Post-need United Order

For the non-LDS (aka non-Mormon) reader, the United Order is a wealth distribution system/social order designed by Joseph Smith Jr..  He took inspiration for the idea from the Bible, where Christ's disciples attempted to implement a very similar system after Christ's death.  Thus far all attempts at the United Order have failed.

The United Order is, in its initial form, a need based wealth distribution system.  Some people have compared it to communism, though many LDS people balk at this description, claiming that it is different because it is voluntary and communism is not.  (This is actually not true.  Marx, the inventor of communism, specifically described it as something that the people imposed, not as something a government imposed on them.  In addition, during Joseph Smith Jr.'s time, he told his followers that God had said they would face severe divine punishment if they did not participate in the system.  Strict Marxian communism is voluntary, while the United Order was imposed as a commandment from God.)  In the United Order, as it was practiced by Latter-day Saint communities, a religious leader (typically a bishop) was in charge of all of the community's resources.  Due largely to the timing and location, the United Order was almost exclusively practiced in agrarian communities.  The bishop was in charge of a warehouse (the origin of the term "bishop's warehouse", now used mostly in reference to LDS welfare buildings where food is distributed to those in need) where all of the community's production was stored.  Resources were then distributed on an as-needed basis.  This ensured that United Order communities had no poverty.  In most instances, the United Order broke down when one or more members of a community started trying to abuse the system.  There are stories of a man in one community who would go around claiming other people's property (a pocket watch, on one occasion) on the grounds that he needed it more than they did.  Now, to be clear this is not how the United Order works.  It does not abolish personal property.  It does not allow individuals to claim the property of others.  All it does is places all resources produced into a central pot and distributes them in an ostensibly fair distribution among the people, with filling needs being the highest priority.  The only time the United Order expects personal property to be donated is on creation or entry.  The idea is that when a person commits to live in the United Order, that person contributes everything he or she has to it, and then is returned only sufficient to be on approximately even ground with everyone else.  "Everything" has often been subjective in this, typically including primarily things of significant value in the context of the community.  For example, low value family heirlooms would not typically be expected to be donated.  If one donated one's house, it would probably immediately be returned, unless it is excessively large for the number of people occupying it and another family needs it more (in which case a more suitable home would be provided in exchange).  In United Order communities just starting out (a vast majority of them), moderately valuable items might also be expected to be donated, either for use by the community or to be sold for funds to buy other things the community needs.  To be clear though, this was not just about money.  United Order communities typically owned farms, farm equipment, tanneries, and other productive facilities, with the goal of being 100% self sufficient.  According to Joseph Smith Jr., he had done the math, and it indicated that a community living the United Order could get to a point where it was producing many times what the people needed, allowing it to become incredibly wealthy fairly quickly.  Unfortunately, this never happened, but it was not because Joseph's math was wrong.

As it has been practiced, the United Order needs buy in from everyone.  (It could be practiced differently, but in the religious setting of the early LDS Church, under hostile Federal, state, and sometimes local governments, there really was no other option than purely voluntary participation with minimal repercussions for reneging on the contract.)  All it takes is one greedy person abusing the system to disillusion everyone else and cause it to collapse.  I am only aware of one instance where it lasted a significant amount of time.  I am not sure how long it lasted, but one community lasted at least a few generations.  Last I heard, it had eventually disbanded, but it was probably the most successful instance of the United Order.  It was not as successful as it could have been though.  The problem is this: The United Order has never been carried to its conclusion.  It has only ever gone through the early phase.  In most cases it failed there, but in a few it lasted longer but stalled at the culmination of the early phase.  The problem is this: The United Order was never intended to be a need based system.  It was intended to be a system of labor and wealth distribution that was both fair and profitable for everyone.  Because it never got past the early need-based phase though, few people actually understood this.  Joseph Smith Jr. never had the opportunity to establish the full potential of the system, because greed destroyed his attempts at it before it ever got that far.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the United Order.  The idea that it is a need based system is one of the worst.  It was never intended to only fill the needs of the people.  Joseph Smith Jr. was clear about that when he claimed that any community practicing it correctly would become extremely wealthy.  The United Order was first and foremost about fairness, and it was second about highly efficient industry.  It is well known that cutting out middle men can result in substantial savings due to increased efficiency.  A system without profiteering at every corner is going to cost far less to run than one where there is someone at every level taking a share, especially when half of the "levels" are not necessary in the first place.  This is what the United Order was about.  It was about increasing efficiency and reducing opportunity for greed to rob the community of its profits.  Obviously, however (or, at least, obviously to Joseph, because many modern businesses don't seem to get this piece of common sense), a society cannot run efficiently when the needs of its members are not being met.  And thus, the first priority of the United Order was to meet the needs of the people.  Any community stopping there, though, was no longer practicing the United Order, because it was never intended that meeting needs should be its only priority or even its highest priority.  No community has ever successfully practiced the United Order, because even the most successful stopped practicing it as soon as needs were met.

