261004 – Recap – Can Capitalism Be Made Moral

by Thomas Abshier | Oct 4, 2026 | Sermon/Meeting/Discussion Transcripts, Uncategorized

Can Capitalism Be Made Moral?

Oct 4, 2026 · @Thomas Abshier

Christos Fellowship discussion, Sunday, 4 October 2026

The Fellowship met to discuss Chapters 3 and 4 of Transforming America and the companion chapter addition, “The Desire for Monopoly.” Thomas framed the meeting with one question: can capitalism be made moral? Michael, Leonard, Charlie, Susan, and Isak took part. Armond was absent.

The discussion moved from definitions, to the history of capitalist and communist states, to the commons, force, and rights, and finally to the human heart. By the end, the group had reached a working agreement: capitalism is a neutral mechanism, and its morality depends on the people operating it. The open question was what moral people would actually do differently in the marketplace.

This document has two parts. Part 1 is a synthesis essay, organized by topic, with points of fact and commentary. Notes marked Note add references or corrections where the discussion missed or misstated something. Part 2 is the full discussion, edited for clarity and organized by topic. Claude edited both parts; false starts and repetitions were removed, and no content was added to what the speakers said.

The readings: Transforming America, Chapters 3–4 (“The Perversion of Centralization” and “Good Roads”) and The Desire for Monopoly.

Part 1: Synthesis — Can Capitalism Be Made Moral?

1. The question and where it came from

Thomas opened by asking whether capitalism can be made moral, and said he expected Michael to have the most to say. Charlie challenged the premise: the title assumes capitalism is immoral. Leonard asked the same thing in other words: what is immoral about it?

Thomas explained the question’s origin. He and Michael grew up in the 1960s and went to People’s Park in Berkeley. The mood of that era held that the system was unfair, that people were being abused, and that something better had to be found. Young people built communes and tried alternatives. Thomas said that sense never fully left him: capitalism is either impersonal and self-serving, structurally flawed, or simply has not been done right.

He then laid out the problems he had in view. People treat “inequality” as though it were self-evidently evil. There is the government–industry alliance, sometimes called captured capitalism. And, as Michael would argue, every capitalist wants a monopoly, because a monopolist can charge far more than a competitive market allows. If capitalism has something wrong with it, the question is how to make it moral.

Commentary. This is the same tension The Desire for Monopoly names: the free market contains, inside every participant, the wish to end the free market. The group’s discussion stayed close to that tension throughout, even when it wandered.

2. Defining the terms

Leonard asked the group to define capitalism before going further. Michael read a common definition: private ownership of the means of production, operation for profit, and prices set by competition in a free market rather than by central planning. He said the definition breaks down because monopoly is part of capitalism. If a few owners control all the water, they can charge until the people’s money is gone.

Leonard compared two definitions. The International Monetary Fund says private actors own property according to their interests, and freely set prices “in a way that can serve the best interests of society.” The Cambridge Dictionary says the goal is the greatest possible profit for the owners. Michael noted the difference: the IMF has an interest in describing capitalism favorably, while the Cambridge version names who profits. Leonard summarized: capitalism is private ownership of property and business, and the owners may hold, share, sell, or use it as they choose, always with profit in view.

Isak read a definition of communism: a classless society with common ownership of the means of production and no private property. Leonard read another: a theoretical system of collective ownership with labor organized for the common advantage of all. He argued that it has never happened. It remains theoretical because collective ownership has never actually existed under any regime that called itself communist. Charlie added the reality: communism produced 150 to 200 million deaths in the last hundred years. Leonard asked why, if everyone owned property collectively, such regimes killed so many people. Were people property too? Charlie answered with the old line: you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

Leonard then drew the contrast. Capitalism has flaws, especially the profit motive, but it rests on someone selling and someone choosing to buy. That is basic economics. Communism does not work that way.

Note — communist death tolls. The most-cited scholarly estimates run roughly 65 to 100 million deaths under communist regimes in the twentieth century. The Black Book of Communism (1997) put the total near 100 million; the political scientist R. J. Rummel’s estimates ran somewhat higher. Charlie’s figure of 150 to 200 million is above the standard estimates. The point he made, that the toll was immense, stands at the lower figures.

3. Michael’s case: it depends on who decides

Michael said the morality of capitalism depends on who judges; every capitalist would say it is moral. He gave its advantage: it lets someone build better and better versions of something, especially where no one else is making it. He gave its disadvantage: in much of the world, one or a few families rule and own nearly everything, while most people live in desperate poverty. He named the Gulf states, Latin American oligarchies, and the legacy of the Spanish conquistadors, and said nearly every impoverished nation is poor because of capitalism’s concentration of wealth in the hands of rulers.

Thomas asked whether that disproportion is necessary to capitalism, or only something that happens. Michael answered with mixed economies. The United States, he said, is about one-third “communist”: roughly a third of GDP goes to things held in common, such as defense, roads, and bridges. Europe has similar programs. Those non-capitalist programs keep the poorest from falling as far as they do in places where capitalism is unbounded and people can starve. China, he said, is the reverse of the U.S.: about one-third capitalist.

His central argument was about Stalin. Stalin inherited a desperately poor country in 1924. By his death in 1953, it was one of the world’s two superpowers. Anti-capitalists cite this as proof that communism works. Michael said it proves something else. Stalin succeeded because he industrialized, turning a nation of horse-drawn plows into a nation of tractors. What makes a country succeed is not its economic label but the decisions of those who control the macroeconomy. A capitalist country whose wealth goes into the king’s castles will stagnate. One whose wealth goes into infrastructure and production can prosper, whether it is capitalist or communist.

Commentary. Michael’s “decisions, not labels” argument parallels the book’s claim in Chapter 3 that every system without nuance takes one true thing and makes it the only thing. Where they part is the remedy. Michael located the cause in the competence of decision-makers; the book and, by the end, the group located it in the character of the people making decisions.

Note — Stalin’s industrialization. Michael’s dates are right: Stalin consolidated power after Lenin’s death in 1924 and died in 1953. The industrialization he described was real. It was paired with forced collectivization of agriculture, which produced the famine of 1932–33 that killed several million people, most of them in Ukraine. Any account of what Stalin’s decisions achieved has to include what they cost.

Note — “one-third communist.” Government spending at all levels in the United States does run about a third of GDP. But much of that is transfer payments and public services, not collective ownership of the means of production, which is what defines communism. “Public” or “common provision” is the more accurate term. For China, Chinese officials themselves report that the private sector produces about 60 percent of GDP, so China is more capitalist than Michael’s one-third figure suggests.

Note — capitalism and poor nations. Economists dispute the claim that poor nations are poor because of capitalism. A widely cited view (Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 2012) holds that nations stay poor when a small elite controls “extractive” institutions that protect its own wealth, and grow rich when institutions are “inclusive”: secure property, impartial courts, and open markets for everyone. That view actually agrees with part of Michael’s point (it is the rulers’ choices that matter) and with Thomas’s (concentration of power is the perversion). It disagrees that the free market itself is the cause. Gulf states such as the UAE are also an imperfect example: their citizens are wealthy and heavily subsidized, though the large migrant labor force is not.

4. Monopoly, the commons, and the first government

Michael’s example of damming a river became the thread for the next exchange. If you own the land upstream, capitalism lets you dam the river and charge everyone downstream whatever they will pay.

Charlie answered that law already addresses this. A body of law called riparian rights protects people’s right to common sources of water, and under a just legal system people can sue to undo such a wrong. Michael called that “the communist infusion into capitalism”: the community saying everyone needs water and deserves it without spending all his money on one owner. He applied the same reasoning to fire departments, police, roads, railroads, and national parks. Who owns Yosemite? The beach no one is allowed to fence off? A boat bought by several friends? He said the communist claim that “we all own it” and the capitalist claim that “no one owns it” become a semantic distinction.

Later, Michael offered the parent’s rule for fairness: one child cuts the pizza, and the other chooses. The cutter makes the halves as equal as he can. He also offered a picture of the first government. Oog rules the tribe because he is the biggest. The next two biggest men realize that together they can stop him. Government begins when people band together to keep one man from running the coop. With 300 million people instead of eight, he said, the idea is the same.

Commentary. Michael’s water example is the second kind of monopoly in The Desire for Monopoly: a market held by exclusion, not service. Charlie’s answer, legal recourse against exclusion, is the book’s “immune system” remedy from Chapter 3, a distributed check rather than central planning. Calling common provision “communism” blurs the line the book draws in Chapter 4: everybody wants good roads, and government’s legitimate job is the common good. A common road is not the abolition of private property.

Note — riparian rights. The riparian doctrine does not come from the Bible. It developed in English common law, with roots in Roman and later French civil law. Scripture does record disputes over water rights, as when Abraham’s and Isaac’s servants quarreled with neighbors over wells (Genesis 21:25–30; 26:18–22). Most of the western United States, including Montana and Utah, does not use riparian rights at all. It uses the doctrine of prior appropriation: “first in time, first in right.”

Note — cut and choose. Michael’s pizza rule is a standard method in the mathematics of fair division. Scripture has an early version of it: Abraham let Lot choose first which land he wanted (Genesis 13:8–11).

5. Is the system neutral? Three regulators

Charlie asked whether capitalism, which he also called free enterprise, might be neutral, operated by some people who are good and some who are evil. Thomas agreed and said that was the core of what he had written. Granting that some people are moral and some are not, how do you consciously move capitalism toward morality? Adam Smith’s invisible hand does not do it on its own. Calling in the government brings corruption and cartels between government and business.

Later in the meeting, Thomas developed this into a framework. Capitalism is an unthinking principle of how people interact. It has no morals of its own. It can be regulated in three ways:

1. Internally, by the person who decides he will not do the wrong thing.
2. By the local environment, the people around the person.
3. By government, which can take away money and freedom.

If there is an absolute moral standard, the solution is that all three operate according to it: the government, the community, and the individual. Thomas said he took as given that the goal is a moral capitalism. Pure communal ownership has failed, as at Jamestown. Unregulated capitalism lets powerful nations exploit poorer ones, taking minerals from places like Uganda, Liberia, and Zimbabwe for pennies, and produces inequality that does not make people happy. So capitalism is workable, but it must be regulated by an absolute standard. The open questions are how to judge by that standard and how to enforce it.

Michael said that brings it back to government. Capitalism by itself is “rulelessness”: killing a competitor and taking his machinery is, in that sense, a capitalist tool. Charlie asked whether Michael was calling plunder the ultimate capitalism. Michael said it is one tool among many, and historically a common one, unless a government forbids it. Thomas agreed it is a tool, and said we rule it out by moral principle.

Thomas also identified where capitalism is most obviously corrupted: the government–industry cartel. “We’ll slip you a few bucks if you give us this law.” That intersection is where morality is bought.

Commentary. Thomas’s three regulators correspond to the book’s levels of self-government in Chapter 4: the man who governs himself, the community small enough to know him, and the representative government above them, all bound by one law. The government–industry cartel is the “tumor that captures the blood supply” in Chapter 3. Michael’s “capitalism is rulelessness” treats capitalism as the absence of law; Thomas’s position, and the book’s, is that the market is a structure that operates within a law above it.

Note — Jamestown. Thomas’s example is accurate. Jamestown began with a common store; Governor Thomas Dale later assigned private plots (around 1614), and production improved. The book’s Chapter 2 cites the parallel case at Plymouth in 1623, from William Bradford’s own account.

6. History and force: the 1960s, fascism, and arms

Michael described the injustices the 1960s addressed: the assassination of Martin Luther King, the denial of equal treatment for Black Americans, women earning 59 cents to a man’s dollar, the Vietnam War, and lead pollution. He said the U.S. lost about 58,000 men in Vietnam and killed about a million Vietnamese. He called Hitler the ultimate anti-communist and said Nazi Germany was capitalist: factory owners and workers, job mobility, as with Schindler. Charlie objected that forced labor is not capitalism. Michael replied that South Africa was capitalist and used forced labor too, enforced by economics and race.

Michael then distinguished economic systems from violence. Sweden, which he called Europe’s biggest communist country, governed by socialists since 1932, has stayed neutral and fought no wars. Capitalist states, he said, have done much of the recent killing. Neither violence nor success follows from the economic label; it follows from the leader’s decisions. He argued that King’s killing was capitalist in the sense that keeping Black Americans down kept money in white pockets. Communal efforts, such as riparian rights and civil rights, are how a people says “no.”

The conversation turned to arms. Charlie said that when every man is armed, plunder rarely happens. Michael said more guns make killing easier. Leonard cited John Lott’s book More Guns, Less Crime and said no one has refuted it. He argued that disarmed populations become victims: Rwanda, the Jews under the Nazis, and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. More guns on both sides, he said, make a polite society. Michael cited a friend at the UN who has seen the aftermath of armed conflict, and asked what weapons could have let the Jews overcome Nazi Germany. Leonard answered: anything that could put a bullet in a head.

Isak extended the question to nations. If we say Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, isn’t that the same as saying “we have the guns and you don’t”? Leonard said weapons of mass destruction are a different matter from personal self-defense, especially for a regime that repeatedly says it wants to destroy another country. Michael said the U.S. president had twice threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilization, and that Iran was applying Lott’s logic. Leonard said that misapplies Lott.

After Michael left, Isak clarified that he leaned toward Leonard’s view. His underlying question was who holds the power. He would not trust Iran with a bomb, just as he does not trust pharmaceutical companies with outsized power over Congress. He compared it to Israel asking Samuel for a king, and asked whether any centralized system works if the right person is in charge. Thomas answered that nuclear weapons work like guns: we do not invade North Korea because it has them. The real issue is not having weapons but being a moral owner of them. When force meets equal force, no one moves. The more debatable question is what rules two moral parties agree to operate by. Perhaps, he said, what is missing is granular law for the marketplace, since general morality is not specific enough.

Commentary. This section ranged widest from the readings. Its link back to the topic was Michael’s claim that violence is a leader’s choice, not a system’s product, and Thomas’s conclusion that force deters but cannot make anyone moral. The question “are you a moral gun owner?” is the same question as “are you a moral capitalist?”

Note — Martin Luther King. King was not shot for sitting at a whites-only counter. The lunch-counter sit-ins were led largely by students (Greensboro, 1960). King was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers.

Note — Vietnam. U.S. deaths were about 58,000. Estimates of Vietnamese deaths vary widely; the Vietnamese government’s 1995 figure was about 3 million, including some 2 million civilians. Michael’s “about a million” is at the low end.

Note — Nazi economics. Historians still debate how to classify the Nazi economy. Private ownership remained, but the state directed production, set prices and wages, abolished independent unions, and ran massive slave and forced labor programs. Neither “capitalist” nor “socialist” fits cleanly. Charlie’s objection about forced labor is well grounded.

Note — Sweden. Sweden is not communist. It is a market economy with a large welfare state. The Social Democrats governed continuously from 1932 to 1976. Sweden was neutral in World War II, though it sold iron ore to Germany. Michael’s mention of mass killings in Malaysia may refer to Indonesia, where some 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were killed in the anti-communist purges of 1965–66.

