Working Toward Zion

Key Takeaways

Under Consideration — to be added.

Interconnections

Under Consideration — to be added.

Highlights

• Some Western firms are doing joint business ventures with Russian companies, but many have been blocked by social unrest and economic instability. Corruption is rampant. Violence, street muggings, and behind-the-scenes mafia activities worry everyone. In the old days, Russia was crime-free. In harsh contrast to the guaranteed jobs and full employment of past decades, the unemployment rate now exceeds 20 percent. A quarter of the members of Natasha’s branch are jobless for the first time in their lives. There is no safety net, no unemployment compensation, and no Church Welfare Program. United Nations research predicts that old Soviet factories have 30 percent more workers than they can ever hope to use in the future, heightening the fear of rising joblessness.
• None of the extensive national news coverage at the time noted that Kay Whitmore was a Mormon. Had the press investigated the matter, they may have understood why it was difficult for Kay Whitmore to lay off people. Perhaps they would have learned that a man who has served for years as a bishop and stake president has spent hundreds of hours listening to the human side of corporate “downsizing.” As a million-dollar-a-year corporate president, it máy have been easy enough for him to lay off thousands of workers. It is the fashion in modern American business to regard personnel as numbers, a cost component to be minimized. However, as an active priesthood holder, the day before he was fired he may well have taken groceries to an unemployed family. He may have spent the weekend with inner-city youth at a summer camp. In a hundred ways for his entire professional life, he was constantly face-to-face with, and responsible for, the people who would have their incomes terminated, their families disrupted and their futures put at risk by his decision to pump up those numbers.
• The gospel restored in this dispensation denounced this dichotomy. The restored gospel does not differentiate between temporal and spiritual. Brigham Young once said, “In the mind of God there is no such thing as dividing spiritual from temporal, or temporal from spiritual; for they are one in the Lord.”15 Modern revelation defines this relationship: “That which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal; and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual” (D&C 77:2). The Lord teaches:
• Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man nor the children of men; neither Adam your father, whom I created. (D&C 29:34)
• “It was the doctrine of Joseph Smith, the original revelator of “Mormonism,” that the spirit and body constitute the soul of man. It has always been a cardinal teaching with the Latter-day Saints, that a religion which has not the power to save people temporally and make them prosperous and happy here, cannot be depended upon to save them spiritually, to exalt them in the life to come.” (Joseph F. Smith)
• Applying the gospel to our lives is, or ought to be, a two-way street. Going in one direction, the spiritual should flow toward the temporal aspects of life-one’s education, the household, the family, the job, and the community. Conversely, the temporal ought to flow toward the spiritual-heightening the meaning of covenants, increasing dedication in one’s church calling, providing service to others, contributing financial offerings, indeed, consecrating one’s time and talents to building the kingdom of God. We cannot be whole Christians without both the temporal and the spiritual dimensions functioning in our lives. We cannot precisely split choice of matters to obey and only focus on a narrow definition o religiosity. God’s commandments involve temporal actions, from home and visiting teaching to prayer, from keeping the Word of Wisdom to temple worship. The restored gospel sees this temporal world as a setting for the highest spiritual concerns. Thus our calling, indeed our life’s mission, is to integrate these two major dimensions of mortality into a congruent whole.
• Clever machines, and a new society and economy that encouraged their development, offered the possibility of producing more of the material necessities of life for each person. This gave rise to a new question: Did change come through individual actions, or through the social institutions in which the individual lives? Which was more important-one’s personal will or the influence of one’s environment? Was moral progress to be achieved by reform of the individual or by making a more just society?
• One cannot have a good society without good individuals. A good society does not necessarily make good individuals, but an evil society can have a profoundly evil influence on individuals. The restored gospel seeks both good individuals and a good society. In the words of David O. McKay, “The betterment of the individual is only one aim of the Church. The complete ideal of Mormonism is to make upright citizens in an ideal society.”
• One scholar has counted 28 percent of the lines of the Doctrine and Covenants as directly relating to economic activities. Another has determined that 36 percent of the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants principally concern economic matters. Of the 112 revelations that the Prophet Joseph received, some 88 deal at least partially with financial matters.
• Both of us have been approached by numerous Latter-day Saints wanting to discuss how to practice temporal righteousness, given the structure and demands of the modern world economy. How can one truly be a Christian in today’s difficult economic environment? What do the economic principles of Zion mean today? How can we truly build a Saintly community? What might be done to foster sustainable development among LDS members in Africa, Latin America, and Asia? Why is there such great inequality within industrialized nations, and how can the poor of the inner city become self-reliant? What is the future of the Church in the 21st century as it grows rapidly into a church with a majority of its members in the Third World?
• When it is universally recognized that entrepreneurs create most new jobs, LDS small employers and business founders are frustrated at receiving little support. Some wealthy Latter-day Saints have expressed frustration in having more money than they know what to do with, yet they still lack personal fulfillment. They have begun to feel guilty, or they now want to help build a better world, but they are not sure how to proceed. Parents engage us in dialogue about their affluent offspring who seem increasingly trapped in the game of material acquisition. Thoughtful colleagues seek to discuss Church history, the rise and fall of the early united order, and the theological and practical meaning of consecration and stewardship.
• In the meantime, tithing and “wise and earnest cooperation in all affairs of life partially take its place.” John A. Widstoe also noted that the united order has “a practical value as an ideal by which any proposed economic system may be tested for the degree of its worthiness. The nearer any scheme for economic betterment conforms to the principles of the United Order, the more likely it will be to assist makind in their efforts to attain material happiness..— As one studies the United Order, the more evident becomes its power for human welfare, for developing human lives, and for providing the prosperity needed on the path of progress.”
• Finally, as we will see, freedom is a vital part of the united order. No private person or group should try to force others into a project because it supposedly will advance united order principles, nor arrogate to themselves the right to issue a priesthood-like “call” to participate in such a venture. Further, the united order designation itself is a term of holiness and ought to be used carefully. This sacred term should not be employed as a title of a firm or other form of group identification.
• The issues covered by this book have been at the heart of public debate for centuries. As we will see, this public debate usually centers on the pros and cons of government actions as solutions. Alternatively, many in the Church tend to cast the burden on the Church and its leaders and hold them responsible if the Saints do not meet the expectations found in the scriptures. Instead, we propose to look to ourselves-as individuals, families, private groups, and firms seeking together “wise and earnest cooperation in all affairs of life.” Unlike with most other proposals on these issues, the applications set out here are all susceptible of implementation without any change in either current government law or policies or current Church doctrine or practices. To accomplish them, however, requires that we not simply try to do things differently. Rather, we need to begin doing different things.
• The ripple effect on other jobs is enormous during these periods of restructuring, and the consequence for many of those laid off will be temporary employment for the remainder of their working lives. Temporary employment through hiring agencies has mushroomed nearly 250 percent in the United States since 1982. Overall employment has increased less than 20 percent during the same time frame. In 1988, about a quarter of the workforce consisted of contingent employees. That figure is now growing toward including half of the labor force. The largest private employer in the United States in 1992 was Manpower, Inc., with 560,000 workers. General Motors was a distant second with 362,000. By 1994, Manpower, Inc. employed 750,000, with displaced skilled technical workers constituting its fastest growing area of business.
  • Intrinsic Value
• The bulk of U.S. workers saw their wages decline in real value (constant after inflation dollars) by some 10 percent in the 1980s while they worked almost 10 percent longer hours.º These longer work hours have significantly reduced the time available for family and service. By 1990 the average American manufacturing worker’s compensation was $14.83 per hour, below that of France, Italy, and others who enjoyed hourly compensation levels from $15.25 to $21.30 according to the U.S. Department of Labor.10 The decline for American workers continues into the 1990s, affecting middle- as well as lower-income groups.
• Inequality. In contrast, American executives enjoyed astronomical growth in pay and perks.15 While “real” family income for Americans has declined over the past 15 years, CEO compensation has risen dramatically. In 1979 the ratio between the lowest paid workers in a typical Fortune 500 company and the CEO was 29 to 1.
• Lately, the ratio has approached 200 to 1. Business Week’s analysis of total CEO compensation in major U.S. companies shows that it grew 212 percent during the 1980s, four times the incréase in factory worker total pay, which was only 53 percent. Unlike Kay Whitmore, most of the corporate bureaucrats running America’s large businesses focused on short-term gains through takeovers and financial manipulations, while millions of Joe Browns were laid off to pay the enormous debts incurred in this process. By 1990 average salary and bonus for top management was $1.2 million, and when stock options and other benefits are included, average total compensation rises to $1.95 million. This rose again in 1992 to the extent that average CEOS of major U.S. firms enjoyed pay increases to $3.8 million, 56 percent above 1991. For the typical U.S. factory worker at his or her compensation rate, it would take 85 years to earn as much as a CEO earns in just twelve months.16 In contrast, the comparable ratios are 21 to 1 in Germany and 16 to 1 in Japan. The trend now seems to be the normal course, with CEO compensation increasing 8.1 percent from 1992 to 1993, 11.4 percent from 1993 to 1994, and 10.4 percent from 1994 to 1995 while other employees’ salaries remained comparatively flat.
• Wealthy America has seen the emergence of a new breed, the “hyper poor.” This group is made up of the needy who attempt to make do on less than half the income which falls under the official poverty line. Translated for a family of three people, this means that they would try to survive on under $4,945 annually, which would require that each person get by on under $5 per day. Despite benefits in the form of welfare checks, food stamps, donated canned groceries, and so forth, the hyper poor are often homeless, eking out a subsistence-level lifestyle. Many become dysfunctional, lacking social support, suffering from alcoholism or mental illness. Shockingly, this group of the hyper poor grew by 52 percent during the 1980s. While the myth is that poor Americans are simply lazy and unwilling to work, the facts are that 9 out of 10 are either handicapped, teenagers or younger, single mothers with preschool children, over age 65, or employed but receiving terribly low wages. The age-old notion that the poor are simply not motivated, and that they choose to be on “the dole,” is not borne out by research evidence. It may be relatively easy for many of America’s upper and middle classes to admit that urban poor minority children are sadly “at risk” and then go on our merry way consuming the latest electronic games and shopping at the mall for a weekly addition to our wardrobes. What is not so appreciated is the fact that the plight of the “Have Nots” directly affects us in terms of taxpayer costs to provide education, welfare dollars, food stamps, and health care support as the very needy become less and less able to support themselves.
  • Fight with Nathaniel about giving money to homeless people.
• To white American Mormons, this description conjures up the image of a black inner-city stereotype. Such an assumption, however, is wrong. There are more Hispanics in the U.S. today (22.4 million) than blacks, and Hispanícs are more likely to be LDS and live in the inner city than are Afro-Americans. Physical density, decay of urban infrastructure, and environmental pollution seem to conspire jointly in undermining the lives of people in the inner city. The prophet Joseph Smith envisioned utopian cities of around 20,000 in population, a far cry from today’s overcrowding. Thomas Jefferson foretold the plight of the urban U.S. as follows: “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.” Not surprisingly today, many of America’s cities are more corrupt, more dangerous, and more criminal than the large cities of Europe, far surpassing Jefferson’s dark-clouded warning.
• Perhaps even more severe is the desperate situation of the North American Indian reservations. Unemployment is over 50 percent among many tribes, problems of alcoholism and low levels of education are widespread, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., is cutting back its funding. Suicide among young Indians is an increasing problem. The answer on a number of reservations is to create gambling industries that will attract outside whites who will pump dollars into tribal coffers. While the actual amount of revenue may increase, the side effects of corruption will, in the long run, diminish the tribes’ quality of life even further.
• Other signs of poverty, such as lack of food, correlate with low income along the Wasatch Front. In a 1990 report of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, data showed that requests for emergency food grew 20 to 25 percent over the previous year. ““Despite local efforts to increase food donations, funds, and volunteers, demand always exceeds available supplies,” the report declared of Salt Lake City. The rise indeed has continued over the past several years. In 1992, Utah received almost $200 million in federal cash and food from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, making it a sort of welfare reservation. This was up $28 million from 1991, a rate of assistance from Washington, D.C., of $544,000 a day. The total cost of food stamps alone in Utah was $95.5 million in 1992.
• For many active Latter-day Saints, it defies the concept of Zion in the Rockies to see groups of people living under the freeway overpass in Provo or in abandoned railcars in Salt Lake City, Even more surprising to people in the BYU community was a June 1993 front page article in the campus paper, The Daily Universe, which reported that three homeless men had lived the past half year in tents adjacent to the university. The shocking aspect of the story was how these homeless individuals provided various food items to an apartment of BYU students in an off-campus housing unit who were struggling financially to make ends meet during the academic year.” Apparently, the scriptural saying is now being fulfilled that “the last shall be first.”
• A recent study suggests that hundreds of Utah worker deaths have not even been investigated because employers did not report the incidents to state safety officials.
• The (Republican) U.S. Secretary of Labor accused the companies of having “an addiction to cheat” and assessed $5 million in fines and penalties.
