Analytics

The fact that these judges were in the minority doesn't mean their opinions were wrong. And if AI is an incompetent lawyer because it sided with the minority, does that mean the judges in the minority are also incompetent? I'd like to offer a legal dispute that is still in the courts as a case study on whether AI is ready for primetime lawyering. This is a huge sidebar, but I think you might be interested in it because it is in your specific wheelhouse. Case A more detailed AI-generated overview of the case is below, but basically, an HOA of a condo sued a resident because the HOA dues were allegedly not paid, and received a summary judgment. The HOA is now suing to foreclose on the homeowner. That would seem pretty open-and-shut, but the attorneys who took this on didn't know what they were getting into. Rather than giving you my own biased and unskilled evaluation, I uploaded all of the complaints, motions, counter-complaints, etc., into Claude's top publicly available model and asked it the following: Prompt I'd like you to review the attached documents and do the following: First before evaluating these documents, create a brief rubric of how the legal skills of a lawyer may be evaluated from the briefs they write in a civil case. If I was reading a case and wanted to objectively evaluate the legal skills of the respective legal representatives who argue the case, what would I look for? Then, in very general terms and without naming the specific parties, give a very brief, very high-level overview of the dispute. 100 words max. Refer to the parties generically as "homeowner", "condo association", "management company", etc. Next, do a blind evaluation of the legal skills of each party in the above case using the matrix you described above. When applying it, make your own evaluation of the documents and the arguments they make, and also consider whether one side or the other conceded points the other side made and what that indicates about the legal skills of the respective parties. Go full beast mode on this point--maximum effort. How do the respective legal teams stack up? Finally, give a brief overview of the respective legal teams. Don't name any individuals or law firms--just give a general description of what kind of individuals and firms they are--white-shoe international law firms? Respected regional firms? Etc. In your response, relay the court and case number in case somebody wants to look it up, but otherwise keep everything anonymous to the casual observer and search bot. Claude

The Plaza Live case is an ideal case study about whether the new law was necessary: The state's own investigators said the show was raunchy and suggestive, but that there was no genital exposure, no physical sexual interaction with audience members, and no lewd acts. In other words, this was a marginal case. It wasn't marketed as being family friendly, and only three minors were there. They successfully prosecuted this under the old laws--the venue had to pay a $5,000 administrative penalty, and promise that it would forbid people under the age of 18 from attending in the future, even with parental approval. You've successfully argued that in general, there are situations when new laws might be necessary, but you haven't explained why this law was necessary, and have ignored the fact that for these types of events, the old laws were working as intended.

I wrote a fairly long response to this, and it was somehow deleted by the editor when I tried to post it. Rather than trying to retype everything, I offer the following synthesis of all of these related issues. I worked hard to make an unbiased prompt that addresses the real issues, I think Claude's analysis is spot-on. I'll put the prompt in a quote box and Claude's response in the main body so that you can more easily respond to it if you wish. Claude Fable 5 High This is one of the genuinely hard problems in liberal constitutionalism, and the honest answer is that the principle can be applied consistently — but rarely is, and the mechanisms courts use to manage it are imperfect compromises rather than clean solutions. The empirical baseline. The evidence that a minor suffers serious, lasting harm from a single or occasional exposure to sexualized content at a live performance is weak. The research literature on harm to children from sexual content concerns chronic exposure, exposure combined with abuse, or exposure to pornographic material — not brief encounters with adult-themed entertainment. Courts have noticed this. In HM Florida-ORL v. Griffin, the litigation over Florida's SB 1438, judges observed that Florida already had obscenity statutes covering material harmful to minors, and that the new law's vaguer standard ("lewd conduct" in "adult live performances") added little except uncertainty. That gap — between existing narrowly drawn law and new broadly drawn law — is itself evidence about legislative purpose. When a state passes a redundant statute with softer definitional edges, the plausible function is not closing a protection gap but chilling a disfavored expressive category. When is preemptive legislation legitimate? The defensible framework requires three things: harm that is serious, harm that is empirically probable rather than speculative, and means that are narrowly tailored. Obscenity-as-to-minors doctrine (Ginsberg v. New York) already satisfies this for genuinely explicit material. The strongest case for the Florida-style approach is that legislatures may act on reasonable predictive judgment without waiting for longitudinal studies, that community standards about what children should see are legitimately majoritarian within constitutional limits, and that parents who bring children to such events don't extinguish the state's independent interest in child welfare (we don't let parents take children to strip clubs). That argument deserves to be taken seriously; it is not mere pretext in every mouth that utters it. The counterargument: when the asserted harm is speculative and the restricted activity is expressive, the First Amendment deliberately raises the evidentiary bar — precisely because "protecting children" is history's most versatile justification for censorship (comic books, rock lyrics, video games, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants being the canonical rebuke). The parental-rights asymmetry. The criticism of DeSantis-era policy has real force and should be stated precisely: parental rights were invoked as near-absolute against school curricula, library books, and medical decisions the state disfavored, but were overridden when parents affirmatively chose to bring children to drag events or sought gender-related care. A consistent parental-rights theory cannot do both. The fair defense is that no one holds parental rights as absolute — everyone accepts a floor (abuse, neglect) — so the disagreement is really about where the floor sits, and Florida voters located sexualized performance below it. But that defense concedes the deeper point: "parental rights" was functioning as a rhetorical vehicle for substantive value preferences, not as a neutral procedural principle. That's a legitimate way to do democratic politics, but it should be named as such. The religion parallel. Your consistency test bites hard. There is a serious clinical literature on religious trauma — shame-based purity teaching, fear of damnation, high-control environments — arguably better developed than the literature on drag-show exposure. If the state may override parental judgment based on contested predictions of psychological harm from cultural content, nothing internal to that principle protects intensive religious formation. What actually protects it is doctrinal and political: Wisconsin v. Yoder and free-exercise jurisprudence give religious child-rearing heightened constitutional armor that secular expression lacks, and religious majorities hold political power that drag performers do not. That asymmetry is defensible only if one thinks religion is constitutionally special (the Founders did); it is not defensible as an application of a neutral harm principle. The limiting principle. The best available one is procedural rather than substantive: the state may act preemptively only where (1) the harm is concrete and supported by evidence meeting a burden proportional to the liberty restricted; (2) the statute is precise enough that enforcement discretion cannot track viewpoint; and (3) the law is content-neutral in application — meaning a legislature genuinely worried about sexualized content must regulate Hooters, beauty pageants, and cheerleading routines by the same standard it applies to drag. Selective application is the tell. A child-protection law survives the consistency test; a culture-war law fails it visibly. The uncomfortable residue: this framework would also constrain interventions progressives might favor against religious environments, and it permits some genuinely harmful things in both categories to continue. Liberal neutrality buys pluralism at the price of tolerating harms it cannot prove to a demanding standard. Those who find that price too high — on either side — are rejecting liberal constitutionalism itself, which is a coherent position, but one that should be defended openly rather than smuggled in under "protecting children."

