Book of Mormon Socialism

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

I see that I missed an entire thread on the question of the Book of Mormon's support for socialism.

I don't care to get into a discussion of this matter, and don't really have time anyway over the next while, but did want to register my opinion: I see no support whatever for socialism in the Book of Mormon.

For which I am grateful. Socialism has reduced enough people to unnecessary poverty, and killed more than enough scores of millions. It should go the way of phrenology, liver-divination, leechcraft, witch-burnings, and astrology, which have done far less damage.

The BoM supports "Zion"...you are right; not the same thing.

[Loran Howard Blood]

Why on earth is capitalism always associated with greed by those who support socialist views. Many capitalists, such as Larry Miller, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and Oprah Winfrey are very generous givers of their own time and money. Whereas, socialists always want to give away someone else's money.

Because Deborah, whatever remains in private hands is, by definition, not in their hands. It is the fathomless greed of the "do gooders" who plunder the property of others in the name of "compassion" to expand and concentrate their pervasive control over the lives of others that is truly to be marveled at.

[Loran Howard Blood]

There's no getting around it - that describes to a "T" not only the Nephites at their most righteous, but also the early Christians in the New Testament and the early Mormons as well. You may disagree with how socialism has worked out in secular societies, but there can be no honest disagreement that the arrangement described in 4 Nephi and elsewhere meets the definition of socialism.

To bad you don't have the slightest understanding of LDS doctrine on this subject logo, and have apparently no comprehension of the numerous clarifications and elucidations of the UO and LoC by the Lord's anointed servants in our day regarding these concepts.

You're in a leaking dingy far, far out to sea logo, and some of us here will help reel you in if you so desire.

[Loran Howard Blood]

Read The Wealth of Nations - greed is essential to capitalism - it can't function without it. That's capitalism's genius - the recognition of real-world motivators of real people.

Read Von Mesis, Hayek et al. "Greed" has nothing whatsoever to do with the mythical construct of "capitalism." Smith was dead wrong here, as many later theorists have pointed out.

[Loran Howard Blood]

If I define socialism in terms that are bad, then it is bad.

If I define socialism in terms that are good, then it is good.

Stalin's socialism was bad.

Nephi's socialism was good.

1. Stalin's socialism was a further refinement and expansion of Lenin's socialism.

2. Lenins's socialism was the practical application of Marx' theories.

3. If Nephi had attempted anything approximating the ideas of Marx, or any other forms of socialist thought, the result would have been failure of the same fundamental kinds.

4. Nephi did not engage in socialism, but in a UO form of social organization, which is not in any sense socialism but a society of covenant stewardship.

[semlogo]

To bad you don't have the slightest understanding of LDS doctrine on this subject logo, and have apparently no comprehension of the numerous clarifications and elucidations of the UO and LoC by the Lord's anointed servants in our day regarding these concepts.

You're in a leaking dingy far, far out to sea logo, and some of us here will help reel you in if you so desire.

I'm well aware of opinions expressed by conservative members of the church, but the text speaks for itself. It was socialism, by definition.

It was not the same socialism as practiced by the various secular nations, but it does qualify as socialism. You don't get to make up your own definitions for words.

[semlogo]

Read Von Mesis, Hayek et al. "Greed" has nothing whatsoever to do with the mythical construct of "capitalism." Smith was dead wrong here, as many later theorists have pointed out.

Such naivete.

[Loran Howard Blood]

If that were true, then no one would have any problem with, say, equalizing the pay of top level executives with lower level laborers. Not that they don't enjoy their work, but greed is an essential part of the equation. It motivates all of us.

Nice non sequiter. Equalization of pay for executives is the behavior of a police state, not a free society (which is doubtless, precisely why you support such). The pay of top executives is

1. The personal contractual business of the corporation and its board of directors/stockholders and none of governments affair.

2. Based on market phenomena utterly beyond your or my comprehension at any given time, let alone a state bearcracy or group of commissars.

3. Based upon salient differenes in skill, talent, and knowledge between workers and upper management that are hardly fungible between the two groups (in the overwhelming majority of individual cases).

[Loran Howard Blood]

That is patently false. Try to voluntarily opt out from the government programs in a Democratic Socialist country and you will find out how "voluntary" it is. It is still a mandate by a secular government, not what the Book of Mormon speaks of.

Or in America. Try opting out of Social Security. Try withholding your taxes for the funding of Medicare, Mediacaid, the Stimulus, EBT cards, TARP, the EPA, DOT, DoE, the EEOC, NEA, etc. Try telling the government you refuse, henceforth, to pay the union dues of public sector union employees. Try telling them you refuse to fund Planned Parenthood. Let it be known that you will not be paying any future taxes to fund Obamacare. Tell the IRS you refuse any further use of your taxes for the funding of AGW alarmism and the federally funded work of people like Michael Mann and James Hanson. Tell them you refuse to pay for windmill farms, ethanol production, or electric cars. Tell them you are oping out of the Great Society.