• Apparently, while D&C 78:18 declares that “the riches of eternity are yours,” some Mormon employers are determined that this promise should be below the minimum wage, at least during this life.
• Furthermore, since the 1970s Utah has consolidated its reputation for shady business dealings. Events such as the collapse of five thrifts, the AFCO fraud disaster, the Mark Hoffman forgeries, the number of bribes and kickbacks from state management of Navajo tribal oil deals, the cold fusion fiasco, Ponzi schemes, penny stock scams, and a high increase of bankruptcies all make for a poor fiscal reputation.
• The economic situation of the Third World today is a tragic picture of pain, poverty, and pathos. In spite of billions of dollars in aid spent by industrialized nations in recent decades, the direction of most of the world’s poor nations is downward. Massive infusions of capital from the World Bank have built dams, bridges, and highways in Latin America, but overall economic well-being of the masses is in decline. Expensive United Nations programs in Africa to support political stability and create a new middle class have failed miserably.41 Efforts of the U.S. Agency for International Development channeled billions of American taxpayer dollars to poor regions such as India and Egypt, but much of that wealth has ended up lining the pockets of the Haves rather than the Have-nots. Programs such as the Organization of American States and initiatives in the Caribbean have mostly benefitted U.S. firms in their effort to extract raw materials for use back home, rather than upgrading the conditions of the millions who try to survive in shantytowns.
• Some forty nations of the Third World were better off in the early 1980s than the beginning of the 1990s. Per capita income in Latin America is some 9 percent under what it was a decade ago, slipping from $3,400 at the beginning of the 1980s to roughly $2,900 in 1992. Gross national product (“GNP”) per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa is lower now than it was 30 years ago.
• Americans bemoan the wealth gap between U.S. poor and the Rockefellers, Kennedys, or Donald Trumps reflected in the fact that the richest fifth of U.S. households have 12 times the income of the poorest fifth. But in Turkey the ratio is 16:1, in Mexico the ratio is 18:1, and in Brazil the gap is even greater, at 28:1.
• In most Latin American nations, one percent of landlords own some 40 percent of all arable land, transforming millions of families into tenant farmers or peasants, tilling the plantations of well-to-do elites.
• While 15 percent of all Americans are overweight and 20 percent are on diets, malnutrition has been rising in Burma, Jamaica, Nigeria, El Salvador, Paraguay, and other nations. Continual hunger stalks 20 percent of all Ethiopians and Sudanese, and runs as high as 40 percent in Mozambique. Twenty percent of the world’s children are malnourished.
• Several hundred million adults around the globe survive childhood but live with long-term consequences of malnourishment-mental retardation, stunted bodies, and the inability to work at a job and support their families. For example, iodine deficiency in diets has caused 26 million cases of mental retardation globally.
• According to the United Nations, roughly 1.5 billion people are deprived of decent health care, resulting in millions of deaths from malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, and other diseases.
• To cope with the crush of heavy poverty, many of the world’s children are required by parents to labor in the fields or urban sweatshops 14 to 16 hours a day. According to United Nations studies, between 150 and 200 million children in 50 countries do so, in violation of international laws. They suffer abuse, exposure to dangerous pesticides, and inhumane working hours, exploited by relatives or entrepreneurs who rob them of a childhood of happiness, play or innocence.
• A major reason why many poor are unemployed is that they lack education, blocking their ability to qualify for hiring, even if more jobs were available. This also limits their capacity to cope with many other challenges in their lives-to competently raise their children, to manage financial problems, to write intelligently, to serve in their churches, schools, and communities, or otherwise contribute.
• • Illiteracy rages in the Third World, decimating the basic quality of life for many individuals and families. In Sub-Saharan Africa, under 50 percent of the nation’s children even attend school. The illiteracy rate in Jordan is 19 percent, Niger 83 percent, Nepal 70 percent, Pakistan 67 percent, India 54 percent, Burkina Faso 84 percent, Haiti 65 percent, Bangladesh 64 percent. Globally, some 900 million adults are illiterate.
• Megacities of the World. Whether Bombay, Mexico City, Manila, Nairobi, or Sâo Paulo, today’s Third World suffering is tied to the huge influx of peasants who flood into the big cities, seeking better lives. Ten million plus people live like the Illagan and Flores families in unemployment, scavenging, and terrible pollution. They exist in squalid living arrangements, mostly in shanties, lacking basic access to toilets, sewage, and potable water. Such basics as electricity and schools are largely out of the question. The daily struggle for survival instead focuses on how to minimize violence, prostitution, AIDS, drugs and alcohol abuse. With millions homeless, having no basic medical care, longevity is measured in four to five decades at best. Desperation and fear are people’s daily motivations. Scientists predict that the exodus from the rural to the urban Third World will accelerate by the year 2000 as the population increases. They estimate that within two decades, over 50 cities around the globe will each have in excess of 10 million inhabitants. A huge proportion will be unemployed, and violence will be the primary tool for survival.
• The informal economy essentially consists of people engaged in “underground” business activities-street vendors, family businesses, and other marginal jobs. They are usually not registered as formal firms. They have no payroll, no benefits or taxes. Rather they float, often moving from place to place as opportunities arise. They are small, generally composed of from one to three people, many of them women and children, who hustle, often on the streets, dealing only in cash or kind. They often supply lowcost goods and services for the majority of the populace who cannot afford the expensive imported products which are the only alternative in underdeveloped economies which do not produce enough basic goods for their people. Traditional economists have tended to overlook the informal sector, assuming it to be only a short-term substitute for people during a crisis, such as a factory layoff. But the reality is that in the urban Third World, the informal sector is neither small nor temporary. Rather it is a central aspect of national survival for many nations, ranging from 20 to 60 percent of total national GNPS.
  • Informal sector
• While the hard work and entrepreneurial instincts of microenterprise participants in the Third World help put rice or beans on the family table, numerous factors interfere with achieving greater success. Inefficient government policies, legal barriers, complex and contradictory rules for registering land or other private property, lack of credit facilities, disenfranchisement of the poor-all these serve to impede the ability of the informal sector to grow or stabilize. In one study conducted by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, it took four law students over nine months to complete the paperwork to set up a small unincorporated clothing factory, during which process they received 10 bribe requests, had to get 11 different permits and spent 32 times the average worker’s monthly salary in costs (excluding their services). To combat bureaucratic excesses, he advocates institutional reforms to create genuine, market-oriented structures. His Latin American best-seller, The Other Path, analyzes the plight of microentrepreneurs and proposes tangible solutions for strengthening informal economies. These include simplification of the process for registering one’s small business, reduction in other state regulation of small businesses, establishing offices to aid the poor in becoming self-employed, providing training programs and support groups, combined with policies to encourage more bank loans to poor business people. Whether his ideas receive more than lip service remains largely to be seen.
• The wealthiest 20 percent of the world’s population have an average income 140 times greater than the average income of the poorest 20 percent.
• The reason for this massive and increasing debt is that the world economy has become structured in such a way that the Third World serves mostly as a conduit for raw materials to flow toward the developed nations. Prices of raw materials exported by these countries remain low because of overproduction. These terms of trade discourage or prevent the building of internal structures of local free enterprise, and consequently many developing nations have become dependent on foreign imports and foreign capital. They end up with huge debts and an almost addiction to the products of industrialized countries. Perhaps the obsession in Latin America with wearing U.S.-made Levi’s illustrates the problem best. This process keeps the Third World in a vicious cycle of underdevelopment. This is not necessarily due to a conspiracy of the developed nations, but it is nonetheless deeply embedded in the current world economy and is abetted by the international economic policies of the developed nations and their aid organizations.
• Population increase is another major challenge. In 1950, 1.76 billion people, representing 70 percent of the earth’s population, lived in the Third World. The less-developed nations’ populations have increased to the point that by 1990, those numbers were 4.2 billion and 79 percent respectively. Human beings currently have a net increase of three new persons every second of the day10,600 per hour, 254,000 per day, 1.8 million per week, 7.7 million each month, and 93 million per year. At present trends, by the year 2025 there will be 8.5 billion people, of whom only 1.2 billion (14 percent) will live in developed nations, and an astonishing 7.3 billion (86 percent) will make up the Third World. Over the next three decades, if present trends continue, 98 percent of the world’s population growth will occur in developing nations.
• Foreign Aid. Many people assume that American foreign aid is reducing these inequalities, but in actuality, humanitarian aid for health projects, schools, and food has been dropping for four decades. Today the per capita aid spent per American averages only $43, about half that of the still low Japanese $73. In comparison, Scandinavian countries provide approximately $200 per person in aiding poor countries. U.S. News and World Report reported that in 1980, Americans spent $52 billion eating out. By 1990, the figure jumped to $236 billion. In contrast, in 1980 Americans spent a paltry $1.4 billion in food aid overseas. By 1990 that number was still a mere $1.6 billion, and millions of Third World people starved to death.58 The World Health Organization could completely eradicate malaria if it had the amount of money spent by the world’s militaries in just half a day. But the tragic reality is that over the past decade, 40 Third World countries declined in terms of education, health care, mortality, and per capita incomes.
• “I will say, first, that the Lord Almighty has not the least objection in the world to our entering into the Order of Enoch… . He has not the least objection to any man, every man, all mankind on the face of the earth turning from evil and loving and serving him with all their hearts.” (Brigham Young)
• Brigham Young recalled that when he went out to solicit surplus property for consecration, “I never knew a man yet who had a dollar of surplus property. No matter how much one might have he wanted all he had for himself, for his children, his grandchildren, and so forth.”
  • Biggest obstacle in living the law of consecration
• Community-based Cooperatives. The first method of organizing the united order preceded the formal institution of the order in 1874. In Brigham City, Lorenzo Snow had organized all of the community’s businesses into cooperatives. The various businesses operated with a fair degree of autonomy, although a community board, presided over by apostle Snow, coordinated their activities. Great efforts were made to assure that everyone in the community held stock in as many of the cooperative businesses as possible. Stock ownership was not limited to participants in the particular business, but held throughout the community.
• Having spent years serving the Church in such economic centers as London, Paris, and New York City, he was also very familiar with the modern industrial market economy. He endeavored to implement united order principles by establishing Boards of Trade to coordinate LDS economic activities. The rest of the national economy was evolving toward monopolistic big business, and President Taylor recognized that the Saints would also have to combine their economic clout in order to compete effectively. However, by the middle 1880s, the Boards of Trade were forced into inactivity by the same antipolygamy persecutions that ended the Orderville order.
• In the words of Lorenzo Snow, a father has had to “remain awake at night thinking what he should do for his family to keep them from begging their bread.”! God has not ignored such a vital part of his children’s lives and has always given commandments and teachings relating to this central aspect of our lives.
• The terms inventor, entrepreneur, and businessman are new words in the English tongue. The idea of economic “progress,” that by investing in improving the means of producing things a whole society could become wealthier, was unknown until the most recent times. The notion that a wealthy man would receive prestige for working and producing, rather than the dignity of his leisurely pursuits, is modern. Wealth traditionally came from conquest, luck of discovery or taxation, not invention or investment.
• “which they had obtained by their industry” (Alma 4:6).
• When the Savior came to earth to teach humankind personally, he did not ignore the temporal issues of work and wealth. Consistent with the commandments that he had previously given to prophets of the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, Jesus taught that those who had, had an absolute duty toward those who had not. Love of one’s possessions and the failure to fulfill this duty to the poor would bar one’s way to the kingdom of heaven. One cannot have two masters, he taught, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).
• “There is greater efficiency when people band together in love and truth. They produce more in cooperation, and there is thus more to share. The believer in the gospel of work is also more productive. Finally, there are no indolent rulers to take away the fruits of men’s labor. There are no poor among us because all have a greater desire to give than to take, a stronger desire to share than to receive.”
• Such a commercial society would still be preferable to the traditional human economy. By encouraging free human interaction, this market economy would afford more opportunity for people to develop the spirit of sympathy and other virtues. Because they are so rarely accountable to others, “they whom we call politicians are not the most remarkable men in the world for probity and punctuality.” However, if politicians and nations “were obliged to treat once or twice a day, as merchants do, it would be necessary to be more precise in order to preserve their character. Wherever dealings are frequent, a man does not expect to gain so much by any one contract as by probity and punctuality in the whole.”
• The argument against state economic regulation takes up only a few pages of over 900 in the Wealth of Nations. He condemned economic direction and control by government because, in his day, it enforced private monopoly and privilege for the elite. He would have been horrified at the expression “greed is good.” He saw high profits as leading to both economic and moral dissolution. For Adam Smith, the economy and society were better served by high wages than by high profits. He did not see the market economy as being virtuous in and of itself. That the market was efficient did not make it morally self-sufficient. Benevolence, justice and sympathy were still the proper moral basis for society. What justified the market economy was that as an unintended consequence of the limited and controlled pursuit of self-interest, morally worthy ends might be achieved. These ends were a general increase in the prosperity of the entire community, “that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.”