Your original post on this topic was based on Ron DeSantis's talking points rather than the actual legal issues of the real-world case. You began your analysis by saying, This misconstrues both the legal background of this case and what this particular law actually changes in Florida. It is parroting what Ron DeSantis said about it ("This shouldn’t even be controversial, yet our law protecting kids required us to fend off lawsuits and win a case before a divided appellate court." and quotes Eric Daugherty saying, "HUGE WIN! Children are PROTECTED in Florida...", as if without this law, children were unprotected). Existing laws in Florida include: Fla. Stat. § 847.013 — Exposing minors to harmful shows and exhibitions Fla. Stat. § 800.04(7) — Lewd or lascivious exhibition before a person under sixteen Fla. Stat. § 847.011(4) — Obscene live performances Fla. Stat. § 847.0133 — Showing obscene material to a minor Fla. Stat. § 800.03 — Exposure of sexual organs Fla. Stat. § 847.012 — Harmful material distributed to minors Fla. Stat. § 827.071 — Sexual performances by children and child pornography Fla. Stat. § 796.07 — Places operated for “lewdness” Fla. Stat. § 823.05 — Public nuisances involving lewdness or illegal conduct Fla. Stat. § 877.03 — Disorderly conduct and breach of the peace I think what is illegitimate and imaginary is Ron DeSantis's claim, which you parrotted, that this particular law shouldn't even be controversial, and the implication that his political oponents are against "limiting minors access to sxualized events." I don’t have an absolute rule. I can imagine sufficiently extreme sexual conduct where the state would be justified in overriding parental consent. But that doesn't answer the real questions surrounding the legal controversy around this law. Agreeing that some line may legitimately exist doesn't tell us where the line should be, whether Florida's existing laws already drew it adequately, or whether § 827.11 makes Florida a better place to live and raise a family. Just as I don't think Florida needs redundant laws, I don't think other states need them, either. As an example, Orlando has an old theatre called The Plaza Live, which is owned by a non-profit called The Orlando Philharmonic Foundation. In December of 2022--5 months before the children of Florida were "protected" by SB1438, they had a show called "A Drag Queen Christmas." According to the Miami Herald: The Orlando Philharmonic settled with state regulators and paid a $5,000 fine and agreed to no longer allow parents to take their children to such shows in the future. Let's summarize: 1- An old theatre had a show called A Drag Queen Christmas. 2- There was a sign at the entrance warning of potentially unsuitable content for those under the age of 18 3- A small squad of undercover state agents went there, secretly recording everything 4- According to the state agents, "nothing indecent had happened on stage" 5- Some parents chose to take a grand-total of three minors to see the show, where they were exposed to [gasp!] "a hip thrust or two", and "bare-chested men who wouldn't have been out of place at a Madonna concert." 6- State regulators went after the venue, who ended up settling for a $5,000 fine and a promise by the venue that it would take away parents rights to take their children to such shows in the future. And what is the reaction to all of this from Ron DeSantis and those who parrot him? We need more laws! Whatever one thinks of that performance, this is why I reject the suggestion that, before § 827.11, Florida was helpless to protect children from sexually inappropriate live entertainment. As this case proves, Florida had laws on the books, sent undercover law-enforcement officers to investigate the show, and initiated proceedings that threatened the venue’s licenses, and imposed hefty fines—all before § 827.11 existed. I would say the closest real-world parallel to Fla. Stat. § 827.11 — Exposing children to an adult live performance is Fla. Stat. § 847.013 — Exposing minors to harmful shows and exhibitions. I believe the importance of a topic like this should depend, at least in part, on how much actual harm it causes individuals and society. I seriously doubt that a young teenager suffers significant developmental harm from seeing “a hip thrust or two” or “bare-chested men who wouldn’t have been out of place at a Madonna concert.” And I have seen no evidence that parents taking children to performances like this constitutes a significant social problem. Given the low frequency and low severity of this, I'm quite happy to allow parents to make the judgment call on how to raise their own families. I think a much more important topic is how politicians have become so skilled at manipulating voters by taking unusual, marginal, and often made-up incidents, portraying them as widespread threats to children, and using the resulting fear to distract voters from the issues that are really important, mobilize voters, antagonize them against their neighbors who have different beliefs and cultures, and justify new exercises of state power that take away parents rights. The inability of so many voters to see what's really going on here is the really big issue that terrifies and depresses me.