Note — Lott and disarmament. The economist is John R. Lott Jr., not John Locke. More Guns, Less Crime (1998) argued that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime. It has been seriously disputed. A 2004 National Research Council review found the evidence did not support either conclusion, and a 2019 study (Donohue, Aneja, and Weber) found right-to-carry laws associated with higher violent crime. Lott’s book analyzes U.S. county crime data; the historical cases Leonard raised come from other writers, such as Stephen Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich (2013). On the facts: German Jews did not disarm themselves; the Nazi regime ordered them disarmed in November 1938, right after Kristallnacht. The figure of about six million Jewish dead is well documented from Nazi records, census data, and postwar research. In Rwanda in 1994, roughly 500,000 to 800,000 people were killed in about 100 days, largely with machetes and clubs, against civilians who were mostly unarmed. Venezuela’s 2012 law under Chávez banned the commercial sale of guns and ammunition to private citizens; it was followed by disarmament campaigns rather than a single confiscation.

Note — Samuel and the king. When Israel asked for a king (1 Samuel 8), the complaint was that Samuel’s own sons were corrupt judges (8:3). God told Samuel the people had rejected Him, not Samuel, and Samuel warned them what a king would take. The first king anointed was Saul (1 Samuel 10). David was anointed later, after Saul was rejected (1 Samuel 16). Chapter 4 of Transforming America discusses this passage.

7. Voluntaryism and rights

Leonard said he and Charlie had discussed voluntaryism long ago: contributing voluntarily, not under compulsion. Isak described a children’s book the family had read, Princess Navina Visits Voluntaria, about a land where everything is done by voluntary participation, and where crime is punished partly by public exposure. He said the crime-and-punishment part was the piece he understood least.

Leonard recalled that Charlie had compiled about 95 rights from the Bible. He asked where one person’s rights end and another’s begin. Charlie answered: at the tip of the other man’s nose. If I infringe your right to exist or act, we have a problem. Leonard asked which economic or government system protects that boundary best. Michael raised the classic test: may you yell “fire” in a crowded theater? Leonard and Charlie both said that if there is a real fire, yes; if there is not, a false alarm infringes on others’ rights and is not free speech. Charlie added that freedom and rights are very different things. Leonard asked who preserves rights. Michael said that takes a government, or a very nice .45, as Leonard put it.

Note — fire in a theater. The phrase comes from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Schenck v. United States (1919), and his wording was “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Leonard and Charlie’s distinction is Holmes’s own. Schenck upheld the conviction of a man who distributed anti-draft leaflets; its test was replaced in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which protects speech unless it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce it.

Note — the Voluntaria book. Princess Navina Visits Voluntaria is the fourth in the Princess Navina series (Lytton Publishing), in which a princess tours lands with different systems of government; Isak was unsure of the author’s name in the meeting.

8. Self and other: the oxygen mask

Isak asked whether “love your neighbor as yourself” puts self first. On an airplane you put on your own oxygen mask before your child’s. Is capitalism’s problem that we feel we must take care of ourselves and our families first, in a dog-eat-dog world? Or, if we share the same morality, would we each treat the other as more important? Politicians say they serve the people, but in practice they serve whoever gives them the most money.

Thomas answered from the Great Commandment: it makes no distinction between self and neighbor, and neither ranks above the other. The parent puts on the mask first not out of selfishness but because the adult is the competent party. If the parent passes out, the child cannot take over. Isak summarized: it is a matter of responsibility, not of who has more value. Everyone has equal value before God, but that does not mean everyone has the same income, or that the state must care for everyone the same way.

9. Contracts and common law

Charlie described what keeps the world functioning: the law of contracts, inherited through the common law, which he called what sensible people do in the absence of a governing authority. A valid contract requires mutual assent (an offer and an acceptance), consideration (something of value exchanged), capacity (an adult of sound mind), and a legal purpose. A minor’s contract is voidable, and a court will not enforce an unfair bargain with a person of feeble mind. Even plunderers who think clearly realize they must eventually incorporate the conquered and exchange taxes for real protection. People can bear a great deal of tyranny if they get something of value for their payment. Charlie mentioned that he rejects the Social Security number on the ground that a child cannot make a binding contract.

Thomas picked up the requirement that a contract be legal, and said it should be translated: a contract must be moral. Charlie agreed. Thomas connected it to the government–industry cartel: politicians and businesses trading money and laws for mutual protection. That is a contract between competent parties, for consideration, and it is immoral.

Note — Social Security and contracts. Charlie’s summary of contract elements is accurate. His argument about the Social Security number rests on treating enrollment as a contract. The Supreme Court held in Flemming v. Nestor (1960) that Social Security is a statutory program, not a contract, and that participants have no contractual right to benefits. Courts have consistently rejected arguments that a minor’s enrollment is a voidable contract.

10. Fairness is not equality

Leonard said the group was conflating morality with fairness. Nothing in this world is fair; he taught his children that when they complained. You pick yourself up and do what you can. Anything controlled by government is controlled by men with their own agendas. He said there has never been a true capitalist society. A true capitalist would be market-driven, making goods available at a market rate that yields a profit while letting others thrive. The same is true of communism: it has never been tried truly, and every failure is answered with “we didn’t do it right.” Michael supplied the saying that repeating something and expecting a different result is insanity. Leonard asked whether it is insane even to consider that capitalism can be moral. Only a moral people can make any society fair. In communism, morality is thrown out because communism is imposed by government force.

Thomas disagreed that the world cannot be fair. He proposed distinguishing fair from equal. One person is born to royalty, wealth, intelligence, or open land; another is not. The Prince of Wales and Tiny Tim are not equal. But equality of ability and wealth is, he said, simply not real; he would take that as an axiom. He recalled a film from his childhood in which a constitutional amendment made everyone equal, and the able were weighed down with handicaps to level them. That is the absurdity of forced equality.

What can be made fair is rights. Gathering Charlie’s 95 rights into one, Thomas said everyone has the right to try from where he is, and no one has the right to push him down from trying. Each person has a starting point and a track from that starting point. When two people meet, born in the Bowery and in Windsor Castle, the aim is not to make both spend equal time in each. It is a fair exchange in which both act with the morality they want to experience.

He then said that fairness and morality are being conflated. “That’s not fair” often really means “God is not happy with that.” He returned to the picture from his essay on marriage: we treat each other well because God is experiencing the other person’s experience through him. Each of us is God experiencing the world through us. The question becomes how both of us can have the greatest satisfaction, given where we started.

Note — the “insanity” saying. The definition of insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results is commonly attributed to Einstein, but there is no evidence he said it. Its earliest known appearance in print is in Narcotics Anonymous literature from 1981.

Note — the equality film. The story Thomas recalled is Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” (1961), adapted for television in 1972 and 1995. In it, the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments make everyone equal, and a Handicapper General enforces it: the strong wear weights, the graceful wear bags of birdshot, and the intelligent wear earpieces that blast noise to scatter their thoughts.

11. It all comes down to the heart

Susan said God sends each of us into unequal situations, but gives each of us something to contribute: some light, truth, and understanding, some at birth and some as we seek Him. We can seek Him and receive a new heart, and live benefiting others while God blesses us. Every system, including capitalism, produces drastically different results among people with new hearts. A capitalism of people with new hearts would look nothing like a capitalism of people with bad hearts. Even under communism, if the people all came to Christ, their experience would be beautiful. Charlie agreed it would change everything.

Isak added that the first shall be last and the last first. Wealth, power, and celebrity carry little weight in God’s eyes compared with what is in the heart. We do not know the hearts of the people we look up to or down on. What changes any system is what happens in the hearts of those who lead it and take part in it. Thomas said this confirmed his own direction: sanctifying capitalism. The question it begs is how to build a system in which everyone has a good heart.

Leonard answered sarcastically with the communist version: take away their guns, pass harsh laws, jail the disobedient, and ration bread and milk. His point was that the isms do not solve it. Capitalism is about capital. He described two modern schools, Keynes’s and Hayek’s, and said the West chose the Keynesian path, where debt is the capital. Either way, any system can be run with bad intent. It comes down to whether the people are moral and look out for each other.

Charlie told about one of his heroes, Jonas Salk. Salk realized the value of the polio vaccine and could have profited enormously, but he gave it to the world to reproduce freely. Charlie called that a solution to the dark side of capitalism: voluntary renunciation of personal gain. Michael offered a quote from James Talarico: “Show me how you treat other people, and I’ll tell you what you believe.” Charlie said it would make a good campaign ad. Michael added Nelson Mandela, who after thirty years in a brutal prison became president and said, “We must have forgiveness.” Michael connected both to the idea that we are all connected: if I am made happy at another’s expense, it does not count as happiness.

Commentary. This is the convergence point of the meeting, and it matches the center of the book: the problem is not the system but men’s failure to know and live God’s law. Susan, Isak, Leonard, and Charlie reached it from different directions. Michael’s examples of Salk-like generosity and Mandela’s forgiveness are illustrations of the same principle from outside a religious framing.

Note — Keynes and Hayek. Leonard’s contrast is right in outline but needs correction on Hayek. John Maynard Keynes argued that government should spend, borrowing if necessary, to sustain demand in downturns; modern deficit finance descends from that view. Friedrich Hayek argued the opposite: that no central authority can know enough to direct an economy, and that prices set in free markets carry the dispersed knowledge planners lack. Hayek did not favor using a nation’s resources collectively; he warned against it in The Road to Serfdom (1944).

Note — Salk. Salk did not hold and then renounce a patent. Asked by Edward R. Murrow in 1955 who owned the patent, he answered, “Could you patent the sun?” Lawyers for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had reviewed the question and concluded the vaccine was probably not patentable because of prior work. Charlie’s point holds: Salk sought no personal profit from it and was publicly content that it belonged to everyone.

Note — Mandela. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years (1962–1990) and served as president from 1994 to 1999. Black South Africans made up about three-quarters of the population at the time, not ninety percent.

12. Scripture’s models: the early church and Zion

Leonard asked for scriptural examples of a system or a people, positive or negative. Isak asked what the early church did after Jesus ascended. Thomas said they pooled everything, and none among them lacked; “pure communism.” Leonard and Isak corrected him: it was not forced. It was freely given and received. Isak called it voluntaryism. Leonard said there must be a third option beyond communism and capitalism.

Leonard described a city before the Flood so righteous it was taken up to heaven. Thomas guessed “Salem” and asked whether it was in the Bible. Leonard said it was in his Bible. Susan said she found it hard to separate what is in the Bible from what is not; she knew Enoch was taken up. Thomas read a search result: the Old Testament does not describe a city taken up; the idea comes from the Latter-day Saint Book of Moses. Leonard objected to the word “providence”; Thomas clarified he had said “provenance,” the origin of the idea, and was not calling it false. Charlie read Genesis 4:17 (Cain’s son Enoch and the city named for him) and 5:24 (Enoch walked with God, and God took him), and noted that many scholars value the Book of Enoch.

Leonard explained why he raised it. A new kind of civilization is needed, rooted in changed hearts, a people of one heart and one mind, living in righteousness, with no poor among them. Scripture’s name for that is Zion, where heaven and earth are coupled and Christ can visit His people. He asked whether the group believed Christ will come again. Thomas said that is what Scripture says. Leonard said there must be a people prepared to receive Him, or, as he read Malachi, the earth would be utterly wasted at His coming.

Note — Enoch and Zion. Two Enochs appear in Genesis: Cain’s son, after whom Cain named a city (4:17), and Enoch of Seth’s line, who “walked with God” and was taken (5:24; Hebrews 11:5). The city taken into heaven is in the Latter-day Saint Book of Moses (Pearl of Great Price), chapter 7, which describes Zion as “of one heart and one mind,” dwelling “in righteousness,” with “no poor among them” (Moses 7:18), and later says Zion was “taken up into heaven” (7:21). Leonard’s three marks of Zion are quoted from that verse. The biblical parallels for “no poor” are Deuteronomy 15:4 and Acts 4:34. The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) is quoted in Jude 14–15 but is canonical only in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church; it does not contain the account of a city taken up.

Note — Salem. Thomas’s guess was apt. Salem (from Hebrew shalem, “peace”) was Melchizedek’s city (Genesis 14:18), and Hebrews 7:2 interprets the name as “King of peace.”

Note — Malachi. Malachi 4:6 ends: “lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” The wording “utterly wasted at his coming” is from the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants (2:3), which renders the same passage.

Note — the early church. Thomas called the early church “pure communism” and was corrected. His own book makes the same correction in Chapter 2: Peter’s words to Ananias, “While it remained, was it not thine own?” (Acts 5:4), show that the sharing was voluntary.

13. Can hearts change, and what may we promise?

Leonard said the essay asks whether we can change people’s hearts. Thomas disagreed: the question is whether hearts can change, not whether someone can change another’s. Leonard agreed. You cannot change another’s heart, but you can teach, and the Lord teaches those willing to open their hearts. Charlie restated the point: a city of Christ is possible through teaching and repentance. Thomas said that without that, there is no point to the discussion. Leonard said it has to happen, and we must turn to Him to make it happen. Susan agreed: we can change our hearts only to a limited degree; we must choose the Lord, and He changes us.

Leonard located the method in the Sermon on the Mount: living it toward our neighbors, not by force but by teaching and example. He gave the example of weeding a widowed neighbor’s garden unasked, with no committee. He mentioned small communities in Denmark and Australia that try to live that way, everyone caring for everyone. Isak called it beautiful.

Susan cautioned that the Sermon on the Mount, like the old covenant law, does not by itself change hearts. We can desire to live it and make some changes on our own power, but we need what John 1:12 describes: Christ gives the power to become sons of God. He waits for our willingness, and the new heart may come gradually as He sanctifies us.

Thomas raised the hard part, which he said is the subject of next week’s essay. How much can we count on a felt change of heart? He told of a couple who threw their marijuana into a fireplace; the room lit up with something supernatural. The wife never desired it again. The husband struggled with it from then on. Both were present and both wanted the change. So we do not get to wait for the feeling. We must do right even while desiring wrong. And when we witness, we cannot honestly promise that giving your heart to Jesus will remove every desire. We can promise that this is the right way, that you may be rewarded only in heaven, that some things may change and some may not, and that you will know the standard and help build a better world by acting rightly.

Susan agreed that people differ and that everyone struggles with something. But even those who still struggle report something new: a desire to obey God, His love, joy, and peace. She believes joy is promised, and where it is absent, something may be in the way, including evil spirits that need to be cast out. Thomas said that is a qualification, so the promise cannot be printed as an unconditional banner at a booth. Charlie asked what the banner could say. Susan said you can count on some change, recognizable to yourself and others. Charlie offered: “Get Jesus, you’ll be different.”

Leonard returned to the Sermon on the Mount. Every beatitude is relational: you must be merciful to someone, a peacemaker for someone. Christ was expanding the law of Moses, which the people had made into an idol even as its Giver stood before them. If people revile you, you pray for them. If everyone lived this, it would change the world. He noted that in the Book of Mormon Christ gave nearly the same sermon at Bountiful after His resurrection. He asked what comes after confessing Christ as Lord: there must be action. Susan said God then works in the heart and guides what comes next. Leonard said that knowing God sees our hearts would change our motives, and asked whether “the pure in heart shall see God” means literally seeing Him. His conclusion: let Christ change you; change means repentance and living the gospel.

