Both the Nephites and the Jaredites suffered the curse of the 8th commandment, thou shalt not steal (Ex 20:15). The natural effect of a society which ignores this commandment is the chaos and paranoia described among the Jaredites. The Nephite treasures similarly became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land…for behold no man could keep that which was his own, for the thieves and the robbers…in the land (Mormon 1:18; 2:10). Again, the Book of Mormon teaches us that when we obtain any cursing from God, it is by disobedience to that law upon which it is predicated (see DC 130:21). That a man should lay his tool or his sword upon his shelf, and then, on the morrow, not find it was because of the collective Jaredite disobedience to the 8th commandment.
The First Presidency
“We are not given the step-by-step backsliding of this Jareditic civilization till it reached the social and governmental chaos the record sets out, but those steps seem wholly clear from the results. Put into modern terms, we can understand them. First there was a forsaking of the righteous life, and the working of wickedness; then must have come the extortion and oppression of the poor by the rich; then retaliation and reprisal by the poor against the rich; then would come a cry to share the wealth which should belong to all; then the easy belief that society owed every man a living whether he worked or not; then the keeping of a great body of idlers; then when community revenues failed to do this, as they always have failed and always will fail, a self-helping by one to the goods of his neighbor; and finally when the neighbor resisted, as resist he must, or starve with his family, then death to the neighbor and all that belonged to him. This was the decreed ‘fulness of iniquity’ (Ether 2:10).” (Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark, David O. McKay, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:99 as taken from Latter-day Commentary on the Book of Mormon compiled by K. Douglas Bassett, p. 507-8)