I can't tell whether you want to have a serious conversation about this. Florida already had lots of laws that protect children from the things you find objectionable. This new law is clearly about identity politics and throwing red meat to voters who get worked up over imagined social issues. This law is in the same broad category as the proposed F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act in Texas that makes it illegal for school kids to use a litter box--it is addressing made-up problems that are used to manipulate voters. Hamburger Mary’s, a venue that hosts both adult-only and family-friendly drag performances, challenged the constitutionality of the Florida law. The district court, two of the three judges on the original appellate panel, and five judges in the later en banc dissent concluded that Hamburger Mary’s had shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits and that enforcement should therefore be enjoined while the case was litigated. Those judges identified serious concerns involving vagueness, an unworkable age-specific standard, overbreadth, a severe chilling effect on protected expression, and broad regulatory discretion that could permit arbitrary or viewpoint-selective enforcement. So here is what I would like to hear from you: Was this law actually necessary? What concrete deficiency in Florida’s existing laws did it fix? And do you think it is well crafted when judged by ordinary standards for sound legislation: a real and identifiable problem, clear definitions, workable age calibration, proportional penalties, appropriate respect for parental autonomy, and safeguards against viewpoint-selective enforcement?

I find it more troubling that you trust the government to make these decisions for families rather than trusting parents to decide what is appropriate for their own children.

The offending sentence is in section 4.4 "Secret Non-monogamies". A few pages earlier in section 4.1, it gives some context about the "equally valid" claim. It says "As with gender and sexuality, the implications for therapy are to hold all consensual relationship styles and structures as equally valid, rather than perpetuating a sense of the ‘right’ or ‘ideal’ way of doing relationships. Intersectionality is also key here as the relationship norm described above is a white western norm. Working in a multicultural context, many of our clients will come from cultural and faith backgrounds where, for example, arranged marriages and/or polygamy are the standard way of doing relationships (see 1.3; Rambukkana, 2015)." (emphasis added) If somebody comes from a faith background where polygamy is the standard way of doing relationships, do you think it is the therapist's job to lecture their clients that polygamy is less valid than monogamy? I would think your freedom of religion instincts would say it isn't the role of therapists to tell their clients their religious beliefs are wrong. In its actual context, the document isn't in any way "ratifying hedonism." It is saying that the role of the therapist isn't to lecture people about their gender, sexuality, or religious beliefs are wrong.

Quite honestly, I have no basis to evaluate this, because while the sentence you quoted sounds quite scandalous, I believe it needs to be interpreted in the context of the profession for which it was written, and I simply don't have that background. In order to get a little bit of background on this, I posed the following question to the Claude model "Fable 5: High." (Fable is its latest-greatest model, has only been out a couple of weeks, and they charge you "usage credit" based on how much work it does. Generating the answer below cost about $3.00. With the prompt, I uploaded the manual and content of this thread) Prompt: The poster "smac97" is a real estate attorney in Provo, Utah. He started a thread expressing concerns about the manual "Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Diversity (GSRD)" published by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy. As far as I know, smc97 doesn't have any background in counseling and psychotherapy and is only aware of this issue because he read about it in an editorial. His concern with this appears to be that this document is a substantial step towards "ratifying hedonism" by "supposedly credentialed 'experts.'" I've never been in a professional psychotherapy session, much less have had any training in psychology. Could you put this document into the proper context? Is it the role of psychotherapists to condemn "secret non-monogamy" and such things? Is the content of this manual consistent with best practices in therapy? Is it in harmony with how psychotherapy is taught at BYU? Please keep your answer to under 1,000 words, and base it on recognized professional standards including, presumably, the professional psychology standards taught at BYU and written about by BYU professors.

I think it’s obvious. If you do this you’ll be part of a powerful dynasty. You’ll be a king. You’ll be a god!