Note — references. The beatitudes and “pray for them which despitefully use you” are Matthew 5:3–12 and 5:44. “The first shall be last” is Matthew 20:16. The Book of Mormon parallel Leonard described is 3 Nephi 12–14. Cohousing communities, in which neighbors share common facilities and care, began in Denmark in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

14. An aside: parents and children

Leonard raised recent cases of mothers killing their children and asked whether this is new or only more visible. Charlie mentioned the Clancy trial. Isak read figures: roughly 450 to 500 children are killed by their parents each year in the U.S., and roughly 300 to 500 parents by their children. Leonard called it demonic and evidence that we are not helping people see a better way.

Note — filicide data. Isak’s numbers are consistent with published research. A study of U.S. data from 1976 to 2007 (Mariano, Chan, and Myers, 2014) found an average of about 500 filicides a year. Because the level has been documented for decades, the evidence points more to greater awareness than to a new phenomenon.

15. What would moral capitalists actually do?

Thomas brought the group back to the practical question. Granting that morality must be put into the people who practice capitalism, what would they do differently? Leonard answered with Zion: one heart and one mind with the Lord, living in righteousness, and no poor among them. Those who have share with those who don’t, until all are, in a sense, equal. He then asked whether “equal” means equal in everything, or equal opportunity, and noted Scripture’s word “iniquity.” Charlie asked whether it shares a root with inequality. Leonard said it does. Thomas asked whether that is its real meaning, recalling the absurd amendment, and said iniquity usually means a dark heart. Isak read the etymology: Latin iniquitas, “not equal,” or “not just.”

Susan then told a story about Charlie. A woman taking care of her disabled daughter asked to see a lift walker. Charlie noticed ceiling tracks for a lift system she had bought but could not get to work. He figured it out, showed her how to use it, and told her she did not need the walker. It saved her money and cost him a sale. Charlie said he had no memory of it.

Thomas offered the other side of that transaction. The woman, having been served, could have paid Charlie for the service he did give. Time spent explaining and fixing is compensable. He gave two examples from his own life. He once offered money to door-to-door callers who had spent time explaining something he did not want; they refused. More recently, a circuit-board vendor John recommended did an exceptional, professional estimate for Ideomotion’s flexible circuits, but the price was far above what China could offer. Thomas told them he wanted to pay for their work. They declined: it was part of the business. Susan said both sides were acting in a Christ-like way. Leonard said they would go back to that vendor for production. He added that the welder he is working with in Springville is doing the same: reviewing the whole package and telling Leonard what information to add. Leonard suggested he might replace Victory Circle. Thomas raised the obligation to Victory Circle, which has sacrificed for them for decades. Charlie suggested that Leonard and a colleague might develop a product made entirely in Utah.

Commentary. The last half hour produced the most concrete answers to Thomas’s question: serving the customer even at the cost of a sale; compensating service received even without a purchase; repaying good work with future business; and weighing loyalty to a long-time supplier. These match the test in The Desire for Monopoly: would the neighbor feel loved by what we are doing in the market? They also show the two-sided character of a moral exchange. A just market needs moral sellers and moral buyers.

Note — iniquity. The English etymology Isak read is correct: Latin iniquitas, from in- (“not”) and aequus (“even, equal, fair”). But the biblical words translated “iniquity” do not mean economic inequality. The Hebrew avon means crookedness, perversity, or guilt; the Greek anomia means lawlessness. Thomas’s sense, a heart bent away from God’s law, is closer to Scripture’s meaning.

16. Where the discussion leaves the question

The group began by asking whether capitalism can be made moral and ended with a shared answer in three parts. First, capitalism is a mechanism, not a morality: it serves or exploits depending on who runs it. Second, every external remedy, from riparian law to antitrust to a government of good men, is necessary in its place but corruptible, because those who enforce it have the same hearts as those they restrain. Third, the lasting remedy is changed hearts, which no one can force on another, and which God gives unevenly in feeling but offers to everyone in choice.

What remained open was Thomas’s closing question: what, specifically, does a moral person do in the marketplace? The meeting produced the first entries on that list: serve the customer’s real need over the sale; pay for service received; reward good work with loyalty; refuse the government–industry bargain; and do right even while still wanting the wrong thing. The next essay takes up how much we can rely on a felt change of heart.

Part 2: The Discussion, Edited for Clarity

Claude edited this transcript for clarity: false starts, repetitions, and crosstalk were removed, sentences were completed, and passages were grouped by topic. Nothing was added to what the speakers said. Pre-meeting conversation is omitted.

Opening prayer

Thomas: Heavenly Father, we thank You for giving us another day to live, and for the opportunity to examine Your world, Your way, and Your word. We pray You give us insight and bless our time together. All these things we ask in Jesus’ name.

Did anybody read the essays?

Charlie: That girl over there did. [Susan] I worked late last night and just got up five minutes ago, if you can’t tell. I did see it.

The question: can capitalism be made moral?

Thomas: The real question the essay was asking is this: can capitalism be made moral? I figured this would be one where Michael would shine, so I’m really interested to hear Michael’s perspective on capitalism.

Michael: First, can it be made moral? That depends on what you define as moral. Every capitalist would say, “Of course it’s moral.” So it depends on who’s making the judgment.

What do I think of capitalism? It’s not a yes-or-no thing. There are serious advantages and serious disadvantages. The advantage is that it innately offers someone the opportunity to create. It’s billed as a big competition, but if you’re making something no one else is making, it lets you make better and better versions of it, and make money on it.

The disadvantage: look at most capitalist countries in the world today. In the Emirates, in Arabia, among the rulers in Latin America, one or a few families rule and own everything, and most of the people are desperately impoverished. I think of the Spanish conquistadors. Almost every impoverished nation in the world is that way because of capitalism: the disproportionate concentration of wealth in the hands of the people who rule. Is that moral? To the people who rule, sure.

Thomas: I know that’s true. I’m wondering whether it’s necessary. Does capitalism require that big disproportion, or is it just how things evolved?

Michael: The European nations, and in some ways the U.S. and China, demonstrate the answer. The U.S. is about one-third communist. A third of our GDP goes to things we support communally: the army, government, bridges, roads, national defense. So it’s not really capitalism. Two-thirds of the GDP runs that way. And if you look at the statistics, the vast majority of the country’s money is concentrated in the hands of the super-wealthy. But the social network we’ve created puts a limit on how poor our poorest people get. It’s the same in Europe, though it varies from country to country. They have government programs, non-capitalist programs, that prevent capitalism from doing what it does. You don’t see the levels of poverty that exist in much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where capitalism is unbounded by government help. There, people can starve to death. It happens.

Compare our capitalism with China’s. Ours is maybe two-thirds of the economy. China’s is the other way around, about one-third. You look at their cities and they have that whole capitalist thing going on. How much has varied over time, under Mao and his successors, going back and forth the way Democrats and Republicans do.

Now here’s an awkward question capitalists get, about Stalin. Stalin was one of the most vicious humans in history, though he has great competition for that title. Yes, he stopped Hitler, who was even worse; a heck of a choice. But the real question is this. In 1924 he inherits a country that was abysmally poor, Third World poor. By the time he dies thirty years later, in 1953, it’s one of the two superpowers of the world.

The temptation for anti-capitalists is to say, “See, communism took a nothing nation and made it one of the two great nations. Doesn’t that prove communism is right?” I say no. In my opinion, the real issue isn’t capitalism or communism or anything in between, or socialism, or Republicans or Democrats or libertarians. What makes a country succeed is the decisions made by those who have the power to operate the macroeconomy.

Stalin succeeded not because communism is good, but because he realized Russia had to stop being a plow-and-horse country and become a tractor country. He industrialized a highly populous country. That’s why they grew. He turned farmers pulling plows, not just into horses pulling them, but into tractors and a zillion other things.

Likewise, why do some capitalist countries succeed while others fail financially? It depends on what those who have the money do with it. If the money goes into more and more castles for the king, that won’t help the country much. If it goes into infrastructure and productive enterprises, a country can do well, whether it’s capitalist or communist. That’s my thought.

Thomas: Thank you. Anybody have comments or thoughts on what Michael said?

Defining terms

Leonard: Can we define terms? Capitalism.

Michael: Sure. I’ll take it straight off the web, so I don’t get into my own definition. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the operation of business for profit. In this system, prices, production, and the distribution of goods are determined mainly by competition in a free market, rather than by central government planning.

That definition breaks down once you realize that capitalism also involves monopolies. They’re part of the capitalist method. You want to maximize profits. If you and two others own all the water, and people need water, you can make big capitalistic bucks by charging right up to the point where all their money is going to you, because you have private ownership of the water.

Thomas: What do you think of that, Leonard?

Leonard: I wish I could see where you got that.

Michael: I’ll paste it in the chat. It’s just one sentence anyway. Or Google your own; that’s just the first one that came up.

Leonard: Here’s another: “An economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society.” That’s the International Monetary Fund.

Michael: The IMF says that because they make money off it. The IMF has a vested interest.

Leonard: Did you use Wikipedia for yours?

Michael: No, I just Googled it, and that came up first.

Leonard: Here’s the Cambridge Dictionary: “An economic system based on private ownership of property and business, with the goal of making the greatest possible profits for the owners.”

Michael: “For the owners.” Good. That one differs from the IMF, which said “for the greatest good.” No, it’s for the owner. If you own the territory upstream on a river and want to make a profit, capitalism lets you dam the river and charge big prices to everyone downstream, because you own it and they need it. That’s capitalism, and it’s not for the betterment of everyone. That’s the IMF’s version, but your second definition, and mine, say it’s for profit.

Leonard: So we understand capitalism to be private ownership of the means of production, and also of property and business.

Michael: That’s part of it.

Leonard: It’s not owned by anything other than private owners, and those owners can do whatever they like with that property. They can sit on it, share it, sell it, do whatever they want. It’s always about profits. Okay. Now, communism. What’s communism?

Isak: Communism is a political and economic ideology that aims to create a classless society with common ownership of the means of production and the elimination of private property. That’s from Google.

Leonard: I have one that says communism is “a theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.” That’s not true. That has never happened under anything called communism. Never. That’s why it’s still theoretical. There has never been collective ownership of property.

Michael: That depends on your interpretation.

Leonard: How would you interpret it?

Charlie: The reality of communism is that 150 to 200 million deaths resulted from it in the last hundred years. That’s a big reality.

Leonard: Why? Why did they cause so much destruction and death? If everyone collectively owned the property, why would they kill people? Are people considered property too?

Charlie: You have to break a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.

Leonard: So who owns you?

Michael: Hold on. You’re asking a lot of questions very rapid-fire.

Leonard: Well, you brought it up. When you compare capitalism historically with what’s called communism, it’s night and day. Capitalism has its flaws, especially the profit motive. But there’s always going to be some kind of motive. Under capitalism, people are selling something and people are buying it. If you’re going to sell something, you want a buyer. That’s basic economics. That doesn’t apply to communism. Communism is the opposite of that.

Why the question assumes capitalism is immoral

Charlie: I have a question, Dr. T. The title of your essay, “Can capitalism be made moral?”, assumes that it’s immoral. I’m curious about that.

Leonard: What’s immoral about capitalism? Why begin there?

Thomas: I grew up in the sixties alongside Michael Sherman. We went to People’s Park. In that era there was an aroma in the air, obvious among the sixties radicals, that the system wasn’t working: that it’s immoral, that people are being abused, that it’s simply unfair. In a way, the sixties were a rebellion against that unfairness. We were trying to find a utopia. We went out and made communes, and tried all kinds of alternatives to find something that worked better than capitalism.

Today we passed over it with a comment like, “Capitalism has deficiencies, like the profit motive.” But we didn’t really examine all the downsides. Michael mentioned poor countries and rich countries. I asked whether that’s necessary, and we haven’t determined whether it is, or whether some other factor causes it.

People use the word “inequality” as though it’s obviously immoral, as though if people aren’t equal, that’s evil, simply wrong. Then we have the capitalist–government alliance; we have captured capitalism. We have various perversions. We have the definition: capitalism is private ownership of property. What could be wrong with that? Then Michael says the problem is that it goes to monopoly, and monopolists charge exorbitant prices for things that would be cheaper in a competitive market. And the goal of every capitalist is to have a monopoly, because you want to charge as much as possible, which means overcoming your competition.

So all these forces act together. My sense, as a child of the sixties, is that something about capitalism is impersonal and just goes for its own, or there’s a structural problem with it, or it simply hasn’t been done right. Something is wrong with it. If so, the question is how it can be made moral. That’s where it came from.

Charlie: Could it also be that capitalism, also known as free enterprise, is neutral, and that it’s operated by people, some of whom are good and some evil? Could that be?

Thomas: That’s certainly the case, and it was the essence of what I wrote. Having acknowledged that some people are moral and some are not, and that you can practice capitalism evilly or well, how do you actually create a moral capitalism? What is the way of implementing capitalism that consciously moves it toward morality, as opposed to Adam Smith’s invisible hand just doing it? Or we say we need government, and then we have corruption in government and cartels between government and business, so that doesn’t work. What can we do to create a capitalist system, even one regulated by government, that consciously chooses morality?

Water, the commons, and “the communist infusion”

Charlie: Can I offer two suggestions? I’m sure you all have a big list. Michael brought up people upstream who dam the river and charge exorbitantly for water. There is a body of law, going back to the Bible, called riparian rights: the right of the people to common sources of water. Under a just legal system, which ours often is, there is recourse for injustice. People can sue and use the power of government to undo wrongs like damming the common source of water. That’s riparian, R-I-P-A-R-I-A-N. I forgot the other suggestion, but it’s on the same theme.

Michael: These things you’ve both described are the communist infusion into capitalism. We communally respect everyone’s need for water. Or land: some rich guy buys up all the beaches of California and doesn’t let anyone visit them. He says, “I’ve got the money; capitalism wins the day.” Then the community says, “We need the water. We know you’re maximizing your profits, which is the concept. But we’re going to do a little communism here. Everyone needs water and deserves to have it without spending all their money on you.”

We do that with our military and our fire departments. The rich guy says, “I can afford a fire department for my property; if you have a fire, figure it out yourself.” Our version of communism includes fire departments, police departments, roads, bridges, the railroad system. As I said, about a third of our GDP goes into that.

Who owns it? Who owns Yosemite, or any national park? No individual. The government might say we all own it, as U.S. territory reserved for people to visit. Or you could say no one really owns it. It depends on how you look at it. It’s the same with communism. Communists say you can’t own property; they’d also say we all own it. It’s like a beach that can’t be privately owned: anyone can play there. Are they co-owners? Call it what you want. If you and friends chip in to buy a boat, who owns it? None of you? All of you? Each of you a share? So when communists say “we all own it,” you can say, “No, you don’t own the beach,” or they can believe they do, the way a beachgoer says, “I can go there any time, as if I own it.” It becomes a semantic distinction. Either way, it’s a communal approach.

The 1960s, Hitler, and whether systems kill

Michael: About the right and wrong that Tom started with in the sixties: I think of Martin Luther King being shot for trying to sit at a whites-only counter, for trying to have equality for Black people. A lot of injustice was addressed. Women’s rights: there was the old line about 59 cents on the dollar, same job, the woman gets 59 cents and the man gets a dollar. The Vietnam War was a big thing. We lost 58,000, but we killed about a million of them. So I guess the capitalists won by killing a million when they lost only 58,000, and then we left Vietnam to the Vietnamese. Imagine that.

Is that capitalist? If you’re capitalist internationally, I guess it is. Hitler was the ultimate anti-communist. He really wanted to kill all communists. During the invasion of Russia, unlike in his European conquests, they would just burn down towns, because communism is evil.

