Luke chapter 6, I'll read to verse 5, we'll look at that passage and then we'll move on into verse 6 and conclude at verse 11. I need to tell you that normally when I'm doing studies in the gospels, I have a tendency of taking the entire time in the first portion. For example, I would take 40 minutes, 45 minutes just to speak to you about verses 1 through 5, and so for me it's a little difficult to try and do these two two studies, but that's what we're doing. I'm trying to get through Luke before Jesus returns. We'll see. I kind of hope I don't. As a matter of fact, I really hope I don't, and I know you do too, that the Lord might return would be just a wonderful thing. But until that point, let's look at this passage together. Beginning at verse 1, reading to verse 5, Luke chapter 6. Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that he went through the grain fields. And his disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. And some of the Pharisees said to them, why are you doing what it's not lawful to do on the Sabbath?  No, he didn't. Sometimes you wish he would though, don't you? Jesus answering them said, have you not even read this? What David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him. How he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those who were with him, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat. And he said to them, the Son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath. So as we look at chapter 6, it opens with two controversies. Both of these controversies relate to the Sabbath observation. Verses 1-5 concerns itself with physical labor being performed on the Sabbath. And then as we'll see in a moment, verses 6-11 are concerned with the fact that Jesus heals on the Sabbath. Now we know that at this point Jesus has already begun alienating the religious leaders of his day. And they've already begun making accusations against him. We've seen that already in chapter 5. For example, in chapter 5 verse 21, we've seen that they've already accused him of blasphemy. And in chapter 5 verse 30, they've also already accused him of living an unholy life. And so he's already alienating the religious leaders of his day. And so what is happening now as we enter into chapter 6, is they are beginning to search for scriptural reasons to reject Jesus Christ. He's already addressing and has addressed the attitude that they possess. They're already, he spoke about that in chapter 5 verse 39, when he had said, no one having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says the old is better. When it says the old is better, that word better simply means it tastes better. It's more agreeable to our pellets. In other words, the Pharisees had no desire for what he has to offer them. They are rejecting him because their desires, their hungers, are for something other than what he is offering them. Their tastes are different. They don't want what he wants to give to them. And so they're rejecting him. The Apostle John speaks concerning that kind of attitude in John chapter 1 verses 10 and 11, when John says that Jesus was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world didn't recognize him. And he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. And so they are beginning to reject him now. They're beginning to make accusations concerning him, and they are at this point beginning to oppose him. Now, one of the primary reasons for their opposition related to the observation of what is called the Sabbath. You see, Sabbath observation is at the heart of the Jewish legalistic religious system. It is the traditional day of rest that is observed by the nation of Israel. See, the Bible speaks concerning the word Sabbath. We all know that word Sabbath. In the Greek, it's sabbaton. In Hebrew, it's shabbat. When you go to Israel today, they have greetings on shabbat, shabbat shalom. They'll speak to you in that way because the Sabbath is still recognized as being a day of inactivity. The word Sabbath literally means to cease work or to rest. You first see that mentality, that rest all the way in the first book of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, in chapter 2, at verse 3, where it says that God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because he rested from all his work which God had created and made. And so in honor of that day, the Lord declared it to be a time of rest as well as remembrance. The Jewish nation was to rest on the Sabbath and to remember him on that day. And so God gave them this Sabbath rest in the law. You see that if you take notes in Exodus in chapter 20, verses 9 through 11, where God says, 6 days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God.  For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. The Sabbath day is the day of rest for the nation of Israel. Sometimes I'm asked the question, well, if God gave the nation of Israel the Sabbath, why do we go to church on Sunday? Seeing they observe from Friday, sundown into Saturday, sundown as Shabbat, why don't we go to church on Saturday rather than attending church on Sunday? Why is that? And the quick answer is because Jesus was raised on the first day of the week, and the church has from the book of Acts on been meeting habitually on the first day of the week in celebration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, Paul is speaking in the book of Romans to those in the Roman church who had questions concerning holy days and observations like that said that some people look at one day as more important than the other and others deal with each day as equally holy. And so we can have services where we observe or we can arrest on certain days that are not necessarily the Sabbath day. It can be a Sunday, it can be a Wednesday, it can be any day of the week. And so that's another reason. The third reason is because the Sabbath was for the nation of Israel and is not necessarily for the church. According to Exodus chapter 31 verse 13, the Lord God says, speak also to the children of Israel saying, surely my Sabbaths you shall keep for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. And so the Sabbath keeping is for the nation of Israel and not necessarily for the church. Now over the centuries the Jewish religious leaders observed Sabbath. Unfortunately they began to add rules and regulations to it. And so any kind of work imaginable was strictly forbidden. I was reading concerning some of the things that were forbidden and you'll find it interesting. For example, tailors did not carry a needle for fear that they might be tempted to sew. Clothing could not be washed or dyed. Fires could not be littered or extinguished. Baths could not be taken for fear water would fall on the floor and wash it. You could not carry anything heavier than a dried fig. Chairs could not be moved because dragging them might make a furrow in the ground. Women did not look into mirrors in the event that they might see a gray hair and pluck it out. False teeth could not be worn because they exceeded the weight limit you were allowed to carry. And so there were quite a number of rules and regulations that related to the Sabbath observation. And so the Sabbath during the time of Jesus became a time of frustration as well as stress because the people began to be tired of bearing an ungodly yoke of man-made oppressive regulations. And so the Sabbath is a very important element in the religious observation of the Jews during the time of Christ. And so Jesus is going to be having some controversies related to the observation of Sabbath. And that's what we see here. Notice verse 1 again here in chapter 6 of Luke. It says it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that he went through the grain fields. His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. So he's walking through grain fields, as Luke says, and his disciples are so hungry that they begin to just reach up to the grain and they're beginning to pluck it. Now, somebody might be saying, aren't they stealing? They're going through somebody else's field or biofield and they're taking the food from it. Isn't that wrong? Well, no it isn't because under the law of Moses, that was permissible. In Deuteronomy in chapter 23, 25, God had said, when you come into the standing corn of your neighbor, you may pluck the ears with your hand. In Leviticus chapter 19 verse 10, you shall not glean your vineyard, neither shall you gather every grape of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and stranger. I am the Lord your God. It was permissible for them to do that. They were hungry, they were passing through, and so it was permissible for them to be able to reach up and to take that fruit. It's similar today.  Actually, I'm just teasing, but that can take place and it's all right and so there's nothing wrong with it. So as this is taking place though, I want you to see that the Pharisees respond. Verse 2, it says, some of the Pharisees said to them, what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? Now what are you saying? Well, I want you to notice in verse 1 how it says, they plucked the heads of grain and they rubbed them in their hands. To the Pharisees, what they were actually doing was reaping when they plucked it and threshing when they rubbed it in their hands. So they were actually guilty of breaking two laws, at least in the way they thought. You see, the law doesn't say that. This was really their own religious tradition and in their own mind, their religious tradition was equal to the Word of God and so what they're saying is you have broken rabbinic law. It is not lawful for you to do that on the Sabbath. Now in verse 3, you have Jesus there answering them and he says, have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he went into the house of God, took and ate the show bread and also gave some to those who were with him who were not lawful for any but the priests to eat. So what he does, and you might not notice this at first reading, is he actually gives to them a cutting statement. What he is doing is offending their pride because in the way that he asks them and notice how it says in verse 3, have you not even read this? He's speaking to the legal experts in the religious law of the nation of Israel and in saying that to them, he's actually cutting into their pride because these of all people should have known and understood and indeed they have read what God would have to say about that and so what he's doing is he's offending their pride for belief that they are experts. I want you to see something else though here because I think this is the way that you deal with those kinds of controversies and questions. I want you to see how he responds to this. Notice that he doesn't argue with them about religious tradition. Notice that with me. He didn't start an argue with them about religious tradition. He simply quoted Scripture. He asked them concerning what the Word of God has to say. That is a very, very important thing to learn to do guys. To be able to point to Scripture, let's see if I can bring this home in a way that's non-offensive. No, so I'll just say it this way. Somebody asked me once, why don't you honor Mary, the mother of God and this was a Catholic speaking and this is how they phrase the question, Mary the mother of God. Why do you as a Protestant not give honor to Mary? My response? Of course we give honor to Mary.  