Disrupting Television
by Jim Davidson
[email protected]
Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise
“I wish there were a knob on the TV so you could turn up the intelligence.
They got one marked ’brightness’ but it don’t work, does it?”
— Leo Anthony Gallagher
“Television: A medium—so called because it is neither rare nor well done."
— Ernie Kovacs
Beginning in November 2017, I was asked by one of the legends of the freedom movement, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, to join in a series of conference calls about a set of really ground-breaking projects that address homelessness, the financial crisis of 2007-present, risks attending polluting industries, and safe and environmentally sound solutions to real-world problems in building materials, insect control, and re-building after earthquakes, tornadoes, and wildfires.
This week Melinda is in Las Vegas at FreedomFest.com in ThePitchTank.com presenting the ideas she and her team have come up with for FreedomTVNetworks.com. The revenue model that I just built for them projects their enterprises generating $1.7 billion in 2019 and upwards of $23 billion revenues by 2022. The pitch in the first rounds today went well, the winner is a widget that does DNA stuff and they may be raising funds to have a show on our networks.
So, what is the purpose of making television interactive, and why should you care? I myself don’t own a television and haven ’t for months. After all, there are hundreds of channels but nothing worth watching. Oh, I suppose I could have kept the DVD player and watched some of the films I own on DVD, but I still have over 200 books inherited from my parents which I haven’t read. Books are more fun, for me.
Interactive television is something you’ve seen in tiny morsels. America’s Most Wanted, for example, provided a call-in number to report criminals, thereby encouraging a tattle-tale culture. America ’s Got Talent and similar shows allowed viewers to rate or support contestants who were good at singing, dancing, comedy, or, quite often, not much at all. All the way back in 1992, a dark horse nearly unknown candidate was about to quit the race when he was invited on a "Phone Voter" television show, in which audience interactions led to his decision to continue in the race. His name was Bill Clinton.
The Freedom Interactive Television Networks Association was created with the idea that we can make better television shows, do so profitably, and tell people about a lot of better ways of doing things. Further, we can interact with audiences and learn from them, so making our shows better. Best of all, using a crypto-currency of our design, we can pay viewers for interacting, responding to polls, participating in focus groups, and they can use those crypto-tokens (use tokens) to pay for per-view events or special films, or goods and services.
Several show concepts have already been developed so we ’re ready to roll out as soon as we bring in the capital we need.
Percentage As You Earn
One of the innovations we’re focusing on is changing the way
mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and personal loans are made in this
world. Currently, collateral loans require a fixed payment every month, and
if you miss more than a small integer (three or so) the lender begins
foreclosure proceedings. This sort of lending resulted in the financial
crisis that began in 2007, became really bad in 2009, and is still with us in
many ways.
There is a better way. What if you paid 7% of your earnings, whether your earnings went up or down? And if you had no earnings for a while, 7% of zero would be zero. So people with intermittent earnings, and people whose earnings rise and fall either seasonally or for other reasons, would not face losing their home. Or car. Or credit worthiness.
It turns out that there is ample historic precedent for percentage-as-you-earn lending. It was used very successfully to obviate the "indentured servitude" contracts that were chattel slavery with a thin veneer of disguise. Changing to percentage-earned contracts helped encourage many settlers to cross the Atlantic. The same system was also used in privateers during the American revolutionary war, the second globe-spanning war of the 18th Century. Thousands of privately chartered and financed war ships captured much more British shipping on a per warship basis than did the government funded ships. More recently, the system was very successfully tested by Jack Kemp during his time at Housing and Urban Development.
We anticipate helping millions of Americans get homes, or convert from rip-off mortgages to better financing. And we have a number of heavy-hitters looking to place capital in this new way.
What Happened to that Other Deal?
Back in December 2017 I was engaged to write a business plan for a
travel-related crypto-currency. The plan I wrote focused on rapidly deploying
technology available from Ascension.Foundation to mint several hundred
million units of TravelCash. The plan found enthusiasm among the network of
friends and family of the three founders. Funds were raised, a securities
lawyer of my acquaintance was engaged who suggested selling shares of stock
and using TravelCash to pay dividends. Three corporations were formed.
Additional consultants and law firms were hired. Although I advised against
it, the company chose a strategy of seeking to have their crypto-currency
registered as a security. They also pursued a know-your-customer strategy for
all further sales of TravelCash, using a reliable crowd-engine service to
handle the gathering of identity data and accreditation data. Perhaps that
strategy will succeed, but given my extensive published works both online and
in book form, it seems clear that I cannot help them gain government approval
of their registered security, and I’ve left the company. The sentences
in this paragraph are my understanding of what happened.
How Can You Help?
There’s a lot going on, and FreedomTVNetworks is working fast to
build our team, design our crypto-currency, implement some new software, and
get our television networks up and running. You can check out our web site,
follow us on Twitter and other social media, and take a look at our crowd
funding when those premiums are up and running. FreedomTvNetworks.com
Jim Davidson is an entrepreneur, author, and peace activist.
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