• “But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” (Adam Smith)
• As the transcontinental railroad approached Utah, Brigham Young told the October 1868 conference that “we want to associate with men who aspire after pure knowledge, wisdom and advancement, and who are for introducing every improvement in the midst of the people, like the company who are building this railroad. We thank them and the government for it. Every time I think of it I feel God bless them, hallelujah!… Do we believe in trade and commerce? Yes, And by and by we will send our products to the east and to the west… Let us save our money… to buy machinery and start more woolen factories.”
• “What, then, ought to be our policy? It ought to be to bestow all the skill and labor possible upon everything we produce. Not one pound of wheat ought to go out of this Territory until it has received all the labor possible to be bestowed upon it, or in other words, until it is made into the finest of flour… . To send our wheat away for other men to grind and take a toll off, and then send it back to us manufactured into flour, why it is suicidal! … You are paying your money to sustain communities afar off, while your own people are suffering for want of labor… For any portion of our people to be idle is wrong, and there is something radically wrong about a system that admits of or has a tendency to keep a portion of the community in idleness.” (George Q. Canon)
• However, the coming of the modern economy introduced a new element. The birth of entrepreneurship was as important to the Industrial Revolution as its technological advances. The possibility arose of a path to getting wealth other than theft. While capitalist entrepreneurs unfortunately showed little resistance to the temptation to use bloodshed, oppression, and tyranny to get ahead, they also introduced the concept that new wealth would be created by investing some of society’s surplus in better means of production, instead of conspicuous consumption as in the ancient economy.
• It is contemplated that stewardships would yield money by “improving upon the properties which I have appointed unto you, in houses, or in lands, or in cattle,…by hundreds, or by fifties, or by twenties, or by tens or by fives” (D&C 104:68). Brigham said that “if we are the people of God, we are to be the richest people on the earth. …I am ashamed to see the poverty that exists among the Latterday Saints. They ought to be worth millions and millions.” However, the promise of a “universal opulence” envisioned by men like Adam Smith and Brigham Young did not follow inevitably from the Industrial Revolution, as Brigham saw when he visited Britain fifty years after the great Scots philosopher’s time.
• The earth…was made for man; and one man was not made to trample his fellowman under his feet, and enjoy all his heart desires, while the thousands suffer. We will take a moral view, a political view, and see the inequality that exists in the human family… It is an unequal condition of mankind. We see seroants that labor early and late, and that have not the opportunity of measuring their hours ten in twenty-four. They cannot go to school, nor hardly get clothing to go to meeting on the Sabbath. I have seen many cases of this kind in Europe, when the young lady would have to take he clothing on Saturday night and wash it, in order that she might go to meeting on the Sunday with a clean dress on. Who is she laboring for? For those who, many of them, are living in luxury. And to seroe classes that are living on them, the poor, laboring men and women are toiling, working their lives and to earn that which will keep a little life within them. Is this equality? No! What is to be dome? The Latter-day Saints will never accomplish their mission until this inequality shall cease on the earth.” (Brigham Young)
• It is human nature always to think of oneself as a moral and proper person, and the new industrial elite were not without a philosophy that justified their ruthless conduct. An English philosopher named Herbert Spencer taught that the development of nature was governed by the “survival of the fittest.” He argued that this was also the proper and natural basis for human morality, that the survival of the fittest was not only how nature operated, but was also the morally correct way for human society to operate. Although Spencer is the chief author of this philosophy, it came to be given the name of his more famous scientific colleague, Charles Darwin, and was identified with other proponents of biological evolutionary theory such as Thomas Henry Huxley and Louis Compton Mial. What came to be called “Social Darwinism” taught essentially that winning was everything and that human progress was achieved by the unrestrained triumph of those who won in the competition that was life. Most Social Darwinists emphasized personal freedom and the progressive evolutionary improvement of humanity. They tended not to emphasize that the method of realizing this progress was the elimination of those who could not compete, the poor and the needy. However, Spencer himself did not shrink from the logical implications of his jungle morality.
• It was forgotten that the founder of free market economics, Adam Smith, had justified the market because he thought it would bring economic progress to even the lowest levels of society.
• The “Utopian” Socialists. One of the first successful industrialists, Robert Owen, a Welshman who built a large textile factory in Lanark, Scotland, created humane conditions in his factory and made a fortune as well. Owen acquired a wide prominence for his ideas, which came to be called socialism, even if they were not copied in practice. In 1824, he visited the United States and was widely acclaimed. His lecture in the United States Capitol building was attended by the President and many members of the cabinet and Congress, and he was personally received and commended by Thomas Jefferson.
• The problem that has bedeviled socialists from Owen forward has never been a lack of charitable sentiments or high ideals. The problem has always been how to implement them. Owen attempted to establish an ideal community at New Harmony, Indiana, in 1826, and its progress was widely followed. Unfortunately, by 1829 it was abandoned. Too many people came too quickly without proper planning. There could be no proper planning because Owen never set out the specifics of how his ideal society was supposed to operate.
• In general, those that survived tended to be small, tightly controlled, insular, and religious. Members of successful communities often renounced normal family relationships and practiced sexual abstinence. They wore uniform clothing and limited their contact with the outside world. All aspects of their lives were regulated by the group and its leaders.
• In an influential book she concluded that worker-run cooperatives could not be self-sustaining. She argued that if they remained democratically owned and managed, they would inevitably remain small or fail. On the other hand, if they grew they would lose their cooperative nature and degenerate into ordinary private companies without significant worker ownership.
• The Fabians did not advocate change by revolutionary upheaval. Their approach was to permeate the existing ruling social class and convert it to socialism. The Webbs wrote that the goal was to “make thinking persons socialistic.”
• In 1888, Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward: 2000 to 1887. In this fantasy, a wealthy Bostonian is trapped in a drugged sleep in his basement in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. There he finds an ideal society where everyone serves in a state-directed industrial army for 24 years and then is able to retire and pursue “ease and agreeable relaxation.”
• Unacknowledged in a vast literature on the influences on Bellamy’s influential work is his long visit with Lorenzo Snow at Brigham City in 1883.
• Brigham said that the united order was to “let those who possess the ability and wisdom direct the labors of those not so endowed, until they too develop the talents within them and in time acquire the same degree of ability.
  • Connect to quote about “I am laboring under a certain embarrassment…”
• He thought that “modern necessities and luxuries” were appropriate for the city of Zion. “On the other hand,” he continued, “it is possible to have all these things and instead of reaping the blessings of Zion, suffer the very torments of hell. If the wealth, for example, from the wide acres be obtained by the oppression of the poor, …If in the palatial offices men sit and scheme how to prey upon their fellows, … then all these advantages will be but a means of making life miserable and unhappy.”
• From the beginnings of the modern Church Welfare Program, it has been emphasized that the “dole,” able-bodied people receiving assistance without rendering work for it, is a great evil, corrupting to both giver and receiver.
• Rather than the competitive and antagonistic relation that exists between capital and labor in the worldly economy, the united order principles of care for the poor, work, and self-reliance are interconnected duties which bind Haves and Have-nots in a mutual godly spirit and purpose.
• It calls for enterprise in the service of people rather than profits, for satisfaction through broad brotherhood and voluntarily shared wealth rather than class distinctions and conspicuous consumption.
• “The underlying principle of the United Order is that there should be no rich and no poor, that men’s talents should be used for the common good, and that selfish interests should make way for a more benevolent and generous spirit among the saints.” (Brigham Young)
• Consecration is not just giving money to the Church. Elder Neal Maxwell has recently commented that “we tend to think of consecration only in terms of property and money. But there are so many ways of keeping back part. One might be giving of money and time and yet hold back a significant portion of himself. One might share talents publicly yet privately retain a particular pride. One might hold back from kneeling before God’s throne and yet bow to a particular gallery of peers… consecration may not require giving up worldly possessions so much as being less possessed by them.” He voices concern over Saints “whose discipleship is casual, … the essentially ‘honorable’ members who are skimming over the surface” of church participation. Those “casual members are usually very busy with the cares and things of the world.” Elder Maxwell pleads for “greater consecration” that goes beyond self-satisfaction, regular church attendance and temple work, suggesting that we become “anxiously engaged,” for “only greater consecration will cure ambivalence and casualness in any of us! … Consecration is the only surrender which is also a victory. It brings release from the raucous, overpopulated cell of selfishness and emancipation from the dark prison of pride.”
• Consecration extends to our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. It means acknowledging as true equals the poor or less quick who cannot get into college or the country club. It means conducting ourselves in the gospel spirit of cooperation, cheering others’ progress, rather than in the worldly spirit of competition measuring our success by our defeat of others. It means being willing to travel the gospel path to Zion, even though Babylon’s broad highway promises us the big bucks or intellectual fashionability.
• There is always a larger boat, car, or house that needs to be bought.
• Our possession by our possessions is why it is so important to learn, according to Ezra Taft Benson, that “the basic principle underlying the united order is that everything we have belongs to the Lord,” who said that “I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine” (D&C 104:14).
• In Zion, the responsibility of those with “surplus means” is to promote employment of those who do not yet have a “competence and the conveniences of life.” John Taylor told the 1878 general conference: “Talk about financiering! Financier for the poor, for the working man, who requires labor and is willing to do it, and act in the interest of the community, for the welfare of Zion, and the building up of the kingdom of God upon the earth. This is your calling; it is not to build up yourselves, but to build up the Church and kingdom of God… Do not let us have anybody crying for bread, or suffering for want of employment. Let us furnish employment for all.”
  • Not just “be a good person with your money.”
• This storehouse is not intended to simply redistrìbute goods to the poor. Rather it is to function like a modern bank or other financial institution by funding the development of united order businesses. However, its activities would be judged by their success in generating employment, rather than the accumulation of supposedly hard, but often unproductive, assets such as real estate and bonds from corporate takeovers.
• Under the united order, idleness has no place and greed, selfishness, and covetousness are condemned. The united order may therefore operate only with a righteous people.”
  • Connect to John Adams quote about the constitution being for a moral people.
• That people should be free to do as they wish as long as they do not harm anyone else.
  • This protected us with polygamy but hurts us with gay marriage.
• “I am Laboring under a certain embarrassment and so are many others, with regard to deeding property, and that is to find men who know what to do with property when it is in their hands.” (Brigham Young)
  • This should be why BYU has so many business students. - connect to quote “let those who possess the ability…”
• Under the Church Welfare program, the emphasis has been on helping members find existing jobs, rather than developing new job-producing businesses.
  • Help to change this.
• Sensitive observation discloses the rising concern of Church leaders at the increasing burden which the rapid growth of the Church in Third World nations will place on the Church’s resources. Church membership generally does seem to encourage gradual upward economic mobility, and to some extent this individual economic advancement may help. However, the poor members seem to flood into the Church faster than the old members move up economically. Also, to the extent that the Church relies on individual economic advancement, it will remain dependent on frequently distressed local economies.
  • The church has to build sound economic endeavors, not rely on rich people.
• Concentrated in the new urban working classes, the Saints are often poor even by Third World standards. One Church-commissioned study found that percent of the Church members in the Philippines, one of the areas of the most rapid Church growth, live below the official poverty levels. This is substantially higher than the already high Philippine national poverty rate of 49 percent. Efforts to institute the Welfare Program in these countries are only in the initial stages. Even if welfare programs are established, if they operate like the Welfare Program in the United States as nonincome-producing “safety net” programs, dependent on subsidies from American tithing and fast offerings, they will eventually be overwhelmed by the unstoppable arithmetic of the Church’s growth into the worldwide Zion.
• One solution is for American Church members to strive more anxiously after worldly wealth in order to increase the subsidies on which the Church is dependent everywhere else in the world. Another is to look to what Spencer W. Kimball called the “full economic plan of Zion, the united order.”
  • “I’ll get rich and then I’ll help the church.”
• Is there any reason to think that we could be more successful than the Saints of the last century? Are there realistic ways to move toward the united order, to permit the Saints to establish Zion independent in every nook and corner of this desperate world? We believe that we can move toward increased application of the principles of the united order in the modern world and that there are ways to overcome the difficulties faced by the Saints in the 19th century. This belief is founded on two concepts.
• The first is that we are not alone in this quest. John Taylor declared, “great men in every age have tried to introduce something good… Is there a true principle of science in the world? It is ours. Are there true principles of music, of mechanism, or of philosophy? If there are, they are all ours. Is there a true principle of government that exists in the world anywhere? It is ours, it is God’s; for every good and perfect gift that does exist in the world among men proceeds from the Father of lights.” We will see in the coming chapters that many good people have pioneered methods and examples which we can profitably use in building Zion.
• The second is to overcome our image of the united order as a single form of utopian fixed state. This image leads to the impression that the united order can happen instantaneously by some prophetic decree. However, with no other gospel principle do we expect to achieve instant perfection. Rather, the gospel teaches faith, repentance, and progression “line upon line, precept upon precept.” As John Taylor observed, it is not articles and constitutions that make the united order, but the steady work of getting the united order into the hearts of the people. This is a work in which every Saint can engage now. The principles of the united order are the Lord’s way to temporal righteousness for all, a continuum along which we all can strive in many ways to move toward the gospel’s celestial economic ideals, looking out for others’ welfare as diligently as we do our own. The question is not “Is it the united order?” The question should be “How well does this put into effect the principles of the united order?” The question is not “When will the Church start the united order again?” That is in the Lord’s hands. The question for us should be “How engaged am I today in working toward living the principles of the united order?”