And obviously we give honor to her. So I said, you know in the Gospel of John in chapter 2 where Jesus is there and his mother is at the wedding feast of Cana of Galilee and his mother walks up after discovering that there is no wine. They've run out of the wine and all. How Mary says to Jesus they have no wine. You remember that story and I know all of us in this room do. And yes, you remember how when Jesus spoke to his mom and shared a few things do you remember how she said to the men whatever he says do it? And that's John chapter 2 whatever he says do it. Yes, I do honor the mother of Jesus Christ because she said whatever he says do it. Now let's ask the question, what does he say? And what he says is unless a man is born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That's what he says. What he says is I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. That's what he said.  See there's no need to argue religious tradition. All you need to do is open up what the Scripture says. What does the Scripture say? And then follow that. And so Jesus doesn't begin to argue with them about the variety of things that they've added to the law. What he does is he simply quotes Scripture. Now the Bible tells us in 2 Timothy in chapter 3 verses 16 and 17 all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So God's word is all that is necessary for us to handle these kinds of controversies. So what does he do? Well he asks the question again in verse 3. Have you not even read this? What David did when he was hungry he and those who were with him. So he refers to what we would call today 1 Samuel chapter 21. A story that is found there with King David and that's the story about David when he fled to a priestly city called Knob. That's where the Tabernacle was at that time. Tabernacle being the tent of meeting where God would meet with the nation of Israel. And so he went to the city of Knob where the Tabernacle was at that time and he and his men had no food. Now as they had no food they actually were given the show bread and that's what Jesus refers to in verse 4 how we went into the house of God took and ate the show bread. The word show bread there speaks of 12 loaves of bread that are called the bread of the presence. The bread of the presence represents the 12 tribes of the nation of Israel which are before the Lord both night and day. But the bread was to be eaten not by common but by the priests. And yet David who was not a priest went and he and his men ate of that bread. You see according to Exodus 29 verse 32 the Bible says at the entrance to the tent of meeting Aaron and his sons are to eat the meat of the ram and the bread that is in the basket. They are to eat these offerings by which atonement was made for their ordination and consecration. No one else may eat them because they are sacred. And yet God allowed this law to be violated so that David and his men might be fed. And so the point he's making is human need is more important than man-made regulations. And so if a man-made regulation is broken it's not as important as when you care for a human being and that's the point he's making. And so he closes with verse 5 by saying the son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath. In other words I have authority to change your way of viewing the Sabbath because what I am doing is I am reading my people the terrible burden of your religious traditionalism a traditionalism that is devoid of the spirit of God and is filled with man-made regulations and rules that do not bring people to God but simply weigh them down. If you take notes Matthew chapter 11 verses 28 through 30 powerful scripture that goes along with this because Jesus in that passage said it this way he said come unto me all you who labor are heavy laden I will give you rest take my yoke upon you learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. See so when you have a relationship with the Lord he doesn't add a burden to you he doesn't add what is called the yoke of the law to you he gives you his grace because his yoke is easy his burden is light and so if I am laboring in my walk with the Lord perhaps I am not wearing his yoke perhaps at this point what I am doing is trying to do it on my own when a farmer would be breaking in an ox a young ox he would put that ox next to an older one and they would put a custom fit yoke over their shoulder area and it was the older ox that basically did all the work while the younger one began to walk alongside of him as the work was being done Jesus is saying I have a custom made yoke that will be fitting right over you so that as I walk in this perfect way you will match me step by step and I will bring you into the peace that religious traditionalism never will bring to you people today try to have peace with the religion but what we need is peace with our God and our peace with our God comes through faith in him and so the Lord Jesus Christ makes it very easy for us to understand my yoke is easy he says my burden is light moving on into verse 6 it happened on another Sabbath also that he entered the synagogue and taught and a man was there whose right hand was withered the scribes and Pharisees watched him closely whether he would heal on the Sabbath that they might find an accusation against him but he knew their thoughts and said to the man who had the withered hand arise and stand here and he arose and stood then Jesus said to them I will ask you one thing is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil to save a life or to destroy it and looking around at them all he said to the man stretch out your hand and he did so and his hand was restored as whole as the other but they were filled with rage and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus now once again he is teaching once again this is a Sabbath he is in a synagogue present in the synagogue is a man who is afflicted with a withered right hand again his opponents are going to have an opportunity to accuse him and notice this is interesting to me how it says in verse 7 notice how the scribes and the Pharisees watch him closely whether he is going to heal on the Sabbath this is interesting because they are watching him hoping to catch him do something good you know I have had people catch me do something bad plenty of times they are actually caught doing something good and that is what they are doing they are watching him closely that they might find an accusation against him now the word watched there is a word that speaks of watching with evil intent close scrutiny they are looking with the intent of finding fault with him they are not observing him as somebody who admires him they are not observing him as those who cannot keep their eyes off of somebody that they love you know we understand that I mean if you got a girlfriend, boyfriend, husband wife, children, grandchild whatever and you see them and sometimes you just can't take your eyes off of them you know for me that is the way it is with my family that is the way it is right now with my grandson Josiah and the minute I see him I just have my eyes on him I can't take my eyes off him because I love him so much you know there are times that you look at that person and you just can't keep your eyes off of them because you love them you admire them or whatever it is that is not how they are looking at Jesus because they are going to find him doing something that they can accuse him of but the thing that they are looking for him to do is something good they are looking to see if he is going to do something that they can find fault with and so he is under a microscope now by way of application believers even today in the 21st century are often under the same kind of microscope people will watch your life because as they do so they have the gospel they have lived out in living color if you will your life, my life is observed by people there is no doubt about it and it is not because we are kind of paranoid and this and that we have got this fear that we are being watched all the time now the reality of the fact is when you say I follow the Lord there is no doubt about it people do keep an eye on you because you have made that statement that you follow God and so it makes a testimony of a pure faith powerful because people will watch you now the Bible tells us if you take notes Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 the Bible tells us that we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them God intends in other words for those of us who are believers to walk in good works and we are living letters known and read by all men Paul said it this way you yourselves are our letter written on our hearts known and read by everybody you show that you are a letter from Christ the result of our ministry written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts during the time of the writing of 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 2 and 3 during the time of the writing of that letter there were letters of recommendation that would be written say that you were in this fellowship and you went from this fellowship to another state and you have ministry and you desire to serve the Lord at a Calvary ministry in New York and so you come up to me and you say I'm going to be going to upstate New York and I understand that there's a Calvary chapel up there and I say there are several Calvary chapels up in the upstate New York area well I'm going to be going to Calvary Chapel Finger Lakes and I say well that's great I know the pastor there I've known pastor's father for many years we're on the radio out there in Finger Lakes that's great well you know I'm going to be doing some ministry and I want to because I'm going to be there for a little while can you write me a letter of recommendation and so I say no no I say sure how much you want to give me so I say of course and I write and I say this is so and so been in our fellowship