Joseph Smith Jr.'s United Order was intended to work very differently in the long run from how it was ever practiced.  Meeting needs and establishing self sufficiency were indeed the first goals.  Several instances managed to get this far, but they were either torn apart by dissension or just stopped there.  Only one that I am aware of lasted very long, but its later problems really highlight its own failure.  This community, once self sufficient, continued to isolate itself from the outside world.  There is a story floating around about a teenage boy who was given some money and sent outside of the community by the leaders, to find things that the community did not have.  The goal, specifically, was for him to go out and find some decent quality modern clothing.  He did this, and he returned with some nice jeans, a fairly high quality shirt, and a few other things.  These items were turned over to those members of the community who made the clothing.  They examined the clothing and took from it sufficient knowledge to recreate it.  The items were then given to the boy as a reward for successfully completing his task.  Now, here is the problem: This was most of the extent of the trade between this community and the outside world.  Sometimes the community would sell stuff, but there was not a lot of demand for most of their more primitive productions.  The community was self sufficient, but it was not wealthy, by any means, largely because it did not participate in sufficient trade to gain much wealth, and further, any wealth they did have was spent almost exclusively inside the community, thus isolating it from modern conveniences that gave the outside world a significantly higher standard of living.  This is not what the United Order was supposed to be like!

The United Order, practiced as intended, would have rapidly achieved self sufficiency and met the needs of its members, but it would not have stopped there.  It is true that true self sufficiency requires the ability to be self sufficient even in isolation, but it does not require that a state of isolation be maintained in the long term.  One can have all of the land and labor required to produce enough food and be self sufficient, even if one is choosing to buy food from someone else because it is cheaper than growing it.  Self sufficiency is about ability, not about actually doing.  The second phase of the United Order, which to my knowledge has never been attempted, is finding ways to increase efficiency, without sacrificing self sufficiency.  For example, you can't sell the farm to increase efficiency somewhere else, but if it is cheaper to buy food than to grow it, definitely do that.  The farm land might be more valuable growing some cash crop than growing food, but so long as the land is capable of growing sufficient food, self sufficiency is not compromised by using this more efficient strategy.  Efficiency almost requires engaging in trade.  A self sufficient community has a lot of flexibility in what it can produce, and being able to obtain necessities cheaper through trade increases that flexibility.  Thus, a United Order community that has achieved self sufficiency must emerge from isolation to progress to the next phase.  Sadly, this has never been done.  The second phase is the generation of wealth.  Once needs are met and self sufficiency has been achieved, focusing on the generation of wealth is not wrong, nor is it harmful to the community.  In fact, it is quite valuable.  Such a community can afford to expand its capabilities, allowing it to produce more and more value to trade for wealth.  But, it must also trade some of that wealth for efficiency.  Upgrading factories and automating processes will increase its capacity for generating wealth and its ability to be self sufficient.  Once this process has gotten to a point where the community is generating a significant income, it is time to move on to the third phase.  The technological and efficiency progress of the second phase is not abandoned here, just like the self sufficiency and need goals of the first phase were not abandoned upon moving to the second.  What is different is that the wealth begins to be shared with the members of the community, instead of all being put back into improving the community, and this wealth is not merely distributed in the form of more needs.  It is distributed in the form of money that can be spent within or outside of the community.  If the community can provide for some fairly universal wants significantly more cheaply than individuals can buy it themselves, then this may be done to improve the efficiency of the system, allowing more wealth to be retained and distributed than might otherwise be.  Attempting to do this for all wants, however, is a poor and maybe even oppressive strategy, because either the system is stocking up on wants that may end up with surplus, or the system is determining what wants the people are allowed to have and what they are not.  For example, if only a few people want video game consoles, either the system has to guess how many it will need (of each type), or it will decide that because the majority does not want it no one can have it.  This is a poor strategy that money distribution avoids.  A successful United Order is a community where everyone has significant buying power even outside the community.  This is the kind of United Order Joseph Smith Jr. intended, because what is the point of a wealthy community where the individuals of the community are still poor, having only their needs met and nothing else?  (Joseph Smith Jr. and the primary book of scripture for the church he created are both very clear on the fact that God wants his people to have the blessing of material wealth.)

The fact is, the United Order has not been proven to be a failure, despite how many times it has failed.  Even the few cases where it has lasted to the point of self sufficiency, it was never allowed to progress beyond that.  Joseph Smith Jr.'s claim that the United Order is a path to a very successful and wealthy community makes perfect sense to anyone with a modern understanding of supply lines and general economics.  The problem is not the system.  The problem is that no one who truly understands it has ever managed to get it to the post-need phases.  The system itself is probably one of the most well designed systems for economic equality and fairness, and it is a shame that it has never been given a fair chance.