• For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And insomuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward. But he that doeth not anything until he is commanded and receiveth a commandment with a doubtful heart and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned. (D&C 58:26–29)
• “What is there to stop me from observing and keeping the law of consecration at this very day as I have already covenanted and promised to do without reservation? Is the foundation too broad for us to build on?” (Hugh Nibley)
• It is, in the words of apostle Erastus Snow, the “Godlike doctrine of raising those who are of low estate and placing them in a better condition.”
• The plan will be to start with the most basic, everyday forms of consecration, gradually building toward increasingly more organized forms of consecration, and concluding with possible steps toward a modern economy inspired by the principles of the united order.
  • You don’t start by donating all your property to the church. Line upon line.
• The Latter-day Saints are not alone in this journey. Joseph Smith said that “friendship is the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism, to revolutionize and civilize the world, and cause wars and contentions to cease and men to become friends and brothers… We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true ""Mormons’.”
• Is it possible to combine socioeconomic justice with principles of democratic decision-making?
• “The responsibility for each person’s social, emotional, spiritual, physical, or economic well-being rests first upon himself, second upon his family, and third upon the Church if he is a faithful member thereof.” (Spencer W. Kimball)
• Elder Alexander Morrison of the Seventy notes that “aggregate needs may be overwhelming, but hunger and pain are experienced individual by individual. In the same way, we can relieve some needs individual by individual. To help one person is better than helping no one.”
• Likewise, there are the initial efforts of people like Arturo and Genevieve DeHoyos, sociology professors at BYU who recently returned from three years of mission president service in Tijuana. The couple are launching a project to establish a Cumorah University for young Mexicans who agree to abide by LDS standards. For most young people south of the border, college is not an option unless one is wealthy and has political influence to gain admission. Generating funds to establish a private alternative would offer higher education to thousands of LDS youth, including over 10,000 recently returned Mexican missionaries. It would raise their temporal well-being and that of the Church as well. The DeHoyos’ dream is to build a Mexican historical theme park adjacent to the university, much like that of the Polynesian Cultural Center at BYU-Hawaii, so that year-round jobs would exist to help college students finance their higher education, as well as learn about Aztec history. Church members with an interest in Mexico, especially those with planning skills and higher education careers, would be an ideal resource in helping design and carry out the fund raising for this project.
• These activities did more than supply financing for Church businesses, canned foods for Welfare Square, or new clothes in which to worship. More significantly, such activities created a sense of identity as Saints, a culture of Mormonism as real and powerful as that of many ethnic groups today. Such projects helped foster a feeling of “we-ness” in relation to other people, a shared sense of values, a social solidarity. For young people growing up in the Church, these experiences provided a process of acculturation and socialization as to who they were and what the Church really meant, and laid a foundation which combined belief with meaningful service to others.
• If the millions of faithful tithe payers around the globe were to “up the ante” just a bit in a righteous way by practicing the principle of “social tithing,” a great rush of additional service would be forthcoming. The social tithing we advocate is the donation of ten percent of one’s time, skills, and moral energy to building a better world. It means more than only carrying out one’s regular Church assignments. Rather, one might rechannel a tenth of one’s medical practice to a free clinic, thus serving the poor who cannot afford health care. It might be the pro bono services of an attorney who freely advises those unable to pay the usual fees of $75 per hour or higher. Social tithing could be offering produce from one’s backard vegetable garden to neighbors, or giving four hours a week to repairing the cars of single mothers in the ward or branch.
  • 24 x 7 = 168 hours x 10% = 16.8 hours per week and that’s just time.
• Joseph Smith said that “the greatest temporal and spiritual blessings which always come from faithfulness and concentrated effort, never attended individual exertion or enterprise.”
• In some 28 U.S. states “Time Dollar” programs are functioning at the grassroots level. A neighborhood organization or church group, for example, operates as a kind of central bank by keeping track of volunteer worker hours donated to various projects. The computer records each 60 minutes of service, and each hour makes up a single Time Dollar. With one’s credits saved up in the “bank,” the volunteer may later draw on the account as needed, much like early united orders, whose members were credited for labor as well as money contributions.
• The program is often run by a paid staff director who works out of donated office space with a phone and tracking system. Start-up kits and a procedures manual are currently available. When volunteers later need help themselves, the director assigns another member to fulfill the task. Examples might be tending a child, mowing a sick neighbor’s lawn, or taking an elderly person to the supermarket. A program in Brooklyn, New York, for instance, called Elderplan, is a health maintenance organization (HMO) which uses service credits as purchasing power. Participants may accumulate enough credits to obtain the services of other members, or, if desired, they may use their credits to pay for their own quarterly HMO premium.
• Thus one’s volunteer efforts function similar to a blood bank, but the donations are in time, instead of blood, and one’s service is quantified into real productivity. This form of currency operate essentially as money, matching supply with demand, linking needs with people. However, Time Dollars are not affected by recession or inflation, nor are they taxable by the IRS.
• Likewise, in a Utah Valley community, a group of neighbors facing hard economic times because of job losses organized a group buying club to make bulk purchases of food and other retail items. The effort was so successful that they continued the practice, even though their financial hard times ended and conditions improved.
• Each participating faculty family pays a five dollar membership fee to join. Each week a food order list is given to each family to fill out for the purchases they want to make-meat, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, breads and cereals, etc. A volunteer committee compiles the list, and several men take a university truck into Honolulu to make bulk purchases. Upon their return, another group unloads the truck at a campus warehouse, and others parcel out the products to family members assigned to pick up their specific order. The process is undertaken weekly. All co-op members voluntarily spend one to two hours a week in the various roles needed to carry out this project, but it results in savings of thousands of dollars annually.
• However, the potential exists for ward or neighborhood families to counter this crisis. They might collectively establish high quality day care centers, using the fine facilities of local LDS chapels, which stand empty during daylight hours, five or six days each week. Compensating the ward or branch, even modestly, would provide additional revenue for local units hard pressed by budget restrictions. Or as a service to LDS members, use of the building could be free. A licensed, professional staff would be hired by the co-op, equipment purchased, licensing and insurance arranged, and a legal structure could be created to protect the Church from liability. A not-for-profit co-op could make available high quality care in pleasant, familiar surroundings near the family residence, leading to improved stewardship of parental responsibilities. After a carefully designed pilot project, such a co-op procould quickly spread to thousands of LDS meeting houses. This strategy could become a real source of support among working families, who would be assured that the children of the Church would be cared for in an effective, responsible, community-based manner.
• Known as “liberation theology,” a radical new perspective of Jesus is being fashioned, one that views Christ through the eyes of the oppressed.10 This view stresses consciousness-raising in which the world’s injustices are critiqued and new forms of social and religious solidarity are formulated among the lower classes. Unfortunately, liberation theology became connected to certain Marxist ideologies. Thus distortions and political agendas gradually became entwined in the struggle for a better life.
• With funding from the Inter American Foundation in Washington, D.C., a dairy plant has been constructed in Durazno, Uruguay. Before, local farmers hauled their milk to customers by horse cart, requiring one to five hours each day. Now the milk plant sends a truck to collect milk from each farm, pasteurizes it at the plant, and delivers it to area stores. The farmers themselves are now owners of the plant, having jointly created a producer cooperative in which democracy and equality is practiced. The collective dairy now produces additional products such as butter and cheese, thereby increasing profits. And by saving thousands of hours per year of horse-drawn deliveries, dairy farmers now have more time to improve their herds, grow new crops, and devote more time to family life.
  • Derek Gerrat
• Financing American Small Business. One example is among inner-city blacks. Data show that the net worth of the median white family in America is some $43,000, compared with only $4.100 for blacks. In response to these depressing statistics, a number of innovative strategies are being developed to facilitate minority economic development. One example is that of a black Methodist minister, Charles Stith, who pushed Boston banks into committing $500 million in loan money over the next decade to finance black entrepreneurs. Reverend Stith’s seven-year-old Organization for a New Equality (ONE) offers neighborhood courses on economic literacy. Since the Los Angeles riots in 1992, a California minister, Cecil Murray, has obtained grants from Atlantic Richfield and Walt Disney Company to renovate black businesses and launch 35 new, small, black-owned firms. He argues, “Spiritual development cannot take place without economic development.” The overall goal is to transform the violent destruction of the riots into a process for reinvestment and community renewal. Through this effort, the dignity of work is emerging, rather than passive dependence on welfare.
• The Grameen Village Banking Model. Perhaps the origins of such credit projects are best traced to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. The name comes from a Banglai word meaning “village.” Nearly 20 years ago, a young economist from Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, returned to his native country after earning a Ph.D. in the United States. The inconsistencies between conventional economic theory taught at the university and the painful struggle for survival in the Third World prompted him to consider more indigenous tactics for rural development. His solution was to offer micro-loans to the poor, empowering them with credit to raise from their subsistence-level existence. A set of 16 principles, including frugality, personal hygiene, and habits of personal savings, are emphasized.
• Funds are provided as loans, not grants, and must be paid back with interest. The typical loan might be $20–$50 to purchase raw materials for basket weaving or other small projects. Loans are made, however, to a small group, all of whom become liable to repay the money. If one person begins to default, peer pressure tends to get the person back on track so that the group may retain its good standing. The group meets regularly and, as early small loans are paid off, members qualify for a larger pool of capital to further expand business opportunities. Since its inception in the 1970s, the Grameen Bank has loaned over $400 million, and its repayment record is an astounding 98 percent, much above that of traditional large Western banks. Millions of the poor in Bangladesh have raised their income tenfold within a vear through micro-enterprise loans.
• The village banking model is now spreading in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Recently it has even been applied to the poor in the United States. Tiny, home-based businesses have started up such as desktop publishing services in Denver and cut-flower cultivation in West Virginia. Other examples are jewelry designers, caterers, and beauty shops. Arkansas created the Good Faith Fund program, allotting $1200 per group member during the first year.
• If no defaults occur, the amount is doubled the next year. In Chicago, the Full Circle Fund is only one of six Grameen-type credit programs established to offer support for women only. On the Oglala Sioux reservation, the Lakota Fund was recently launched to encourage entrepreneurial success and self-reliance. In contrast to the typical 50 percent reservation default rate on loans through a regular bank, the Lakota Fund has had only a 7 percent average default with its peer lending and support. Sioux tribal members who never before had jobs or checking accounts are now starting up firms such as a tire repair business, an Indian crafts project, or a cafe. U.S. early success with village banking efforts has prompted the Small Business Administration to create a $15 million one-year experiment in some 35 cities for micro-loans.16
  • Value Added Ventures
• The dramatic success of micro-lending enables recipients to avoid homelessness, hunger, and community loan sharks.
• To illustrate, for several years a large group of volunteers have spent the five days of spring break on the Navajo Indian Reservation, at their own expense and without college credit. They repair fences, paint houses, dig ditches for irrigation, and plant corn. Smaller groups go down monthly throughout the year to register voters, grind corn, herd sheep, weave baskets, and read to the tribe’s small children. Anglos learn Navajo ways, and natives learn about urban white culture as both grow in understanding and sensitivity of the other’s world views.
• In the spirit of Brother Brigham, the area presidency in Manila began to read Leonard Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom and encouraged local leaders to do likewise as they searched to learn how LDS pioneers were able to raise their standard of living in early Utah. Various local initiatives were gradually implemented to uplift the Saints temporally and to encourage them to begin practicing principles of a Zion-like economy.
• LDS wards in North America have reached beyond their own boundaries to “adopt” a group of Latter-day Saints in another part of the world, taking a very real interest in the well-being of their distant brothers and sisters. They send books, Church supplies, and clothing, facilitate exchange visits by teenagers, and otherwise attempt to broaden their understanding and appreciation of God’s people in other cultures.
• Enterprise Mentors’ mission is: To build self-reliance and entrepreneurial spirit within those who struggle for sufficiency in developing countries. We do this through the principle of a “hand up, not a hand out,” for those who are committed to building their livelihood, their families and communities through micro and small scale enterprises. By training, character development, counseling and encouragement, sound business practices are established. Results created include improved livelihood, employment opportunities, hope for a better life, greater self-respect, self-sufficiency and self-realization.
• The center offers several services: (1) training groups who already have, or want to start, small-scale enterprises, offering education in accounting, marketing, and other business essentials: (2) networking efforts which link people with others who run similar businesses or refer them to other experts such as attorneys, engineers, banks, or mentors; (3) running business clinics to provide an assessment of needs in order to provide counseling; (4) consulting by staff experts who work on site offering in-depth, long-term client services including data collection and analysis, developing business plans, and so forth; and (5) cooperative development which leads to the organization of group co-ops for credit, marketing, and other purposes.
