Brigham's Beehive State

[WalkerW]

Just so you know: I am by no means an advocate for socialism. But let's just all admit that the free market is a telestial system in which "every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength." Are we really that enamoured of this view?

I would agree that free-markets allow those to prosper according to their genius, but not necessarily to their strength. It isn't as dog-eat-dog as many make it out to be. But I agree: telestial, the both of them.

[Droopy]

But even that means that he was influenced by them. They influenced him enough to get him to think about them, perhaps seek revelation about them, reject them, and proclaim something better than them. In my view, I see a parallel between this case and the Word of Wisdom having famously been influenced by Emma getting tired of cleaning up the spittoons after Priesthood meetings.

There is an inherent plausibility to this view, but I'm not at all sure that is what David want's us to take from this hypothetical association. Owen's communities failed, and failed pretty miserably at that, so there wasn't much to "take" from that experience. I understand what you're saying here, that there was some catalyzing influence - as with the Masonic rituals - which did not become the Endowment per se, but which provoked questioning, study, and finally, revelation.

There is more than one kind of influence, and being sucked into the maw of something is not the only kind.

Agreed.

Now I'd like to ask for some charity for David's views here. There seems to me that, within a Gospel framework, there is room for a whole range of opinions on many subjects. It is true -- and I'll be the first to say it -- that socialism has failed everywhere and every time it has been tried; but people keep right on trying it, usually after a bit of tinkering. Why? Perhaps because there is a sense that a few people accumulating far more wealth than they and their families could ever reasonably -- or even luxuriously -- use, while so many others struggle to provide the barest of necessities for their families, does not exactly resemble the ideal provision an impartially loving Father would seek for his children; what do you think?

My fundamental view here is that how much money or other property someone amasses through honorable work, investment, and creative economic activity is none of anyone's business, save between the individual and his creator. This is especially true of a free market economy, in which the size of the total economic pie is always (if left alone by the political class) growing. If my wealth somehow created your poverty, there would be a point in social concern over how much certain individuals amassed. In a truly free market society, new wealth can, and is, always being created in the marketplace; I can always (If I have the desire and aptitude) become the rich guy down the street.

The gospel is primarily concerned with how that money was made and how it is spent (morally, ethically etc.), not with how much anyone has of it. Once the UO is fully functional, that will change, and the surplus of each stewardship, beyond that necessary for the needs and wants of each family, will move to the Bishop's storehouse. Income will still be unequal along a complex continuum, but the vast disparities of wealth that now exist will be eliminated.

That system is not yet, however, and my primary concern here is with human, non-Priesthood and non-Holy Ghost oriented attempts to right all perceived economic wrongs, end running around the Brethren and the Church, under the sway of the same kind of utopian hubris (all well intentioned, of course) that has caused so much human ruin during the last century.

I have long objected to David's strong insinuation that LDS not accepting his particular views here are, in some sense, not authentic or spiritually committed Latter Day Saints.

Do you think the present economic mess looks like the result we should expect from living the way our prophets have counselled us?

Absolutely not, but then again, the free market per se had nothing to do with the present economic mess, and never would have allowed it to occur had many of its key incentives and disciplines not been destroyed by a plethora of government social engineering schemes. Private corporations did have some involvement of course, and large corporations have never been in any way necessary friends of free market economic principles, but even so, they were primarily responding to the deeply perverse incentives created by the political class through initiatives such as the CRA, Fanny and Freddie, "affordable housing" legislation, a debt and inflation fueled economy, artificially low interest rates, etc., etc. Well, I don't want to get going on this at any length.

Do you really think the Law of Consecration was intended to produce a few gazillionaires lording it over a vast population of subsistence farmers and hardscrabble labourers?

Where on earth have I ever claimed this? My view of the UO is of a prosperous, modern, dynamic free market society substantially liberated from many of the shackles that hobble economic freedom and prosperity at present, including expropriationary taxes, oppressive, politically motivated business regulation, unionism, corporate welfare, general dishonesty (the "shoplifting tax"), drug and alcohol addiction, white collar crime, and other disabling factors.

The dynamism and creativity of such an economy will more than provide for the raising of all out of poverty, as well as ensure that most able bodied members of that community will have gainful employment enough to create a citizenry who, to a substantial degree, are independent of the Bishop's storehouse and actually net contributors to it.

Just so you know: I am by no means an advocate for socialism. But let's just all admit that the free market is a telestial system in which "every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength." Are we really that enamoured of this view?

Actually, I would have to disagree here somewhat. Claiming that the free market is a Telestial system, and therefore somehow corrupt by nature, needs to be compared and contrasted to other fundamental negative freedoms of the unalienable sort, to use as a counterexample. If I say, for example, that freedom of speech, association, religion, or press are Telestial artifacts, and then associate them with the philosophy of Korihor, this opens the door to essential restrictions on those freedoms based upon an inherent threat they post to civil society.

The question then becomes, who will decide how to limit the evils of free speech, association, religion, and press, and upon what criteria?

While some human aspects and uses of a free market order are Telestial, the fundamental principles upon which it is based, and which it is no accident find themselves represented in the Constitutions as to economic matters, are eternal principles and principles upon which, quite literally, all our other unalienable rights are predicated. The core here is private property rights.

I think you are mistaking free market capitalism with Korihor's philosophy or materialistic hedonism, which uses "capitalism" to its own advantage but otherwise is no necessary friend of that philosophy and its principles.

Indeed, some of the worst Korihor's of all time have been masters of entire countries where no free markets of any substance existed at all.

[Droopy]

I would agree that free-markets allow those to prosper according to their genius, but not necessarily to their strength. It isn't as dog-eat-dog as many make it out to be. But I agree: telestial, the both of them.

But isn't this rather pedestrian, in a gospel sense? Of course free market "capitalism" is "telestial" in the sense that the economic principles therein are capacitated to our use here in the mortal sphere. This in no necessary sense renders them evil or something to be abhorred.

Martial arts, all the many centuries of them, are also telestial, but thanks be to God for them, and for martial knowledge that the righteous may defend themselves, their loved ones, their property, and even their country, if need be.

Martial art is not wicked or righteous, but only becomes so when used by either the wicked or the righteous. Similarly, economic freedom, like all other negative rights and freedoms upon which our agency can predicate decisions and choices, can be used to build a meth lab, a porn empire, or the countless profitable enterprises and businesses that are the engine of wealth creation and the ultimate answer to poverty (work, that is).

In either a Terrestrial or Celestial world, in which there are infinite resources with alternative uses, "economics", in the present, telestial sense, will no longer be relevant.

This does not make its key principles untrue or without eternal basis.

[Mike Reed]

By the early nineteenth century, beehives were typically square boxes made of wood; however, Owen used an old-fashioned skep or bell-shaped basket Beehive as the symbol of the cooperative movement as workers organized and identified under it

[dougtheavenger]

I tried to bump this topic because not many seemed to show much interest the first go round, but in light of recent interest in Staker's wonderful book, I would like to read people's views. President Brigham Young adopted the symbol of the Beehive to represent the inspired co-operative economic efforts fundamental to the restored Gospel. In so doing, was President Young perhaps influenced by Owenite philosophy?

From a historical perspective, Latter-day Saint efforts to accomplish economic harmony formed part of a larger spirit of social and economic reforms sweeping across the United States during the 19th century.

One of the most influential of these movements was the Working Men