lkwdblds
Crusader
Thanks for all this interest information!
Thanks Chuck for all this fascinating data! I don't see it at all as a reply to the point I was making in the post of mine which you quoted but that is not important.
I had intense exposure to what was going on way back in 1973 as a S.O. member. I have often wondered about how the S. O. was doing in much more recent times. Your survey is very comprehensive and full of interesting and enlightening data. Most of the material is completely new to me.
I highlighted in blue your comment about them never "tanking". It looks like they are very strongly entrenched. Even so, if they lost their religious exemption and had to pay their work force minimum wage and time and a half for overtime, plus the normal taxes and benefits which a non religious employer must pay, do you thing having to do that would threaten their existence or could they just steamroller their way through it?
Do you have any idea how they might compensate for having to deal with such a problem?
I am starting to see C of S now as a medium sized business run by just one businessman, dictatorial style. There is one C.O.B. who is a dictator and no Board of Directors but only aides who must back up the head man. Supporting the top man and his aides are about 5,000 staff members, nearly all of whom work for a very small stipend.
This team of management and employees service a field of perhaps 35,000 to 50,000 active members. In addition to these hardcore members there are probably several hundred thousand people who have purchased a book or attended a lecture or course of some sort. All of these people constitute their field and for PR reasons, a figure of 10 million is tossed around as the size of the membership. That figure must continually increase per policy, especially since Int Management continuosly asserts that highest evers are occuring in all the key stats. In a year or two, they will be claiming 12 million and the figure will keep growing over the decades regardless of what their actual size truly is.
Meanwhile, their focus has changed away from spiritual counseling and seems to now be focusing more on land and building aquisition as a means to achieve, preserve and grow their wealth.
Lakey
In 2000-2003, while on the PAC RPF, we did renos for the Western US IAS reg office, and those people in the IAS office pull in a hefty chunk, I think a couple hundred Gs weekly, just WUS IAS office.
Of that, they pay to the PAC Estates, for the rooms and boards of all the WUS IAS staff, about 20 persons.
The other PAC Orgs today chip in their cuts for each of their staffs' rooms and boards, which means their berthing costs and food.
THAT all total, from AOLA, the CLO WUS, ASHO D & F, and whatever other "units" have offices at the complex, like the Gold Relay Office (forget it's actual name), the CMO Cont Unit, etc, any of the Sea Org units chip in their costs.
It just so happens that there is STILL a lot of Scientologists still dribbling on lines at AOLA today, witness on Marty's blog the info about AOLA being sort of running at a steady stream of people (like the FSO is continuing to run at a steady stream, again confirmed by recent defectors who have witnessed FSO's production).
So this all means the Sea Org staff ARE able to feed and uniform themselves.
Between the upper Sea Org service orgs, and CC Int has always been very stable, under Dave Petit, for a couple decades now, and they are self sufficient essentially.
The DO have the income, AOLA, FSO, ASHOs, CC Int, and actually, while on the RPF, the PAC staff ate a little better than the HGB (middle managment staff at the HGB), until the HGB started carting their food over from the complex, which they do today, so their food is equal.
In my years of eating Sea Org chow, from 1975, till when I routed OUT of the Sea Org, in 2003, I'd rate the food at the end, as good or better than ANY of the years in the 1980s, and when I left in 2003, it was slightly better than when I got to the complex in November 2000 (coming to the complex from the Int RPF, where we had excellent chow brought to us in the hot boxes, from the Int Base, where the chow is the best of the whole Sea Org echelons, and even on the Int RPF, from Jul 96 till Nov 2000, our chow in hot boxes brought to us at Happy Valley, was better than the chow at PAC when I arrived at PAC, and PAC's food was better than the HGB per the HGB staffer's opinions, and people from the FSO told me the food at PAC was a little better than the FSO, the staff food I'm talking about.)
I think the Sea Org creature comforts, berthing, was the "best" at the end, when I routed out, 2003, compared to any prior years in the Sea Org, with some exceptions.
I saw a general creature comfort for Sea Org staffs, in the HGB (middle management level) and PAC Sea Org echelon, IMPROVE over the years.
All of the PAC building are internally renovated.
I believe a MAJOR increase to the creature comforts is from the
IAS income source.
With the IAS doing regging at each cont, attached to ALL Sea Org bases, THAT is a NEW and stable, and scott free cut of income that goes INTO the Sea Org basic survival things, the food and berthing, since there is a slight trickle down, as the IAS Cont units PAY money to the Estates Orgs of each Sea Org base.
At FSO and Int Base, the food and berthing isn't particularly necessarily effected, since at the FSO and Int Base, they get their Sea Org food money as their cuts of the FSO profits weekly. HGB gets a cut of FSO profits, and all CSI, which includes the HGB orgs and OSA, get their FSO weekly income cut.
On Marty's blog, these details of the stable income scene are some of the unfortunate truths of the intransigence of official Scientology.
They (official Scientology) ARE unfortunately more stable than in earlier years, and I think one of the key things is the IAS commissions that the orgs get, for pushing their parishioners to MAKE those IAS donations, for which the orgs get their commissions on those IAS donations, and then the IAS Cont regging units themselves are an added NEW income source that helps with the local Sea Org base creature comforts.
I think the dirty little secret in the Cont Sea Org units, is that the IAS payments to the Cont Estates Orgs, is enough to keep the whole Cont Sea Org bases FED each week, and the building utilities costs all dealt with.
So, that's the money stablity.
Now, another dismal fact I've observed.
Not all defectors from the Sea Org go SP and into the independent or change of religion category.
Some ex Sea Org members, we need surveys, but the damn LA region is FULL of probably thousands of ex Sea Org members who work at Scientology businesses (businesses made up by mostly ex Sea Org members and ex GO staff, and ex regular Scientology Org or Mission staff, and all manner of Scientologists).
