Personally, even if we were angels, I wouldn't want to live in anything remotely like a United Order. I enjoy economic freedom, and I don't believe in the type of radical economic equality the UO implies. I have no problem with a distribution of income and wealth, though I do have a problem if it results in overly wide disparities.
My meaning Guy, is that the United Order in a unforgiving desert in the context of pre-industrial age technology is a very different United Order than might exist under present conditions. The covenant would be the same, in that we would consider all of our property to be the Lord's and available at any time to do his work or support the poor, but the application might be very different. The almost military restrictions on personal freedom imposed at that time was, indeed, necessary for the naked survival of the Mormons in the Salk Lake Valley. The actual collectivization of personal property that occurred then is not something that would be necessary under modern conditions, though I can see why it would have been so under conditions prevailing then. Scarce resources, winter coming on, and no supermarket or CVS to run to to get what we need for the next couple of weeks.
If men were angels (or so fully influenced by the spirit of the Lord that they were the next best thing to them), I would have no problem with the United Order. Free agency is perhaps
the cardinal, overarching principle within the Gospel system of doctrine and governance. We also understand the unalienable rights stated in the Declaration and codified in the Constitution as divine in origin.
The problem arises when people think they can create a United Order themselves, outside the governing influence of the Priesthood. Without any doubt, they would make a hash of it, and bring discredit upon the concept in so doing. Even the Israeli Kibbutz, the most successful collectivist society we know of, eventually came apart because of the truncation of human potential and growth this kind of culture inevitably produces in its members.
I don't know what the full United Order, flourishing in a modern, technologically advanced economy would look like, but I'm quite satisfied it would not look like the Nineteenth Century version, any more than New Testament Christianity looks like Mosaic religion. To Mormons, they are all on a continuum, of course, but crafted to the capacities and needs of different peoples.
No, the coming UO will not look exactly like modern capitalism. There will, however, be capitalism within it. Were this not so, it would be inevitably and unendingly poor and dependent, and that is not a part of the prophecies regarding it. There will be no rich and poor in Zion, which means both that there will be a "welfare" system there that sees to the needs of the poor, as well as work and opportunity for the poor (a situation that, paradoxically, is well nigh impossible without free markets and accumulation of capital). However, there being no rich and poor (a narrowing of the vast disparities we see in secular society) in no way implies a classless society. Nor does it even imply economic egalitarianism. Mormons scriptures say there will be no rich and no poor; they do not mention economic equality.