Then, take note of the consequences.

[Loran Howard Blood]

Mola Ram Suda Ram:

As you cling to your guns, religion, and money.

I don't know whether this places STS in the basement or in the conning tower of the Great and Spacious Building, but it saddens me beyond words to think that one who identifies himself with the restored Church and Kingdom of Jesus Christ could so blatantly cling to the hanging gardens of Babylon.

I hear they're just gorgeous in springtime.

[Loran Howard Blood]

You seem to be opposed not to socialism, but to the basic concept of democracy.

Both are closely related evils. As Marx himself made clear, socialism is very much a democratic movement.

Until the socialists actually come to power, that is.

[Loran Howard Blood]

nope, but I understand why you believe that.

what happened to the price of ebooks, after the competition - Apple - got involved, the price of books went up 3 - 4 dollars, 9.99 was the gold standard for ebooks before "competition" came around.

what happens to the price of airline tickets during the holidays i.e. competition for tickets, the price increases 3 fold.

the "competition" involved with american style economics, is best demonstrated by the game "hungry-hungry-hippos" the hippo with the most marbles wins, this means the grabbing hands grab all the can because everything counts in large amounts. prices increase because greed drives the price, the greed of the producer to manufacturer are the first to determine prices.

You don't understand rudimentary economics Frank. Not in the slightest. A basic education is easily available, but I fear, as historical experience dictates, that such an endeavor, even if you had any motivation to seek it out, would fall on deaf ears.

[semlogo]

Nice non sequiter. Equalization of pay for executives is the behavior of a police state, not a free society (which is doubtless, precisely why you support such). The pay of top executives is

1. The personal contractual business of the corporation and its board of directors/stockholders and none of governments affair.

2. Based on market phenomena utterly beyond your or my comprehension at any given time, let alone a state bearcracy or group of commissars.

3. Based upon salient differenes in skill, talent, and knowledge between workers and upper management that are hardly fungible between the two groups (in the overwhelming majority of individual cases).

If someone is going to claim that executives aren't in it for the money, then they should be willing to submit to pay equalization. You can't have it both ways.

[Loran Howard Blood]

I like those services at the local level as well. However, imagine how much more we could do in our own communities if the federal government wasn't in our pockets or mandating the states for things that don't interest them.

These "benefits" also, of course, as is usual with this particular classic diversion, have nothing whatsoever to do with the nanny state and its powers and prerogatives that, unlike the "infrastructure" uses of federal taxpayer dollars that can be constitutionally legitimated, fall well outside both the Constitution and any serious concept of a "free" society.

[semlogo]

Both are closely related evils. As Marx himself made clear, socialism is very much a democratic movement.

Until the socialists actually come to power, that is.

I'm glad that you can at least admit to your anti-democratic feelings.

[Loran Howard Blood]

Not meaning to answer for David, may I give my own answer to your question.

Redistribution of wealth is a given in heavenomics. "Obligatory" is the modifying word in need of address here.

The great mystery to the Zion collective, is how to create a free and independant people, who, through there own autonomy feel to self impose obligations to insure that there are "no poor among them".

So then, if we are free to enslave ourselves and each other, and we choose to do so, that justifies the slavery? Do we have the right to give away our free agency in this manner, and if we do, have we not assented to Lucifer's original counter-plan of salvation?

By the way, could you justify your use of the term "collective" using the D&C or any statements of the Lord's servants in our day as sources?

[Loran Howard Blood]

I mean, will there still be big sprawling commercial dairies or will everyone have to have their own cow? Will there be multi-square-mile commercial grain growing operations, or will everyone (or maybe every ward) have to have its own wheat field, combine, mill, etc.?

Heh...communist Chinese "backyard foundries."

Both I and William attempted in vain and ad infinitum in the old "United Firm" thread to induce David to enter into a discussion of both his understanding of how wealth is created, and what the more specific details of his vision of the UO actually is, less the lofty rhetoric regarding it.

You will, I predict, engage him on these points without a satisfactory result.

[Loran Howard Blood]

All property belongs to God. So no one will have more than anyone else, though some will possess a larger stewardship.

A very subtle sophistry in play here now...

David now admits that there will, indeed, by differentiation in economic condition in Zion, exactly what I and many others have maintained all along.

But, no one will have more than anyone else in a more abstract, covenant (and explicit psychological) sense - exactly what I and many others have maintained here all along.

And yet, in many other posts in other threads, David has maintained a strict literalism in his insistence that the UO will involve literal equalization of economic condition and the eradication of inequality in personal income.

Which is it?

[Nomad]

A very subtle sophistry in play here now...

David now admits that there will, indeed, by differentiation in economic condition in Zion, exactly what I and many others have maintained all along.

But, no one will have more than anyone else in a more abstract, covenant (and explicit psychological) sense - exactly what I and many others have maintained here all along.

