Who is Jesse Fisher?
Well, I’m Jesse Fisher and I seek to understand, apply and share principles of truth that empower individuals and groups to express the full measure of their potential for peace, happiness and prosperity.
For a living during the past 20 years, I have been assisting individuals and small businesses to succeed in the marketplace by using my strategic thinking and problem solving skills in the arena of online marketing.
My interest in changing the world began when I was a youth. A conspiracy-theory book I found at age 9 or 10 opened my mind to the possibility that all was not well in American society. Then a novel my sister gave me turned me on to the idea that mankind could construct a better society, a peaceful, productive society where mutual respect reigned supreme.
In college, these interests were fueled as I studied political philosophy, education, and even, advanced Geometry. It was there I was introduced to the ideas that state-run schools were not ideal, that we Americans had strayed dangerously from the ideals of our founding, and that there were better ways, more human-friendly ways, of organizing Capital and Labor to meet the demands of a free market.
Around 1991, I met a man who became a great friend and who also shared my desire to find better ways, more respectful ways, of organizing society. We gave a great deal of thought to how such a society could be structured and we networked with others thinking along the same lines. This launched me on a decades-long search for specific examples of where people have greatly improved our traditional social institutions: schools, businesses and governments.
Around that same time, I discovered a group of parents who were working to create a “democratic school” in my area. After attending a few of their meetings, I was elected the leader and helped them bring about their desire for a more child-friendly school based on the model of the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts. It was clear to me that this type of freedom-based school could be a cornerstone of an ideal free society. Today, I’m helping launch another freedom-based school in Utah County – see Alpine Valley Academy.
My search led me to discover the Mondragon network of worker-owned cooperatives. The more I learned about it, the more I realized this was a much more humane method of organizing businesses and would solve many, if not all, of the complaints people have about Capitalism (ie. competitive free-enterprise).
Ironically, my wife and I had chosen to raise our family, we later discovered, among a people whose ancestors had enjoyed amazing success with worker-owned cooperatives during the mid 1800s. The early Mormons of Utah were creating a robust economic engine based on Cooperative Free Enterprise. Unfortunately, they were beaten into economic submission to the Competitive Free Enterprise system by the US Government in the late 1880s. Sadly, in an effort to achieve statehood and appease their economic enemies, the Mormons abandoned their once-robust zest for creating cooperatives. Today, their descendants are mostly unaware of their own history of dramatic successes with cooperatives and are culturally reticent to recreate those successes. Hence my video on their economic history created to help them remember.
After years of servicing clients who were selling goods and services that meant little to me personally, I recently realized that I want to help organizations that are more in line with my personal values. That’s when I renamed my company NewSalem Web Services and built this website.