - Democracy.earth's alpha launch at vote.democracy.earth; the importance of censorship-resistant networks (Bitcoin, blockchains) to make transparent, auditable voting possible outside corporate control. - Post-nation-state governance and the role of decentralized technology in replacing centralized institutions; information theory (Claude Shannon) and memes as carriers of cultural and political power. - Psychedelics, philosophy, and personal transformation: Siri's experience in Cuba at age 20 as a Marxist sympathizer, subsequent disillusionment with ideology, and the role of love and self-discovery in building better systems.