Can a Rightist be Considered a Faithful Latter-Day Saint?

[_Gadianton]

But I do follow you Coggins. More importanlty, I'm following the topic of the thread, which you are trying to avoid. You can't show the compatibility of the D&C scriptures with capitalism. So it seems you're going to have a difficult time being a "good Mormon" if one's politics is the window to their soul, as you claim.

[Guest]

You bash the Left by pointing out how they're morally corrupt using scripture.

I criticize it, yes.

I argue the Right can be bashed equally using scripture

.

Some things can be argued against, but not equally. Leftism is Korihorism, they are the same. Objectivst economic and social theory could take a sound drubbing from the scriptures, to a substantial extent. Austrian economics could be taken to the woodshed in some things (especially the Rothbardian extremes), but only in a limited sense. So I only agree along certain dimensions.

I think you're also confusing Agency and Freedom too. Capitalism doesn't give you agency.

Capitalism gives one's agency a much larger field and a far greater set of options from which to choose. What this ultimately means is far greater opportunity to develop our talents, abilities, aptitudes, and skills; to seek excellence and fulfill our potential. But seeing as how life in 10th century Finland is as much or more to your liking as modernity, am I talking past you here?

The lowliest slave in Rome possessed as much agency as the Emperor or even Jesus Christ himself. You're suggesting we give people freedom, not Agency.

Then you didn't read my post. What I said was Capitalism was free agency in the economic sphere. I didn't say it was agency, but only agency free to achieve and grow in the economic (and, by extension, personal, social etc.) sphere.

Speculation is a use of freedom. Building hellhole mining towns so you can feed off the profits (while living somewhere else of course) is freedom. Buying the poor widow's last cow for $5 and then praying to God and thanking him for helping you get such a good deal is a use of freedom. Joseph and Brigham condemned all these choices.

This sounds like Michael Moore raving in a MSNBC Town Hall meeting. Please, I enjoy discussing economics, don't flush it down yet.

Nehor, the examples you are using above are examples of the use of agency by individuals, and have nothing whatsoever to do with a free market economic order. The same things happen in socialist, fascist, and every other kind of economic system. And, it should be noted that, in really socialist systems, dishonesty, greed, and economic cruelty are inherent in the political system itself. If one's government steals from the people, why shouldn't the people steal from each other? In a capitalist society, individuals are free to sin economically. They are also free to be honorable in all their business dealings, as the Temple recommend questions asks.

Why are you against a system that looks exactly like what the Lord planned for us in the Grand Council and provides every opportunity to choose good over evil in economic affairs? Let us go down to see if they will do all things we command them. What do you find wrong in this?

[_The Nehor]

Laissez faire doctrine is taught only one time in the Book of Mormon, by Korihor, as Nehor pointed out.

Laissez faire doctrine is taught nowhere in the Book of Mormon. What Korihor does teach there is leftism: human self sufficiency, the preeminence of material wealth and individual needs, personal self absorption, and moral relativism, all things conservatives have been screaming about since the first issue of National Review rolled off the presses 53 years ago. There is no economic doctrine mentioned (except in those parts of the Book of Mormon where the righteous Nephites become wealthy due to there industry and business sense, achieving high technology and culture in the process. Oh yes, they always seemed to become wicked because they let the wealth go to their heads, but that has nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth per se and everything to do with The Fall, which affects the poor as well as the rich.).

No economic doctrine?

The teachings of Korihor:

'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' (textbook laissez faire, I earned it, it's mine, I deserve the fruits of my labor due to my management skills, I know the system and made money)

The words of Korihor:

"And thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires; and ye keep them down, even as it were in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, that they durst not look up with boldness, and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges. Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own lest they should offend their priests, who do yoke them according to their desires, and and have brought them to believe, by their traditions and their dreams and their whims and their visions and their pretended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offends some unknown being..." (How DARE you tell these people that they can't use their property however they want? Classic laissez faire. They have rights you know. They can do whatever they want.)

Compare this to Jacob:

"Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you." (No mention of fair wages and keeping them as low as the market allows. Instead a command to help all and share your wealth freely to all so all can be wealthy. No mention of the rich creating a middle class beneath them through job creation, no mention of how you can get wealthier by helping others acquire wealth through economic stimulus. The law of Consecration has no problem with wealth or riches as long as everyone is wealthy and rich.)

The Nephites grew wealthy and destroyed themselves because it divided them. Do you really think we can do better using the same system? If we can God chose poorly in giving us a witness and a warning. The whole book is marketed by God as an example of what can happen to us if we don't repent and change our ways.

[_Droopy]

If wanting to build Zion the way God prescribed it makes me a raving starry-eyed teenager caught up in a fashionable cause (which I don't follow, Zion has never been a fashionable cause) then I'm in good company with such naïve fools as Enoch, Nephi, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young who obviously knew nothing of economics. Those raving lunatics just kept calling society Babylon for some reason. Nutters, the lot of them.

What it seems you want to do is throw our entire society into subsistence poverty. How is that compatible with the Gospel, and particularly, its modern mandates?

[Guest]

This sounds like Michael Moore raving in a MSNBC Town Hall meeting. Please, I enjoy discussing economics, don't flush it down yet.

Nehor, the examples you are using above are examples of the use of agency by individuals, and have nothing whatsoever to do with a free market economic order. The same things happen in socialist, fascist, and every other kind of economic system. And, it should be noted that, in really socialist systems, dishonest, greed, and economic cruelty are inherent in the political system itself. In a capitalist society, individuals are free to sin economically. They are also free to be honorable in all their business dealings, as the Temple recommend questions asks.

Why are you against a system that looks exactly like what the Lord planned for us in the Grand Council and provides every opportunity to choose good over evil in economic affairs? Let us go down to see if they will do all things we command them. What do you find wrong in this?

The same things do happen in every economic system. So why are you picking a favorite wrong system? That is not doing all things God commands us. That is what I find wrong with it.

I think the Lord commanded Consecration, not Capitalism. Then again, I hold the scriptures in higher esteem then the latest findings of conservative think tanks so what do I know? Funny that Consecration failed in the early Church because the Saints chose Capitalism (not socialism or fascism or communism) over it. We lost the heavenly order because the Saints insisted on a worldly system and now you're suggesting that the worldly system is what God planned for from the beginning? That modern America has beat the City of Enoch and the utopian period of the Nephites and come up with a superior system? I really don't know what to think now.

[Guest]

If wanting to build Zion the way God prescribed it makes me a raving starry-eyed teenager caught up in a fashionable cause (which I don't follow, Zion has never been a fashionable cause) then I'm in good company with such naïve fools as Enoch, Nephi, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young who obviously knew nothing of economics. Those raving lunatics just kept calling society Babylon for some reason. Nutters, the lot of them.

What it seems you want to do is throw our entire society into subsistence poverty. How is that compatible with the Gospel, and particularly, its modern mandates?

I want to live the way God tells me to. I'm sure the City of Enoch and the Nephite Golden Age were cesspools of subsistence poverty or were they an exception?

Also laughable is the idea that God needs us to be rich to do his work. I'm collecting wealth because God needs me to have it. I call that materialism disguised by delusions of both grandeur and holiness.

[_Gadianton]

Economics as a science better not have been invented in the Book of Mormon, that would be one crazy anachronism to explain away. But Korihor is right in line with capitalism precisely where you misunderstand. As Adam Smith points out in his famous, "It's not the benevolence of the baker.." quote, and as you admit in your moral neutrality statements, doing that which is right in one's own eyes, by his own volition, and for his own personal satisfaction is the foundation of capitalism. You are seriously distorting the capitalists by adding your "unselfish" component in and rewriting capatilist doctrine as "serving" one another, it has nothing to do with service. As you point out, capitalism is amoral. So is Korihor's philosophy.

[_The Nehor]

Economics as a science better not have been invented in the Book of Mormon, that would be one crazy anachronism to explain away. But Korihor is right in line with capitalism precisely where you misunderstand. As Adam Smith points out in his famous, "It's not the benevolence of the baker.." quote, and as you admit in your moral neutrality statements, doing that which is right in one's own eyes, by his own volition, and for his own personal satisfaction is the foundation of capitalism. You are seriously distorting the capitalists by adding your "unselfish" component in and rewriting capatilist doctrine as "serving" one another, it has nothing to do with service. As you point out, capitalism is amoral. So is Korihor's philosophy.

While economics as a science may be new economics is not. Capitalism is not new either. We've stopped using slave labor but that's about the extent of improvement I've seen in the historical record. The masses of the poor have a higher standard of living but is this because the market demanded it or because too many of them have guns to put up with living in horrible conditions?

[_Moniker]

I think they have guns in Somalia which is a pure free market economy.


:)

[_Droopy]

No economic doctrine?

The teachings of Korihor:

'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' (textbook laissez faire, I earned it, it's mine, I deserve the fruits of my labor due to my management skills, I know the system and made money)

This is textbook no such thing. Laissez faire simply means to let business compete in a free and open marketplace. What Korihor is talking about here has nothing whatsoever to do with economic theory and everything to do with personal attitudes toward life, of which economics is a part. Good heavens...

Nothing, absolutely nothing prevents Stephen Covey or Orson Card from acknowledging God as the author and provider of their talents and abilities and the blessings of great prosperity that have come to them, and not simply themselves and their own efforts, independent of God's grace and providence.

The words of Korihor:

"And thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires; and ye keep them down, even as it were in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, that they durst not look up with boldness, and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges. Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own lest they should offend their priests, who do yoke them according to their desires, and and have brought them to believe, by their traditions and their dreams and their whims and their visions and their pretended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offends some unknown being..." (How DARE you tell these people that they can't use their property however they want? Classic laissez faire. They have rights you know. They can do whatever they want.)

I have no idea, none, nada, how you are possibly extracting a covert attack on free market economics in this. What I see here is classic ACLU anti-Christian, anti-religion liberalism, in all its nineteen seventies glory.

Perhaps he was speaking about tithing, as the United Order among the Nephites did not exist until after Christ's appearance.

Nehor, what do you make of the eighth and tenth commandment, especially in an Old Testament context, where you seem to find the idea of private property and the concept of ownership wanting?

You're wresting the scriptures, drawing false dichotomies where none really exist and knocking down straw men. The concept of wealth in the scriptures in far more nuanced and complex than your black and white fundamentalist interpretations allow.