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Economics in the Nation of God
Introduction Not surprisingly, since the
One big difference that will immediately be noticed in the Nation of God is that people in business will be motivated by the fun of turning their energy and talent into a profit for themselves. People enjoy certain kinds of challenges, e.g., seeing if they can bring a price down, performing more efficiently, capturing a larger market, etc. Money may be a convenience and a reward, but it’s not the prime motivation for healthy, energetic people. As for material wealth, it is anticipated that after a few generations the very best would be available to everyone and that everyone would soon live like a millionaire, but would not require a millionaire’s income in order to enjoy those advantages.
Many people in this culture share a certain preoccupation with money. Perhaps if we understand more about money, it will take on a better perspective. We sometimes lose sight of the fact that any currency that we have today is really based on human effort. Basing it on how much gold you have in the central bank, or something of that sort, is just a way of keeping score. For instance, if you want to buy lumber to build a house, the only value that should be represented in that lumber is the amount of human effort it took to cut the tree down, to dress the lumber, and to move it from where it was cut down to the mart where it’s being sold. That should be all that’s Involved. Of course, there are some equipment costs which have to be amortized. Machinery has to move it and cut it and develop it in one way or another, and that has to be pro-rated over the value of that particular piece of lumber. Now, in our present system, the person who owns the tree can charge whatever he chooses or whatever the market well bear, and he gets a percentage of the lumber. In Lemuria, the Commonwealth owned all natural resources. The Angelic Host created all these things for us. No man created a mineral or a tree, so it seems unnatural that he should be paid for the labor of Angels, at the expense of other people.
If this seems foreign to us, we must note that the right of Eminent Domain was built into our system in the early days of our government, when it was decreed that the land is owned by the commonwealth, and we have a deed to its usage. We can build houses or factories on that land, but if the government says that a freeway is to go through there, then we find out how little we own it! We’ve only purchased the right to use the land we buy. In the Nation of God, corporations can actually be operating some utility, but only under the control and at the behest of the commonwealth, a referendum-based government.
Corporate Structure So public ownership of natural resources will help to eliminate human greed; and high-quality products will end what we know as “planned obsolescence.” In our present society people who are in the higher echelons of a corporation, generally speaking, are the ones who have capitalized it, and they expect more return from a job than the person whom they hire to do the work.
In the Lemurian system in the Nation of God, rather than the stock market, the commonwealth provides money for capital equipment of a corporation. It owns the factory and all the machinery. It sees to it that what is being produced by that corporation is valuable to the commonwealth; otherwise the government wouldn’t have invested in it and licensed the corporation management in the first place.
Although the means for production and distribution is owned by the commonwealth, the Lemurian system is not collectivist in any way. Everything is designed so that a worker receives in direct proportion to the amount of effort that he puts forth, or the amount of skill that he has to bring to bear in a corporation. A corporation is people, and the purpose of a group of people coming together to work in a corporation is to maximize the return on the effort that they put forth every day. There are greater efficiencies possible within the specializations of many different people coming together in a corporation—rather than one person trying to do everything or to learn everything and not being expert at anything. Usually a sole proprietor ends up being a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. However, the cooperative teamwork of specialists is to the advantage of all concerned.
Also, a profit-oriented situation does not have to lead to the lack of parity between executives and workers which we see today. Everyone in the Nation of God is definitely a first-class citizen, because eventually the only persons who can he allowed to live there are those who have achieved Initiation and higher. Some people choose to do work in the shop, some like to be engineers, some like to sell things. There’s something for everyone, and they can do what they want. The time and skills that people put in are comparable between various trades. A machinist has a highly salable and desirable skill that he is marketing, and so does the executive. There is no reason for management to enjoy vastly greater wealth, status and privilege than labor. That disparity will disappear in the new Nation.