• Assistance is provided on a “value for value received” basis so that small-scale entrepreneurs do not assume they can get something for nothing. Instead, they have a professional relationship with PEDF that encourages a financial payment of some type, at least a token fee if not the market rate for consulting. Even charging a modest fee helps create the image that PEDF is not a charity providing free services, enabling recipients of expertise to preserve their own self-respect. In other words, PEDF provides a hand up, not a hand out.
• Appropriate assistance is given, assuming that the potential success of the business is high and that the client possesses the necessary aptitudes and moral principles.
• Approximately 6,800 Filipino Latter day Saints have benefitted temporally, since each new job positively affects the lives of an average of five other family members.
• The experience of Reggie De Aro and hundreds like him today is solid evidence that bottom-up, grassroots development efforts can succeed. United order principles such as pooling of resources, working hard, and operating cooperatively to lift the group are able to counter the unemployment, underemployment, and temporal suffering of LDS poor.
• Critics might denigrate some of these efforts as simply a pretext to opening the political process so our missionaries can preach the faith. Thus participants would have to be grounded in their commitment to charity for its own sake, not as a means to Church proselytizing.
• Mormon Peace Corps. Another idea that could generate a great deal of self-reliance in the world would involve a small group of retired Latter-day Saints who have experience with the U.S. State Department, embassies, and American outreach programs such as the Peace Corps or VISTA, These individuals might pool their considerable skills and help LDS youth organize a sort of Mormon Peace Corps, based in Salt Lake City or Utah Valley, or wherever else a large concentration of young Church members exists. This effort could link up with several courses taught at BYU and local colleges to train young people in international development, culture, and organizational change. Funds for overseas work could be raised through corporate or personal donations and internships arranged for college-age individuals to spend 6 to 12 months in Third World countries where service is needed, such as in Samoa working on rain forest preservation, or in Nicaragua teaching at a village school. Many candidates would be ex-missionaries who desire to return to the lands in which they served, this time to help members economically. They would already have a good grasp of people, language, and culture. Other potential candidates may be returned missionaries who served stateside but now want to go abroad. Still others could be students who never served a mission, both active and inactive LDS, as well as other Church groups who would enjoy doing some good. A parallel effort coordinated by this “Mormon Peace Corps” would be for older retired LDS couples to do similar work. For the young, the advantage is good health and high enthusiasm and energy. For older volunteers, the advantage is experience, wisdom, and a strong skill base. Other middle-age individuals could also serve, taking a one- or two-year development leave from their firms to help the needy. We know couples who have done so and
• found great joy. Neighbors in their late fifties studied a year or two of Russian, for example, and then obtained a professional leave to spend a year assisting privatization efforts in Russia.10 Others have served under the auspices of a Seventh Day Adventist program. Often companies will provide a year’s salary to do such work, or at least continue health benefits and seniority, pay travel expenses, and otherwise offer support. Progressive LDS executives could create corporate policies and practices to reward community service of this type, since the firm benefits, as does the direct provider of service. There are dozens of opportunities to serve in U.S. urban areas, with programs such as the Citizens Democracy Corps, which offers consulting help to foster free market strategies in Eastern Europe. And of course numerous groups such as the LDS Humanitarian Committee, Africare, and others abound with understaffed projects and opportunities.
• “We must not lose sight of the fact that all we are doing now is but a prelude to the establishment of the united order, and living the law of consecration. The individual Saints must understand this.” (Ezra Taft Benson)
• Africa: Centuries of pain and pathos dominate today’s African reality. History records exploitation by whites through ancient slave trading, inner-tribal conflicts, colonialism, and apartheid, coups and civil wars. Droughts and civil conflicts today exacerbate conditions such that agricultural production has been declining for decades while, conversely, the population grows, leading to a third of the masses now being dependent on the importation of food from other continents. With the inception of the LDS missionary thrust in the late 1970s, the bulk of Church efforts to help these nations has been the Ethiopian special fast and subsequent donations of food, clothes, emergency supplies, and cash noted earlier. A number of activities have also flowed from the LDS Humanitarian Funds to CARE, Technoserve, Red Cross, Africare, and the Ouelessebougou Alliance. These include projects such as well drilling in Nigeria, irrigation systems in Ethiopia and Chad, a demonstration farm in Ghana, a cassava processing operation in Nigeria, self-employment in Zaire, and the provision of medical care, training, and supplies to a number of nations.
• Katalysis was founded by Bob Graham, a committed Christian who vowed to God he would spend the first 20 years of his career making as much money as he could and then spend the next two decades giving it away. Other such partnerships between the general Church and other development groups are being established.
• However, such noble efforts must be wisely managed in the spirit of local self-government, as required by the law of stewardship. They must look to build up local self-reliance rather than using a traditional, top-down “president (general authority, Church bureaucrat, American missionary) knows best” approach. In Haiti a mission president attempted to set up agricultural cooperatives some years ago, but the lack of organizational skills, marketing, and understanding of cooperative management led to disastrous results. Some members left the Church over what happened, and missionary work itself was threatened when the government intervened and became very critical of the LDS program. Civil conflicts since then have made these problems even worse.
• The growth of wealth in the hands of a few individuals threaten[s] us with greater danger to-day, than anything that can be done by outsiders… God does not design that there shall be classes among us, one class lifted above another, one class separated from the rest of the people…Men are more disposed to compromise principle who have great monied interests at stake… The time must come when the talent of men of business shall be used to benefit the whole people … not for individual benefit alone, not for individual aggrandizement alone, but for the benefit of the whole people, to uplift the masses, to rescue them from their poverty. That is one of the objects in establishing Zion, and anything short of that is not Zion.” (George Q. Cannon)
• Even in his time, Adam Smith noted “that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.”
• The thrust of these various management efforts was clearly not philanthropy or a handout, but to create successful financial ventures in which their firms would also behave in a socially responsible fashion.
• LDS manufacturers in the United States who wish to expand operations south of the border, who are ethical and committed to progressive labor relations practices, could create joint ventures with Latino partners. Perhaps native regional representatives, stake, and mission leaders could help identify local professionals already living in those countries. They could also serve to identify and locate indigenous employees who are honest and hardworking, both LDS and of other religions, who have business aptitudes and potential. More job opportunities, expanded small factories, and a higher living standard for Church members would be likely outcomes. Although such ventures would not be official Church projects, the LDS network would be a promising resource to accomplish business goals and to serve LDS needs among Latino Saints.
• LDS communities need to experience a greater degree of such good corporate citizenship through top management policies that strengthen needy areas, rather than ignoring them or relocating to escape them.
• George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO, declared, “Inever met a corporation that has a conscience,” suggesting that after all, it is not the organization itself, but individuals at the top who are either sympathetic or apathetic to human needs.6 To avoid the stereotype of narrow self-interest and personal greed, the notion has emerged in some business circles that those at the top of the social pyramid have certain obligations to other members of society. Such a view is not merely an indulgence in rhetoric, but a long-standing tradition among many in the upper echelons of business. John D. Rockefeller accumulated huge amounts of money a century ago, but gave away $550 million during his lifetime and incorporated the Rockefeller Foundation, through which subsequent billions of dollars could be passed on to future generations for worthy projects.
• Andrew Carnegie’s famous article “The Gospel of Wealth” asserts that the duty of the person of wealth was to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer in the manner which, in his judgement, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community-the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren… The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth… will pass away “unwept, unhonored, and unsung,” no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor, and to bring “Peace on earth, among men good will.”
• If it was ever misunderstood from his words, his belief that the wise and virtuous man always seeks first “the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent beings, of which God himself is the immediate administrator and director.”
• “I wonder if many of us are not lusting to be rich. Are we making compromises in order to accumulate?” He challenged those who justify seeking excess farms, herds, and firms when one already possesses life’s basic necessities. “Why continue to expand and increase holdings, especially when those increased responsibilities draw one’s interests away from proper family and spiritual commitments, and from those things to which the Lord would have us give precedence in our lives? … to the point where our interests are divided and our attentions and thoughts are upon the things of the world?” (Spencer W. Kimball)
• “The worst fear that I have about this people is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and His people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and pointing to very real dangers for us today. go hell.” (Brigham Young)
• Instead, priesthood holders should seek “enough income so that we may be self-sufficient and able to support our families, while leaving us enough time free to be good fathers and church workers.” (Howard W. Hunter)
• Elder Dallin H. Oaks captures the problem: “Materialism is a seductive distortion of self-reliance. The corruption occurs through carrying the virtue of ‘providing for our own’ to the point of excess concern with accumulating the treasures of the earth.”15 Those who feel they need to acquire great sums to start their children off in life and marriage with many material possessions deprive the young of the challenges which build character. Furthermore, the next generation is crippled with the burden of status and pride, thus ensuring that the materialistic “sins of the fathers” are visited on their descendants. How much wiser to heed the counsel of the Prophet Joseph: “The faith necessary unto the enjoyment of life and salvation never could be obtained without the sacrifice of all earthy things,” and “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.”
• Living the simple, gospel-focused life is the greatest gift of all. Andrew Carnegie believed that one should give away wealth rather than pass it on as an inheritance, and he tried to do so during his day. Elder Oaks puts it another way: “A wealthy man died. ‘How much property did he leave?’ someone inquired. The wise response: ‘He left all of it.” Instead of building a rich inheritance or accumulating excess goods for one’s lifestyle here and now, Elder Oaks counsels that “we must also be so indifferent to material or earthly things that we are willing to give up cheerfully whatever is necessary to become ‘equal’ in those things… which is the polar opposite of aggressive and selfish materialism: ‘Every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God’ (D&C 82:19).”
• While these organizational cultures appear to have a number of positive features, the conduct of many LDS businesses as described in chapter 2 shows that more could be done to enable many LDS-owned or managed firms to better embody principles of the united order. The low wage levels which give Utah such a negative reputation nationally ought to be significantly raised to be commensurate with the state’s much touted, highly educated workforce. Dangerous work practices and unsafe factory conditions need to be completely eliminated. Their elimination need not compromise business success.
• Decades ago, Owen Young, General Electric’s chairman, declared, “The old notion… that the heads of business are the paid attorneys for stockholders, to exploit labor and the public in the stockholder’s interest is gone-I hope forever.” Likewise, Forbes magazine put forth the view that “the business of modern business is service.”6 LDS businessman Ray Noorda, the former head of Novell, advocated a hierarchy of priorities that put customers first, employees second, and shareholders third-and built one of the most important software companies in the world.
• Spencer W. Kimball warned those who engage in deceitful business dealings: “Profit and commissions derived from worthless stock are contaminated, as is the money derived from another’s deception, excessive charges, oppression to the poor,” an apparent reference to the growing plethora of scams and pyramid schemes involving so many Church members. What is required by the Lord is “fair dealing in business matters, in selling, in buying, and in general representations,” in contrast to the worldly capitalist dictum of caveat emptor-”let the buyer beware.” Rather than the profit that comes from compromises, graft, and exploitation, which President Kimball calls the work of those who are “greedy for filthy lucre,” he pleads for true Saints to “keep your money clean,” defining it thus: “Clean money… is that fair profit from the sale of goods, commodities or services. It is that income received from transactions where all parties profit.”
• Any means is justified if the end is important enough. The prince or CEO is allowed to take whatever measures are needed to accomplish his goal and preserve his power. Beating people at their own game and outplaying the cunning techniques of the competition by whatever devious strategies are possible-these are the hallmarks of Social Darwinism. By twisting scriptural truth, today’s vernacular encourages executives to “Do unto others before they do unto you.”
  • Maximizing shareholder wealth cannot be the end goal because the means it justifies would be terrible.
• By the 1950s, business experts were writing about the Iron Law of Responsibility, arguing that those who do not utilize power appropriately will lose it if society concludes that they were not responsible. In other words, it is in the best interest of the enlightened corporation to be responsive to the wishes and expectations of society, or its own survival will be in jeopardy. Such a view is not a statement of values or preferences, but rather a prediction that recognizes the mutual interdependence of the company and its social context. Avoiding corporate moral and social responsibility will inevitably lead to the erosion of business freedom, as shown by the increased federal regulation of corporations after the excesses of Robber Barons in the last century.
  • Business for the sake of business is not a sustainable model.
• “I am perfectly aware that profit is the life of business, and I have no objection whatever to the profit incentive, but I do not have any sympathy with the avarice and stupidity which in the long run cut off profits and stifle prosperity. It would almost seem as if the privilege of profit should not be permitted to those who, either through ignorance or lack of humanitarian principles, are not capable of being entrusted with it. It is here that the concept of brotherhood of man plays such an important role. No one who recognizes the Fatherhood of God and mankind as his children can tolerate with equanimity the inequalities and injustices which such selfishness brings about.” (Stephen L. Richards)
• Sam Walton said that the single most important factor in the success of Wal-Mart was his realization that “the more you share profits with your associates-whether it’s in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts-the more profits will accrue to the company.” Employee enterprise, energy, and loyalty are won by respect and generous compensation. As Adam Smith wrote in the Wealth of Nations, the “wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low.”