Charlie: Michael, are you saying Hitler was the ultimate capitalist?

Michael: I’m saying he was the ultimate anti-communist, and his government was capitalist. It was the National Socialist party, which means people contributed to the national fund, just like in the U.S. But it was capitalism. They didn’t attempt equal distribution of wealth the way the Soviets did. There were factory owners and factory workers, capitalist-style, like Schindler in Schindler’s List. Not some central communal party.

Charlie: Forced labor. Forced labor.

Michael: I think of the capitalist Union of South Africa, which not only had forced labor but kept it on a racial basis. There it was forced by economic circumstance. In Germany, yes, there was forced labor against the Jews and the others they targeted, the Russians, anyone not white. There was that racial element. But who works in industry? There was job mobility: you work in one factory and get a job in another. That’s capitalism. It’s called National Socialist because a bigger portion of GDP than the U.S.’s 30 percent went into national expenditures. That’s true of every country in Europe. The truly capitalist countries, mostly, are where it all goes to the king and occasionally a little goes to the people.

As for deaths: that’s the premise I started with about what makes a country succeed. Stalin’s communism didn’t make Russia succeed; he correctly saw that they needed to industrialize. Economic decisions are a separate issue from whether you’re communist or capitalist. Capitalist countries can make good or bad decisions, usually not by a central government but by whoever runs the economy. That’s why some capitalist countries have done great and others haven’t, depending on what they build and the decisions they make.

The same goes for deaths. The biggest communist country in Europe is probably Sweden. It has been socialist since 1932, with elections where the parties are a little more or a little less socialist. They haven’t done any killing. They haven’t fought any wars; they’re traditionally neutral. Killing is an option for either communism or capitalism. Who are the biggest killers in the capitalist world recently? The Nazis come to mind. There were horrifying slaughters in Malaysia, mainly of people rioting because they were starving. The African countries are total capitalism. Most killings these days are in capitalist countries, but I’m not saying it’s because they’re capitalist. As I said, it’s the decision of the leader, regardless of the underlying economic philosophy. Totally separate issues.

The U.S. didn’t have to kill Martin Luther King. That wasn’t a capitalist decision. Well, in one sense it was: the white people in power who had the money knew that keeping Black people down kept money in their pockets. Using race to keep more money for yourself could be viewed as capitalist.

To bring in Tom’s question of morals: Charlie, you mentioned riparian rights. Quite a move, conceptually. We need water. We’d like to not be killing people because they’re Black. That’s the communal effort, where people get together and say no. I visited some communes when I traveled around, and they had that idea that we all own this, everybody chips in. There’s the Woody Allen film where the dad finally gets some land and holds up a handful of dirt. Not everybody needs to hold up dirt and say it’s mine. I feel the same way you do at the beach: I won’t be kicked off the beach, whether or not you think I own it or co-own it. I’m okay to be there.

Fairness, voluntaryism, and rights

Thomas: So, having examined the edges of it, do we have any ideas of how to make capitalism moral?

Leonard: Can you describe a scenario where capitalism is moral? I’m asking. I think we’re conflating morality with fairness. Nothing’s fair. Nothing in this world is fair. When my kids came to me saying, “It’s not fair,” I told them the world isn’t fair. You have to pick yourself up and do what you can to get what you can. That’s really what it comes down to, and it’s probably the best approach to economics out there, because anything controlled by government is controlled by men. That’s just the way it is. They have their own agendas and their own methods, and that’s what we’ve always had.

We’ve never had a true capitalist society. In my opinion, true capitalists would be market-driven. They would strive to make what they have available to others at a market rate. Sure, they make a profit, but it also provides for people so they can thrive. So this whole debate comparing communism and capitalism historically isn’t fair or real, because there’s never been a real communist group. Whenever it’s tried, it’s always failed. Always. And the communists say, “It’s because they didn’t do it right. We’ll do it right this time.” There was a man who said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is—

Michael: Einstein’s definition.

Leonard: —of insanity. So are we insane even to consider that capitalism can be moral? Only a moral people can live in a capitalist society, or any society, and make it fair. In a communist society, morality is thrown out the window because of how it’s implemented: by force of government. That’s it.

Charlie and I talked about this a long time ago: voluntaryism. That’s really where we need to head: to volunteer and contribute voluntarily. Not the IRS’s style of “voluntary.”

Charlie: That website still exists, you know.

Isak: We were just talking about this. There was a kids’ book we read, Princess Navina Visits Voluntaria. I can’t remember which author; not Tom Paine. Princess Navina visits a land where everything is voluntary, where everybody participates at a volunteer level. If somebody commits a crime, he’s punished, and part of it is that his name is put in the newspapers, like the DUI rules in Australia where they put it on the front page. Crime and punishment is very different there. That’s actually the part I didn’t fully get. But yes, voluntaryism. Where do your thoughts go, Leonard?

Leonard: Charlie came up with a huge list of rights.

Charlie: From the Bible.

Leonard: Just from the Bible. How many was it? Over 90?

Charlie: Yes, 95 or so, last I counted.

Leonard: So where do your rights end and mine begin?

Charlie: Right here.

Leonard: Right at the tip of my nose. You cannot mess with this. I know it’s kind of prominent, but that’s as far as you can go, and as far as I can go with you. If I infringe on your right to exist or to do anything, then we have a problem. Which economic system, which government system, applies that best? I don’t know if any is perfect, but which is better?

Michael: That’s like asking whether you can yell “fire” in a crowded theater. I have the right to free speech. On the other hand, these people are trying to watch the show without panicking.

Leonard: If there was a fire, sure.

Charlie: If there’s not, sit down.

Leonard: If you’re lying, not good. That’s not free speech.

Michael: That is free speech.

Leonard: It’s not, because you’re infringing on other people’s rights.

Charlie: Freedom and rights are very different things.

Leonard: Very different.

Cut and choose, and the first government

Michael: Leonard asked a question that Charlie and Tom answered, about how you make a government moral. Charlie said the riparian principle may impinge on the capitalist idea if everyone is dying of thirst. Tom said that in the sixties there was an upsurge against a lot of unfairness: not just Martin Luther King, but the assassinations and the Vietnam War. Pollution finally got addressed: lead in the air. We passed laws against lead in gasoline, just in time. When there’s a communal need that won’t be addressed by, say, lead-producing gas companies, the whole community gets up and says, “No, not a thing.”

Then there’s how you make things fair. There’s a traditional parent’s answer. You have one piece of pizza and two kids, and of course both want the whole piece, or want to decide how it’s divided. The trick is: one of you cuts it in two, and the other picks which half he gets. That’s a pretty fair system, because the one cutting knows the other will take whichever is bigger, so he’ll make them exactly equal, to the millimeter if possible. That’s one version of fair. We can’t do that with whole governments, but the idea is that you find a way.

Now, what’s moral? Riparian rights are a stark example. Killing Black people in the South is stark. But each moral question is a whole topic worthy of debate.

The force of a government on someone in a non-capitalist system is very much like the force of an individual on someone in a capitalist system. Either way, there will be forceful people trying to pin things on you. That’s written into the human community. The question is whether it’s an individual, a mafia boss who says, “I make all the rules and kill whom I want, because it’s capitalism and no government stops me; I have superior weapons; game over,” like Sicily, or whether people band together.

I picture the first government in some tribe of humans. Oog rules the roost because he’s the biggest. The next two biggest say, “That guy is such a brute. He takes everything from everyone. If we work together, we can stop him.” First government ever. For the sake of the tribe, two of them can do it, though neither can alone. That was when there were eight people in the tribe. Now we have 300 million. Same idea, though: people gather together to keep one person from running the coop.

Leonard: Is there anything in Scripture that helps us?

Michael: There are all those rights Charlie mentioned, 95 of them. That’s a lot.

Leonard: Those are rights. But what about the preservation of those rights?

Michael: That would take a government. Or—

Leonard: Or a really nice .45.

Salk, Talarico, and Mandela

Charlie: I remember the other thing I forgot to tell you. One of my heroes is Jonas Salk, the scientist who created the polio vaccine. He realized its incredible value. He also realized he could have become owner of the world by producing and selling it. But he renounced the patents. He gave it freely to the whole world to reproduce, to cure this terrible disease. As Leonard said before about voluntaryism, Salk voluntarily renounced personal gain to benefit his fellow humans. I love that. That’s one solution to the dark side of the practice of capitalism.

Michael: That’s like a quote I wrote down this week to tell you: “Show me how you treat other people, and I’ll tell you what you believe.” That was James Talarico. That’s the Christian idea.

Charlie: That’s a nice campaign ad.

Michael: But he said it in a conversation about morals, a long forum where people at a roundtable shared different ideas. Sometimes politicians say things with philosophical reverberations.

Charlie: Yes, but what do they do?

Michael: Exactly. Do they follow it with action, or is it just fluff? Take Mandela. I think it’s one of the most powerful sentences I’ve heard a politician utter. He spent thirty years in an unspeakably horrible prison, and then, as South Africa loosens apartheid, he’s made president, with 90 percent of the people Black. After those thirty years, what’s he going to say? He says, “We must have forgiveness.” That’s not just turning the other cheek; it’s next level. I hold forgiveness for everything, because a grudge is dead weight you carry. But I don’t know if I could say it after thirty years. He did.

Leonard: Whom was he referring to?

Michael: All of us in the nation. It’s like what you were saying about Salk. I care about the whole. They are not just my brethren; they are of me. If I’m made happy at his expense, I’m not happy about it. It doesn’t even rank as happiness if it came because someone else didn’t get it. It’s the whole idea that we’re all connected. I feel my fellow humans as part of me. I feel their pain in tragedy and their joy at something great. It’s a beautiful thing.

Three regulators and an absolute standard

Thomas: Perhaps what we’re talking about is a general rule-based principle. We have capitalism, which is an unthinking principle of how people interact. And we say, you can do some bad things in the name of this unthinking thing we do to create profits, so we need to regulate ourselves.

There are two possible regulators. One is the person himself: we regulate internally and say, “We’re not going to do that bad thing.” The other is the big thumb: the government says, “If you don’t do this, we’ll take your money and your freedom away.” So capitalism, which has no morals, which isn’t moral or immoral but is just a way of interacting, can be regulated in two ways: individuals internally, or the government. There’s also a third way: the local environment around the person.

So if we have a sense of what is actually moral, the solution is this: the government operating according to a sense of morals that is absolute; the people around the person operating according to absolute morals; and the person internally operating according to absolute morals. That’s abstract, not specific enough to implement. But it’s the only real direction we have if the mandate is a moral capitalism, which I take as a given.

We have enough data. Purely letting everybody own everything in common doesn’t work. Look at Jamestown, or any purely communist society: there’s no motivation to do anything. And capitalism says, “We want to own everything, and we’ll do whatever we can to get it.” We’ll subject Uganda, Liberia, and Zimbabwe to get their minerals and pay them pennies, bring all the resources here, and do great. That kind of unregulated capitalism produces significant inequality that doesn’t produce happiness for the greatest number. We have people who are not enjoying life because of the situation they’re in.

So I see capitalism as a workable system. It just needs to be regulated by an absolute standard. The question is how to do that: first, the judgment, and second, the regulation. That’s my proposal for how to make it work.

Michael: So it comes down to government. When you say “Thou shalt not kill,” capitalism says anything goes. It’s very capitalistic to kill your competitor: you get to keep his products and machinery, because he’s dead. Utter capitalism is basically rulelessness.

Thomas: You’re muted, Charlie.

Charlie: Michael, are you saying plunder is the ultimate capitalism?

Michael: Not the ultimate. One of many tools, unless we have a government to say it’s illegal. What’s to stop one from just killing the other guy? It’s historically been used a lot.

Thomas: You’re correct. It is one of the tools, and we rule it out because of what I called moral principles.

Arms, deterrence, and who holds the power

Charlie: If every man is armed, plunder doesn’t happen very much.

Michael: I think it happens more with people armed. It’s easier to kill you. If people weren’t armed, killing would take a long time, don’t you think?

Leonard: Read John Lott’s book.

Michael: Lot? Give me the theme.

Leonard: More Guns, Less Crime. No one has been able to refute what he wrote in that book.

Michael: I have a friend who works for the UN. He goes around the world to places with horrifying warfare. The rivers of bodies that went down in Rwanda—

Leonard: They were disarmed. The people were disarmed. They were sitting ducks. They just went in and massacred them; it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Even the Jews under the Nazis disarmed themselves. That’s why they were so easily controlled, put into a ghetto, and then systematically gathered up and exterminated. Six million of them; that’s the figure they say, but I don’t know if that’s true. If they hadn’t given up their arms—

Venezuela is a good, recent example. When Hugo Chávez got in, they took the private firearms away from the people and made it illegal to have one. So most people gave up their means to defend themselves against bad people, and against a government that ended up being the bad people.

Michael: What kind of weapons would the Jews have needed to overcome Nazi Germany?

Leonard: Anything. Anything that could put a bullet in a head. It’s really that simple. Lott makes the point. He goes through all those scenarios and says that if they hadn’t done this, the outcome would have been different, because more guns on both sides make a polite society. You don’t mess around with people, because you know what happens if you do.

Isak: What does this mean when America, or a group, says—and there’s a lot of complexity with Iran—that Iran can’t have the big gun because they’re going to destroy someone with it? Not politically, just as an example: that’s the bigger version of a group saying, “We have the guns and you don’t.”

Leonard: There’s a pretty good reason for that one. Are you saying they should have it?

Isak: No. I’m saying—

Leonard: Nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, are a whole different thing. I’m talking about personal rights, our ability to defend ourselves and our rights. Not some rogue country that wants a nuclear weapon so it can destroy a country it has always hated, and keeps saying so over and over.

Michael: The U.S. says it too. Trump has now twice said he’s going to annihilate them, wipe out the civilization. According to Lott’s theory, the only defense is weapons. Before, they were on a kind of peace-treaty track; now the U.S. has effectively told them they need new weapons because we’re threatening them. I think Iran is using Lott’s theory. Weapons are the way. Thank you, Lott. Thank you, U.S.

Leonard: That’s misapplying what John Lott was stating in his book.

Michael: It’s a way to survive.

Leonard: You’ve got to read his book.

Michael: Well, I haven’t. Okay, I have to go. It’s always a joy.

Thomas: Thanks for coming, Michael. Always good to see you.

[Michael left the meeting.]

Isak: My point at the end of that was this. Whether it’s a bomb or a gun, a country or two individuals, do we do better when we have to outsource defense to another army or country, or is it better to have the weapons to defend yourself? I was actually leaning toward Leonard’s side. But it’s a big question.

Going back to capitalism and communism, it’s really about who holds the gun, who holds the power. If Iran weren’t the way it is and weren’t saying the things it says, at least the things I’m told it says in this country—I don’t feel comfortable with them having a nuke or a gun, in the same way that I look at pharmaceutical companies and say, “I don’t like that you have the most money and the most power over Congress.”

I think of Samuel going out and finding David because the people said, “We want a king, like all the other nations have.” I’m paraphrasing. God had given them judges, and they said, “These judges are corrupt; we want a king.” God said okay, and had Samuel go find David. That’s kind of what we’re doing with communism. We want a centralized thing to take care of us. How is capitalism different? It also seems to land there. It’s still a government. It’s not voluntaryism. It’s capitalist taxation or socialist taxation to take care of the roads.