Competition serves as incentive in our present-day society, but in many cases monopolies have been given to utilities, and the control of the resources and how business is done is in the hands of a small segment of the populace for private profit. In the Nation of God, engineers, cost accountants, people who would know exactly how much it should take in order to do a given job can establish what the fair price would be that they could charge. Of course, it’s up to the efficiency and energy of the individuals to make a profit on that basis, and it is important that everybody make some profit.
Profit and Distribution In the U.S. there is now a system of laissez-faire, so that people can, if they find a way of making money, do whatever they want and charge anything they want to. It was seen that people abused that, and so antitrust laws were passed. People in the Nation of God will have to be educated as to what the karmic consequences are of trying to get something which they haven’t earned and will know that there’s no possibility of doing that in the larger view of things.
If we examine profit markups today, we will find that it is not what it costs to get something to the marketplace; prices are based on what the market will bear. Four and five hundred percent markups are not at all uncommon. In many cases that is the minimum a company can charge if they are to stay in business, often due to many levels of inefficiency. Whatever the reason for such inflated prices, if your prices are too unreasonable, then someone is going to take over your market.
A very efficient Mart System was used in Lemuria, and it will be reinstituted in the Nation of God. This is where there is only one distribution system, and only one store in each town from which to buy things. The Mart System eliminates all the middlemen and controls all distribution—transportation from the factory, warehousing, and getting the goods to all the stores throughout the nation. All agricultural products will also be distributed that way, so true parity will obtain in the agricultural markets, assuring the farmer of his true profits.
With the Lemurian System, the idea was that the maximum size of a city was 250 thousand persons, and generally there was no more than eight miles on a side, which means the centrally-located mart would never be more than four miles from any person’s home. They had a delivery system, which we expect to recreate also. A person didn’t have to go to a store, just telephoned an order of what they wanted and had the goods delivered. If you want to pick out some ready-made clothing or see what kind of hardware items there are for something you want to do, you can go to the Mart, which will be like a large department store in the Nation of God.
Having just one store saves a great deal of money. Each store now, say a furniture company or an industrial supply company, has a large stock which might not be called on for six months at a time. That warehouse space has to be figured into the cost. There may be shrinkage or deterioration as well.
Interest also is a major expense for each store. In the Lemurian System, there was no interest charged on anything. Interest charges were completely illegal because they do not fit in with karmic law. Given the fact that the inability to pay interest on vast debts is a major cause of bankruptcy in many nations, probably including our own, a world without interest charges is intriguing indeed.
Other Benefits of the Lemurian Economic System Management and labor will work together as a team, and the best outfit which can produce a service or material, etc., will be appointed by the commonwealth to do that. If we eliminate the duplication of various stores and firms, then it naturally follows that there will be less work to do and that the workweek will be shortened. Twelve hours per week is the work-week in the Lemurian System. Such a work-week will fit the needs of people who have already evolved themselves to being Initiates in the Brotherhoods. They will have time to pursue education and to help in the education of their children, as well as to help their children to pick up the very fine attitudes and customs which are in the culture around them. There will be freedom to pursue knowledge and higher truth, and there will also be freedom from the multiplicity of laws which we know today. People will not be transgressing the law because of the philosophy taught to the populace. Customs will be loving.
There will never be taxes in the Nation of God. There will be the expectation that everyone will contribute ten percent of their income to provide for the various municipal services and governmental services that would benefit everyone. There would also be an expectation that each individual would tithe ten percent of their income to the work of God, which is essentially to the educational system. Ongoing education of adults and children would be the very basis of the high level advancement and the continuation of that advancement in the Nation of God.
There is little stability in the economy we know today. The present government of the U.S. now over-spends tens of billions of dollars every year, and that has brought us to the point of no return, economically. Paying the interest on that debt is barely possible, and the threat of inflation or deflation looms over us at all times. There will be no chance of that kind of instability in the Nation of God for there will be no inflation, no rising taxes, no interest and no banking system to regulate money. The unit of human labor will keep the monetary system stable and eliminate any inflation. Careful cost-accounting will monitor all finances. Such a system can keep going indefinitely, given the training in basic morality and the refinement of the citizenry in the Nation of God.
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