for this long here great person loves the Lord tremendous ministry highly recommend them and while they're with you should you have opportunity to use them encourage you to do so they're blessing to all of us that's a letter of recommendation that's what Paul's talking about you see because people would sometimes come into churches just like this two thousand years ago and they would claim to have some kind of authority they would say I have a message from the Lord and so the question would be asked what fellowship do you come from oh I come from the church of Ephesus who's the pastor there you know I find it interesting I have people on occasion approach me and speak to me and they say well I just came here from such and so church and I say really how long were you there always there for three years really what's the pastor's name they don't know they say oh really you don't know well you know I wasn't there that long how long were you there two years really how interesting is that some people don't even know the pastor's name because they really don't go there a lot of people claim to have a church that's theirs but they don't even really go there 30% of the church is gone every Sunday every Sunday that we have church services at least 30% aren't even here in two or three years and they'll say oh hi pastor how you doing you know and I say fine how are you doing where you go to church oh I still go with you I haven't seen you yeah well I still go there yeah right in your dreams you know you go to St. Mattress the church of the Living Springs so there are letters of recommendation and so they'll say where do you come from we come from Ephesus really who's the pastor well John is pastor in the church oh that's great there's a letter of recommendation oh yes they'll open it up and it's a commendation to them well that's what you are do you know that do you know that when Paul was writing here in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 2 and 3 he was saying in its context that the there are people who are demanding this is the context of this there are people who are demanding that I have a letter of reference to point out that I really have authority in the body of Christ he says I don't need a letter of recommendation the reason I don't is because you are my letter of recommendation because your walk with God demonstrates whether or not I'm called by God to equip the saints for works of service so do you guys who call this church your home do you realize that you are the letter of recommendation for Calvary Chapel Chino Valley do you realize that that when you leave this place and go out into the job site or go wherever it is that you go to school your neighborhood or whatever you realize that do you realize that you are the letter that your neighbors and your fellow workers and your fellow students your unbelieving friends and relatives you are the letter that they're reading it's very important for us to understand that because it causes us to be on our toes because we are bringing either shame to the name of Christ or glory to it by the way that we live and so people do watch you and they watch you very very carefully because that's true Christians need to conscientiously guard their walks so that we might appropriately model the grace of God that's lived out in a person's life that's why 1st Timothy chapter 4 verse 12 is so important because Paul when he's writing to a young man by the name of Timothy says to him let no one despise your youth but be an example to the believers in word in conduct in love in spirit in faith with all purity I was 23 years old once and I was teaching Bible studies at the age of 23 my first congregation consisted of my family and some neighbors my dad was 47 my mom was 43 and I am 23 years old and I've been out of the military for several months and a relatively new Christian of probably less than 3 years or so in my walk with the Lord at that time what gave me at the age of 23 the ability to communicate the things of God the man who was almost 50 years old it certainly wasn't eloquence and it most certainly wasn't intelligence it was not a lot of experience with God because I was a new believer what was it you know part of what it was with my dad is my dad saw transformation he saw a kid who was in rebellion and had been so for years transformed miraculously by the power of the spirit of God and my dad who was 47 years old respected me at the age of 23 as his Bible teacher and my dad respected me to the day I buried him as his pastor and I never forgot Paul's words to Timothy let no one despise your youth but be thou an example of the believer because that's what it's all about you see there's more to life than doing what pleases me and trying to be authentic to the point where my carnality is excused because it's real and I'm being real in front of people God hasn't told me live a carnal life and call it authentic God has said live for Jesus Christ and demonstrate that it's possible to live a successful life and to have a life that's blessed by God and that's what he was speaking to this young man Timothy because Timothy is a young man in a society much like ours he speaks to the older people not the younger ones and therefore Paul says you need to have an example he says be an example in a word when he speaks of being an example that's your speech because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and so you're to live is an example of word he says in conduct that means you are recognizably growing in Christ likeness it speaks of your manner of life he speaks of love may that be so evident in you that they know that God has done something in your life he speaks about their spirit that speaks of your mental attitude your charitable and loving and caring individual he speaks about faith because it speaks of your faith in Christ as well as the way that you live and he speaks about your purity because that speaks of your moral excellence or your sexual purity he says this is what you ought to be living like in order that people will see the power of God to transform lives Jesus is here and it's a Sabbath there are people gathered around but they intend to find as it says in verse 7 an accusation against him now they expect him to heal they know he's going to do something they expect him to heal or do something like that and yet even though they're aware of the fact that he has the power to do that they still are bent on rejecting him and so what they want to do is they want to convict him of breaking the law of Moses in order that they might discredit him you see to accuse Jesus was to find him in violation of breaking the law of the Sabbath and that would constitute a charge they could bring against him against the Jewish religious before the Jewish religious court because under some conditions working on the Sabbath is actually a capital offense it's something that is punishable by death Exodus 31 14 says observe the Sabbath it's holy to you anyone who desecrates it must be put to death whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people so Jesus is being watched and he knows it what does he do does he hide they're keeping it on me notice what he does it says in verse 8 he knew their thoughts and he said to the man who had the withered hand arise and stand here and here rose and stood so he takes the offensive to do something in plain view of everybody and that's his habit he tells the man arise and stand you see later on in John chapter 18 verses 19 and 20 the Bible says the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and teaching and this was Jesus's response he said I have spoken openly to the world I always taught in the synagogues or at the temple where all the Jews come together I said nothing in secret so Jesus did things openly he wasn't hiding it I don't know if I mentioned this to you recently one of our ministers was invited to go and do an outreach at a particular church they asked would you come and share and he was asking me what do you think should I go and I said what do they want you to do he says well they're going to have some music but they said that I could share but I have to be careful not to bring too much conviction because they don't want us to make the people uncomfortable there because they want us to evangelize but not bring conviction and I said that's an interesting way to think how long do you have to speak about 15 minutes of refreshments and they're going to have a pep talk for 15 minutes and they call it evangelism and that's kind of the state of the church today unfortunately guys unwilling to say the hard thing for fear of offending sensitive hearers Jesus was not afraid of telling the truth and neither should we be and he did it openly he asked the question basically is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good to have a life or to destroy it now doing good is actually the life of the believer that's what we're supposed to do Psalm 37 3 trust in the Lord and do good Ecclesiastes 3 12 there's nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live James 4 17 to him who knows to do good and does not do it to him it is sin it is the life of the believer to be known for those who do good and so he asked the question that actually begs the answer the answer obviously is it's always right to do good and so in verse 10 looking around at them he said to the man stretch out your hand he did so his hand was restored as well as the other they were filled with rage and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus now in Mark chapter 3 verse 5 Mark says he looked around at them with anger being grieved by the hardness of their hearts when it says he was grieved that word grieved means an anguish it's a heart that is filled with pain when he speaks of the hardness that speaks of a callousness he's angered at their fault finding he's angry at their evil thoughts and their obstinate refusal to answer and it's their hardness to people's pain that causes Jesus to get angry and they would rather this man remain crippled than to break their traditions regarding the Sabbath their regulations and their rules were more important to them than somebody's eternity years ago I was an assistant pastor in another Calvary chapel and we wanted to do a series of outreaches and at that time we were renting a church we didn't own it and so we spoke to the the elders of the church their committee and we said we want to do some outreaches to reach this community and we want to rent the church facilities on Saturday night so we can have a series of concerts so we can reach the kids of the community and we were going to be bringing in some bands