• Valuing Human Resources. It may seem obvious that it is better for an enterprise to have employees who are “more active, diligent, and expeditious” than not. A firm where everyone labors with “energy, devotion, and service” would seem to be more likely to do well than one where this is not so. However, while most companies pay at least lip service to these ideas, modern American business management often seems to neglect them in practice. This may be partially explained by the inability of modern accounting principles to fully account for human resources. If a company buys a new machine it can add the cost as an asset on its balance sheet. In addition, even though the full cost was paid in cash when the machine was purchased, the company can spread the cost as a reduction to its earnings over several years. In contrast, when a company pays for additional training for a worker, it must take the full cost as an immediate reduction to its earnings. Further, it cannot add the cost of the training as an asset on its balance sheet.
  • Quantifying human capital
• Even though they do not appear on the balance sheet, skilled, well-motivated employees are usually a company’s most important asset. The long-term journey to corporate success requires motivated human beings cooperating in joint enterprise, not labor treated as a disposable cost component on a statement of operations.
  • Quantifying human capital
• Sam Walton predicted that “in the future free enterprise is going to have to be done well-which means it benefits the workers, the shareholders, the communities, and, of course, management, which must adopt a philosophy of servant leadership… A lot of American management has bent over too far toward taking care of itself first, and worrying about everybody else later. … [In] the next century the way business is conducted worldwide is going to be different. … Good management is going to start listening to the ideas of [the] line soldiers, pooling these ideas and disseminating them around their organizations so people can act on them. … Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who’s going to have a great idea.”
• The first fact is that downsizing, at least as currently practiced, generally does not work. Surveys by the consulting firm Wyatt & Co. found that barely one-half to two-thirds of downsizing firms seeking to reduce expenses actually did so. And that was the best result. Less than half seeking to do so actually improved profits, productivity, customer satisfaction, competitive position, or efficiency. Nor do the short-term gains in stock price endure. One survey found the stock prices of major downsized companies lagging behind the competition by 26 percent three years after the layoffs.
• The reasons for these failures are not hard to fathom if one remembers that corporate workforces are made of human beings rather than numbers on financial statements. The employees sent out the door take with them expertise, experience, and customer wntacts. Major downsizings also devastate the morale of the remaining employees. Since many companies reduce the numbers of workers without rethinking and reducing unnecessary work, the survivors suffer from overwork and burnout doing the full workload of their fired coworkers. The survivors become fearful that they will be laid off and spend more time on office politics than productive work. An atmosphere of suspicion prevails, reducing cooperation, communication, and any sense of company culture. Further, the lack of a flow of new hires deprives the company of fresh input. Exhausted, fearful, and inefficient workers weaken the company’s revenues and profitability. Eventually, even the financial statements reflect the depletion in the company’s most important revenue-producing asset, its people.
• Finally, if layoffs are unavoidable, they can be carried out humanely. The current fashion is to effect layoffs as a one-time, massive surprise attack. This is a good approach if the management’s chief concern is to give the company’s stock a one-time boost. However, as counterintuitive as it may seem to many of today’s numbers-oriented managers, the most effective way to implement layoffs is through close and long-term consultation with the company’s employees.
• “A person never can enjoy heaven until he learns how to get it, and to act upon its principles. Now you take some individuals, and you refer back to the circumstances that surrounded them twenty years ago, when they were living in log huts, when they had a certain amount of joy, of peace, of happiness at that tìme, though things were uncomfortable. Now they may have secured comfortable circumstances and temporal means that would administer to their temporal wants and necessities, but if they have not secured friends, the good feelings of their brethren, they are unhappy, and more so than they were twenty years ago.” (Lorenzo Snow)
• Top management could invite outsiders to perform a company audit of the balance between corporate power and the firm’s social responsibility. The company culture might be changed to institutionalize such values as stewardship, self-reliance, and moral motivation, utilizing united order principles. Instead of asserting that companies are amoral and respond only to unseen laws of the marketplace, society will witness the creation of a new economics founded on the scriptures, that is, an economics of cooperation which sees us all as children of God rather than materialistic automatons. Only then can we begin to truly work toward the ultimate aim and spirit of the true Church.
• However, the united order challenges us to think beyond the structure of current business operations. How would a business operate that was dedicated to seeking to fulfill all of the applicable principles of the united order? How would such a firm be created? Could such businesses exist and Prosper in our contemporary business environment?
• “When this factory at Provo can go into the hands of men who know what to do with it, it will go; when my factory in Salt Lake County can go into the hands of men who know what to do with it, it will go. There is my beloved brother James W. Cummings, who has worked my factory ten or twelve years; he counts himself A No. 1 in all financial business. I have offered the factory to hìm and his workmen on the co-operative system, in the order that we wish to adopt. I said to him-”Take it and manage it, you are welcome.” Said he-”If I only had plenty of money to furnish it I suppose I could do it.” Have I not furnished it without money? Yes, I had not the first sixpence to start with. I furnished my factories, and I have built what I have built without asking how much they cost, or where I was to get the money to do it. When we find somebody that knows what to do with property, … we will give them charge of it.” (Brigham Young)
  • Connect to other Brigham young quote about consecrating
• Ernest Bader. Although generating millions of dollars and known as an entrepreneurial success story, Ernest was dissatisfied with the gap between himself and the employees. Profit sharing was generous from the beginning, but he felt that it was not sufficient. His biography records that eventually “light came… . He suddenly said, What am I doing? I’m playing the game of all these others… Well, I’m not going to face my maker having done that… The most simple order came from Christ-‘As Christ said to the young ruler, give everything away.” In 1951 Bader restructured his firm into a commonwealth and placed 90 percent of the stock in the hands of the workers. The other 10 percent was vested in worker accounts in 1963. Together Bader and his employees created a constitution that would limit compensation to a seven-to-one ratio from top management to lowest paid workers. Sixty percent of profits were allocated for taxes or reinvestment in the firm for new equipment, expansion, or other business needs. Of the remaining 40 percent, half was given in bonuses to all partners, while the other 20 percent would be donated to charitable causes in the larger society. The firm has been a resounding success, illustrating how enterprise growth and achievement can be consistent with stewardship and democratic management. Instead of becoming inordinately wealthy, Bader and his descendants have found great joy in building a new “social order,” a working community in which all are responsible for the well-being of one another. As Ernest later put it, the motivation for this radical change in business was “to raise employees to the status of responsible owners; or in other words, to liberate them from the wage nexus, as I had already liberated myself.” For him, “common ownership means the economic and social fulfillment of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
• “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The dignity of work and the right to rotate jobs so that no one is constantly stuck with boring, repetitive labor are also important.
• Benjamin Franklin believed that co-ops were the path to social reform and a major means for advancing the good society.
• The constitutional right to own property fits with the idea of workers owning stock in their company. Personal ambition and the pursuit of happiness are both consistent with the idea of prosperity through employee ownership. The strong motivation to work hard so that through personal effort one will be rewarded parallels the practice of workers sharing in the profits of the business they help to succeed. The early, anticolonial views of the nation’s founders who claimed there should be “no taxation without representation” is the equivalent of today’s worker opposition to the huge corporate profits and executive compensation for distant, absentee owners and management. Both the American economy of the past and the recent movement toward worker ownership are based on free market principles.
• Worker cooperatives are another approach to democratic ownership. These modern firms tend to be somewhat small in size and heavily egalitarian in nature. “One person-one vote” is the method for allocating power. Workers usually elect managers, and they typically have a voice on the job. This gives them a sense of dignity and self-respect that many workers in traditional firms do not experience. Business productivity and quality are also higher in many co-ops because working harder and smarter positively affects the year-end dividends workers receive as owners. This translates into less absenteeism and turnover, better productivity, higher product quality, and more profits.
• J.A. Geddes, The United Order Among the Mormons: An Unfinished Experiment in Economic Organization.
  • Books to read
• Too many times, the founder of a privately held firm, perhaps as a family business, discovers on approaching retirement that one’s heirs have little interest in maintaining the firm and passing it on to the next generation. Unfortunately, the typical response to this type of situation is to sell one’s firm to a larger company, usually from outside the area. This often results in new owners only acquiring the smaller firm in order to increase market share or reduce competition. Many times the founder’s assets are stripped away, equipment is sold or removed, lifetime employees lose their jobs, and the factory is padlocked shut. Even the founder’s name is taken down, and his or her reputation disappears from history.
  • Teamshares
• New, young LDS entrepreneurs who are in the early stages of establishing their small firms would be emboldened to seek more creative ways to share their success, not just keep it for themselves and their families. After all, structuring a new business from the start so that it conforms to gospel temporal and economic principles is much more likely to succeed than attempting to convert an older conventional firm to participative employee ownership.
• “We may look forward with hope to the day when it shall be the rule for the workman to be Partner with Capital, the man of affairs giving his business experience, the working-man in the mill his mechanical skill, both owners of the shares and so far equally interested in the success of their joint efforts, each indispensable, and without whose cooperation success would be impossible.” (Andrew Carnegie)
• (Matthew 19:16–30, Luke 18:18–30). It is possible, of course, to rationalize it awaythe young rich man really did not have to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor; his fault was just that he loved his wealth too much. We can keep our money as long as we do not love it too much. Such clever reasoning may well be why it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Taken literally, the parable confronts us with a stark choice. In part, the starkness of the choice may be due to the stark nature of the economy in which the choice was presented. In the static ancient economy, in which the only way to care for the poor was wealth transfer through almsgiving, the only way to practice full consecration would have been to give everything away.
• An effective method of implementing the law of stewardship in the modern economy is employee ownership. However, giving stock to employees only begins the transformation of a company into a united order principles inspired enterprise. The united order revelations state that the united order is managed by the “commo consent of the order.” As we have seen, this differs from the hierarchical, top-down, bureaucratic management method found in many corporations and governments today. Running a business by “common consent” implies a participatory, “bottom-up” operating method.
• Brigham Young noted that this diversity of ability would prevent the successful operation of a united order based on a simple arithmetic dead-level equalization. The principal reason was that for the lack of opportunity they are not able to develop the talents and ability that are within them. This is the condition of the peoples of most of the nations of the earth. … [[Jesus] requires, absolutely requires, of us to take these people who have named his name through baptism, and teach them how to live, and how to become healthy, wealthy and wise. This is our duty.
• The UOPIE must work to help its participants to develop then talents, abilities, and gifts. This can be accomplished by providing job training and assistance with expenses for further education. Mentoring programs, in which more experienced people help less experienced workers improve their job skills and understanding of business, can give the less experienced confidence and boost their spirit of entrepreneurship.
  • Find the D&C scripture about one strong takes one weak and makes them stronger
• John Widtsoe, “many unite in one enterprise, in such a way that no one person dominates it, but that all concerned have a voice in it.” This bottom-up, participative management is sometimes referred to as “employee empowerment.”
• Third, in order to make bottom-up management by common consent effective, workers have to be given information about the business and the opportunity to learn how to understand and use that information. UOPIE management is accountable to the employees, and accessing and understanding the enterprise’s accounting data are essential if they are to be able to assess management’s performance. Access to and understanding of ongoing comprehensive information about the enterprise also helps individual workers do their jobs better. They can see their role in the big picture and are enabled to figure out ways to increase their contribution to the whole.
• It is an unhappy but constant feature of human nature that decisions about where resources are to flow tend to cause them to flow toward the decision maker.
• However, when a UOPIE is owned and managed by its employees in the spirit of common consent and the law of stewardship, decisions about the flow of resources are made or monitored by the entire group. Resource allocations will be made on neutral business grounds, and any contrary tendency for resources to flow to the leaders will be minimized.
• “The great difficulty I have had to fight against has been the ignorance of the laborers, their inability to make their labor pay for itself, and their unwillingness to be put to the test. They prefer someone to raise the capital to be invested in the enterprises, and employ them and pay them big wages… They will say, “Let us work by the day or piece, and be paid our wages every Saturday night; and then let us have a store to spend our money at, that we might do as our fathers used to do in the old countries we came from.” This is the spirit of the working classes of the old world, and I said before, unfortunately we brought ourselves with us when we emigrated to the new world.” (Lorenzo Snow)
• When workers have a capital stake in a business and receive the means to exercise personal entrepreneurial self-reliance by having real influence and control over how they do their work, they will work harder and smarter.
• John Taylor observed that “man never could and never will be able to govern his fellows, except the power, the wisdom and the authority be given from heaven.”
• All economic systems have moral foundations. Capitalism is predicated on the ideals of freedom and honesty. For a free market to function, its participants must be free to contract with others and then adhere to those commitments. Socialism espouses concern for others-working for the common good over individual interests. The united order incorporates all these virtues, because it is founded upon the most basic gospel virtue, love. The fundamental revelation on the united order repeats as its basis the most fundamental of Christ’s teachings: “for inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these, ye do it unto me” (D&C 42:38). The united order is about nothing less than using Christian morals as the moral foundation of an economic system. Speaking of the Church’s efforts to implement some of the united order principles through the Church’s Welfare Program, president Spencer W. Kimball said, “We can see that Welfare Services is not a program, but the essence of the gospel. It is the gospel in action.” The united order is essentially a gospel economy.