I don’t know what “the historical or religious question” is. The topic of this thread is secret non-monogamy, the way people rationalize their secret non-monogamy, and whether British Psychotherapists specifically and society in general should facilitate people rationalizing and normalizing this behavior. Joseph Smith made a sacred vow to cleave unto his wife Emma and unto none else. He broke that vow. You think this is categorically different than other people who broke the same vow, because Joseph’s motivation was sincere religious belief and not lust. If we want to categorize Joseph’s secret non-monogamous relationships, the category they best fit in is sexual abuse in cultic circumstances, as described by Hava Dayan in her paper “Sexual Abuse and Charismatic Cults,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 41 (2018): 25–31. DOI: 10.1016/j.avb.2018.04.004. Let me know if you’d like me to provide a sample list of religious leaders who convinced sincere believers that God wanted them to have secret non-monogamous relationships with them. The secret non-monogamy of the leaders of new religious movements fits into the broader category of secret non-monogamy in general. Some people rationalize this behavior as coming from God. Others rationalize it because, in the words of Atlantic Starr: Secret lovers, yeah That's what we are Trying so hard to hide the way we feel 'Cause we both belong to someone else But we can't let it go 'Cause what we feel Is also real Personally, if a British Psychoterapist is going to give a moral pass to somebody who breaks their marital vows because they are trying to obey God, I don’t know why she shouldn’t also give a moral pass to somebody who does it because the love they feel for their secret lover “is also real." If anything, having a secret non-monogamous relationship motivated by sincere religious conviction with the leader of your New Religious Movement is worse, because it is less consensual. The question isn’t whether the girls sincerely believed God wanted them to do what they did. The question is were they able to freely consent? “God commanded me to marry you. If you do, your family is guaranteed salvation. If you don’t, an angel will kill me with a flaming sword. It’s your free choice though.” That type of manipulation is sick, regardless of their sincerity and regardless of whether God really was sending angels with flaming swords.

Hold on. Let’s get our terms straight here. “Marriage” is a socially recognized union between two people that establishes a set of mutual rights, obligations, and expectations. This social recognition can come from law, customs, or even religion. But two people can’t call their secret affair a “marriage”--there has to be a recognized status that creates some durable social, legal, religious, or communal rights and obligations. Even if the marriage isn’t disclosed to the general public, some sort of Church or legal authority needs to recognize it and the spouses need to undertake genuine marital duties and obligations. When a secret marriage violates the laws of church and its main covenant is lying to everybody about its very existence, the marriage isn’t a real marriage in any real sense. If one of the marital obligations is “the single promise at the heart of every wedding, to forsake all others,” and one of spouses breaks that single promise, it is called adultery. Now, somebody could try to renegotiate the terms of their marriage so that it becomes some sort of open marriage or whatever. That’s between them. But when somebody secretly breaks those vows, it is adultery. Full stop. With this understanding of these terms, it is abusing the language to call Joseph Smith’s actions the “practice of plural marriage.” His actions weren’t a type of marriage. They were a type of adultery. Calling it a type of marriage is a misnomer. Semantic inversion. Orwillian doublespeak. Newspeak. According to D&C 132, it is about lust, or at least about “desire." "if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another...” (D&C 132:61) The full verse says: "And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else." How many of Joseph Smith’s plural “marriages” satisfied all of these conditions? How many were virgins, had vowed to no other man, and were entered into with the full consent of Emma? His behavior wasn’t nearly as tightly controlled as you are trying to imagine. Jospeh Smith’s secret non-monogamy is a case study in secret non-monogamy, and people who are saying it is categorically different than other examples of secret non-monogamy are being very selective in their judgmentalism.

Rationalizing infidelity is exactly what you are doing, isn't it? You believe that if God commands you to break your wedding vows, which according to your beliefs He does from time to time, you should obey God, right? The only question you are unsure about is whether you should tell your spouse about how you sincerely believe God commanded you to do this.

Every situation is unique. I presume the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy's position is more nuanced than you give it credit for. My assessment of Joseph Smith is that he was guilty of "Secret non-monogamy"--of repeatedly breaking "the single promise at the heart of every wedding: to forsake all others." I think Hale's effort to rationalize Joseph Smith's behavior is a lot like using an "affirming lens" to rationalize behavior that lacked integrity. There are many reasons for "secret nonmonogamy." Maybe you feel you deeply love the other woman. Maybe you are bored. Maybe you just feel you really need sex with somebody different. Maybe for money? Self esteem? Fantasy? Clinging to youth? Or maybe you think an angel with a flaming sword is coercing you to do it. Jospeh Smith's rationalizations, as imagined by you and Hales, is certainly a creative excuse to engage in behavior that lacks integrity in any other context. But ultimately it is just selectively applying a self-serving "affirming lens" to rationalize behavior that lacks integrity. Yes, secret nonmongamy tends to do that. The question is whether we are going to rationalize the behavior of the person causing the pain and look at their destructive behavior through an "affirming lens." Do you think Joseph Smith keeping his promise to Emma to forsake all others would have been as "equally valid" as the choice he made to engage in secret nonmonagamy?

Someone who reveres him as a prophet and believes Section 132 is from God. Right. We should look at Joseph Smith's infidelity through an "affirming lens" because he was just doing what God told him to do. But beyond Joseph Smith and people being unfaithful to their spouses under Joseph's guidance, nobody else should be granted an affirming lens.

I might as well say it: it is extraordinarily ironic to hear a disciple of Joseph Smith categorically condemn “secret non-monogamy.” Mormonism’s founding prophet practiced what any ordinary English speaker would call exactly that—secretly, behind his real wife's back, repeatedly, and sometimes with other men’s wives.