and all and the first thing they asked us was what kind of musical instruments did they play in these bands and we said well just normal instruments you know they have drums and guitars and things like that no you can't you can't use electric guitars in the sanctuary but you can use it in the fellowship hall so we said we can't rent the church sanctuary why? because you're going to have electric guitars and it was like but we can have it in the fellowship hall yeah you can have it in the fellowship hall and we're Calvary guys so we walk out of that meeting going I guess God doesn't like to go to the fellowship hall and he only hangs around in the sanctuary it made absolutely no sense to us does it make sense to you it didn't make any sense to me at all it's like the Lord says no here you have to have pipe organs in here you know but out there you can rock it doesn't make any sense you know it didn't make sense then it doesn't make sense now and the thing that was sad is that these people didn't realize that what we wanted to do is reach people for the kingdom of God to transform their lives to the gospel of Jesus Christ but their tradition but their sense that you can't have that kind of music in this facility would keep them from reaching the youth reaching the people who will listen to that music and then come on in and they'll hear the music we've been doing this for 25 years you'll hear the music and some of you don't like it I know I get the letters sometimes the music but I don't like that just turn your hearing aid a little lower it won't hurt that bad but they get caught up it's the old wine skin kind of thing you know it's the old wine skin thing and these people didn't want us to reach the crippled those who were lost because we wanted to use certain instruments that they had a problem with drums and electric guitars and that was 20 some years ago 26 years ago 27 years ago and it hasn't really changed even to this day and how does Jesus respond to that with anger they would prefer people to remain crippled as long as it doesn't break the traditions and that to me is still a sad fact continues to be this way but notice what Jesus does he speaks to this man and he says stretch out your hand no wait a minute how can he it's crippled it's withered it's paralyzed it's immobile the guy could have been reasoning within himself and he could have said to the Lord listen my hand is withered how can I stretch it out make it whole first and afterwards I will do as you say isn't it interesting that the Lord Jesus Christ gave to him an impossible and you gotta see this an impossible command and then the power to fulfill it he gave him an impossible command stretch out your hand he can't because it's withered it's paralyzed there's no way he can do that but he says stretch it out it's a command and as the guy obeys he gives him the power to fulfill you know the Bible in Luke 1.37 says with God nothing will be impossible when the Lord gives a command the Lord gives the power to fulfill it it would appear reasonable if he thinks I can't do it heal it first and then I'll stretch it out that appears reasonable it's even logical but in his case it would have been foolish so when God says move it's wise for us to do so faith disregards apparent impossibilities where there's a command and promise of God interestingly enough the man was healed with a word without even a touch the Sabbath was unbroken even according to the most rigid interpretation of the letter of the law Jesus through a word healed this man didn't even reach forth and touch him but you know what they didn't see it what was their response did they say oh my God I just saw a miracle did you see that can you imagine what it would have been like to be there to watch this man they all knew had a withered hand a crippled hand to see it receive strength again could you imagine how hardened in your heart you have to be to reject that and to actually get angry but that's what happens and discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus legalism is always the enemy of grace always has been always will be this man obeyed and was healed by way of application what do you think the Lord may be speaking to your heart today as a believer what has he been telling you that he wants you to do praying I really can't do that Lord unless you do certain things to make it possible I can't do that well you know what I've discovered if the Lord puts it on your heart to do something it's just utmost wisdom to do it when he puts it on your heart I was speaking to a friend of mine just today and I'll close by illustrating it in this way he said I had a Bible track I was driving and he said and I was praying fervently Lord I want to give this track to somebody I want to give this track to somebody and just Lord just show me who you want me to give this Bible track to I want to share your love with somebody today I'm going to this gas station and Lord I know you have somebody in this gas station that you want me to give this track to so he says he pulls over and he begins to you know he's there at the gas station and he's just looking around to see who the Lord is going to bring for him to give this track to well this guy comes walking out and he says I'm going to be honest with you pastor he says he was a gang banger and as he walked out he had tattoos all over his head and everywhere and he looked really rough and he said and I just thought no that can't be the one I'm supposed to give this track to he says no you know send me a 95 year old harmless old woman you know but I'm a little nervous with this rough looking guy so he's looking around he says nobody else walks out so this has got to be the guy so he says so I'm standing there and this guy's walking by and he says so I called the guy hey come here and the guy looks at him like what he says come here and the guy walks over and he says I want to give you something and he says the guy says yeah what do you want to give me he says this and he hands him a track as they hands him the track and starts to talk to him about the love of Christ and this guy's a rough looking guy and the guy says you know talks to him a little bit and he says where do you live and the guy says well I live over here in Diamond Bar he says what have you ever heard of Rawl Rees and the guy says I don't think I have he says oh he's got a church right here you know he tells him where Rawl's fellowship is and all and the guy says well wait a minute come with me so my friend walks with this guy to the car this guy's car and his wife is there in the car and he says he says give me that picture so his wife gives him a picture and it's a picture of him and several of his guys and they're all kneeling down and directly behind them is a picture of Rawl's church building he goes is this the church you're talking about and my friend says yeah that's Calvary Chapel Golden Springs he says we were there last week I've never been there before I don't go to that church I've never been there before but one of my friends was killed and we went to the funeral there and so my friend says well that's the church I'm telling you about and continued sharing with him and so he finally looks at the guy and says do you want to receive Christ as your Lord and Savior and the man goes yes I do and the wife says now you wait a minute I want to receive Jesus too and my friend says they kneel down next to the car they kneel down next to the car in a gas station and they gave their hearts to Jesus Christ what does God want to do with you what does He want to do with you He could do yeah clap go ahead let it go come on you're going to clap clap like you're at an opera oh that was nice no that's that's what God wants to do all you have to do is to say here am I I'm willing to do it I'm willing to do it openly I'm willing to do it for you God nothing's impossible with you let's see what you want to do you'll be surprised what God can do through a willing vessel just be open and don't get caught up with legalism let God's Holy Spirit work freely through you don't get angry you know when you see people are doing things differently just let God take care of that but you walk in the grace of God and watch what the Lord will do


In the 1980s, then Governor Michael Dukakis decided to try an experiment in changing the way we organize human services and social services here in Massachusetts. That was the period when we were going through de-institutionalization. You'll remember the Northampton State Hospital, the Belcher Town State School. Our examples of institutions locally that were really warehouses for the mentally ill and the developmentally delayed. And Governor Dukakis, as we were de-institutionalizing and preparing the way for moving people into the community, felt that we needed more small community-based services and small community-based institutions. And that the folks who worked in those institutions should principally and significantly be private employees, not public employees. And so this started a network and a trend in the Commonwealth of human service organizations that spread from border to border here in the Commonwealth. And over the years, literally thousands and thousands of small organizations were developed to provide services, to provide residential opportunities, work-related training and work opportunities. So basically it was a decentralized system of small community-based organizations that would be staffed by local folks. And as a result of this, we ended up creating a bifurcated system where some agencies would have some of the same people doing the same work as a state employee making more money than a person who is doing it in the community. And some of these folks who are working these social service agencies are working with some of the most needy people and some of the most challenging circumstances. And the lower-waged workers in these agencies were struggling so much that they were entitled to things such as food stamps and to receive daycare vouchers for their children because their salaries were so low that it really was not a living wage for them. So one of the projects that I undertook as the chair of Ways and Means in my first budget in the mid-1990s when I served as the chair of the committee, I took the opportunity to set up a special reserve for salary increases for low-wage workers in the community-based programs in social services. And it was a very, very hotly contested issue in the conference committee. The conference committee is the three state reps and the three state senators that work out the difference between the two budgets, the House budget and the Senate budget. And so it was in the Senate budget but not the House budget. So we had to fight in the conference committee to keep that. And as a result of the successful effort, we were for the first time able to provide, through a human services salary reserve, modest salary increases for all of the people who were in the lowest-paid jobs in the community provider system. That account actually was funded virtually every year from the mid-1990s until 2008 when we hit a bad patch again in the economy, went into recession and at that point, unfortunately, the account disappeared. That was three years ago. But we are resolved to try to put that back into place so that we can once again provide these modest salary increases to very hardworking people working under extremely difficult circumstances so that they can support themselves and their families in a better fashion than they would otherwise be able to do.


