by Dr David,Editor / Publisher

I presented my Lokkal project as an investment possibility to a wealthy man, X. X showed interest, going so far as to share my proposal with a friend. Then he decided not to invest. At the time, X was also considering buying a hotel (whose price-tag was many times more than I was asking for). I don't know whether he bought it.

Why does such a man buy a hotel? While he doesn't want the hotel to lose money, any money it does make, the rental income, would not be important to someone at his level of wealth. Of course, real estate is generally a good investment, appreciating over time.

When you have so much money, you have to do something with it all. You don't just let it sit in the bank. X's house was full of expensive art. There wasn't room for one thing more.

Why did Michael Jordan buy a restaurant? Again, while he doesn't want the eatery to lose money, any income from it would be insignificant to his overall personal wealth. My guess is that Michael Jordan bought a restaurant because he wanted to entertain his friends in his own restaurant. My guess is that he had run out of things to buy. He already had everything.

Maybe X wanted to house his visitors in his own hotel. Maybe X had also run out of things to buy. Maybe it was a failure of imagination. A bricks and mortar guy, maybe X could not relate to the joy of owning a digital platform like Lokkal, however prominent in the community, in communities around the world, that platform might become.

Months passed, a year. I changed tack. I asked X to consider Lokkal as a recipient of his charitable giving. X's charitable giving is sizable. He has an accountant who directs it for him.

I'm not privy to the details of his philanthropy, but I expect that locally he has given $15,000us to Casita Linda to build a house for a family... more than once. I would be very surprised if he doesn't give on the same scale to Patronato Pro Niños, Jóvenes Adelante and other worthy local charities annually. He's a generous man.

As important as the work of these charities is, it is important principally to the individuals living in the houses Casita Linda builds or going to school on the scholarships that Jóvenes Adelante provides.

In contrast, Lokkal will float everyone's boat, addressing major social problems: building community, strengthening the local economy, reforming the internet. Moreover, Lokkal just needs some help, not even much, now at the start. Once it gets going, soon, it will be self-sustaining, even investing/donating its profits into the community. And Lokkal will spread to other cities beyond San Miguel, nationally and globally.

I asked X to consider Lokkal as a recipient of his charitable giving. He declined.

Maybe it's my fault, my failure of imagination. Maybe I haven't explained the project well enough:

Lokkal is a local internet platform that builds community and fosters empathy.

Lokkal is a digital town square that strengthens the local economy, combats income inequality, resists the concentration of wealth and provides Covid relief for small businesses.

Lokkal is an internet commons that creates a transparent, more ethical, more humane, less addictive, less toxic internet experience.

Providing togetherness, a higher standard of living and a healthier internet, Lokkal is a meta-platform that gets to the root of problems facing society today.

Lokkal is the People's Internet, a cooperative project, free of commercial control, managed like a public utility for the community's benefit. Profits are returned to the community.

Lokkal is a social network (like Facebook) and
it is a search engine (like Google), but it is local, geographically-specific, like the Yellow Pages robustly reborn for the 21st century.

Thank you, Big Tech, but we don't need your algorithm. We will present our own neighborhood, town or city, to the planet and to each other.

More

Without much of it myself, I respect material success. Wealth demonstrates power, I would go so far as to say, a type of spiritual power. There is a magic to making lots of money, not always good.

Up in Hartford, Connecticut, where I'm from, there was a businessman who had made a billion dollars. This was 30+ years ago, when a billion was still a billion. Simon Konover was his name. He was a survivor of the Nazi death camps.

Someone asked Simon Konover, why, with his vast wealth, he continued making money. He replied, "I've forgotten how to do everything else." Another failure of imagination.

I guess that's my beef. I would think that after you've definitively won at one game, that you'd look for another to play.

I would think that a working prototype of an internet platform that might go a long way towards solving many of the major problems facing society today, would warrant support from a man who had run out of things to buy; an investment that would be less than the cost of the last painting he hung on his wall.

It's my fault. I haven't conveyed the revolutionary potential of Lokkal. It's unique; the bluest of Blue Ocean Strategies.

I'll keep trying. There must be someone wealthy out there who wants to build a monument, leave a living legacy, create a more equitable world, save the planet, no?

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Dr David and his merry band believe that the new expanded Lokkal will change the world, city by city.