I've been listening to a fascinating Great Courses series, The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity, by Hans-Friedrich Mueller, and it's changed how I think about the Old Testament. My impression is that early Israelite religion wasn't originally categorically different from the surrounding Canaanite/Semitic religions. Instead, the Israelites seem to have gradually become a people defined by an exclusive covenant with Jehovah, and only later did that develop into the explicit monotheism we associate with Judaism. Through that lens, stories like Elijah's don't read to me as arguments over whether only one God existed. They read more like arguments over whether Israel would remain faithful to its covenant with Jehovah or seek the blessings of the other gods that everyone around them also believed in. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but I find that way of looking at it makes the Old Testament feel much more like it's taking place in a real ancient Near Eastern world instead of in a religious vacuum.

I think it is an interesting case study. I apologize for the way I said that. I meant to imply that tithing is a commandment, and the Church doesn't meet generally accepted transparency standards. I appreciate your efforts with this and for telling us about it.

All the bolded statements are statements of belief, right? They are subjective and are largely informed by your personal feelings about the church and interpretations of the doctrines it teaches rather than being supported by evidence. They seem like examples of belief bias, which are hard to square with your earlier statements about how your personal biases are not impacting your conclusions on this topic. It is an objective fact that the Church doesn't provide members with financial statements that allow them to see how their donations are or would be put to use. It is an objective fact that the Church says paying tithing is a commandment. It is an objective fact that the Church says they should pay tithing even though they aren't given any real information on what the Church does with its donations. It's a value judgement that you should evaluate how organizations spend money before donating, but it is a widely held one. For example:

A couple of points. First, to the extent that any of the dollars in Ensign Peak are actual tithing dollars, I would think that per D&C 120, their disposition continues to fall under the purview of that Council. As it is, the actual mechanics of this emphasize my point that accumulating money is functionally the Church's highest priority. Think about how this works. The top leaders of the Church first decide that the full $15 billion of investment earnings will be reinvested to turn the $200 billion reserve fund in the beginning of the year into a $215 billion reserve fund by the end of the year. This is mathematically equivalent to saying "we never expend more than what we estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings." That is the most sacred ground rule of the entire thing. And these top leaders might peel off a layer of tithing to be added to that, so it becomes a $216 billion reserve fund by the end of the year. After that, they go to the full Council on the Disposition of tithes and say the budget for the year is $8 billion of the $9 billion of tithing that is expected to come in. At that point, if Elder U wants to increase the missionary program's budget by $1 million, he can argue that the million can come from reducing the genealogy department's budget by a million, or the temple construction budget or the education budget or the humanitarian budget. In principle it can come from anywhere except from the $16 billion that the higher-ups have already decided must be invested in growing the reserve fund. Functionally, this process makes it clear that growing the reserve fund is the most sacred allocation. If it worked the way I'm suggesting, Elder U would be able to argue that the million dollars he wants for the missionary program could come from the increase of the reserves rather than another Church mission, and that the Church would be okay if its year-end reserve was only $215.999 billion rather than a full $216 billion. Ultimately I don't really care. I'm just trying to answer your questions and explain to you why accumulating money sure appears like it is the First Presidency's and Presiding Bishopric's everlasting goal. And this seems to illustrate a point made by the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability, which requires under it standards that "Every organization shall provide a copy of its current financial statements upon written request [to anybody who asks to see them]." When explaining why, they say: Of course you aren't bound by this, but it does illustrate the general principles I'm talking about. More to the point, they seem downright prophetic in their claim that organizations without transparency are at risk of having reserves that are too large. Can you clarify? Are you asking me to provide references that tithing is a commandment, or are you asking me to provide references that the Church isn't transparent?

First, it should redefine as "what it takes in" to include investment income and not merely tithes and offerings. If it said it aimed to always deploy 90% of its total income--including investment income--I'd have no problem with it. Beyond that, there is a wide variety of things it could do, but it should be done strategically and not in compliance with a simplistic "fixed principle" that mathematically forces the majority of its income to go towards exponentially increasing the size of a bloated reserve fund, and is done in a way that allows its own fiduciaries the information necessary to fulfill their responsibilities in a responsible way. But what's the point of having such a tool if it comes with a rule that it may never be used? In any event, you can have faith in whatever you want to, and there are worse things you could do with your money than give it to an organization that by any objective measure is going to hoard it. If that's what you want to do, knock yourself out. But don't be surprised when a ton of members eventually realize that they needed the money more than the Church did, and resent being manipulated into donating, and become bitter critics as a result. The emphasis here should be on prudent reserves. Grossly excessive reserves don't do anything to support those things. I thought the Lord commanded that "We never expend more than what we estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings." If the real mission somehow involves deploying the vast majority of its annual income on growing its reserves so that someday it can completely change course and do it on a scale order of magnitudes greater than what it's doing now, it should clarify that. This line of thought contradicts your bottleneck hypothesis in a huge way, but if this were the real goal, they should be transparent about it.