Our technology keynote speaker is Laura Shin. Laura is a crypto journalist and hosts the crypto podcast Unchained. Formerly a senior editor at Ford's, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full time and is the author of the book, The Cryptopians. Idealism greed lies and the making of the first big cryptocurrency craze. Laura graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University School of Journalism. Laura Shin. All right. Hi everyone. Nice to see all of you. Thanks so much for coming today.  Chase Chapman is a recent university of mission graduate and when she was in college, she imagined she would kind of go the typical business route. She was thinking maybe she would do management consulting, investment banking, maybe along the way at some point she would end up in private equity. But not even a year out of college, she's actually living a very different life than what she imagined. And the reason is that when she, oh sorry, this is, here, is this better? Yeah, okay. Pull it down. Pull it down, like that. Oh yes. And now I can even hear myself. Okay. All right. So even a year out of school, she's actually living a life very different from what she imagined. And the reason is that when she was in college, she started getting into crypto. And she then ended up deciding to found a crypto startup upon graduation. And interestingly, as she was working more in crypto, she actually realized that she was working with a lot of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs. Now a DAO can be really any kind of different group. There are typically ones that have some kind of purpose or set of values or a mission. And then they organize themselves via a token. So we're seeing a huge range in the diversity of DAOs nowadays. You might have heard of a really popular one from last fall called Constitution DAO. It's sprang up within the span of a week to try to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution. There are other ones that are social clubs. There are certain ones that try to manage what are called decentralized finance protocols, which are software protocols on the internet that basically try to offer the services that financial institutions offer, such as decentralized borrowing and lending or decentralized exchange. And I've even heard of a DAO recently that is called Fry's DAO. And it is, I think, trying to buy some kind of fast food franchise. So as you can see, there's just a huge variety in the types of DAOs. So as she was getting involved in all these different DAOs, she realized that decentralization is really the crypto way. And being the founder of a startup, that's definitely more centralized. Oh, I think this is like a bit wobbly. Is that what? Yes. Oh, okay. Sometimes if you just talk about the angle, it's like once this handle seems to be tight. Okay. All right, the microphone definitely has a mind of its own, but hopefully it will obey now. Okay. So she was getting involved in all these different DAOs and she realized that actually this decentralized way was more of the crypto way. And so what she ended up doing was stepping back from her startup. Now she's an advisor there. And instead, she is what she calls a web three freelancer. And she says that she contributes to these little democracies. So this actually might sound kind of futuristic, but I actually want you to now think of a much different kind of world, a more analog world. So just imagine that we have a village of, well it could actually be all the people in this room. So we're all part of a village. Now imagine that every single day at noon we all gather kind of like in the town square. And what we'll do is whenever any of us, for any of the transactions that we've had in the last 24 hours, we will each call them out. And then what all the members of the village do is we all write those transactions down in ledgers that we individually keep. So for instance, I might say, oh okay, so I bought $5 worth of bread from the bread maker. The bread maker might say, I paid my neighbor $20 for babysitting, whatever it might be. And for each of those we all write the transactions down. Let's say one day I'm sick and I don't participate in this and my ledger then looks different from everyone else's. Well, we would then know that majority rules that the canonical ledger will be the one that majority, the majority of the ledgers show that they all agree upon. So if you now swap out all of us for anonymous computers around the world, that is what a blockchain is. And instead of having these new blocks of transactions every 24 hours, instead we have them every 10 minutes in the case of the Bitcoin blockchain or every 12 to 13 seconds in the case of the Ethereum blockchain or even some newer blockchains such as Solana will do this every 400 milliseconds. So as you can see, this is kind of like a sort of democracy, right? Every individual kind of has their own voice and is contributing, but majority rules. And so you can kind of see how this technology then sort of naturally gives rise to what she's called these little democracies that she is now working for. So I am now here going to describe the characteristics that I am seeing when I'm looking at these different DAOs. And I mean, obviously this is a very new space. So don't hold me to this over the next few years who knows these could change quite a bit, but this is how I see it now. And so at the base layer we have the values of the DAO. You know, as I mentioned earlier, this is kind of like that purpose or the mission. On top of that, you have this collective ownership layer and that's the token layer. And this is what differentiates DAOs from the startups of the internet boom, where instead of this company that owns everything, now the users actually are also part owners in these networks. Then on top of that, and not every DAO has this, but definitely the newer DAOs do, they have generally a set of clear processes or some kind of formalized governance system that uses the tokens. And there tends to be a lot of transparency. For some of the earlier, whether or not you wanna call them DAOs, but blockchains such as like Bitcoin or Ethereum, they maybe don't have this kind of tokenized governance or clear governance. And so you will hear a little bit about how that can cause issues. And then when you have these characteristics, that helps give rise to very easy collective action. And something I have definitely learned in my nearly seven years of covering crypto is that definitely in crypto, when things happen, they move fast. And I think it's because these blockchains do enable this collective action and it can move very quickly. And then on top of that, and this actually I think speaks to many of us who I'm assuming most of us are American in this room and this is sort of the pinnacle of this is that all of this when you have clearly articulated values and a sense of ownership and these clear processes transparency, that also then gives individuals a sense of autonomy and ownership and freedom. So I'm going to start with this first layer describing this values layer. And as I mentioned earlier, every single one of these DAOs will have its own mission or values. And like as I mentioned, they really can vary. And so they will begin kind of by articulating what is the purpose? What is the reason for our existence? So one example that we have here is that constitution that I mentioned earlier, it made headlines quite a bit in the fall so you might have heard of it. And this is what the webpage looked like at a certain point back when it was raising money. And so you just have this screenshot here but further down the page, they had written some text and one of the sentences was decentralization and cryptocurrency or web three have created structures that allow people to self govern with unparalleled levels of autonomy and freedom. Again, those characteristics I was talking about at the top of the pyramid. It's fitting that we use the technology to honor and protect the greatest historical tool for human governance, the US Constitution. So they were saying, you know, our mission is to steward this copy of the US Constitution that they were trying to buy which unfortunately they failed but even during that time when they were making that effort they had a bunch of museums and other public institutions reaching out to them that had resonated with that mission. And when I interviewed Chase on my podcast, I had asked her a question. This was not meant to speak to this values issue but I just asked her, oh, so, you know, if these are decentralized groups, if you have let's say two different people in the same role, let's say they're both business development people but one of them is living in New York and the other is living in my hometown of Cleveland, you have two very different costs of living in a centralized company, typically the cost of living would determine compensation so how would you handle that in the Dow? And she didn't answer the question directly, she said, what would matter is that the Dow would articulate what the values are from the outset and then everyone would know that that is how decisions would be made. So when you kind of join the Dow, this is kind of like what you're agreeing to and then as long as people agree on those values then later on if there are questions like this then it kind of obviates conflicts. So about that we have the token layer or this layer of collective ownership and this as I mentioned earlier, this is where people turn just from being users into user owners. So many of these Dow's have their own coins and for instance, this is a social club Dow, it's called Friends With Benefits and in order to be a member of the Dow you have to own FWB tokens and depending on the number you own you get different perks with your membership. Here's another Dow called Pleaser Dow and this actually has very interesting origin story. There was an NFT artist who was doing kind of a big NFT drop.  