And yet, in many other posts in other threads, David has maintained a strict literalism in his insistence that the UO will involve literal equalization of economic condition and the eradication of inequality in personal income.

Which is it?

I think you're right that he has made a kind of subtle shift in his stance since he first started talking about this topic last year. Interesting ...

[Loran Howard Blood]

We got it, Dr. Peterson although it's kind of strange that you just state your opinion... in a discussion board, without intending to discuss it. About your statement that "Socialism has reduced enough people to unnecessary poverty, and killed more than enough scores of millions" I would like to CFR you.

The Black Book of Communism would be a good start. The work of R.J. Rummel is excellent. Anything by the eminant Robert Conquest is excellent. Hayek is fundamental. There has been a substantial amount of new scholarship on the history, nature, and effects of socialism since the fall of the Evil Empire, which you clearly have not availed yourself of. Its time to avail yourself. The history is settled and well known here, so the old tired shibboleths on your part will not be of much use.

There is no such thing as a Marxist or socialist state that is or was not an economic basket case, and there is no such thing as a social democracy that, were it not for its capitalistic elements, would also not be an economic basket case.

Western Eurupe, despite popular and uneducated fantasies to the contrary, as expressed even in this forum, are and have been for quite sometime economically sclerotic, weak, and dissipated states that ever declining economic potential and freedom to their citizenry (with the concomitant declines and restrictions in political and social freedoms).

The bodies buried all around us by the efforts to achieve "a better world" now number substantially over one hundred million. These are facts. They are history. They are also, it appears, for many, many on the Left, so many "inconvenient truths."

[Loran Howard Blood]

I strongly suggest those that commonly slap the "Greed" label on capitalism see the following:

Paul J. Zak (ed.), Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy (Princeton University Press, 2008).

J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, H. Gintis, R. McElreath, M. Alvard, A. Barr, J. Ensminger, K. Hill, F. Gil-White, M. Gurven, F. Marlowe, J. Patton, N. Smith, D. Tracer,

[Loran Howard Blood]

I'm well aware of opinions expressed by conservative members of the church, but the text speaks for itself. It was socialism, by definition.

Their political philosophy is of little relevance. The fact of the matter is that there are no General Authority teachings on the subject inconsistent with those of the "conservative" members.

Check..

It was not the same socialism as practiced by the various secular nations, but it does qualify as socialism. You don't get to make up your own definitions for words.

I will leave the manipulation of words with the Left where it originated and was perfected in modernity. Rather ironic, is it not, that you are terming as "socialism" was is, in point of fact, its antithesis.

That's not just the manipulation of language for ideological reasons (political correctness), but the outright falsification of Church and scriptural teachings. But then logo, Marxism itself can be described as the falsification of history as a theory, so no wonder the scriptures fare no better under leftist analysis.

[Loran Howard Blood]

Such naivete.

I've been waiting, through both these recent socialism threads, for an actual rational, logically connected, intellectually substantive argument from you, but as of yet, all we've received here is and endless stream of standard leftist tropes; populist left-wing boilerplate that was killed and interred long ago by history, critical thought, and authentically liberal moral clarity but which for some true believers of the totalitarian dream of sameness and uniformity, continues on in a spectral form, haunting their hubris driven dreams of vicarious power and envy.

Why do you fear freedom so much logo? Why the terror of individual liberty? Why do you fear free agency so deeply logo?

[Loran Howard Blood]

If someone is going to claim that executives aren't in it for the money, then they should be willing to submit to pay equalization. You can't have it both ways.

I will make another vain attempt here, logo, before ignoring you utterly from henceforth, to make clear that your attempt to logically connect the non-economic motives of business executives or entrepreneurs to the arbitrary forced equalization of pay between the executives and the employees of a corporation is a non-sequiter. There is no logical connection between the non-economic incentives of economic activity and having their pay "equalized." Executive pay is ultimately determined by the market, just as is the pay of employees across a plethora of job classifications.

Your problem here is that, whether or not someone works purely for monetary reward or for a mix of personal reasons, there is no rational or moral basis for such equalization in the first place. Secondly, there is no rational economic reason for such.

Thirdly, there is no constitutional basis for such, nor can the concept of the rule of law be sustained in this kind of arbitrary, police state environment.

There's no need to "have it both ways" here, as you have not provided any reason to believe that the motives of economic activity have the slightest thing to do with the economic rewards that accrue to engaging in it. The state of the market determines economic reward, not the motives for entering that market. Why should the pay of executives who have the skill and knowledge to start, finance, and run businesses, and especially large, complex businesses, be the same, or even near the same, as the janitor who cleans the hallways and bathrooms of the executives - or of the IT people or accountants?

[WalkerW]

I would also add to this Von Mesis' The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, which is a short but succint analysis of the mind set (or sets) that cling to this view of human motives.

This can be found online at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute.