bcspace wrote:Free Market Capitalism is THE replication of God's economy as God Himself is a Free Market Capitalist. It's the only system wherein agency exists, is completely neutral, and where enticements towards good or evil can operate to the salvation of mankind. It's also the only system wherein a United Order can operate an be successful.
I think this is key. The moral neutrality of free-market economic relations, which is to say the provision of an open, free, rule of law based society with:
1. Minimal barriers to entrance into employment and/or entrepreneurial activity
2. An open, dynamic, expanding field of opportunity in economic matters irrespective of class or ethnic origins.
3. A rule of law and equality under the law based social order (representative-democratic) in which fraud and charlatanry are controlled and sanctioned by a civil and criminal justice system
4. Strictly limited, non-invasive government that involves itself very little in the personal economic affairs of a citizenry save to enforce laws against fraud, deception, and trespasses against the unalienable rights of others in business dealings.
5. A regime of low, fair, morally defensible, constitutionally legitimate, economically stimulative taxation and minimal, rational business regulation.
is central to understanding why it is both rationally and morally the underlying structure of the United Order as well as of the Constitution and the founding principles of America (and LDS doctrine, let us all remember, posits the Constitution as a
divinely inspired - above just being brilliant and imaginative - political document).
That which is unfortunately called "capitalism" is nothing more than liberty in the economic realm;
it is free-agency applied and practiced in matters of economics - catallactics, in the broadest sense. As in all matters of the mortal "probationary state," not just agency, but
free agency - the ability to use and an environment conducive to agency's decision and determination making capacity against a background of alternatives, is central to the workings of plan of salvation (as well as human happiness and felicity in the mortal realm).
Thus the intersection between religion and politics occurs primarily in 2 Nephi 2 and wherever the war in heaven, the fall of Lucifer, or the purpose/reason of earth life is detailed. We are either free to choose salvation (FMC system) or someone is trying to force salvation on us.
Exactly, and just as I've been arguing for years and as this point comes up in the book I've been working on for years on the subject. The intersection between the gospel and politics is in the politics of the war in Heaven; in the conflict between the two grand plans of how the mortal probation would be structured and what would be possible within it.
Socialism, Liberalism, Dictatorship etc. are, by official LDS doctrinal definition, part of the church of the Devil.
Hard, hard doctrine, unfortunately, for some. No one, as I've pointed out umpteen times before in this and other forums, seems to have too much problem with denunciation of National Socialism (Nazism) as evil and as, from an LDS perspective, part of the GAAC. The problem only seems to arise when the term socialism or communism comes up without the appellation "national" and the high, noble, and lofty talk of "equality," "equity," "brotherhood," "fairness," "the poor," and fundamentally changing human nature and perfecting humankind through in the light of grand ideological theories of human redemption seems to shut down rational thinking processes and a retreat into pristine, idealistic realms among the clouds fills the void left by the abandonment of critical thought, the lessons of history, and gospel teaching.