So they just whipped up a Dow, they whipped up a coin, the peeps coin and now essentially this Dow, the purpose of their existence is to just collect NFT art that sort of speaks to their values and so another artwork that they bought was the only NFT that Edward Snowden has sold which is called Stay Free and it's just the text of a court decision saying that the NSA did violate the law with its mass surveillance activities and he released this as an NFT and when they explained why it was that this was one of the many NFTs they bought, they said that Stay Free expresses that cypher punk ethos of transparency for all which as you know is another one of these characteristics that I'm talking about. So something that has been interesting to me is that this notion of kind of the collective or you know work that will kind of benefit a group this is actually kind of attracting a slightly different kind of person to crypto and as I mentioned, I've been nearly covering this space for seven years and I have a popular podcast and I will tell you that the vast majority of the audience is male and has been for a very long time it's ever so slightly becoming slightly more female but it's still like far and away, very, very male and what I found out recently was that there's this new tool called Syndicate Dow and they recently launched these Web 3 investment clubs and they naturally ended up attracting quite a number of women dowes and they didn't mean to do it. I will explain so the Web 3 investment club is basically a group of 99 people or fewer that again you know are organized by a token and what their purpose is to kind of share expertise so maybe let's say all of us are in one of these investment clubs and maybe you know that woman right in the front is like an NFT expert and so she is kind of tasked with helping do the NFT investments and maybe this man in the gray up front is really good with DeFi and kind of knows what DeFi investments to make. So they will then make these decisions for the group and the group will invest together and we all kind of share in the profits or the losses also we have to note and but you know it's this kind of ethos of a rising tide lifts all boats and so when Syndicate Dow went to launch with its initial cohort they found that half the dowes they were launching with were either female lead or all women dowes and they did not intend to do this and when I asked them how that happened they said you know we actually were just looking for groups that were kind of mission aligned values aligned and when we went to launch we suddenly realized oh half of them are female lead and it's very unusual in crypto they didn't mean to do it and I think it shows that again these values in dowes are you know this kind of sense of like group ownership is something that's really baked in and I think it's attracting a new kind of person. However I don't want to paint the picture that this is all as rosy as it sounds and there's definitely a lot of kinks that need to be worked out. So at the moment there's a big argument raging in this space about the role of venture capital and VCs and this is a cartoon that somebody we did out kind of you know criticizing the participation that venture capital has been making in this space to you know basically profit from these new coins that are being launched and so what can happen there's like two ways that a coin can be launched one is to do it more like Bitcoin where you just launch in the network and there's no pre-mined coins when you start. No a pre-mined coin is often you know what happens in these coins that do have the venture investment the early team and the investors and anybody who participated in that build up before the public launch they will be rewarded with coins that have been minted by the software even before they're publicly available and then they're allocated out you know if you think about sort of like equity in a startup it's sort of that conception acceptance for these tokens that will become liquid very soon and so you know there's essentially this debate between what some people disparagingly call the VC coins and then other people call a coin like Bitcoin a fair launch coin when that doesn't have this pre-mined. So you know how like whatever it is that will be the ideal way for these coins to launch in the future I think remains to be seen. So I don't want you all to think that you know this is all as democratized as it sounds like in the ideal world you know clearly there's debates over how to do this. The next layer after this is the clear process layer the this is where you have the rules around how to govern, you have transparency and a number of these different protocols have different ways for managing their governance. So one of them that is actually in its 13th round of providing funding and has dispersed 50 million dollars in funds is something called Gitcoin, Gitcoin Dow and what they do is they fund public goods and projects will make proposals to receive funding and then the Gitcoin Dow foundation will allocate funding based on how their members vote and they have funded things such as open source projects or journalism I even noticed in the latest round there are projects for tackling climate change or for contributing to the war effort in Ukraine. Now here's the thing people often talk about blockchain based identity how in the future we might have that but since we don't right now a lot of these token voting systems are literally just based on how many tokens go to a specific vote or a specific proposal and since even a wealthy person could for instance make themselves look like many people by spreading their funds out amongst different wallets they try to just kind of offset the influence that whales have in these systems. So whales are people who have such a large amount of tokens they can either sway the price or in the case of these proposals they can sway the outcome of the votes and so what they have done is they created this website called WTF is QF and the QF stands for something called quadratic funding and quadratic funding is their kind of work around to try to mitigate the influence of whales and it's a really interesting system. What will happen is that let's say there's one proposal that receives one vote from 10 different entities as you can see here in this first example and then under that the next proposal has received 10 votes but from one entity. So when Gikoi goes to allocate that money out roughly 90% will go to the one that has many more entities voting for it and then only 10% will go to the one where it's a single entity but they just have frankly more money and when I spoke to the founder about this he explained quadratic funding as a way of optimizing the preferences of the poor and the many over those of the rich and the few which I found to be an interesting philosophy and I think there's a lot of different ways that people are managing the governance right now. So we'll continue probably to see more experiments but now I'm gonna tell a story of one of these doubts that maybe doesn't have such clear governance. Many of you might have seen my book which I think is, yes I do see people with the book, The Cryptopians and it tells the history of Ethereum and I have a slide here showing the Ethereum kind of like founding group right when they met like the very week that they all first met and at the time the creator of Ethereum was a teenager. He was just days away from turning 20 and so he clearly did not have a lot of management experience and so when they were trying to figure out how to allocate the pre-mine which by the way also he had been influenced by others to even have a pre-mine because he didn't want to have one but he said instead of trying to determine what every individual's contribution is going to be why don't we just kind of divide the money sort of equally and what that meant to him was for that allocation that was going to the people who contributed between the inception of Ethereum until the crowd sale they would just divide the amount of pre-mined ether equally between each of the months and then for each of the people contributing during those months they would either earn one portion or half a portion for 0.5 for half time work and then 0.25 for part time work so what this meant was basically kind of the same hourly rate for everyone and one of the main coders of Ethereum would still be annoyed years later when he would recount how that meant for one of the months when he worked full time on Ethereum there was a carpenter who was building a wall in the house where they were all living and building a desk and just doing carpentry type work and that person received the same amount of ether for that month and so because people felt that this wasn't fair there was just kind of a lot of grumbling about it and a year later when they went to finally allocate that money out somebody went to Vitalik again trying to change the system saying this isn't fair and Vitalik had a veto on the foundation board and this person said we at least need to bring this up with the board but Vitalik said I have the veto and I'm not gonna change my mind on this because we've already promised these people that I'm not gonna go back on my word therefore I'm not gonna bring it up to the board meaning essentially he didn't follow the clear processes that had been laid out what this led to was the person who was disgruntled erring their grievances on Reddit about how much individual people were earning and so then there was this very public discussion around how much ether these different people were getting based on what their contributions had or had not been to Ethereum definitely not an ideal situation for any organization it was obviously slightly scandalous so that's what happens when you don't have clear processes or when they're not followed so when you have these characteristics the values, the collective ownership, the clear processes that enables collective action that is what enables these groups to act on that mission or those values that they have laid out and a lot of different DAOs are trying to do things such as tackle tragedy of the commons type issues or they will just do things that in a previous world a centralized company might have tried to do but they're gonna try to do it now in a decentralized way using a DAO and a good example of this is one decentralized protocol called the GRAF and the GRAF is basically trying to be a