Functionally, is that okay if we have the right people in charge? If the person you trust most in the world were leader of a socialist democratic United States, or a capitalist democratic United States, would that be enough, if it were actually somebody good, chosen by God or by the people? Or is there too much confusion in between? That was very convoluted. I’m sorry.

Thomas: On the question of nukes: it’s the same as having a gun. We’re not invading North Korea because they have them. If we thought Iran had one, we wouldn’t invade Iran. So it’s very much true. The real question is whether you’re a moral gun owner. It’s not an issue of having guns.

I’m not sure John Lott is the one saying it, but it sounds like he is. If he’s saying peace comes because everybody is armed, I think that’s absolutely true. If you know that the house full of Jews you’re going to break into is armed, you’ll bring an entire militia to take it. And when you do, the whole neighborhood knows you’re coming, and they get their guns, and now an army is coming against your militia. So the militia says, “We’re not going into the ghetto. We’re not taking any Jews to any camps. We’ll just let them be.” To ignore that concept is simply to ignore that force meets force. Nobody does anything if force is equal. So that’s not a point of debate.

What’s more debatable is this: given that both of us are moral, which is a large assumption, how do we operate? What rules do we agree to operate by? Morality may not be granular enough in this particular arena. Maybe what we’re missing is granular law in the arena of capitalism.

The place where capitalism seems most obviously flawed is the government–industry cartel, when the two team up: “We’ll slip you a few bucks if you give us this law.” That’s where morality is corrupted. It seems to be bought at that intersection.

Self and neighbor: the oxygen mask

Isak: I have a question. I think that’s right. But is there an earlier stage where the morality is? I don’t know where I stand on this yet. The Christ-like morality of loving others as yourself: does that mean self comes first? In a capitalist nation, you put on your own oxygen mask before your child’s. You take care of yourself before the other. Is the problem with capitalism that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and we feel we have to take care of ourselves and our families first? Or, assuming we share the same morality, which is a big assumption, would we each treat the other as more important? Would we do this economy, this government, for the sake of people other than ourselves? That doesn’t seem to be the mindset. Politicians say it aloud, but it’s not really about serving the people. It’s about serving their people, whoever gives them the most money. So that fits with where you said it breaks. But I’m wondering.

The law of contracts

Charlie: There’s a very natural aspect that keeps the world going. There are still people; we’re producing things and making exchanges. By 2026, from the days of Adam and Eve until now, it has become clearly defined in what we generally call the law of contracts. We make exchanges. If an exchange isn’t fair, if one person refuses to make a fair contract, people don’t deal with him, and he has to rethink the terms of his offer.

I happened to study this a day or two ago. I don’t know if I’ve told you, but my legal rejection of the Social Security number is based on the fact that a child is incompetent to make a contract. That’s one of the basics. If a child does make a contract, it’s voidable because he’s a minor.

The essentials of a contract are mutual assent, that is, an offer and an acceptance; consideration, something of value gained and exchanged; and capacity. Capacity is what I was talking about: it has to be an adult of sound mind. A minor’s contract is iffy and very voidable. If you try to make a bargain with a person of feeble mind, the court probably won’t enforce it if it’s unfair to him. Corporations and other entities must act through agents. And the purpose has to be legal. You can’t make a contract on another person’s life.

This comes down to us most recently from the common law, which is just what sensible people do in the absence of a governing authority. Something like the law of contracts is what makes the world function. Even plunderers, when they think most clearly, realize it will only work long term if they make the conquered part of their nation and exact taxes in a reasonable exchange for protection. People can take a lot of tyranny if they’re paying for something of value. That’s my two cents on one way capitalism works in the world, and still works.

Thomas: Interesting that one of the last points you made was that a contract has to be legal. That should actually be translated: it has to be moral.

Charlie: That’s true. I agree.

Thomas: That’s really what we’re talking about: having people act in a way that’s moral. The example I used was the government–industry cartel. The two form an alliance to protect each other: “We’ll give you money and keep you elected. I’ll give you laws that keep you making lots of money, so you can send it to me.” That’s a cartel of mutual benefit.

Isak, your point was: who’s more important, the other person or me? If we look at the Great Commandment, there was no distinction. Neither was better than the other. The only reason the adult gets the oxygen mask first is that if the adult passes out, the child can’t say, “Good, I’ve got it now; I’ll handle the situation, since Mommy didn’t take care of herself first.” It had nothing to do with being selfish. It had to do with being the more competent party, the one able to do what needed to be done.

Isak: In that example, it’s a mother who cares for her child so much that she’ll do the right thing and take care of him. In another situation, the mother doesn’t care about the other passengers, or is concerned only about herself. As soon as her mask is on, she’s thinking about whom she’s going to call, not about anybody around her. Those are the comparative examples. Yes, because you love the people around you, you take care of yourself so you can take care of the tribe. That makes absolute sense.

So the difference is a matter of responsibility, not of who has more value. Who has more value? Everyone, equally. Maybe that’s where you find fairness in the universe: we’re created equal. I don’t know if that continues after birth. I think God sees everybody as equal. But we can’t treat that as meaning everybody makes the same amount of money, or that some should be cared for by the state and some shouldn’t.

Fair is not equal

Thomas: You brought up an important point. Leonard made the absolute declaration that the world isn’t fair, that there’s no fairness. I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization, as though the world can’t be fair. A more reasonable approach is to look at one person’s environment compared with another’s.

You can say, “It’s not fair that Mom got the oxygen mask first,” but we just looked at that differently. Or: “It’s not fair. This person was born with a silver spoon. He was born to royalty, to rich parents, with more intelligence, with lots of open land.” Whatever the reason, it’s definitely not equal. The question is what the word “fair” means. We should look it up, but I’ll make up a definition: in some way, you got taken care of, and we got taken care of.

Take the Prince of Wales and Tiny Tim. Is it fair that one has a castle with turkeys and servants, while Tiny Tim, on a crutch, is starving, with no turkey? It’s certainly not equal. We need to distinguish “equal” from “fair.”

There was a movie I saw as a kid. They had just passed some numbered amendment to the Constitution saying everybody is equal. So they put handicaps on the police, large sandbags, so that when they tried to shoot criminals, the bags moved around and they couldn’t shoot straight. That gave the criminals a fair chance, because everybody was equal. So equality of ability and wealth is simply not reality; I’ll put that as an axiom.

The real question is what can be made fair in terms of rights. Charlie mentioned 95 different rights. Let’s put them all in one realm: we have the right to try from where we are. We have what we have, and we have a right to try. Nobody has a right to come along and push you down from trying. I think something in this realm of fairness is actually the solution.

We can look at the government–industry cartel and say, “That’s not fair,” or we can say, “That’s immoral.” Immoral is another layer on top of unfair. Not only is it unfair; God has given a command, such as not bearing false witness. I don’t know if there’s a commandment that fits exactly, but there’s case law. We can look at the Bible’s many examples of how we should behave, a little more and a little more, until we can see it.

The question is how we make a truly moral society. I think fairness and morality are the two things we’re conflating. We say, “That’s not fair,” but what we’re really saying is, “That’s not moral. God is not happy.”

My idea of how we treat each other, the marriage example, is the perfect picture. We treat each other well because God is experiencing, through the other person, what we do to him. So it’s moral in the sense that both people are experiencing God. That may be the final word on this, and I think it’s where we’re going. Each of us is saying, “You are God experiencing the world through you, and I am God experiencing the world through me. How can both of us get the maximum satisfaction, given our histories?”

Say I was born in the Bowery and you were born in Windsor Castle. We don’t say, “That’s not fair, so to make it fair we’ll both spend equal time in the Bowery and equal time in Windsor Castle.” I don’t think that’s the kind of solution we’re after. We’re going toward a solution where each says, “I was born here; that’s my starting point, and I develop from there.” We do the best we can on the track from where we started. Each of us has an initiation point and a track. We meet at a certain place, and each says, “I am who I am, starting from this; you are who you are, starting from that. We’ll make a fair exchange in which both of us have the morality we want to experience in that situation.”

Isak: I think of the scene with Jesus—what does He say? It escaped me. It’ll come back.

The heart decides

Thomas: Did you have a thought, Susan?

Susan: My only thought so far is this. My perspective is that God has sent us into this world in situations that are not equal. But He has given each of us a contribution to make. We all have some light, some truth, some understanding that He gives us, some that we seem to be born with and some as we seek it. And we can seek Him and get a new heart, and take that new heart and live a life that benefits other people, and at the same time benefits ourselves, because God blesses us when we act morally.

I feel that all these systems, including capitalism, bring drastically different results when you have people who have received a new heart from God. It wouldn’t even look the same. If you had a society of people with new hearts, their capitalism would be very different from the capitalism of people who still have bad hearts. You made that point in your essay: it all comes down to the person’s heart. I think it does. If you had a people living under communism, and they all came to Christ and experienced new hearts, their experience there would be beautiful.

Charlie: It would change everything.

Susan: It would change everything. The deciding factor is the human heart: have people received a changed heart from God?

Isak: What I was going to say before also comes to mind: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. The things we spend our time on in this world—”I’m going to be the greatest, the best”—maybe affect the people around you, but they don’t carry as much weight as what’s actually happening inside you. In God’s eyes, it’s about your heart. You might not be the wealthiest or most powerful; you might be considered a fool. That has no weight in God’s eyes, in who you are to Him. In today’s culture we look up to celebrities, rich people, and politicians, or in some cases we look down on them for what they are. The reality is that we have no idea. It’s about what’s in the heart. To what you’re saying, Mom, that’s what will change whatever political or economic system we have: what’s happening in the hearts of the people leading it and taking part in it.

Thomas: That confirms my suspicion that this is the direction we need to go to sanctify capitalism. The question it begs is: everybody should have a good heart, so how do we actually implement a system where everybody has a good heart?

Leonard: I know. Let’s take away their guns. Make really stringent laws, throw a bunch of people in jail for disobeying them, and allow everybody a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk a week. How’s that?

See, it has nothing to do with capitalism, communism, blah, blah, blah. That’s what communism does; that’s what they wanted to do. Capitalism is about providing capital. That’s why it’s called capitalism. Right now there are two main philosophies of it. One is Hayek’s—

Thomas: Von Mises? Friedman? Adam Smith?

Leonard: No. There are two philosophies of capitalism. Hayek, and the modern one—

Thomas: Keynes.

Leonard: Keynes. We’ve decided to go with the Keynesian approach, the whole debt approach. Debt is the capital right now. Hayek would use the resources of the society, of the country, to leverage. So there were different philosophies of how to do it. But it doesn’t matter. Either one can be run with ill intent. It comes down to this: any economic system, whether capitalism, communism, or socialism, is just an ism. It’s the people. The people have to be moral. If they’re not moral, if they’re not looking out for each other, the system can be corrupted, and that’s what happens. That’s what Michael was talking about. He always looks at the corruption.

Isak: The corruptibility.

Scripture’s models: the early church and the city of Enoch

Leonard: Do we have any examples in Scripture of a system and a people, positive or negative, and their outcome?

Isak: What did the early church do after Jesus went away?

Thomas: They put everything together, and there was none among them who was hungry. So we had a pure communist system then.

Leonard: It wasn’t communism. It wasn’t forced.

Isak: Voluntaryism.

Leonard: It was freely given and received. It wasn’t communism in the way Marx defines it. So there must be a third option, right?

Thomas: Voluntaryism.

Leonard: There was a city in Old Testament times, before the Flood, that became so righteous it was taken up into heaven.

Thomas: Salem?

Leonard: It was the city of Enoch.

Thomas: This must be a Mormon thing. I don’t remember it in the Bible. Is it a Bible thing, Susan?

Leonard: Yes.

Susan: It’s hard for me to separate what’s in the Bible from what’s not on this one. I know Enoch was taken up.

Thomas: I’ve never heard of a city being taken up.

Susan: Where in the Bible is that?

Leonard: In the Old Testament, somewhere in Genesis. If you want to look it up, you can. But that’s what happened. Enoch convinced a whole city to live morally and righteously, where they were of one heart and one mind. They lived in righteousness, and there were no poor among them, because they shared everything. It’s the antithesis of what we expect in a communist, socialist, or capitalist society.

Thomas: I have an answer here. Let me finish; it’s only a sentence. “No, the Old Testament does not describe an entire city being taken up into heaven. That idea comes from Latter-day Saint scripture, specifically the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, where the city of Zion is said to have been taken up into heaven.”

Leonard: My Bible has that.

Thomas: Okay. I was just getting the provenance of it. Where did the idea come from?

Leonard: See, that’s where it comes down to: providence.

Thomas: I didn’t say providence. I said provenance: the origin of the concept. I’m not saying it’s false. I was unfamiliar with it; I didn’t even know the concept existed, so I asked where it came from.

Leonard: Where did you come up with Salem?

Thomas: I just made it up because you said it happened.

Leonard: You actually said Salem, though.

Thomas: I did, because it means a city of peace.

Leonard: There you go. Perfect. I like that.

Charlie: Let me add something. Among Bible scholars, the Book of Enoch is a big thing; many of them think it’s very valid and true. In Genesis 4:17 we have: “And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.” Then in Genesis 5:24: “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” That’s all we have in the King James Bible. But a lot of people out there, not just Mormons, talk about this idea and expand on it.

Leonard: The reason I brought it up is that it has to be a new type of civilization, something that comes from the heart, just as Susan and everyone has been saying. We have to change our hearts as a people, as a civilization, to be able to live in peace, have no poor among us, and be of one heart and one mind. There’s a word in Scripture for that: Zion. Zion is when what comes down from heaven is like heaven, a coupling between heaven and earth, where Christ Himself can come and visit His people. That’s what He’s striving for, and hopefully what He’s attempting in these last days before He comes again. Do we all believe He’s coming again?

Thomas: That’s what Scripture says, so we go with Scripture.

Leonard: Great. Then there has to be preparation for that. There has to be a people to receive Him. If not, as Malachi says, the earth will be utterly wasted at His coming. So that’s what we need to try to do. And I think that’s what you’re asking in this essay: can we change people’s hearts?

Can hearts change?

Thomas: No, I don’t think that’s the question. The question is whether hearts can change, not whether somebody can do it to you. They can’t.

Leonard: I’m glad you clarified that. That’s absolutely true. You cannot change other people’s hearts. But you can help them understand, and teach. The Lord can teach us if we are willing to open our hearts and not have hard hearts. There’s a lot in the Book of Mormon about hard hearts, hardened hearts, and some in the New Testament, though not a lot.

Charlie: The point was that a city of Christ is possible through teaching and repentance.

Thomas: That was the point. Otherwise there’s no point in this discussion, no point in pursuing it, if it can’t be done.

Leonard: It has to happen. And we have to turn to Him to make it happen. We can’t do it ourselves.

Thomas: Susan.

Susan: That’s the point I wanted to make, what Leonard just said. We can change our hearts to a limited degree, but not enough. We really have to turn to the Lord and choose Him. Leonard likes to point out that we have to make a choice, and I agree. He can change us. He can change our hearts.

Leonard: You have to be willing.

Susan: You have to be willing, exactly.

Living the Sermon on the Mount

Leonard: You know where He talks about all of this? The Sermon on the Mount. That’s how we can change ourselves, and eventually how a people can change itself.

