April 6, 2012

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was officially organized 182 years ago today. It continues to grow and flourish because it has eternal value and was provided to us mortals by God as a vehicle through which the Priesthood of God and the remaining covenants, ordinances, and commandments would be available to us as we attempt to endure to the end and return to his presence.

The most compelling question we can ask ourselves is how we can best serve our fellowmen in achieving this goal for our family, for our fellowmen, and by extension, for ourselves. In recent years the Church has added a fourth tenant to the three-fold purpose of the Church; namely, ensuring the needs of the poor and needy. The adage regarding giving someone a fish and it lasting for a day and teaching someone to fish and it lasting a lifetime comes boldly to mind as I review this purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, the critical question is, how can we serve Heavenly Father’s children through helping administer this principle.

This is what I believe would assist in blessing the lives of many in this country and other parts of the world:

1.       Create a network of like-minded individuals that share a common interest such as

a.       making shoes, clothes, blankets, socks, furniture, caskets;

b.       or remanufacturing cars, bicycles, houses, etc;

c.        or creating food products including, vegetables, fruit, sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, eggs, legumes, wheat, rye, oats,

d.      Or others.

2.       Create one, or more cooperatives with distributive linkages, owned and operated by the members of the network.

3.       Provide

a.       first, for the needs of any and all network members

b.      second, for others who wish to purchase quality products through the cooperative.

c.       Products and services not available through network members purchased through the cooperative, such as paper products, fuels, new vehicles, building products, etc. purchased in bulk and sold to members.

4.       Each network member would provide consigned products to the cooperative to be purchased at market price by other network members or outside vendors, or users.

5.       Each participating network member would be paid for any and all products sold through the cooperative, less ten percent that would remain as a contingency fund in the cooperative for overhead, employees, insurance, etc. Employment in the cooperative could be rotated through members of the network that wished to do so and paid for their services.

6.       Even, services such as insurance, real estate, mortgage brokerage, and stock brokerage could be included in the network and cooperative.

7.       Since the network and cooperative are 100 percent owned and operated by members, any residual funds at the end of any fiscal year would be returned on a prorate basis to the participating members. Again, a contingency fund would be developed and maintained as a “rainy day” fund.

I have only sent this to you, to my sons Scott and Daniel, and to my friend Mario for right now. I really have no ideas if we could pull off something like this on any workable scale. It just seems like a great idea. Glenn Beck is attempting to put things together that will bless the lives of like-minded people. It might be that we would want to share this with him and see what happens. I am not sure what kind of business licensing we would need. Would we need licensing for individual network members? Would there just be one umbrella license for the cooperative and no other? Would we all go to jail for thwarting the purposes of our Communist leader, Rocky Obama?

Just me thinking again. Can you smell the smoke coming out both ears?

 

Duane Jacobs