Google for blockchains except they're doing it without a company that has a C-suite and a board and is hiring all these different workers and different roles and different departments the way they're doing it is they're creating this decentralized protocol that has a coin and the coin has different incentives baked in to try to get people to contribute to the network to these different services that they want to have on the network so if you just think about the purpose would be something like the way that we can search on Google for instance the population of Utah or something on the GRAF you could query something like how many Ethereum smart contracts have more than a million ETH in them and so there was one company that started off actually trying to provide the same service but they were doing it in a centralized way as a startup and I interviewed this company streaming fast and they said that they began just trying to do things that a normal company would do to get clients to get monthly recurring revenues and they did this with their kind of close source proprietary technology but of course in this crypto world and this web three world they were not getting a lot of customers and meanwhile they were seeing all these headlines about the GRAF getting all this investment and they were attracting all these different people working with them and so finally they realized we cannot compete against this decentralized protocol and this group of people however loosely organized they are via a token because the incentives are just too strong to join that network as opposed to working with our little company so they threw in the towel and they decentralized they now are service providers on the GRAF network and instead of chasing these monthly recurring revenues from companies and having their technology be closed source they've open sourced everything and they earn GRAF tokens and they feel like owners of the GRAF network they're user owners they're also service providers of it and they said once that happened and once they adopted that crypto ethos then they saw their business take off people began using their technology reaching out wanting to work with them so this now gives us the last piece of this you know what I talked about the pinnacle of this pyramid and when you have these clearly expressed values when you have these user owners you know have this sense of ownership when you have clear and transparent processes not only can the group act but individuals are also empowered to act and they have a lot of autonomy and freedom and that sense of kind of entrepreneurship and so certain people like a great example would be creators so I'm a fan of Kings of Leon and they were a band last year that became the first band to issue their own NFTs so before NFTs a band like Kings of Leon would make money for instance from streaming services and you may be very well aware that these streaming services pay fractions of a penny for every stream and a lot of people talk about how a lot of musical artists just cannot make a living from that and many of them end up depending on touring but even for touring at least where I live in New York when a popular band comes to town I know this from experience you can go on there at the minute that the clock turns to you know whatever time the tickets are gonna go on sale and they will sell out within that minute and most of the tickets will go to scalpers and so then the tickets will be resold at whatever the true market prices of those tickets whatever the real value is of those tickets and you know who's gonna get that money it will be the scalpers not the band the band itself is not actually getting the market value of what they're offering so there are a lot of problems that creators have but NFTs enable them to transact directly with their fans in a way where there's many fewer middlemen or perhaps none at all depending and so what Kings of Leon did was they had multiple tiers of NFTs and the most exclusive where I think there were only six that they offered at the time but they were ones that would unlock for you kind of like lifetime tickets front row tickets for the for as long as Kings of Leon exists and you will get kind of you know a chauffeur a chauffeur and drive in a limo to the concert and VIP access and then there was a middle tier that was probably less expensive less exclusive and then there was kind of the mass tier which is actually where I bought in and yes I could have just added the new album to my streaming service yes I could have done that and then they would have earned pennies or dollars or whatever from my streams of that but you know I have this emotional connection with them and frankly as somebody interested in crypto and who likes Kings of Leon I thought this is the first time you know the years that I've covered this space were something that I'm actually interested in in my personal life kind of intersects with crypto so I just sort of had that oh no was like this emotional moment and that's where the vast majority of people bought in and so when you think about how Kings of Leon was kind of able to capture what fans were willing to pay at multiple different levels I mean that's really a new model for creators but you don't have to be a creator to kind of capitalize on the top of this pyramid that I'm describing you can be of course like Chase Chapman you can be a business person you can be a web three freelancer you can contribute to these different dows you know what the rules are you can find ones that align with your mission and your values and you can find your own place and contribute to them so I do not know what the future holds for someone like Chase I mean she obviously hasn't even been a year out of college so who knows what her future career will look like but I do think there is something new and interesting that is rising up out of these dows and I do think especially you know I imagine for many of us being American and like living in a democracy I could imagine that these values and the way these function could be quite interesting to a number of us so I would urge you to either try to contribute to a dow somehow or if that seems a little bit out of reach for you I would urge you to instead just think about how you could dowify your life how could you express your values or the values of the people you're working with more clearly how could you make processes more clear and transparent how could you make things more democratic and enable the collective to act together more easily or see how you and others might have more freedom and that is that's my talk on dowse so I think I'm supposed to answer questions I don't know if there's a mic for the oh right there okay go ahead is this on? All right great. All right we'll do it. Thank you so much Laura that was a fascinating talk and I really love the stories that you gave and the analogies they really helped a person who's not an expert to understand so thank you. I've heard a couple of other questions and I hope that we'll keep asking these questions either in our own minds or here at the microphone all day to every presenter because I think it is the most important question about you know how do we make this the future that we want and that is how do we program social justice into dowse so that they become a feature and not just a hopeful bug right? We've had a couple people answer and say oh well it just so happens that these things lead to democratization and empowerment of the masses but it's not really a feature it's a bug I think most of us would rather see that a feature we'd rather see that built into it baked into it so I'd like to know you know I think that's how we will compete with China and with authoritarian regimes and strong men politics in the future is if we can empower you know the little people and the people that aren't people you know the animal people the plant people that are just as important to our the health and sustainability of our ecosystem going forward how do we give them tokens how do we give them a vote and I want to know if you have any any gut feelings about how we can do that with dowse you know this is such a difficult question so I'm definitely not gonna pretend like I have any answers here I will say though that I think a lot of people are working on these issues and I think frankly what's probably gonna help is trial and error I don't know if people followed what happened with Brantley Milligan of the Ethereum name service but he had some tweets that expressed discriminatory views and so then later there was a vote whether or not to remove him from his directorship at this foundation and you know it really goes back to that processes issue because what ended up happening was he was the single largest holder of ENS tokens and he did not abstain from the vote and he had a large enough number of tokens that he actually swung the outcome in his favor and so he was able to keep that position and so people were just upset by the fact that you know he obviously you know probably shouldn't have participated in a matter that involved himself but he did and the issue there was of course they didn't have any rules that would have prohibited that and you know that is something they're probably learning now okay going forward you probably should have some kind of rule where if the vote involves you then you can't participate so I think it's more about kind of establishing what those rules are from the outset but I like for instance you know every time I do my podcast I have this checklist that I run through before I start recording and sometimes people guess will say to me oh this is a really smart checklist and I'll just laugh to them I'll be like oh you know you're listening to a history of all the mistakes that have ever been made on the show and I imagine that a lot of DAOs will have to go through a process like that that there will be mistakes that will made and then people will learn oh okay going forward it's probably best if DAOs incorporate this or that and we're even seeing that when it comes to smart contract security you know there have been some very famous hacks in this smart contract space and again I think it's one of those things where going forward people know never to code things a certain way because then it will be vulnerable to a hack so you know I can't claim to have any really good answers for you now I think probably what's gonna happen is there's just gonna be more issues like these and then over time they will become more they will fit more that ideal that people aim for. Oh okay. Yeah good question. Where should I go to learn about DAOs like maybe a reference the different