It's an important principle of good corporate governorship. There is a ton of academic research into what makes an organization effective, and this research makes it into the real world in MBA (and SOA) curriculum. Why is it important that the people who deploy resources know what the resources are? GPT articulated the issue well: No. [What the church does] would not be considered best-practice board governance. A board can delegate investment management to a committee, but it should not create a two-tier board where most fiduciaries are intentionally denied knowledge of the organization’s material assets. BoardSource describes nonprofit boards as ultimately responsible for oversight, accountability, stewardship of entrusted resources, and legal/ethical compliance; that requires access to full, material financial information. (BoardSource) The resource-allocation rule is also poor practice. “Spend less than donations every year and save the rest” is not a mission-based capital policy; it is a mechanical accumulation policy. Best practice is to set reserves based on risk, obligations, liquidity needs, strategic plans, and mission opportunities—not simply to grow the fund forever. (National Council of Nonprofits) The life-tenured, elderly, insider-informed structure adds another problem: weak renewal and weak challenge. Good boards need informed oversight, independence of judgment, succession planning, and enough transparency inside the boardroom for real debate. This structure would tend to suppress all of that. My best reference that really explains the feel of it is Elder Bednar's conference address from Fall 2013: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2013/10/the-windows-of-heaven?lang=eng Other references to piece it together are Hinckley's comments, David Nielsen's insights, that 2020 Deseret News article, etc. Bednar said, "In that first council meeting I was impressed by the simplicity of the principles that guided our deliberations and decisions..." and later in the article he called this process, "the Lord's own way." I suppose in principle a young apostle could sat that they need to revisit this and that as an apostle on Disposition of Tithes committee, he felt that he really needed to understand the full picture of the Church's resources in order to fulfill his fiduciary duties, and that they should be open to spending more than that year's tithes and offerings if they felt confident could put it to good use. But really? I just can't imagine somebody questioning "the Lord's way" in front of 14 senior apostles and the Presiding Bishopric. I'm not advocating for any of that. I'm merely pointing out the fact that the Church's reserves are way too big by any objective measure of such things, that the Church is objectively guilty of hoarding, and that functionally, asset accumulation is the Church's dominant financial priority. That's my entire point. What should they do about it? I'd suggest four things: Be completely transparent with the apostles with their finances and show them complete consolidated financial statements of the entire Church. Be completely transparent with the general membership and show them the financial statements, too. Hire a consultant (Clayton Christensen?) to come in and give them best practices for setting the size of the reserves. Then figure out how to best deploy their resources for their mission. They don't have to do any of that, of course, but if they keep waiting for a revelation to tell them what to do then functionally, asset accumulation will continue to be their dominant financial priority. Probably. But from my point of view, that is off topic. What I'm talking about is how the apostles aren't allowed to know how much money the church has, aren't allowed to know what its investment income is, and how they "never expend more than what [they] estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings." Because they can't fulfill their fiduciary duties without that information. Not really. I think responsible individuals should weigh their own needs vs. the needs of the organization they are donating to before making donations. The Church refuses to give members the information they need in order to be good stewards of their resources that way, and instead claim that it is a commandment for them to donate blindly to them. Some people are okay with it. Some aren't. And others (e.g. Huntsman) will donate for a while, and will then figure out that their faith was misplaced. If the Church wants to avoid members feeling disillusioned and getting upset, they should be transparent with them in the first place.

Almost none of what you said above addresses my actual point, but one thing did. According to the 2020 article you quoted: “The church practices what it preaches in terms of setting aside and having budgets,” Bishop Davies said. “We never expend more than what we estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings. And also by definition we set aside a certain amount every year in reserve for those times when there will be a need” It doesn't follow this rule because of a bottleneck in how hard it is to responsibly deploy resources to fulfill its mission. It does this because it is the "fixed principle" that was established last century. A fixed principle like this makes sense for an individual who is bound to become disabled, retire, and/or die, and needs funds for those events. But according to widely agreed upon best principles of organizational finance, it does not make sense for an institution that is existing into perpetuity. We know that on November 30, 2019, the Church had $122.86 Billion in reserves. I did a projection with the following assumptions. In 2020, tithing and offering revenue was $7 billion, and increases by 5% per year Every year they deposit $1 billion of of tithes and offerings into the reserve fund The portfolio earns 7.4% per year (this comes from the portfolio's historical performance) With those assumptions, in 2025 the Reserve fund hit $200 billion. It did all of the wonderful things you've been talking about with $8 billion of tithes and offerings, and put an additional $14 billion into EPA, meaning 66% of its revenue went to grow the size of its investment portfolio. Assuming it continues to abide by the fixed principle, they maintain their commitment to never expend more than what they estimate will be coming in in tithes and offerings, and the investment portfolio continues to generate a relatively modest 7.4% investment return, in 2048 they will hit $1.068 trillion in assets, with a total income of $101 Billion, 74% of which will go to grow the size of their reserve fund. Then in 2057, something that is easily within our lifetimes, it will grow to $2.042 trillion. When that happens, its total income will be $183 billion, 77% of which will be going to increase the size of the Reserve fund. So yes. Trillions. You can assume that the Church will need this money for some pending emergency and that when the time comes it will become capable of successfully deploying it. But the fact remains that according to well-established principles for churches and non-profits, this is objectively called over-accumulation, under-deployment, and hoarding. If the Church's main mission is to accumulate a massive investment portfolio, this is success. But if the Church's main mission has something to do with perfecting the saints, redeeming the dead, spreading the gospel, and charity, then this is failure.

