My guest today is Scott Conger, the Mayor of Jackson, Tennessee. Jackson is a city in and the county seat of Madison County, Tennessee. Located 70 miles east of Memphis. Latest estimates the total population of Jackson to be approximately 67,000. Scott has been the Mayor of Jackson for a few years now and is actually the 3rd person in his family to serve as Mayor of Jackson. At 35, Conger became the youngest mayor of the City of Jackson, Tennessee, beating out his opponent Jerry Woods by over 3,000 votes. Mayor Conger was one of the first US elected officials to publicly embrace Bitcoin. Over the years, Mayor Conger has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the long-term prosperity of the Jackson, Tennessee community. Mayor Conger views Bitcoin as an ideal way for his city to secure its financial future as well as to encourage young remote tech workers to lay down roots in Jackson. Mayor Conger follows three principles when navigating his role as a leader in local government: transparency, efficiency and inclusion. These principles shine through our conversation. We cover the latest infrastructure bill and the possible implications on the crypto industry, the importance of local politics, and Bitcoin. We discuss the infrastructure bill and some inside baseball about how local politicians can influence national politicians. Mayor Conger explains how Jackson Tennessee is running a fiscal surplus and how they are incentivizing people to move to Jackson. Mayor Conger goes on to stress the importance of citizens having access to fast internet and why broadband should be classified as a basic utility. We discuss why the biggest problem facing progress is single interest groups. A very memorable moment in the conversation was when Mayor Conger talks about how even though his campaign was underfunded compared to his opponent, he was still able to win by being more strategic about his marketing and ultimately more impactful. The story illustrates the power of the internet and network effects but more importantly it demonstrates that stories are what drive people to action. We finish our conversation with a deep dive on local politics by discussing the structure of local politics, the importance of local politics, and how to get involved.

Kava:

Kava connects the world's largest cryptocurrencies, ecosystems and financial applications on DeFi’s most trusted, scalable and secure earning platform. Built to scale on the largest decentralized PoS network, Kava lets you mint stablecoins, lend, borrow, earn and swap safely and efficiently across the world’s biggest crypto assets with a simple and intuitive user experience and the full confidence of institutional-grade security and quality . To learn more visit https://untoldstories.link/kava 

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