Episode 65: Free speech at USC and Google, Michael Jordan wins at NASCAR, churchofjesuschrist.org, Owning and employing as a pathway to wealth and wellbeing

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The Thought Provoker:

Matt is up first this week. Two big stories this week related to free speech. In the first, the University of Southern California canceled a graduation speech by a valedictorian who is Muslim and has social media posts that support Palestinians. They say that it is a question of safety. In the second, Google has terminated 28 employees after a series of protests against labor conditions and the company’s contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. Both of these are private organizations, so there is not technically a violation of the First Amendment. Are either of these organizations wrong to punish free speech in this manner?

Next up, Sam. Michael Jordan wins at NASCAR

Finally, Shawn. In recent episodes we engaged in topics that lead us to seek for answers from our church’s website: churchofjesuschrist.org. We were able to find answers that supported both sides of a few discussions and on the surface seemed to contradict each other. One example was the proper use of the word “Mormonism” and another was whether or not the family proclamation is doctrine. I believe I know the answer to why these contradictions occur on the website and am 100% ok with them but my question to you both is…why do you think these contradictions occur on the website and is it a problem?

The Big Question: New research by Gallup shows that 67% of people who are employer-owners (an employee who owns shares in their company or the right to the value of shares in their company) are thriving in well-being. Only 51% of employees are thriving, and only 48% of self-employed workers are thriving. This is interesting because each of us fits into one of those categories. Is one form of employment better than the others? Why are so many employer-owners thriving?

For this research, Gallup measured subjective wellbeing along five dimensions:

1 Engagement at work

2 Evaluation of employment situation

3 General life evaluation

4 Financial wellbeing

5 Whether basic needs are being met
Cory writes, “Your discussion from last week about the Family Proclamation was very interesting and shows that it can be used as both a spiritual and political document. I often hear church members say that the proclamation came out of nowhere seemed very uncontroversial at the time. However, the church leaders knew what they were doing and were very much concerned at the time it was released. I would like to provide some information about how the Family Proclamation has been used as a political document from the beginning. There is ample evidence that the 1995 Family Proclamation was in response to the emerging legal environment when the 1993 Hawaii supreme court ruled that prohibiting same-sex marriages was discrimination. The Hawaii constitution contained ambiguous language about the gender of people soliciting marriage, and a case in 1993 brought this issue into national attention. Shortly after being called as an apostle in 1984, Dallin H. Oaks circulated memo with the senior church leaders