My point is that "best practice is a reserve policy with a purpose, target range, board oversight, disclosure, and rules for use and replenishment—not endless accumulation by default." A "revelation" is whatever the president of the Church says is a revelation. Not exactly. My point is that when you look at total resources (tithing plus investment income), the Church has waayyyyy more resources than it knows what to do with. This situation isn't a temporary bottleneck. It is endemic to the structure and culture of the Church. That is the problem. Of course. Effectively deploying resources of this order of magnitude is incredibly tough. Would you agree with me that as a first step, the Church ought to tell the apostles how much money the church has? Or do you think it can better deal with this issue by keeping the apostles in the dark regarding the resources at the Church's disposal? I think the Church is using the vast majority of its resources to make the size of its investment portfolio bigger and that as it continues to do that, this problem will get exponentially worse. I think their councils work exactly the way Bednar suggested. The junior apostle comes in to the meeting about the deposition of tithes. Along with the other apostles, he isn't told how much money the Church has. He isn't told what their investment income is, either. He is instructed that they "simply" do what they have always done--they set and manage towards a budget based on their projected tithing revenue, send extra money to Ensign Peak Advisors, and are not allowed to see what happens to it. I believe they are instructed to have reverence to this process. I believe a fundamental part of their process is that regardless of how many wonderful ideas they have about how the Church should deploy its resources, at the end of the day they have a budget equal to 90% of that year's tithing projection, so if they want to increase funding for project X by a dollar, they must reduce funding for something else by a dollar. According to everything I've seen and heard about the Council of the Deposition of tithes, that is how they operate. And they aren't allowed to question the process. If you look at this from the perspective of an MBA, their process is fundamentally flawed. I think doing that is wonderful. But it doesn't change the fact that the Church uses the vast majority of its financial resources to grow the size of its investment portfolio, which makes the problems you are talking about exponentially more difficult. I think that is all wonderful. But it doesn't change the fact that the Church allocates the vast majority of its resources to growing the size of its investment portfolio rather than to these things. Q: The Church does some amazingly good things with the 30% of its annual income that it deploys towards its mission. Did you take that into account when analyzing its transparency, the size of its reserves, and its internal decision making processes? A: Yes. That matters, but it does not answer the whole governance question. Doing substantial good with the deployed 30% is highly relevant to mission effectiveness. It shows that the organization is not inert, fraudulent, or incapable of impact. But it does not by itself resolve questions about the remaining 70%, especially if that portion is repeatedly accumulated, not clearly tied to a reserve target or deployment plan, and not fully visible to relevant decision-makers or donors. Governance analysis looks at the whole system: impact, transparency, capital policy, oversight, opportunity cost, and whether donor resources are being used consistently with the organization’s mission and representations. So the fair conclusion would be: the good work should be credited, but it does not immunize the reserve policy or governance structure from scrutiny. I know effectively deploying resources is tough, but I don't have any expertise in that area. And this is a fundamentally different issue of whether the Church is being wise when it refuses to share its financial information with apostles, whether it is wise to have a "fixed principle" of always operating on less than that year's income, and whether its reserve fund is obscenely too high. Really? Do you think, for example, that the United Way should stop telling its board of directors how much money it has saved, and should start using 70% of its resources to increase the size of that fund regardless of how big it gets? Hmmm. I think that's great as far as it goes. But it doesn't address any of the concerns I've raised in this thread. I think those are totally valid issues, but it is ultimately a different question than the question of how big reserves should be, whether the Church's "fixed principle" is wise, and whether the church should be more transparent with the apostles, general membership, and society at large. I realize charitable endeavors are really difficult. Just like building a high-quality temple on-time and on-budget is difficult. Or choosing a new employee is difficult. Or just like anything else is difficult. And I also believe that the leaders of the Church are genuinely good guys who aren't making themselves personally rich off of the thing. In fact, for reasons I can't discuss I could be more confident about this than you are. What I do know about is how to think about reserve levels and how to evaluate whether the reserves are too small, too big, or broadly justifiable. And I do know some things about organizational governance and how groups should be structured to avoid predictable pitfalls such as groupthink, institutional inertia, deference to seniority, secrecy norms, and distorted incentives. My criticisms against the Church on these issues of structure, transparency, and fallacious principles. It isn't against the brethren as individuals.