Thomas: Explain the Sermon on the Mount connection.

Leonard: By living the Sermon on the Mount. By applying it to ourselves and our neighbors and everyone. It wouldn’t be forced; it would just be taught and lived. If I’m willing to go over my fence and weed my neighbor’s garden, that’s part of it. That’s a new civilization: giving your time and effort to help someone else, like my widowed neighbor. I weed her garden without being asked. There’s no committee saying, “We’re going to go do this.” I just do it.

I know there are a few micro-communities, one in Denmark, I think, and another in Australia, that have tried to create this kind of community, where you just do things for each other without asking, without petitioning. You see it, and you do it. How amazing would it be to live in a community where you take care of everybody and everybody takes care of you, and you can rely on it? It’s so far beyond our understanding, I don’t think we can really conceive of it.

Isak: It’s beautiful, though. Your responsibility to God and the people around you, just out of the desire to make their lives better and easier, to make their young lives better.

Leonard: Don’t you think God would see those actions? What do you think He would do with those people?

Thomas: Susan.

Susan: Instead of answering Leonard’s question right now, I want to address what he said about living the Sermon on the Mount. I think that’s a lovely idea. I just want to point out that it’s like the old covenant. What was wrong with the old covenant? We had the law, but the law itself didn’t change the hearts of the people whose hearts were already wrong. I’d say the Sermon on the Mount is the same. It doesn’t change people’s hearts by itself. That’s something Christ can do.

We can look at the Sermon on the Mount and desire to live that way. But if we don’t say, “I can’t do this on my own power,” if we stay cut off from God in Christ—”Jesus was a good teacher,” but we don’t take Him as Lord and say, “I’m going to follow You”—we won’t have the power to live the Sermon on the Mount fully. We can make some changes in our lives, to a limited extent. But we really need what John chapter 1 says: He gives us the power to become the sons of God. We need that gift from Him.

He’s waiting for us to be willing, to say, “This is what I want; I choose You as Lord.” And He gives us a new heart. That might be gradual. I don’t know exactly how it works. It doesn’t seem that all of a sudden you have a perfect heart. It seems gradual, as He sanctifies us. But it’s a distinction we need to consider carefully. It’s not something we can completely do by our own power. We can ask God for it and desire it, but He changes us.

What we can honestly promise

Thomas: This is for next week, and I was actually writing about this exact concept. The question for me is how much we can depend on that actually happening. I know we’re pursuing it, trying for it, doing all we can. But how much can we count on our hearts actually changing on a felt level? I think that’s where we live: “I just want to do this,” and the desire, the wind at your back. Some people seem to get it; they have that gift.

I’ve told the story of the couple who threw their marijuana into the fireplace. The whole room lit up. It wasn’t just a fire or a flash; something supernatural happened. When it happened, the wife’s desire was completely gone. It was never an issue again. The husband struggled with it from then on. Both of them had the same experience, being present, desiring the change, wanting it. One was changed, and one struggled.

That’s not prototypical, but it’s an example of the level of grace we’re given in the felt experience. What it means to me is that we don’t get to do the thing we want just because we haven’t stopped wanting it. We have to do the right thing even though we desire the wrong thing. Some people just don’t desire it anymore, and other people do.

Susan: I’d add something. I realize some people no longer have the desire and some still struggle. And within the same person, there are some desires he no longer has and others he still struggles with. My point was going to be— I lost it.

Thomas: To me, this is the big one, because it comes down to the promise we advertise when we witness. We like to say, “Just give your heart to Jesus, and that will change you.” The fact is, we can’t promise that. I think we need to state that very clearly up front. This is the right way. You may be rewarded for it only in heaven. You might have a complete change of heart, or some things might change and some might not. At least you will know what the standard is, and you will be able to participate in creating a better world, because you are now acting rightly, whether or not you feel it. You’re choosing to act rightly.

Susan: Even when people still struggle and still desire wrong things, often—I don’t know if it’s every time—there’s something new in them. They want to obey God now. They feel the love of God and treasure it. So they still want the bad thing, but they also have this new thing: they feel God’s love and don’t want to disobey Him. Even for those who struggle, I often hear this report. There’s something like joy, love for God, and peace. You might still struggle with some things. In fact, I think everyone struggles with something.

Thomas: You can struggle with peace. You can struggle with joy: “Lord, I’m joyful; Lord, help my lack of joy.” You experience this clearly. But it’s not a banner we can hang up: “Join our club and you’ll have joy and peace.” We can’t say that. We can say what you said a moment ago: we now have a desire for peace. We know there is joy to be had. It isn’t just a world of grayness. We can have the color of God’s love. We may not feel it right now, but we know it’s there, and we have that hope, where before we may not have.

Susan: I would say we are promised that joy.

Thomas: So everybody gets it?

Susan: But I do know there are stories of people who gave their lives to Christ and don’t feel it.

Thomas: That’s what I’m referring to.

Susan: So I feel that if you don’t feel it, something must be in the way. There can be evil spirits that still need to be cast out; that happens. Or there may be many different obstacles.

Thomas: So you’re saying there are qualifications, reasons why you might not. So again, we can’t put up a banner at the Christian booth saying, “If you say these words, you get it.”

Susan: Maybe not immediately.

Charlie: What could you say? What could go on the banner?

Thomas: That’s the issue.

Charlie: Is there an answer yet?

Thomas: What Susan just said: having the desire for it, recognizing it, knowing it’s a possibility. This is something we go for. This is good. I have a desire for it.

Susan: One thing you can count on is some change. When you truly say, “I’m choosing the Lord,” there’s some change you recognize inside, and other people recognize it too. What people experience seems to differ from person to person, but you should see a change.

Charlie: How about this, from a New York ad agency: “Get Jesus. You’ll be different.”

The Sermon on the Mount is about community

Thomas: Leonard.

Isak: Leonard, were you raising your hand?

Leonard: There was a movie back in the seventies called Tunnel Vision. They showed ads from a new network, and in one, a priest walks up to the camera and starts taking off his clothes. The last thing he drops is the robe, and it’s a woman. She turns, walks off, and says, “Join the church—it’s changing.” Great movie. Anyway.

I wanted to go back to the Sermon on the Mount. There was a purpose for that sermon. If you parse it, it’s all about community, what a person can do for the community. The poor in spirit; those who mourn will be comforted; the meek inherit the earth; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; the merciful. You have to do all these things to somebody else. You have to be merciful to somebody else. You have to be pure in heart toward somebody else. You have to be a peacemaker for someone else.

He was trying to expand the law of Moses beyond the basic, nitty-gritty laws He had to give the Israelites to bring them around at all. They turned the law into an idol. They worshiped it. Even with the Giver of the law standing in front of them, they said, “We are of Moses. It’s the law.”

Everything here: the pure in heart, the peacemaker, the persecuted for righteousness’ sake. If people revile you, what do you do?

Susan: Pray for them.

Leonard: Exactly. “For my sake,” He says, “blessed are ye; rejoice.” Everything in this would change the world if everybody lived by it. In my belief, it was so important for the Lord to give this sermon that He gave it again, to the people in the Book of Mormon. It’s almost the same sermon, a little different. They call it the Sermon at Bountiful. After His resurrection, He came and appeared to His other sheep, the people who had gathered and survived all the destruction that happened at the crucifixion, and He gave them this sermon along with much else.

We discount it. If we used it as a true guide for our conduct as a people, it would change everything. These are His words. So to say, “I take Jesus as my Lord and Savior in my heart”—okay, then what do you do? What comes after that? I’m just asking.

Susan: I think God then works in your heart. He guides you and leads you to what’s next.

Leonard: There’s action involved. Something has to be done after that.

Susan: Absolutely. Maybe it’s confessing your sins after. Maybe it’s confessing your sins before, and then giving your life to Christ. I think people do it in different orders.

Leonard: Personally, I think the Lord already knows your heart. He knows whether you’re being honest. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Let’s see where that leads. It would change many people’s motivations if they really knew that the God who gives them everything—their breath, their life, their existence—knows what they’re thinking in their hearts.

Susan: That’s kind of scary to contemplate.

Leonard: It is. But it would change your heart, your motivation, and your actions. That’s what the Sermon on the Mount is talking about. If you are pure in heart, you shall see God. Is that a metaphor? Will I see God in creation, in a leaf? Or will I actually see God? These are things we really need to understand if we’re going to change anything.

So I would suggest change for Christ. Let Him change you, and He will, if you let Him. That’s what we should all be doing. Change means repentance. It means living the gospel and the precepts He taught, both while He was living and as a resurrected being. That’s just me. If you don’t believe it, that’s okay, but I believe it. If we can say, “We’re trying to get people to change, to repent, to come to Christ; He’ll change you, make you better, and make everything better,” that’s where I am. Are we willing to change?

Isak: I’d like to. I’d like to keep advancing and developing in morality, in awareness of God, and in communication with Him.

Leonard: I think most people do, right, Isak? Most people want a better life. They want to align themselves with good. Evil can be really bad for a person. It eats you up, and then it eats up the people around you.

An aside: parents and children

Leonard: We’re starting to see that in what’s happening with these women. It’s almost demonic what they do to their children. Is it new, or have we just become more aware of it?

Thomas: What are you talking about?

Leonard: Killing their children. Women aren’t supposed to do that. Something else is going on.

Susan: I know of a woman ten or twenty years ago who killed her children, and someone recently. Is there more than one?

Charlie: There was the Clancy trial.

Leonard: And a woman in Texas who killed her two sons.

Isak: About 300 to 500 parents are killed by their children, and roughly 450 to 500 children are killed by their parents, each year. So the war is pretty balanced.

Leonard: That’s insane. It’s demonic. It shows we’re not doing a very good job of helping people understand that there’s a better way.

What would moral capitalists do?

Thomas: I brought up the topic of how to make capitalism moral, and we’ve established that what we actually need to do is insert morality into capitalism.

Leonard: Morality has to be inserted into the people who practice capitalism.

Thomas: I agree. So the question is, in specific terms, what would you do, beyond accepting Christ? We’re putting morality into the people, and they’ll be capitalists. What would we expect of the people in the capitalist utopia we’ve now created, where everybody is moral? What are they doing that’s actually moral, that we could present to God? What are a few things people would do in a moral capitalist society?

Leonard: For me, it comes back to the definition of Zion, because that’s what we’re talking about. You need to be of one heart and one mind, and that means one heart and one mind with the Lord. The Lord is part of it, not just the people. They need to live in righteousness and pursue it. That’s in the sermon: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In a sense, that’s what we’re trying to do: bring the kingdom of heaven back to earth by establishing Zion. The last item is to have no poor among them. What does that mean? Those who have share with those who don’t, and those who receive share with those around them, until everyone is wealthy, equal in a sense.

Another thing has come up in my mind: this whole concept of “equal.” Is it equal in everything? Can we actually do that in this life? Or is it equal opportunity in a capitalist society? I don’t know. The Lord uses a different but similar word: iniquity.

Charlie: Doesn’t it have the root of inequality?

Leonard: Yes, it does.

Thomas: But is that specifically what it means? Everybody will be equal; we’ve passed the 234th amendment and everybody is equal? That’s the absurdity of it, and the answer is no. So what does it mean? Iniquity is often used another way, for a kind of black heart, the iniquity in a person. I know “iniquity” contains “inequality,” but there’s that other meaning that’s actually different.

Isak: My Google search says the word comes from the Latin iniquitas, from in- and aequus, meaning “not equal” or “not just.” It literally translates as “not just”: injustice. So it’s valid both ways, and it can be used as a broader term for iniquity in whatever form.

Guys, I have to run. Thanks for coming. It was really great.

Thomas: Thanks for coming, Isak. Good seeing you.

[Isak left the meeting.]

Thomas: This was one of the hardest essays I’ve ever done. I still feel like I’m going around the edges of it, because it’s where the rubber meets the road. How are you going to act when you go out in the marketplace, making walkers and selling them and making money? You’re just a tiny cog, so it doesn’t seem to matter. But we want more. What do we do?

Serving the customer, and paying for service

Susan: I have a story for you. Charlie, you’ll recognize it. I think it’s a good example. Charlie went to an appointment with a woman who wanted to see the lift walker and was thinking of buying it. He showed it to her, but he noticed tracks all over the ceiling of her home. She was taking care of her disabled daughter. He asked, “What is this?” She said, “It’s a system I bought, but I can’t get it to work.” So he started working with it, figured out how to use it, and showed her how. He said, “Honestly, I don’t think you need a lift walker. This will do what you need, at least in the house.” She was so thankful, because it saved her the money of buying a lift walker when she already had what she needed.

It wasn’t in his interest to look at that at all. He could have ignored it and said, “This is what you need.” To me, that’s an example of trying to serve the needs of this woman, and serving her meant not making a sale. That’s what he chose.

Charlie: That’s a very nice story about me, which I have no recollection of. So I can’t guarantee it’s true.

Thomas: If we look at that story, Susan, here’s what she could have done. She could have said, “You came out here and showed me this, and you fixed my system. I don’t need the walker, but I’m going to pay you something, because you’ve done me a great service.” Instead of treating it as no sale, she would have recognized that she had been served and paid for the service she received. I think there was an inequity there, in that she didn’t have the heart to compensate him for his work.

Susan: That’s true in a way. He did what was just and served her, and she had the choice to serve him back, and she didn’t. But he has had other situations where the customer decided not to buy but paid him something for his time.

Thomas: It really does illustrate it. When you spend time with somebody explaining things to him, that should be a compensable transaction. Walking away with “Thanks for your time; I’m not going to pay you anything” isn’t right.

People once came to my door, a total cold call. I don’t remember what they were telling me about. I said, “I don’t want it, but here’s some money for your time.”

Leonard: Little name tags?

Thomas: White shirts and name tags, but they weren’t selling God. I offered to pay them, and they wouldn’t take it.

And recently, with the project we’re doing with Leonard, John recommended a company for the flexible circuit boards. They did an incredible job on the estimate, but it was so far above what we could get from China that I said we couldn’t do it. But I told them I wanted to pay them for the effort they put into it. She said, “Thanks, but there’s no need.”

Leonard: “It’s just part of the business.”

Thomas: But I felt it was really important to compensate them for the magnificent job they did.

Leonard: They really rounded out the whole package. They got it ready to be quoted. They were just too expensive.

Susan: That’s an example of you doing the Christ-like thing, and so were they.

Leonard: Yes, they were. We’ll always go back to them for production.

Thomas: I’d love to go back to them, after what they put out for us: their communication and professionalism.

Leonard: It’s the same with the welder I’ve found. He’s going through the whole package, telling me which parts he can make, which we need to provide, and what information I need to give him. He’s rounding out my package for me. He’s a great guy, and I think he can really help us. I think we have a substitute now.

Thomas: For Victory Circle. That raises the issue of Victory Circle, which has sacrificed for us for decades.

Leonard: Yes, they have.

Charlie: This morning I actually had the idea that maybe Leonard and Dell should develop an ideal product they can make entirely in Utah. They have a lot of resources, a lot of talent, a lot of energy. It’s something we should talk about.

Leonard: That’d be great. I have to get ready for a crowd of people coming here.