  • Capitalism vs. Socialism vs. United Order
• Morality and Enterprise. Those experienced in the worldly economy are apt to react quickly that, while we may try to act honestly in our economic dealings in the world, some amount of realIsm is necessary. Morality alone is not going to get you ahead in the real world. Certainly modern economics, with its lust for quantification, has never much taken such matters into account in its theories. However, some have recognized that the human endeavor of temporal survival involves more than the mechanical input of land, capital, and raw material. Adolf Berle concluded that successTul economies were characterized by a “transcendental margin” Witch “is the product of a value system that causes effort and expenditure beyond that calculated as conducive to the personal advantage of an individual or his immediate family group. Berle’s principal illustration of this is a comparison of Utah and Nevada. Settled about the same time and with comparable geographical endowments, Utah he found to have a stable, solid economic history, compared with the boom and bust of Nevada’s past. He attributed the difference to the two states’ differing value systems. The devotion of Church members in Utah lead every productive individual “to put more into the economic system than he took out.” In contrast, in Nevada’s mining and gambling mentality success means staking a small contribution and, without further work, winning a larger prize. On the cold economic side, this does not add to useful capital, make for greater production, or occasion great distribution or growth.
  • Golden balls - make a “prisoners dilemma” where they can split 50/50 or secretly try and take a little more but then they get nothing.
• Other writers have tried to account for human motivations in economic prosperity. One economist, Harvey Leibenstein, has even attempted to factor it into economic theory, dubbing it “Xefficiency.” Other recent writers have observed that trust, social cohesion, and cooperation are far more central to successful economies than competition. Like Adolf Berle, they cite the Latterday Saints as a primary example.
• The gospel does not oppose business ability; it seeks to transform the hearts of those who possess it. Lorenzo Snow referred to the Doctrine and Covenants where we are told: “If we are not equal in temporal things, we cannot be equal in spiritual things. Men on whom God has bestowed financeering ability are the men that are wanted at this time. … Persons who have the ability are the ones who should step forward in things that would lead the Latter-day Saints to this union. It would be of more value to them than all the things of earth. The blessings of God upon them in time and eternity would well repay them to step forth and labor for the Zion of God… What a lovely thing it would be if there was a Zion now, as in the days of Enoch! that there would be peace in our midst and no necessity for a man to contend and tread upon the toes of another to attain a better position, and advance himself ahead of his neighbor.”
• “It takes a Zion people to make a Zion society, and we must prepare for that.” (Ezra Taft Benson)
• The principles of the united order are for wealthy bankers, accountants and go-getter entrepreneurs as well as poor Third World peddlers and inner-city welfare recipients. They are as important to the spiritual well-being of the Haves as they are to the temporal welfare of the Have-nots. We believe that the principles of the united order are the solution to humankind’s economic, social, and moral concerns and that they can be the basis for a Zion economy that can function realistically in the modern world. Such a righteous economy can be made when Saints of means, ability, and talent are as seized and propelled by Zion’s vision of love and unity as the world’s ambitious are by Babylon’s allures.
• “One becomes a cooperator through education and the practice of virtue. We need each other; we are called upon to complement each other. The man who can stand solitude is either a god or a beast, as a celebrated philosopher has stated. And this means that social classes need each other and should collaborate; this means that the people and the authorities must not live divorced from each other. This means that institutions must offer mutual aid, that we must sincerely pursue what we claim, that is the common good, there is no reason for exclusivity… For this purpose it is not enough that the bosses undertake and do good things. It is necessary that the workers participate in these things, so that a real communion among them exists. It is not enough that the workers dream of great reforms, if the bosses or entrepreneurs do not contribute to their realization, providing their zeal, their technical knowledge and skills, their experience… Where this fusion and spontaneous and generous collaboration has not been achieved, there is no real social life, and… peaceable relations will be superficial or fictitious.” (Jose Arizmendiarrieta)
• Don Jose Maria for short, also felt that he had an ecclesiastical responsibility to respond to the effects of depression and war that went beyond simply preaching unquestioning endurance and faith in justice in the next life.
• “We build the road as we travel.”
• One key aspect of the Mondragon cooperative complex is that it is complex, as befits a complex modern economy. Its structure has evolved over decades of efforts to create a business organization that would be true to its fundamental values. These values are basically to maximize job creation and to accord to every worker both the benefits and the responsibilities of being an owner. The Mondragon method profoundly reflects the fact that its leaders were trained as practical engineers rather than as abstract social theorists. Its business focus has been on high value-added jobs in sophisticated, capital intensive industries. The broad principles and goals are implemented by carefully detailed structures and procedures. However, despite its elaborate organization, it has little bureaucracy and the rules are revised or thrown out if they are not effective in achieving the objectives. Even Don Jose Maria, who taught the ideals that underlie the Mondragon system, was not above nitty-gritty technical work. At first the working folk of Mondragon could not afford sophisticated legal assistance, so their well-educated padre would roll up his sleeves and plunge into the law books to find an obscure statute or regulatory loophole that would facilitate the legal construction of this novel venture.
• As with wards and stakes in the Church, there is a strong policy toward dividing enterprises after they reach a certain size, to the extent that this is consistent with maintaining economies of scale and overall efficiency. In this way the individual worker does not become submerged in a large and unresponsive bureaucratic environment. The cooperative enterprises are also organized in subgroups on industry and geographical lines.
• Workers who are hired by a Mondragon enterprise are required to pay a substantial entry contribution to the cooperative, which can equal several months’ pay. It can be financed in part through the Cooperative bank and is credited toward the worker’s account. New employees are also evaluated for a period of time in both work skills and personal attitudes compatible with the cooperativist corporate culture. Each worker has an individual capital account. A majority of enterprise earnings are allocated to these accounts. The remainder is divided among benefit and social security costs and a collective corporate surplus account according to a preset formula. “Salaries” and “wages” as such are not paid. Instead every worker from shop floor to management is paid a monthly anticipio, which is a draw against their capital account. Surplus earnings left over at the end of the year are credited to the capital accounts. The individual accounts accumulate interest and are also periodically adjusted for inflation. Normally, individual worker accounts cannot be withdrawn until retirement. Earlier withdrawals are subject to a penalty unless the worker is transferring to another enterprise within the complex of cooperative companies. In the meantime the funds in the individual accounts are available for general use by the cooperative.
• The bank has served as the central focus of the complex of X cooperatives and provides the cooperatives’ principal source of financing. It also coordinates the extensive intercooperative arrangements and joint operations which tie together the various Mondragon enterprises (which are otherwise theoretically independent) and mandates compliance by the enterprises with the basie cooperative rules through a “Contract of Association” with each of the cooperatives.” If, for example, a cooperative transgresses a fundamental principle-such as eliminating the one-person, one-vote rule in the general assembly-the bank is empowered to cut off the enterprise’s credit. This power is balanced by the fact that a majority of the bank’s ownership is held by the cooperatives, which checks unreasonable or arbitrary use of the bank’s rights.
  • Each group needs money and every entity (including the bank) needs to have their control checked
• By the mid-1980s, the bank had grown so large that the cooperatives could not profitably employ all the bank’s funds. In order to facilitate the expansion of its lending activities into other areas, its coordinating and supervisory functions were spun off to an overall cooperative board and congress. These function in many respects like John Taylor’s Board of Trade was intended to function, enabling independent enterprises to work together and combine their resources so as to be able to compete effectively with large noncooperative companies. In the pursuit of their cooperative ideals, the Mondragon cooperatives have now created a structure which combines strong local autonomy on the operational level with strong central coordination-the very structure that is universally recognized as the paradigm for the successful business of the 21st century.
• Mondragon and Enterprise. Most interesting of the functions recently spun off to independent status is the Entrepreneurial Division. This is a cooperative consulting firm of over a hundred professionals which provides management assistance and funding from the CLP to new start-up cooperatives. When a cooperative or group of workers in the Mondragon conglomerate have an idea for a new business, they present a business plan and proposed management to the Division. The Division carefully evaluates the plan and, if it deems it feasible, provides a wide range of professional market research, financial analysis, site selection, strategic planning, legal, scientific, and technical services in developing the business launch. A “godfather” is assigned from the Division staff to shepherd the process from the evaluation through the first year or two of operations. The founding members are required to put up some financing. Other funds are loaned by the CLP. The CLP not only provides start-up funding but covers losses through the first years of operation if they are in line with the business plan. More recently, the CLP has also launched new enterprises on its own initiative, based on a need to rationalize operations among the cooperatives or to exploit inventions from the cooperative research and development laboratory, which also does contract research for outside companies such as соорIBM and Mercedes Benz. The Division has achieved an impressive record of successful start-ups by helping new cooperative enterprises in overcoming two of the principal problems of start-up businesses-inadequate financing and incomplete management know-how. Anyone who has tried to start a business is keenly aware of how difficult it is to obtain funding for a start-up venture. Equally difficult is the task of becoming a master of all fields. A good engineer may be quite inexperienced in marketing, a good salesman may be mystified by ost control and accounting, and even the most knowledgeable entrepreneur never has enough time to do everything. For all our society’s praise of the entrepreneur, the silence can be deafening when the crunch comes and real assistance is needed. Instead, the entrepreneur has to beg and borrow, and often ends up in the embrace of a venture capitalist who will dribble in money and criticism in exchange for the lion’s share of the equity. Although a Mondragon entrepreneur must sacrifice the dream of being the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs billionaire, the Mondragon method of entrepreneurship offers real financial and technical assistance, as well as friends and solidarity, in the lonely struggle of launching a new enterprise. This appears to be a trade-off that many ambitious, bright workers in the Mondragon cooperatives have found worthwhile. The Mondragon method enables entrepreneurial individuals to pursue their dreams and ideas while providing for the cooperative complex the benefit of the entrepreneurial energies that are the key to maintaining the growth and dynamism of any enterprise. This activity also enables the Mondragon cooperatives to fulfill one of their central corporate cultural values, which is the constant expansion of economically viable employment.
• Many commentators feel that these factors are not conclusive explanations for the Mondragon success and are mystified by the failure of efforts to duplicate the Mondragon model elsewhere. Frequently writing from a leftist perspective, they are proud to point to Mondragon as an alternative to capitalist enterprise. However, when they examine Mondragon more closely, there are aspects which disturb them, aspects which are often omitted from efforts to apply the Mondragon model in other settings. One of these is the preoccupation on the shop floor as well as in the (modest) executive suites with operating efficiently, staying competitive, expanding markets, and making profits. Another is the focus on engineering education as the principal training for Mondragon executives and workers. This has been more recently supplemented by a management training cooperative which teaches substantive fields such as accounting, marketing, finance, international business, etc. The elaborate, theoretical, socialist-oriented analyses of capitalist society and economy which are the professional pursuits of many of these commentators are noticeable by their complete absence from Mondragon curricula.
• Perhaps most disturbing to these commentators is the attitude toward labor unions in the Mondragon cooperatives. Basically, there are none. This is not because of any ideological opposition to unions. Indeed, unions are free to organize Mondragon workers if they can. However, the general attitude of Mondragon workers toward unions is that they are unnecessary where workers own and manage the business. Further, strikes are prohibited, and there has in fact been only one strike in the entire history of the Mondragon cooperatives. This was in 1974, a protest against job classification changes in a rapidly growing factory. In response, the policy of dividing up cooperatives to maximize individual worker involvement was adopted, and the social councils were considerably strengthened. Also, the strike leaders were fired, and all the other participants were fined. These sanctions were upheld by the general workers’ assembly.
• In contrast, at least two prominent labor scholars have argued that Mondragon, far from being a socialist inspiration, is actually the definitive refutation of Beatrice Webb’s contention that state control was necessary because worker cooperative and employee-owned businesses could not work and still retain their cooperative character.
  • Figure out who has tried to replicate Mondragon
• Webb argued that in addition to whatever other difficulties all businesses might face, such as lack of capital, competition, and so on, self-managed, employee-owned businesses would not work because of four factors inherent to that form of organization: - inadequate internal discipline - lack of knowledge of the market - slowness in adjusting to new conditions - discouragement of creativity
• First, they have a significant personal stake in the business through their initial entry fee and the share of the profits accumulating in their personal capital accounts. Second, they are screened for their willingness to abide by the cooperative ideals. Third, the availability of workers assemblies and the social councils with real authority to work out disputes reduces the need to protest through passive aggressions, such as slowdowns and sick-outs.
• Also, the organization of cooperative businesses into industry and geographic groups gives the individual cooperative a source of constant independent, but friendly, critique from the other cooperatives in the group (who may buy outside the group if their Mondragon suppliers are not competitive).
• However. in the Mondragon system, the ability of a cooperator or group of cooperators to independently present a plan for a new cooperative to the Entrepreneurial Division for development and funding may be one of the best existing means for permitting a creative entrepreneurial individual to produce new products and services. It certainly seems to offer better possibilities than trying to push a new idea through a bureaucracy that has other things to do, or trying to scrounge venture capital from uncertain sources.
