Orderly Devolution to a Low-Trust society

Southern Belle had an interesting insight that she shared with me on our trip to Detroit Metro Airport to pick up Handsome Hombre.

S-B tends to hold her cards close to her vest. As somebody immersed in the working-world, she realizes that being too forth-coming in her political or religious views can make her a target. Those zipped-lips extend to family as well. I am still not 100% sure what her opinions are and that is OK.

I was sharing my perceptions that society will fragment as the government became increasingly hostile to productive people and anybody who does not demonstrate 100% loyalty to the Government every day of the week. Over time, that will result in concentric rings of loyalty where every person will first be loyal to self-and-family, then tribe, then village... Some groups would anticipate events and manage an orderly retreat and not lose too much productivity. The majority will be totally surprised and the transition will be a total fertilizer-storm.

I also mentioned the concentric-ring model (also called Low-Trust model) was the rule historically and still was the norm in Latin America and Spain, Italy, Greece and the "Developing" countries.

The most successful early-adapters will adopt working models that already have the bugs worked out rather than inventing their own and remaking many avoidable mistakes. The challenge is to find a concentric-ring model that is fully compatible with the current, US culture.

That is when S-B surprised me.

"I think the Mormons (also known as the Church of the Latter Day Saints) might have what you are looking for" she said.

Historically, the US Government has sometimes been hostile toward the LDS church. The LDS church is also institutionally aligned with being prepared since one of the pivotal events in their history was the diaspora which saw a major portion of the LDS church move from the mid-West to Utah. For those readers who are members of the LDS church, please forgive me if I skate over this and perpetuate inaccurate myths.

It is her perception that the LDS culture is very hospitable toward incubating businesses in the sense that a young family with a business concept can easily find legal, accounting, web-design and the host of other professional services required be a fledgling enterprise.

It should come as no surprise that the fledgling business is "hooked-up" with other LDS church-member's businesses.

Of particular interest is that LDS professionals help the new business dance on the safe side of the tax evasion/avoidance line. In many cases, with a little bit of foresight and advance planning actions that could be perceived as evasion can be legitimately defended in an audit as avoidance. That is one of the risks that is unique to the more Developed Countries. All countries have greedy tax-codes but the Developed Countries have more layers to detect the (potentially taxable) flow of resources.

Getting back to the point, the model represented by the Church of the Latter Day Saints (at least in certain areas) is a good departure point for an orderly development of a parallel economy.