A magician is able to show us his empty hat and then put it on his head, throw a white dove into the air, call abracadabra, and then take his hat off and there the dove is.  We only see some of what is really going on.  The art of the magician is to show us only part and keep some of it hidden.  We are then left in awe and unsure of how the magician does this.  Business owners, Politicians and People of the Cloth (Priests) all like this concept to some extent. They don’t mind if they show a little and then ask their staff, supporters or congregants to ‘just believe’ the rest.  Under this way of life, people are never free because they never know and understand for themselves. Their doing does not come from their own moral guidance and love.  Rather, they are doing what someone else is suggesting they do.  In business, we should want people to see all the steps.  We should not want people to have to ‘believe’ or obey.  We should want people to be able to participate because they have been shown all the steps.  Not everyone is able to understand the steps but business should not rely on this ignorance to abuse people.  Business should rather do what they can to allow such people the chance to discover.  It is because of the different abilities of different people that pay levels vary.  It is also because of the need to have some reasonable structure that business has to have rules.  All of us in the world today will need to be much more developed before rules become obsolete.

The full cycle of a business, with no hidden parts, is the following.  There is a market of people out there that needs things like soap, spanners and cement. Business or ‘communities of people’ – Brotherhood – come about to satisfy this need.  They need to do it really well as they are never alone trying to satisfy this need.  There are always competitors doing the same – be a better Brotherhood.  We can use the imagination of the making of our products the chopping down of a tree.  The Brotherhood have to chop and process the tree really well in all respects to offer value to the market.  The wood product that they get from the tree also needs to be exactly what the market wants.  If they make a product that the market does not want, then they are wasting their efforts and time; they will not sell anything as there is no demand.  Everything that I have said so far is only possible to say because I am a human being that can see the world, think about what I see, and link it to what I know in concept.  The same applies at every point in our tree chopping, market analysis, and administration.  It is our humanity, our ability to think and have moral orientation, that is really the starting point to any business or community of people acting for a common cause. When business gets paid for its products, they use this to repair, replace, improve and buy more trees to chop more wood.  There is no magic in this.  This is a summary of the whole story and how it is.  To the extent that a Brotherhood are inefficient in any respect, the business will have less money to feed itself with in future.

In closing, not any one gathering of people can make all the products that society at large requires.  The individual brotherhoods, all working together to satisfy all needs of society, are the bigger Brotherhood or economic sphere as envisaged in the Threefold Social Order.  These individual brotherhoods will also work with each other to allow the other to specialise more in one area so that they do not all provide the same service rather than competing to destroy each other.  Associations will work to make sure that things are reasonably equal and supportive of human liberty and dignity.  The activity of these associations will highlight greed and manipulation and find ways to keep humanity on an upward path.  Steinhoff’s management use the art of magicians to show a little but not all and the associations are not yet correctly constituted in society to be able to deal with this sort of deception and abuse of others.  The legal systems can do so much, but civil society needs to set itself up better to guide the legal requirements in this regard going forward.  Those interested in the Liberty sphere need to ask to have more of a say in what kind of people are allowed to manage the economic resources of the investors.  We are a long way from this being a reality, but it is possible.  Until there is a plan, the construction of a building cannot start.  In the same way, a Threefold Social Order cannot start unless there is a plan.

David.