• Perhaps the real problem is that the attitudes and values of which the Mondragon co-ops are both cause and effect-of collective and individual self-reliance, of collective and individual responsibility and of hard work-are so out of tune with the predominant attitudes in the welfare state, trade union and class struggle dominated societies of the Atlantic world, that a genuine experiment could never be launched. Perhaps it would be too strongly opposed by the bureaucratic socialists; perhaps it would be seen as too much of a threat by the trade unions. In the nd it may be factors of this kind, rather than the non-replicability of Basque culture, which will determine whether ‘other Mondragons’ have any real chance of getting off the ground and of emulating the Mondragon success. (Robert Oakeshott)
• “Collective and individual self-reliance, collective and individual responsibility and hard work” are the attitudes and values of which the Mondragon cooperatives are both the cause and effect.
• Equality. Mondragon enterprises do permit salary differentials. However, the rules limiting salary differentials to six-to-one and the application of the one-person, one-vote principle in enterprise governance substantially promote a much more egalitarian work environment than is normally found in commercial enterprises. This environment is further enhanced by a student-run cooperative in which students at the technical college pay for their education by working as part-time factory laborers in the other cooperatives, thus helping future managers relate to regular factory workers.
• The world has searched throughout the ages for economic justice and prosperity. In some significant cases, such as certain ESOPS, the Israeli kibbutzim, and particularly Mondragon, many of the principles of the united order have been discovered and astonishing success realized. However, in the world’s search for the system or organization that would realize these desires, the need to apply the true, energetie, life-giving principles of the united order generally has not been recognized. There have been no “other Mondragons.” The Latterday Saints have been blessed with revelation of the principles of the united order. Can they show the way toward the realization of the “full economie plan of Zion, the united order”?
• The united order is about economics and business. The establishment of righteous temporal self-reliance for all in accordance with the principles of the united order ultimately depends on the achievement of personal and collective economic viability in the modern world.
• There are several key factors to a successful business-capital, effective corporate governance, technical and management skill, entrepreneurial energy, and business opportunity. The principles of the united order vide the means as well as the purpose for achieving these.
• A bank is always at the center of the most successful industrial organizations of modern time, the Japanese keiretsu.
• The united order is no genteel charity, no philanthropic sideshow. The restored gospel is serious business, and its economic manifestation, the united order, encompasses all aspects of the modern economy.
• Ultimately, the united order is not about donating 12 dollars a year to the poor, as worthy as that is. It is about the transformation of the modern economy by the righteous investment of the hundreds of billions of surplus wealth created by the Industrial Revolution and the modern free enterprise market economy.
• The Caja Laboral Popular is an obvious model, but a UOPIFI need not be so elaborate. Operating through a charitable foundation would entail less expense fewer legalities than setting up an actual banking institution. On the other hand, setting up a banking institution permits the application of a broader range of resources. Deposits from the cooperatives and members of the community could significantly increase the amount of capital available over what might be expected from charitable donations. The young engineers who founded the Monuragon cooperatives were incredulous when Don Jose Maria proPosed that they start a bank, but if faith can move mountains, it should support a bank as well.
• The law of stewardship requires that the control and allocation of the start-up investments be made by local participators, the “voice and common consent of the order” (D&C 104:71). The principle of equality would require that the recipients be employee-owned enterprises.10 The importance of local self-management cannot be overemphasized. Someone sitting in a developed nation can never be qualified to identify the best entrepreneurial opportunities in Cuzco, Quezon City, or Queens, or to make them work. Even natives based in the country cannot generally do so if they are controlled by a developed country-based bureaucracy, even the Church’s.
• Employment must be based on the needs of the enterprise and personal qualifications. Church membership alone cannot be seen as giving one the right to employment in a UOPIE. The observance of these principles would help to avoid overwhelming the available resources, as happened in Missouri in the 1830s.
• There would also be a danger that, despite all declarations to the contrary, Church members would expect the Church to save UOPIES in difficulty. The observance of the united order principles of self-reliance and stewardship self-government, by separating the priesthood leadership from the management of UOPIFIS and UOPIES, would make it much less likely that priesthood leadens and the Church would be seen as responsible for not supporting a failing enterprise, or not getting a deserving member a job.
• Tecal, accounting, technological, financial analysis, and marketing assistance could be organized through the UOPIFIs. In a Church well supplied with MBAS and Amway salesmen, it should t be difficult to find qualified volunteers to advise young UOPIES. Again, these specialists would need to be strongly caulioned that they are advisors and that they must respect the selfmanagement of the UOPIEs. In Third World situations it would also be important for them to be trained in appropriate technologies. For example, it is not necessary to have a computer and a spreadsheet program to keep the accounts for a Third World informal sector micro-enterprise. Old-fashioned paper ledgers can be quite adequate and are far less expensive. The training approach developed by the IEDF Enterprise Mentors, in which expertise is transferred and operations turned over to skilled locals as rapidly as possible is an excellent model.
  • Value Added Ventures
• One can structure the system to encourage and reward hard work and selfreliance, and to penalize their absence. Membership is voluntary, and expulsion of idlers is permitted (D&C 42:42). This institutes a certain amount of self-screening.
• Shoddy goods and surly service are incompat ible with the gospel in action., Strong, positive attitudes toward uality and service would be further enhanced by a sense of sonal and collective responsibility and ownership, promoted by participative management and employee ownership. Obviously, peruch a strong spirit of customer service should also help sales.
• Indeed, our review in this book of teachings about the united order suggests that a popular image of such a day among Latterday Saints may not be accurate. This image has members called into the bishop’s office and asked to sign all of their property over to the Church, to thereafter be managed by a great central Church Economic Correlation Department. However, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, there are good policy reasons for the Church to avoid control of economic activities. Moreover, fundamental to the principles of the united order is the law of stewardship, which calls for private ownership and management of property. In the modern corporate economy, this would often mean Ownership and management through private groups (such as employee-owned businesses) rather than individually. However, the united order is never a kind of centrally controlled Church Communism.
• The establishment of UOPIES in the midst of the world would be a highly visible way of testifying to the coming of Zion to the world. It would demonstrate the benefits of the restored gospel in host countries even to those who may not yet appreciate the value of its religious message.
• Zion is now outbound, engaging every nook and corner of this world. Using wisdom and order, we Saints can work toward the prophets’ vision-the worldwide Zion, the united order, the holy city, the ideal society, the perfect prescription, the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind.
• I have looked upon the community of the Latter-day Saints in vision and beheld them organized as one great family of heaven, each person performing his several duties in his line of industry, working for the good of the whole more than for individual aggrandizement; and in this I have beheld the most beautiful order that the mind of man can contemplate, and the grandest results for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God and the spread of righteousness upon the earth. Will this people ever come to this order of things? (Brigham Young)
  • Not as long as I am dishonest, greedy, impatient, rude, hurtful, or unloving.
• Freedom to pursue one’s divine call and mission is especially important to Latter-day Saints. Despite almost a hundred years of persecution by self-righteous capitalists, Latter-day Saints believe that a democratic free market society offers the greatest possibility for freedom to follow their religion. J. Reuben Clark called Communism “Satan’s counterfeit for the United Order” and did not hold a much better view of democratic socialism. Counterfeits are evil in two ways. First, they trade on the good reputation of the authentic article. Thus, in our present context, one would argue that concern for poverty and inequality are genuine virtues, which socialists have deceptively leveraged into support for their program of state economic control.
• The other evil is indirect. When people are burned by accepting a counterfeit as authentic, they become suspicious of other articles which are in fact authentic. This debases the value of the authentic article. Having discovered that state economic control is oppressive and ineffective, many are suspicious of ideals like equality, community responsibility, and full employment, which have become associated with the socialist program. However, the socialists did not invent, and do not own, these ideals. Marx wrote “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” in 1875, over four decades after the Lord revealed that united order “portions” would be granted to everyone “equal according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs” (D&C 51:3). Keynesian social planners undertook full employment as a social goal over six decades after John Taylor charged local Church leaders to “find employment for every man and woman and child within this Stake that wants to labor.”
• The nearer any scheme for economic betterment conforms to the principles of the United Order, the more likely it will be to assist mankind.” The question is not “is the united order socialistic or capitalistic?” The proper question is “how do socialism and capitalism measure up to the principles of the united order?”
• The preservation of economic freedom is not the ultimate end of our quest for Zion. That moral free agency was preserved after the great war in heaven did not mean that humankind would use it righteously on earth. That a people wins political freedom does not mean that they will always elect honest governments or enact wise laws.
  • “When the voice of the people choose wickedness…”
• Like a democratic government, the free market system is only as good as the people who are in it. The free market system has the potential for efficiently maximizing “the wealth of nations.” However, how we use the wealth thus produced is a moral decision.
• Private charity and government welfare are acts of individual or community moral choice that are neither encouraged nor rewarded by the market.
• The Social Darwinist market responds to how much property a person has, not her or his value as a child of God. It gives more value, resources, and importance to a millionaire than to a pauper, thus placing love of property over love of others.
• And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts. (Mormon 8)
• If one thinks that it is weak to encourage cooperation over competition, one will not notice that the Book of Mormon contains the most concise summary of Social Darwinism ever penned, and that it is propounded by the antichrist, Korihor: “there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but 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” (Alma 30:17). If one believes that poor people are generally lazy and undeserving, not worthy of our help or attention, can one truly take to heart King Benjamin’s plea to remember that we are all beggars before God? (See Mosiah 4:17-19.)
• The value of economic freedom (and freedom’s most potent defense against the socialist challenge) is that it permits us to freely use our material wealth, in the words of Lorenzo Snow, to “banish pride, poverty, and iniquity.”
• The restored gospel is more than attending Church, obeying the Word of Wisdom, and doing genealogy. According to John Taylor, it aims “to introduce correct principles of every kindprinciples of morality, social principles, good political principles; principles relating to the government of the earth we live in.”
• The best time to institute employee ownership is when a company is young and its culture fresh, not when it is old and in danger of closing down.
• Gospel management must look to John Taylor, not Frederick Taylor, for its principles. Delegation does not mean abdication.
• To build a true Zion, we all need to express our insights, learn to listen, explore needs, analyze future possibilities, and, in the words of more than one prophet, “Do it.”
• John Taylor advised the Saints, “Do not be in a big hurry; do not break your ecAs, go at it quietly, and start one industry and then another… Brethren, operate together, and sisters operate together, and let all act in the welfare of each other.” The journey to Zion calls for diligent orderly effort. All efforts should proceed carefully, and be monitored for both strengths and weaknesses. John Taylor said he did “not want to see one solitary principle that an honest, honorable man cannot sustain; but let everything be so that it can be dragged right forth to the daylight, and turned over and over and over and examined all sides up, and inside out, and see that it is true, good, honorable, upright and honest in every particular. That is the kind of thing we want.” We need continually to stop, reflect critically on what we are doing, identify higher possibilities, and then move on. Reflection and action, looking, thinking, planning, and doing, all integrated together, change lives.
• To succeed will require years of hard work, research, and ongoing dialogue. Because we do not live it, it is easy to bathe the united order in a hazy utopian glow. Nitty-gritty programs such as these, and many others that could help us work toward the united order, will require hard work, skillful management, and an ample share of crises and tough decisions. Mistakes and failures are certain. Hazy utopian glows do not long survive the heat of the day and the harsh light of real life. However, such is the work of the eternities, “as old as the gospel itself.” Working toward the united order is worthy of our greatest effort and devotion. It is the only enduring prescription for humankind’s search for a system or organization to overcome its problems and social ills. As experience grows and self-reliance is achieved, LDS culture can evolve to the point at which all persons are respected, treated with dignity, have “a competence and the conveniences of life,” and are able to develop their God-given talents, to pursue their divine call and mission. Their lives, families, and neighborhoods will become places of peace, purity, and joy. Eventually, there will be “no poor among them” and they will achieve a spirit of genuine community, the condition known in the scriptures as Zion.
• I cling to the thought that man will only evolve upwards by the subordination of his physical desires and appetites to the intellectual and spiritual side of his nature. Unless this evolution be the purpose of the race, I despair-and wish only for the extinction of human consciousness. Without this hope-without this faith-I could not struggle on. It is this purpose, and this purpose only, that gives meaning to the constantly recurring battles of good and evil within one’s own nature-and to one’s persistent endeavour to find the ways and means of combating the evil habits of the mass of men. Oh! for a Church that would weld into one living force all who hold this faith, with the discipline and consolations fitted to sustain their endeavour. (Beatrice Webb)
• We all concede the point that when this mortality falls off, and with its cares, anxieties, love of self, love of wealth, love of power, and all the conflicting interests which pertain to the flesh, that then, when our spirits have returned to God who gave them, we will be subject to every requirement that He may make of us, that we shall then live together as one great family; our interest will be a general, a common interest. Why can we not so live in to you and testify to you this world? (Brigham Young)