Compared to mainstream nonprofit reserve guidance. A typical operating reserve benchmark is often 3 to 6 months of expenses, though the right amount depends on revenue volatility, fixed obligations, program risk, liquidity needs, and strategic plans. The Council of Nonprofits says no single reserve policy fits every organization, but notes that nonprofits are often advised to keep 3 to 6 months of operating funds on hand. (National Council of Nonprofits) Other nonprofit finance guidance commonly frames two years of expenses as a very high-end reserve level, not a normal operating reserve target. (Nonprofit Financial Commons) So 30 times annual expenses is not just “above average.” It is roughly 360 months of expenses. Compared to a 6-month reserve, it is about 60 times larger. Compared to a 2-year high-end benchmark, it is about 15 times larger. That does not prove the reserve is wrong, but it shifts the burden heavily onto the organization to explain why such a level is mission-necessary. Compared to what? Certainly not compared to how much you spend every year purchasing more shares of Nvidia, Bank of America, Meta, and United Health. If it was clearly disclosed to you, a tithe-paying defender of the Church, you wouldn't have to speculate about why they are doing what they are doing. Posing your question to GPT: “Clearly disclosed” mainly means disclosed to the governing board, and then disclosed to donors and the public at a level appropriate to the organization’s legal status and fundraising claims. There are two different bases: Legally, ordinary U.S. public charities generally disclose major financial information through Form 990, which is publicly inspectable. Churches are largely exempt from that specific Form 990 filing requirement, so the legal disclosure floor for churches is lower. That means the law may not require the same public disclosure from a church that it would require from a comparable secular charity. (IRS) Ethically and as governance best practice, the basis is broader: nonprofits hold assets in trust for a mission, rely on donor confidence, and receive tax-favored status. Independent Sector frames good nonprofit practice around legal compliance, public disclosure, effective governance, financial oversight, and responsible fundraising. (Independent Sector) BoardSource similarly describes board members as trustees of the organization’s assets who must exercise due diligence and oversight over the organization’s financial condition. (BoardSource) So the strongest “must disclose” claim is internal: the full board or equivalent governing fiduciaries should know the material facts. The public/donor disclosure claim is more nuanced: not every investment position must be public, but donors should not be left with a materially misleading picture of the organization’s financial capacity, reserve philosophy, or use of donated funds. Serious question here. In what way are "millions of members" a financial obligation of the Church? When I hear "millions of members" I envision millions of tithe payers and millions of people doing volunteer work to keep the Church going. How is having members a liability? These things have always been financed by the membership through tithing and volunteer work. Are you envisioning a future of the Church where there is no tithing revenue and no volunteer service? These are assets, not liabilities. Do you envision a future without tithing revenue and volunteer service? It is also less expensive there--building a meeting house in Mali is a lot cheaper than building one in Logan. In any case, if they have a deliberate strategy to save up $500 billion (or whatever) to subsidize the Church in Africa, they should clearly explain that this is the goal and why that is the amount they need to operate there. So what? Are you saying that the future Church needs giant reserves because it is both going to be insanely expensive to operate and it won't have any future tithing dollars or any future volunteers? You still haven't explained why the "fixed principle" of living within the Church's means is going to break down in the future, requiring trillions of dollars in assets. And if spending 70% of the Church's annual income on growing its investment empire is actually a strategic goal for these purposes you speculate, why doesn't the Church just explain this to the members? Yes, wisely spending money on the Church's religious and philanthropic mission is difficult and risky, just as wisely investing money is risky. That is why GPT suggested that the Church's actions look more like the servant who was afraid to invest and instead hid the money. He was taking it safe. While that's true, it doesn't change the fact that they claim the money is being saved for a rainy day and not for a day that they figure out a way to safely use it for charitable purposes. Stated another way, the amount of subsidization you are speculating will be needed doesn't seem anywhere near in proportion to the amount of money being saved.

This sounds reasonable in abstract, but when you look at it more closely, not only is it inconsistent with the Church's stated reasons for why the over-accumulation came into being in the first place (it exists as an economic inevitability of perpetually following the fixed principle of living on less than income, not because they are saving for anything in particular), it doesn't even make Economic sense--you can't eat shares of Nvidia, Bank of America, Meta, or United Health. What would you think of the Church revoking the law of tithing? The Church has the financial resources to do that very easily now, and the 200th anniversary would be a great day to drop that revelation. If that (or something that grand) is the top-secret plan, then what they are doing makes sense. Otherwise, it doesn't. If you think that, you haven't been paying attention to what I've been saying. If they were being excellent stewards, they wouldn't be over-accumulating assets. In any case, I'm not talking about what they should do with their assets, other than pointing out that by any reasonable standard, they are over-accumulating. I'm also talking about how the Church goes about making decisions on how it deploys resources. You are talking about whether the leaders of the Church are good men. These are two different things. From my perspective, the Church has not been exonerated in the tithing lawsuits--even though it has been cleared of committing fraud in the legal sense, it has in fact fallen far short of being adequately transparent with the people from whom it seeks donations. And while reasonable minds can disagree on what the Church does with its money in an abstract way, I don't think any reasonable and informed minds could argue that other churches or charities should follow the Church's example on the issues we've been talking about--nobody is going to argue that the United Way should discontinue being transparent, should perpetually operate on 90% of its donations and invest the balance in a rainy day fund, and should effectively turn into a wealth-accumulation machine that hides these details from its own board. That's true even if the members of the United Way's board were all good, honorable, smart men. That's true even if they weren't getting rich off of it. The best argument you have is special pleading. But it is clear to me that its decisions are driven by its decision-making processes, which are driven by groupthink, deference to authority, loyalty pressure, information asymmetry, insider control, institutional self-preservation, status-quo bias, moral licensing, and diffusion of responsibility. That is why the governance issues I keep bringing up matter. Quinn thinking they are in excellent shape proves he doesn't know what he's talking about--the finances are in terrible shape because the Church saves as if the accumulation of assets is its everlasting purpose and goal. If that is the objective then sure, it's in great shape. If that isn't the objective, then it is failing financially. But we do have clues. The clues include their statements about how things work. They include their explanations for what's happening. They include documents that have been leaked. They include its lack of transparency in and of itself. They include the size of its "rainy day fund". These things all paint a consistent picture. I agree with you that the leaders are good, smart, and well-intentioned. But the institution itself is dominated by culture, structure, and processes that prevent them from making the bold decisions that are needed and result in their resources primarily being dedicated to over-accumulation of more and more resources as if that were an end until itself. If that is their mission they are succeeding. If that isn't their mission they are failing. I'm not blaming them as individuals. I'm blaming the institution itself.