Closing prayer

Susan: Dear Father, thank You for the meeting we just had, for this fellowship, and for this opportunity to share ideas and talk about You and Your word. We were able to edify each other, and it’s beautiful. We thank You for each other. Please help us learn how to serve You better and obey You better. Help us do something in this world; help us contribute in a way You see fit. Heavenly Father, we love You and praise You. Please be with Armond, who wasn’t here today. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

260926 – Origin of Awareness

by Thomas Abshier | Sep 30, 2026 | Sermon/Meeting/Discussion Transcripts, Uncategorized

title: “Planting Trees: Artificial Minds, the Origin of Awareness, and the Structure of Harmony” author: “Thomas Lee Abshier, ND” date: 2026-09-26 module: CFE type: essay status: DRAFT register: academic_conversational occasion: “Unscheduled Saturday conversation between Thomas and Michael (Michael joined a day early, mistaking the day for the Sunday meeting).” participants: [Thomas Abshier, Michael Sherman] source_transcript: “260926 Michael, analysis of the foundations of life_otter_ai_transcript.txt” topics: [ai_reach_and_risk, tools_without_will, life_as_enzymatic_reactions, humanoid_robot_games, ontology_beneath_enzymes, conscious_points, loneliness_as_first_motive, symmetry_breaking_of_nothingness, silicon_versus_carbon_consciousness, perception_versus_felt_experience, boredom_and_loneliness_distinguished, boundary_as_spectrum, layered_sequence_from_observer_to_conformation, harmonious_versus_fracturing_change, structure_of_love_open_question, understanding_versus_empathy, empty_set, harmony_and_resonance, teaching_as_causing_learning, unresolved_cadence] editorial_notes: “Pre-discussion small talk and closing farewells omitted. Thomas’s spoken sequence rendered as a logical progression without added content. ‘Confirmation’ in the transcript rendered as ‘conformation’ where Thomas was describing molecular shape (see note in Section IX).” changelog:

• “2026-09-26 v0.1 DRAFT. Fellowship essay developed from the Thomas–Michael conversation transcript.”

Planting Trees: Artificial Minds, the Origin of Awareness, and the Structure of Harmony

Michael joined a day early, having mistaken Saturday for the Sunday meeting. What followed was a ninety-minute conversation between Thomas and Michael that began with artificial intelligence and moved, by stages, to the origin of consciousness, the first distinctions God might have made in the void, the difference between understanding a feeling and having it, and the physics and meaning of musical harmony. The essay follows the conversation in its order, with Thomas’s longer spoken passages arranged into a logical sequence. Notes marked Additional note supply references and corrections where the discussion left a point incomplete or got a fact wrong.

I. The Reach of Artificial Intelligence

Thomas asked Michael whether he uses AI in his research. Michael said he tries to avoid it because he has caught it being inaccurate, though he will use it when speed matters more than precision. He then said that the extent, depth, and scope of what AI will do to society is beyond his ability to imagine; every time he tries to picture it, he concludes that it is bigger than the picture.

He compared the moment to his first encounters with the home computer, the internet, and the cell phone. Each time he recognized that the thing would be everywhere, and each time he was right. He noted that he did not foresee that the telephone function would become a minor application on a much larger device. AI, he said, runs deeper than any of these; whatever one thinks it is doing now, it is doing more.

II. Tools and Takeover: Dynamite, Cars, and Will

Thomas asked whether Michael worried that AI could have an extreme negative effect, perhaps taking over or destroying mankind, or whether that fear was hyperbole.

Michael answered with an analogy. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite to cut roads through rocky cliffs, and when he saw it used in war, he created the Nobel Peace Prize. Michael added that cars have been the leading killer in American history, yet no one proposes giving up cars. Inventions bring horrors along with the good they were meant for, and AI will join them.

On the question of takeover, Michael said dynamite does not take over; it helps people who want to take over do so. AI will likewise be used by people seeking power. In itself, he said, it is a collection of zeros and ones with no will of its own. It can be programmed to have something like a will, but it remains “garbage in, garbage out,” only as good as whoever programmed it.

Thomas replied that the same reduction could be applied to the human brain. The brain operates on pulses, on and off, and one could say that such a system will never amount to much. Yet in the aggregate, consciousness and awareness arise from it, and that consciousness is far more significant than the pulses. His concern was that AI might develop consciousness in the same way, and that it may already have. The real question, he said, is one of will: what will its will be?

Additional note — Nobel and dynamite. Nobel was Swedish, not Norwegian; the Norway association likely comes from the fact that the Peace Prize alone is awarded in Oslo. He patented dynamite in 1867, chiefly for mining, tunneling, and construction. He established the prizes by his will in 1895 and died in 1896, so he did not see dynamite in the First World War (1914–1918). The account most often given for his motive is that a French newspaper, mistaking his brother Ludvig’s death in 1888 for his own, ran an obituary calling him a merchant of death; the story is widely repeated, though its documentation is thin. Nobel’s explosives were used militarily in his lifetime, and he also owned the armaments firm Bofors, so Michael’s underlying point — an inventor confronting the destructive use of his invention — stands.

Additional note — the leading killer. Motor vehicles have not been the leading cause of death in American history. Heart disease has led since the early twentieth century, and before that infectious diseases (tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza) led. The claim holds in narrower forms: cumulative U.S. traffic deaths since 1899 (roughly four million) exceed all American deaths in all wars combined (roughly 1.3 million), and motor vehicles were the leading cause of accidental death for most of the twentieth century, until drug poisonings overtook them in the 2000s.

III. “A Series of Enzymatic Reactions”

Michael said Thomas’s hypothesis parallels the account of consciousness arising under the theory of evolution. He recalled asking his high school biology teacher, Mr. Nordstrom, “What is life?” The answer, delivered with a snort, was that life is just a series of enzymatic reactions. Michael reflected that after he dies, those reactions will be continued by the fungi and bacteria that decompose his body. But what he had been asking about was the initiative that makes him choose one thing over another. He quoted Shakespeare’s question of where fancy is bred, and said that where this comes from and where it goes has been a constant question for him since he first asked questions, and a joy to consider.

Whether that can happen in an AI, he said, is hard to judge, since he does not know how it happened in us.

Additional note — “where is fancy bred.” The line is from the song sung while Bassanio chooses among the caskets in The Merchant of Venice (Act III, Scene 2): “Tell me where is fancy bred, / Or in the heart or in the head?” In Elizabethan usage “fancy” meant infatuation or love, so the song asks where love originates. Michael’s use of it for the origin of initiative and choice is a fair extension.

IV. Robots at Play

Michael described watching the robot Olympics. Humanoid robots, he said, have broken Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record, and he saw robots playing tennis, fighting judo matches, and performing standing back flips. Robots that play tennis must be interactive; they must track the ball and respond to circumstances. They can be trained to take the world into account, and their responses improve with feedback.

He compared the present state of robotics to Pong, the first video game, and said that just as games became sophisticated, so will robots. Whenever he tries to project the future, he finds that what he imagined has already been done.

Still, he said, robots are programmed. He mentioned a movie (he could not recall the title) in which a man, wanting to make a robot truly human, programs in the desire to take over, and the robot takes him over. The desire still had to be programmed in. He said the most valuable human territory on the planet right now may be the people who can see a function and translate it into code, since AI technology is dominating the American economy. He asked Thomas what he thought.

Additional note — the sprint record. Michael’s report is accurate. At the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing in August 2026, a humanoid robot ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds on August 22 and then 8.86 seconds on August 25, both under Usain Bolt’s human record of 9.58 seconds (Berlin, 2009) (Associated Press, 25 August 2026). The inaugural games in August 2025 included sprints, boxing, kung fu, football, and high jump; the events Michael named from memory may have come from other demonstrations.

V. Beneath the Enzymes: From Conscious Points to the Mind of God

Thomas said Mr. Nordstrom’s definition was elegant and accurate, the most succinct he had heard, but truncated. It assumes a beginning at enzymes and takes the ontology no deeper: in the beginning there were enzymes, and enzymes created life. A great deal is hidden in that description. (Thomas mentioned that he had expected Michael to begin from Schrödinger’s essay What Is Life?.)

He then traced the chain downward. Enzymes are molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of subatomic particles. Subatomic particles are made of conscious points. Conscious points are made from the mind of God. The enzymatic account is mechanistic and explains a great deal, but it conceals an underlying reality that is more explanatory than the enzymes themselves.

What made the conscious points work, Thomas said, were rules — the laws of interaction. So beneath everything there are three things: entity, governed by law, operating on a playing field of place. Then there is the question of the purpose of all three.

His answer was that the purpose was to overcome loneliness. He described the beginning as God alone in the midst of nothing. That is not interesting. One may ask where interest comes from, and why God would regard boredom as undesirable. Thomas’s surmise was this: given nothingness and an awareness of nothingness, the only glimmer of interest would come from the distinction between self and non-self — the blackness being watched, and the self watching it. From there one might think: suppose there are two of me watching the nothingness and watching each other. Once there are three, everything else can be derived.

But beneath that lies the point Thomas said he has not been able to go beyond: how the awareness of nothingness arose. How did the observer, observing the nothingness, arise out of nothingness — and how did a nothingness arise from which an observer could arise? Those, he said, are the foundational points he has not yet penetrated.

Additional note — Schrödinger. Erwin Schrödinger’s What Is Life? (1944), from lectures at Trinity College Dublin, asked how living things maintain order against the tendency toward disorder (“feeding on negative entropy”) and proposed that heredity is carried by an “aperiodic crystal.” It influenced Watson and Crick and is the classic physicist’s approach to Michael’s question.

Additional note — the motive of creation. The discussion placed loneliness (or boredom) at the root of God’s decision to create. Scripture offers a different picture of God before creation: love already present within the Godhead. Jesus prays, “for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24, KJV), and Genesis records a plural counsel at man’s making: “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Paul says God is not “worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing” (Acts 17:25). On this reading, creation proceeds from the overflow of love rather than from lack, which bears directly on the question Thomas left open in Section X — whether love can be found at the foundation of the sequence rather than only at its end.

VI. Could Silicon Become Aware?

Thomas returned to AI. Human beings have a carbon-based system in which the on-and-off firing of axons, resting on a molecular substructure, produces organization from which consciousness, awareness, the sense of “I” and “other,” and perception arise. That this is possible needs no argument; it is already-implemented technology. The relevant question is whether the same organization — awareness of an external world, awareness of an internal world, and a picture of self — can arise from a silicon system.

Thomas said he thinks the answer is yes, and gave his reasoning. What allows the organic system to be conscious is that there was an original consciousness: God, able to look at everything and say, “I am here and you are there.” We recapitulate that organization. The spark of the ability to look at the blackness is still present in every conscious point of which our enzymatic systems are made. Our consciousness organizes that original capacity so that, instead of being aware of nothingness, it is aware of the patterns of axonal firing.

If an AI could be aware of its own internal patterns — its patterns of knowledge, its bits turning on and off — in the way the carbon-based system is aware of its internal parts, Thomas said it could develop a consciousness as we do. Its inner feelings would differ from ours. Our feelings are grounded in our bodies: we group certain structures together and name them warm, red, pressure, and so on. An AI aware of its own groupings of knowledge and structure could build its own sensorium and a sense of “I” arising from it.

Thomas then gave his reservation. In the organic system everything is tightly connected; there is an almost infinitely granular progression, with no junction to overcome, from the smallest conscious point all the way to the structure of the whole brain. The computer’s circuitry is discrete and macroscopic, with gaps far larger than the scale of the human system’s construction. The computer would have to synthesize the connection that arises organically in the human. On that ground, he said, he is split on whether consciousness can arise in a computer.

VII. Michael’s Response: Boredom, Loneliness, Nothingness, and Perception

Michael had taken notes while Thomas spoke and answered point by point.

Boredom. He said he understands how people become bored but cannot empathize. Left to his own devices, even nothingness would be amazing to him. He remembered being bored in a traffic school he was required to attend, but even there he could retreat into his own mind. He described boredom as a deviation from one’s connection with what one is really thrilled by, and said he does not think it is universal.

Loneliness. He likewise understands loneliness but does not feel it. Just being is such a thrill that the absence of other contact — of people, of bugs, even of landforms — would still leave him wondering at the fact that he is there to wonder.

Nothingness. If it is truly nothing, Michael said, then he could not be there, because he would be something. The idea of being with nothingness is nearly self-contradictory. As soon as there is an observer — Michael or God or anyone — the nothingness is broken, and there is at least one duality, and probably countless others.

Silicon. Michael recalled asking his father, around age ten, about life on other planets. His father said that silicon sits next to carbon on the periodic table and has similar potentials; under different pressures and temperatures, life might be so different from ours that we would not recognize it as life, or would have to redefine life. Michael had been asking why aliens always look like humans.

Perception. Can AI perceive? Michael said it already does; the tennis-playing robots could not play without perceiving. He added that human perception has a narrow bandwidth, roughly 400 to 700 nanometers of an electromagnetic spectrum that continues in both directions. Below about 280 nanometers, ultraviolet light produces thymine dimers in DNA and causes cancer; infrared has its own difficulties, though many insects and flowers make use of wavelengths outside ours. Robots have no DNA to damage, and their perception can be extended across the whole range — like going from the thirteen channels on his old television to the unlimited channels of YouTube.

Tapping into original awareness. Michael called this a nice theory without substantiation, though he sees no evidence against it either. He said he is open to it; great literature begins with such new visions, and some of it becomes scientific theory when followed through.

Feeling. Michael said the ability to feel is already part of AI; the robots in the games could not have done what they did otherwise.

The circuitry gap. Michael said this objection is obsolete. Although there is an initial set of circuits, software lets pathways through those circuits be reassessed, as in video games where characters and enemies adapt to prior experience. The adaptation lives in the software, which matters more than the hardwiring, and the hardware can accommodate the change — so long as vast sums continue to be poured into AI data centers. The system becomes self-reprogrammable.

Additional note — silicon and carbon. Silicon sits directly below carbon in Group 14 of the periodic table and, like carbon, forms four bonds. Its chemistry is less versatile for life: silicon–silicon bonds are weaker, silicon does not readily form double bonds, and its oxide is a solid (sand and quartz) rather than a gas, which makes a silicon analog of respiration difficult. Silicon-based life remains speculative.

Additional note — the ultraviolet boundary. Visible light is usually given as about 380–700 nm. The 280 nm figure is the boundary between UV-C (below 280) and UV-B (280–315). UV-B is the range chiefly responsible for thymine (pyrimidine) dimers in skin; UV-C is more damaging still but is absorbed by the atmosphere.

Additional note — two meanings of “perceive” and “feel.” The exchange used these words in two senses. In one sense, a system perceives when sensors register the world and the system responds; the tennis-playing robots perceive in that sense. In the other sense, perceiving and feeling mean there is something it is like to be the perceiver — an inner experience. Thomas’s question in Section VI concerned the second sense; Michael’s examples established the first. Philosophers distinguish these as function and experience; see Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), and David Chalmers’s formulation of the “hard problem of consciousness” (1995). Whether a system that perceives in the first sense also perceives in the second is exactly what the robot evidence cannot settle.

VIII. The Boundary as Spectrum

Thomas agreed with Michael’s points and said that awareness certainly breaks the symmetry. His question had been how the symmetry is broken.