kinds that are set up because I wanna set myself when I loosely understand things I've been a blockchain developer for a while yet I don't know very much about DAOs. So there's a number of different resources actually Chase herself has a podcast called on the other side and it's all about DAOs. I think there are other ones like I know well it's a rabbit hole I think has both podcasts as well as it is a organization that teaches people about crypto and you can earn crypto there. Frankly also there's certain website like there's a website called deep DAO and they just kind of give a lot of stats on different DAOs but if I were you I might just look at the list of things there and kind of how they're breaking things out and then you could probably just click through the links and just see interesting DAOs and ones that appeal to you but frankly other than that I probably would just keep up on crypto news because DAOs are just they're a part of all the crypto media you know coin desk, the block, the crypto crypt and frankly what it might be is you might read an interesting news story about a DAO that sort of resonates with you that you might wanna get involved with because some of the like you know Chase's podcast tends to be a little bit more in the abstract because she since she works in DAOs it's more of a you know how do we handle HR issues in DAOs or that kind of thing but I do think just if you're following the news you might naturally find certain DAOs that appeal to you. So deep down in Chase's podcast. Yeah, yeah, which is called on the other side. Thank you. Yeah so thanks for your talk. I found it interesting the example you gave of Edward Snowden selling an NFT and I wasn't familiar with it so I had to kind of look it up. Now it kind of raised a question in my mind because this is a piece of artwork based on a court ruling right? Yep. And a court ruling would be something that would kind of be in a sense owned by everybody. So I was wondering if you see a role for NFTs for things that are owned by not just a particular community but by everybody and if there is a role for NFTs in that situation what is it? So a couple of things. So first of all and actually so you might wanna just say there because I might ask you a clarifying question but it was an artwork made of the text so it's kind of it's a little bit different from saying it's an NFT of just the text it was an artwork but then I'm sorry the second half of your question was how we can make NFTs of things that people collectively own? Right. So I mean we kind of think of I will buy an NFT or maybe a Dow will buy an NFT. Is there a role for NFTs for everybody? Like is there any kind of a sense that an NFT would be owned by everybody for things that should be owned by everyone? That's a really tough question. So let me just think about it on stage. My sense is that since a Dow members are organized by a token you would then need to have some kind of Dow where everybody on the planet has an ownership stake in that Dow which would be a token given just sort of the state of the world and everything and people's varying interests in this kind of thing. I can't imagine that there would ever be a Dow where everybody would own a token of it. So yeah, that. There is fractional ownership of NFTs, right? So maybe that kind of partially gets there. I just thought I'd throw that in. So you can have NFTs that are owned by more than one individual, right? Yeah, but for the whole planet to own it would to fractionalize into seven billion people to actually distribute to all the seven billion. I just, I don't know, seems challenging. Okay, so, yes? Thank you and I wanna ask if you know how can Dow's help improve journalistic integrity and do you know of any projects that is underway? Wow, how does can improve journalistic integrity? Well, I don't know of any Dow's that are working on that specifically. I do know of a media Dow that is launching or has launched a number of the crypto media have joined together for that, but I don't know if their mission is around integrity. I do know that Gitcoin has funded a number of individual journalism projects, but again, I'm not sure if any of those, the mission has been around integrity. But maybe if that interests you you could try to start one, so. Well, thank you for sharing your voice on it. Yeah. Hi Laura, thanks for the talk. I really appreciated your pyramid structure that you laid out for us. You talked a little bit about some of the learnings that Dow's have encountered as they've discovered gaps in processes and so forth. One of the things that I wonder about is at the bottom of the pyramid you have these values and you talked about this question around what happens when conflict arises and the idea that these values are supposed to then provide a foundation on which to mitigate the possibility of conflict. But as I look at how values of societies also evolve over time, I think about the changing values that were originally enshrined in the US Constitution regarding slavery or misogyny and that obviously there's a process built in to be able to adapt to those. Do you know, given the fact that immutability is such a key piece of blockchain technology about processes that are built into Dow's to account for changing values, changing processes and evolving that over time in a Dow? Yeah, actually what I would say is that something that she's talked about is she feels like in her work with Dow's, what she's realizing is that it's important to realize kind of what needs to go on chain and what doesn't and so there are a lot of tools that are being used that are not tools that have anything to do with the blockchain frankly. So for instance, she was telling me actually that the way compensation is decided at one of the Dow's she works at, it's a tool called coordinate with a P, like ape in as if you know that expression in crypto and what they say is that they provide payroll for Dow's and as far as I understand it kind of logs transactions that you're having as you're working in the Dow and then people that you work with kind of vote, I don't know vote is the word, but they sort of collectively determine what you should be paid for your contributions to the Dow and this is not something that's happening on chain and so I think when it comes to probably these things like the values, I think a lot of that probably is happening off chain and so that allows for that flexibility. On the cultural side of crypto, some of the things you've talked about with Dow's and other things I think there's a lot of really positive developments, but there's kind of a negative side as well. I've seen that I feel like crypto and the financial side of it can seems like enhance tribalism. I've seen you the victim of that a couple of times once when you said you don't own any crypto because you wanna stay neutral and a lot of Bitcoiners had harsh things to say and then more recently some stuff from the Cardano community. I'm just curious what you think things we can do to mitigate the negative aspects culturally of crypto? Well, that is a big question. You know, this goes back to what I was saying about how those Web 3 investment clubs just naturally they ended up being half women led Dow's. When I was talking to those women, they were saying, oh, there's just something about the setup of this that just really resonated with me and my peers and frankly that to me is kind of a less tribalistic notion. It's this, oh, you know, we're gonna do this together as a group, we're gonna help each other out. So you're right that kind of more in the pure crypto world of just the individual coins it can be quite tribalistic. The thing is though, so here's my personal take on that. I actually, I think, so I also, I have a slightly privileged position because since I'm a journalist, especially early on when I was covering for Forbes, if I called somebody up and I said, oh, I'm gonna write an article for Forbes, people were generally on really good behavior with me. But I actually feel like in general, the rhetoric online doesn't always match kind of how people behave in person. And so I mean, I guess that's probably true for any area. So I'm not saying that crypto isn't tribalistic, obviously, but I do feel that the perception that you get from social media is not exactly the same as it is in real life. But I do wonder as I talked about in my talk, I do feel like this notion of this collective and we're all helping each other out if that might kind of be a good way to counter the tribalism. I think we'll have to see, I don't really know. Hi, Laura. Hi. I really enjoyed your podcast recently with Chase Chapman on articulating values for DAOs. And I wonder if you had thoughts on the recent Juno proposal, which voted to take away funds from a well who had Sibyl farmed the airdrop to receive Juno tokens. And I was wondering if you had thoughts on how they should go about maybe fixing like issues like that using values they've been talking about making like a bill of rights, built into the chain. Yeah, I tweeted about this because this was incredibly fascinating to me. So a couple of thoughts and I should also say I did not look into this super closely because I saw people tweeting back at me like, oh, you should look at this proposal and that proposal and this forum chat and whatever and I didn't have time to go into all that. So there's probably a lot of nuances that I missed. But the first thought that I had was, wow, that's, I don't know if there was something a little bit breathtaking about that to see the collective come together and kind of punish this entity. However, I also thought, well, the more I look into this, it does look like they were kind of cheating. So, you know, obviously in our society when people do things that are kind of outside of the rules, they run the risk of getting punished. And so another part of me was like, well, in that case, maybe the governance kind of worked because then this model did enable the collective to express their values. You know, granted, it's not in an ideal way. I think what would have been a more ideal situation here would have been if the farming or whatever the scheme was where they had kind of cheated to get these coins. If that had already from the outset been built in a way where you couldn't cheat to gain extra coins. So then that might have just prevented the whole thing. So that's kind of what I thought, but I do mean to look more into that. And now that you asked me this question, I will do it later. So if you see me tonight at dinner, maybe I might have new thoughts on that, we'll see. I think that's all we have time for. So thank you. Thank you.