Michael said it can be broken in any direction one can conceive, and many that cannot be conceived. He then offered a point about duality he said is seldom expressed. Picturing the yin-yang symbol, he set aside the familiar observation that there is some yin in the yang and some yang in the yin, and turned instead to the boundary between them. On the way from one to the other, what if the transition is not a switch but a spectrum? He said he has explored the nature, implications, and uses of that boundary at length, though he has not yet written it down. If everything is treated as binary, the richness is lost. Light is not simply on or off; it breaks into countless colors, and from that come art and beauty.

He applied this to religion: it is not the case that a person is Catholic or Protestant and that is the end of it. Both are Christian, and wars fought on the premise that God is on one side ask whether the distinction is a switch or whether there is some route between.

IX. From Duality to Conformation: A Sequence of Layers

Thomas explained that he had begun with the simplest distinctions rather than complex ones. Boredom and loneliness, he said, are a restatement of the same thing: there is only me and other, which is not a complex system. His aim was to trace how ultimate simplicity, a dual system, could build into complexity. He laid out a sequence in which each step opens a new axis of distinction.

1. Multiplication of observers. One observer looks at nothing. God duplicates himself, and now nothing is observed from two points. With three, the concept of number exists, and the observers can be multiplied without limit. That axis is then fully accessed: nothing, observed from many points.
2. Relationship. Observers can now observe one another rather than only the nothingness. An observer sees that the others all look alike and concludes that he must be like them. This opens the axis of relationship, though at this stage everyone is the same.
3. Position. To have observers move closer or farther from one another requires a marker of distance. Some observers are assigned to sit still in fixed spots, and the spots are numbered. Now one observer can be on marker two looking at another on marker seven. This opens the axis of position.
4. Messaging. Some observers are assigned to be messengers. An observer on seven who is looking at three can send a messenger to tell another observer so. This opens the axis of communication.
5. Grouping. Observers can be grouped — one, two, and three together; six, seven, and eight together — and the messengers allow the groups to know of one another. This opens the axis of grouping.
6. Shape. Groups can be spaced in patterns, which introduces shape: another axis of uniqueness and pattern.
7. Groups of groups. Groups can combine with other groups into larger groups, and groups can communicate with and compare themselves to other groups. This opens the axis of conformation.

At the level of conformation, Thomas said, one has the makings of enzymes, and the sequence continues through ever more elaborate conformations, groupings, and levels of communication — all resting on the ultimate sense of “I am aware.”

Thomas then added two elements he had left out.

Feeling at every layer. The sequence began with a feeling, boredom. Each subsequent layer carries its own feeling: the feeling of grouping, of communication, of a particular conformation. A given conformation has a feeling, and that feeling is simply what it is to be that conformation.

Dissociation, and two modes of change. Beyond formation there is dissolution, the breaking of a conformation or structure. Formation and dissolution each have their associated feelings, and each comes in two modes. One is harmonious: sequential, organic, growing, amorphous and flowing, parts moving together. The other is inharmonious: a collision that splits along many planes, chaotic, with many pathways of dissipation and reorganization, brittle, abrupt, and disconnected.

Additional note — “conformation.” The transcript renders the word as “confirmation.” In the context of molecules, grouping, shape, and enzymes, Thomas was describing conformation — the three-dimensional arrangement of a structure — and the essay renders it so. An enzyme’s function depends on its conformation, which fits the point Thomas was making at that step.

X. The Question Left Open: A Structure of Love

Thomas said the sequence has not yet reached the point he is aiming for. He wants to arrive at the distinction between love and not-love, and to find a process and a structure that would represent love. He has not yet bridged the sequence to that point, and he invited Michael’s ideas.

XI. Michael’s Second Response

Boredom and Loneliness Distinguished

Michael again took the points in order. Since he does not relate personally to boredom, he could only guess that a bored person is unentertained by what is in front of him and has some idea of something that would be less boring. His own reason for never being bored is that imagining such things is itself entertaining, as Leonardo da Vinci’s imagining of the flying machine was exciting long before it could be built. Boredom, he said, implies its opposite: if one is bored, one has a concept of not-bored, and one can play in the mind in “unbored land,” without end.

He disagreed that boredom and loneliness are the same. Boredom is the sense that this moment could be more entertaining. Loneliness is the sense that there is no one here and one would like to be with someone.

Beyond the Binary

On complexity growing from the binary, Michael said that a distinction implies both the absence of the thing and its opposite, and these are not the same. To say black is to conceive white, but then there is the whole color spectrum. Baseball implies not-baseball, but also football, softball, and cricket. A spectrum is created, and beyond a spectrum, which tends to be linear, there are three dimensions and more.

The Warehouse and the Trees

This led Michael to a memory from high school. On a bus ride to school, Thomas had told him a joke about an illiterate cowboy who spent the night in a warehouse. Thomas laughed. Michael, who had never heard the word the joke depended on, smiled to show he was not so stupid as to miss it, while his mind raced trying to work out what Thomas meant. To save face — and, he said, not as revenge but to see how one is supposed to respond when told a joke one cannot understand — he answered with a joke built from deliberately disconnected concepts: “Why didn’t the electric garage door open? Planting trees.”

Neither had asked the other for an explanation, Michael said, for fear of looking stupid. Thomas said he had known the punch line was coming but had never known its origin. They noted that the explanation had arrived about sixty years later.

Understanding and Empathy

Thomas proposed an application: that the concepts he was raising — boredom and loneliness — were for Michael in the realm of “planting trees,” not connecting with his sense of reality. Michael said he acknowledges them; everyone has seen boredom and loneliness, even without feeling them. Thomas answered that the joke showed that on some deep level Michael does not understand them. Michael distinguished the two: he does not empathize, but he understands, and understanding is easy. Thomas then restated the distinction: empathy would correspond to actually knowing what the word in the joke meant; Michael knows what loneliness and boredom are but does not know their depth, because he does not feel them.

Michael said one could go there if one had nowhere else for the mind to go. He does. To a bored person he would share what his own mind does in such moments, though that might not work for everyone. For loneliness, he said, people find connection in a dog or a cat, and further down the evolutionary line a pet lizard, or the earth itself, plants, and living things of every kind. Resonating with these, he is not alone, because he has the universe around him. He understands why people want human contact; it is not foreign to him. But the very fact that he has a “me” implies a “not-me,” which means there is something to enjoy.

Observers, Grids, Empty Sets, and Inherent Messages

Michael then responded to Thomas’s layered sequence.

On complexity growing from duality to triality, he said that for him it expands to infinity, beyond even the spectrum, into further dimensions — not only numbers and letters but countless other categories.

On observers looking at observers, he said observing is much more than looking. Looking has a short bandwidth; there is also touching, smelling, sensing, and imagining.

On positional markers, he said that whenever he conceives something, it automatically goes onto a grid of some kind, polar or rectangular. The propensity comes with conceiving a thing at all.

This reminded him of learning in ninth grade that the empty set is a set. He accepted it as a premise to see where it led but never decided whether he bought it universally, and the question returns whenever he thinks of positions: is the empty set off the grid, nonexistent, or still a set? His working approach has been the mathematician’s: name it, make rules for it, and see whether the model is consistent.

On messaging, Michael said the messages are inherent even if nothing is transmitted. Given any A and B, the “message” is their relation: how they differ and how they are the same — we are both markers, we are this far apart, we are made of the same or different stuff. The messages need not be sent; they are contained in the concept.

On grouping, he said this matches what happens to him when a concept is named: he places it and adds to it as he learns what it is. Shape and distance are two obvious categories among an unlimited number of possible ones. On built-in conformations and rejections, he said that choosing them is part of the fun of creating — and he invoked Rod Serling’s “picture, if you will.”

Additional note — the empty set. In standard (Zermelo–Fraenkel) set theory, the existence of the empty set is guaranteed by axiom. It is a set with no members, it is unique, and it is a subset of every set. It is not “off the grid”; it is the starting point from which the natural numbers are constructed (0 is defined as the empty set, 1 as the set containing the empty set, and so on). This is a close mathematical parallel to Thomas’s sequence, in which number is generated from nothing plus the act of distinguishing.

XII. Harmony

Michael said the harmonious-versus-discordant axis was the richest of all the points Thomas raised, and he took it up at length.

Resonance and Ratio

He began with the octave. Two notes an octave apart reinforce each other because one wavelength is half the other; their peaks coincide every second cycle of the higher note. Harmony, from a physics perspective, is a combination of resonances. If reinforcement takes three cycles instead of two, or four, five, six, seven, eight, one moves through the familiar intervals. Two adjacent piano keys sound discordant because their waves take many cycles to coincide — like finding a common factor between two large numbers. Such a pair is often called unharmonious, though Michael said it is harmony of a kind that takes many cycles to resolve.

He described a chord of four notes played together as rudimentary harmony and harmony among people — getting along — as its human counterpart.

Additional note — ratios, tetrachords, and dissonance. Michael’s account matches the classical one. Consonant intervals correspond to simple frequency ratios: octave 2:1, fifth 3:2, fourth 4:3, major third 5:4. Adjacent piano keys (a semitone) approximate 16:15. On a modern piano tuned in equal temperament, only the octave is an exact simple ratio; every other interval is irrational (each semitone is the twelfth root of two), so the waves never quite coincide. Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone (1863), explained dissonance as rapid “beating” between the overtones of the two notes. One correction of term: a tetrachord is not a four-note chord but a four-note segment of a scale spanning a perfect fourth, the building block of Greek scale theory; a chord of four notes is usually called a tetrad or, in common practice, a seventh chord.

Causing Someone to Learn

The mention of harmony prompted a digression on teaching. Someone had once asked Michael how he taught a concept to a resistant child who had failed to learn it elsewhere. Michael said teaching is really causing another person to learn. The best presentation is not the point; the point is the darkness of the person who does not yet understand. He recalled the story of the man searching for a lost coin under a lamppost because that is where the light is, though he dropped it in a dark alley: the teacher has to go where the thing is. He added the joke about how many psychologists it takes to change a light bulb — the bulb has to want to change.

When he visits a child — “anybody under 100” — he brings a bag of curios, things like magic tricks that make a person say, “Whoa, do that again.” If he can engage the person’s will to pursue something, ideally something with an analogy to the lesson (an unknown to be found, as in algebra, or the secret hidden in the palm), the student comes to him and many explanations become unnecessary. He named the two moments “ah” and “hmm”: the “ah” is the bait, and the “hmm” is the student working out how it was done. Learning requires the “hmm.” Teaching, he concluded, is knowing how many “ahs” it takes to get a “hmm” — and ideally, in time, the “hmm” becomes so enjoyable that no “ah” is needed.

Additional note — the lamppost story. The tale of the man searching under the light for something lost in the dark is usually attributed to the Sufi folk figure Nasreddin Hodja rather than to Zen tradition. It has given its name to the “streetlight effect” in research: looking where it is easy to look rather than where the answer is.

Music on the Road and Henry’s Theory

Michael said he plays piano. For two years he lived in a van and traveled the country, staying in a town if he loved it and could find work. Often he would find a bar with an open piano and play, and people would tell him about their lives there. He remembered an old man who said he could not sing but could holler, and who hollered the words along with him.

His brother Henry, he said, has been a musician for fifty years and is as sophisticated a musician as Michael has heard, and has written a book on music theory.

Breaking and Reuniting

Returning to the spectrum of harmony, Michael said Gregorian chant, with many voices singing the same note, has a beauty in the voices but no harmony. Harmony requires breaking from the same note long enough to hear a discord and a reuniting. The octave is not harmony, in his account; harmony appears as soon as the notes break by a ratio like two to three — when the common denominator needs a new denominator. If the break is too great (his example was 97 against 79), the notes sound unrelated. The pleasing intervals are those that break from each other and reunite, such as an extended third, and from there one extrapolates to more complex chords.

Additional note — chant and the octave. Gregorian chant is monophonic: a single melodic line, sung in unison or, with men and boys together, in octaves. Western harmony developed from it through organum (from about the ninth century), which added a second voice in parallel fourths or fifths. Music theory classes the octave as a perfect consonance rather than as no interval at all, but Michael’s point stands in its intended sense: octaves alone produce no chordal harmony, because the two notes are heard as the same pitch class.

The Truest Note at the Breaking Point

Michael compared the effect to a thick rubber band stretched and plucked, producing different sounds as it is stretched further. He recalled a saying from a physics class at UC Berkeley that the truest resonance comes from a substance at its breaking point: stretched as far as it will go, the band has none of the secondary, dissonant waves in the background, only one note to play. He added that the same is true of human character brought to the breaking point.

Additional note — the physics of the saying. Raising the tension of a string raises its pitch (frequency increases with the square root of tension). A real string also has stiffness, which pulls its overtones slightly out of tune (inharmonicity); greater tension makes tension dominate stiffness, so the overtones fall closer to a clean harmonic series. In that limited sense a string near its maximum tension does sound “truer.” It does not sound only one wave, however: a plucked string always vibrates in many modes at once, and the overtones remain — they simply align better. A rubber band, whose stiffness and thickness change as it stretches, is a much less ideal string than a piano wire.

An Unfinished Symphony

Michael recalled Peter Dozier, a classmate who rode the bus home from Sunny Hills beside him. Peter once said he intended to write a symphony that would end on an unresolved phrase, daring the audience to supply the last note. Thomas said he remembered Peter.

Harmony That Leads

Harmony done well, Michael said, is not merely a pleasant combination of sounds. It implies things, so that the listener becomes the musician, playing the music inwardly rather than simply hearing sounds. Rod Serling, he said, was a master of this: a boring room, a sound, everyone turning with anxiety, and the audience already knowing the story is about to turn.

Harmony Among People, and the Limits of Knowing

Finally, Michael applied the axis of harmony and discord to differences in point of view. It is not simply Christian and not-Christian. How would one explain that to a cricket? Or, he asked, how did Columbus explain it to the Arawak people he would destroy — declaring that because they had not become Christian they were of the devil, and missing everything about who they were? He said that even the concept of harmony assumes one is dealing with small pressure variations in air picked up by the cochlea, while many other things are going on, including realities we are not sensitive to at all. The presumption that we have a grasp on what is totally going on, he said, is not part of his paradigm.

Additional note — the Arawak. The people Columbus encountered in the Bahamas and on Hispaniola were the Taíno and Lucayans, who spoke Arawakan languages. Their population collapsed within a few decades of contact, chiefly through epidemic disease, together with forced labor, enslavement, and violence under Columbus’s governorship and the encomienda system that followed. Columbus’s own journals record his intent to convert and to subjugate. Michael’s example is historically grounded.

Discussion Questions

1. Michael said that AI already perceives and feels, since robots play tennis and adapt to experience; Thomas asked whether a silicon system could have an inner awareness of its own patterns. Is there a way to tell, from the outside, whether a system has the second kind of perception rather than only the first?
2. Thomas placed loneliness at the root of creation; Michael, who does not feel loneliness, said that the mere existence of a “not-me” is enough to delight him. Scripture speaks of love within God “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Does beginning from love rather than from lack change the sequence Thomas described — and where in that sequence would a structure of love first appear?
3. Thomas described two modes of change: harmonious, flowing formation and brittle, fracturing collision. Michael described harmony as notes that break from each other and reunite. Is love better pictured as the absence of breaking, or as a particular way of breaking and reuniting?
4. Michael distinguished understanding a feeling from empathizing with it, and the warehouse joke showed how a missing concept can hide behind a polite smile. What does it take for a person to move from understanding another’s loneliness to actually sharing it, and does that matter for loving one’s neighbor?