The number of ex staff Scientologists who work in what we call "Scientology businesses" is goddamn huge, and should be surveyed.
My old boss, Al Baker just quit the Sea Org, and works in some Scientology company in Glendale now.
The number of ex staff, ex Sea Org, in the world, THE VAST MAJORITY are somehow suckered into being in Scientology businesses, they get suckered into buying books, since it's okay to buy books even if you haven't paid your freeloader debt.
Even I, not having paid my freeloader debt, the first year OUT of the Sea Org, off the PAC RPF, I lived in a half way house I call it, but it was a house owned by an LA Fdn staffer, and he made it into a rooming house that was filled ONLY with staff at LA Fdn, or working at Scientology businesses, and I worked for an ex Gold Staff member who had 4 Scientologists, the rest wogs, in his Cabinet shop business in Burbank. I did that for a year, left LA, moved to Pittsburgh, and since July 2004 started posting on Clambake and then A.R.S.
But my perception and watching what is happening, they have a stable NEW source of "public" in the form of ex staff, ex Sea Org.
SO MORE detailed surveying of their sources of income, and more raw info is needed.
I don't seem them tanking, no matter what.
These exposes are helping them adapt.
They are downsizing, I think Keith Henson, correctly noted on ARS some time ago, that they needed to downsize to survive, and I think that's one thing DM would agree with Keith Henson, and that's why they downsized the Int Base.
The Int Base was too big and Gold/Int was NOT producing like the IAS "sector", nor producing like the Sea Org service orgs and FSO are producing stable income for the movement.
Gold Base was a drain, technically,with not enough income being driven into the orgs for all the slick promotion and products coming out of Gold, plus for all the reasons in Marc Headley's must read book (Marc's book is a gold mine of info, and the maps in his book alone are so damn important and historical, showing ALL of the Int Base buildings, and Miscavige is probably right about Gold Base not being viable and thus the decision to downsize Gold Base is correct, but Gold Base economics is out of my pay grade, I think LRH's ideas of marketing and promoting Scientology are wrong in the long run in any event, since the whole marketing is positioning, and positioning as Scientology does it is dishonest. Scientology's a talk therapy and high volume exorcism of dead space aliens, and it should just honestly advertise itself for what it is). Correct positioning for Scientology honestly should be like the gaudy ads in the late 1960s, early 1970s, just advertise it for all its gaudy science fiction stuff, since it truly is science fictionesque whole track high volume exorcism of dead alien souls which have been mentally gunked up due to the Xenu hydrogen bomb Wall of Fire/4th Dynamic Engram and 36 1/2 days of bad mental implanting in the special 3D movie theaters to all those mass murdered deal alien souls, that today infest us all, supposedly!)
A couple years ago other former Int Base marketing people, Shelly Corrias Brit, for one, said that it was impossible to market Scientology to the public and get results like were expected, and that's just a big agreement with what you said above. Scientology can't be sold like it used to, leaving in my opinion, only their offspring as their captive audience and recruit pool.
Gold Base I don't think has much dent in the income scene, and LRH was daft to think Gold Base and becoming the international dissemination org for the planet, was ever going to become viable. It's the mass deceptive product sales marketing unit on the planet.
With the internet with the truth about Scientology's "upper levels" who wants to buy high volume exorcism techniques for imaginary dead space alien souls that supposedly infest one?
Scientology's turned in on itself, and as long at it makes babies in the Scientology community, the new kids who don't see the internet, and don't eject out of their parents crazy science fiction high volume exorcism religion, the kids who get suckered into their parents Scientology world, the numbers that make up the bottom part of the movement, after all the suckers suckered into it so far die off, that'll be the deciding long range point.
I think the huge 1970s influx of Scientologists, the baby boomers, we'll see Scientology's decline I think more slowly.
and also for now, there are a lot of the foreign Sea Org members stuck in the FSO and other Sea Org orgs, who came over for a better life in the US, and were jazzed to be in the Sea Org and get their Bridge for free. Those make up a chunk of the FSO and some Sea Org orgs. THose that get kicked out of the Sea Org, settle into Scientology businesses, become to varying degrees Scientology public.
There's a lot of those that make up the movement, and keep its wheels turning.
Thanks Chuck for all this fascinating data! I don't see it at all as a reply to the point I was making in the post of mine which you quoted but that is not important.
I had intense exposure to what was going on way back in 1973 as a S.O. member. I have often wondered about how the S. O. was doing in much more recent times. Your survey is very comprehensive and full of interesting and enlightening data. Most of the material is completely new to me.
I highlighted in blue your comment about them never "tanking". It looks like they are very strongly entrenched. Even so, if they lost their religious exemption and had to pay their work force minimum wage and time and a half for overtime, plus the normal taxes and benefits which a non religious employer must pay, do you thing having to do that would threaten their existence or could they just steamroller their way through it?
Do you have any idea how they might compensate for having to deal with such a problem?
I am starting to see C of S now as a medium sized business run by just one businessman, dictatorial style. There is one C.O.B. who is a dictator and no Board of Directors but only aides who must back up the head man. Supporting the top man and his aides are about 5,000 staff members, nearly all of whom work for a very small stipend.
This team of management and employees service a field of perhaps 35,000 to 50,000 active members. In addition to these hardcore members there are probably several hundred thousand people who have purchased a book or attended a lecture or course of some sort. All of these people constitute their field and for PR reasons, a figure of 10 million is tossed around as the size of the membership. That figure must continually increase per policy, especially since Int Management continuosly asserts that highest evers are occuring in all the key stats. In a year or two, they will be claiming 12 million and the figure will keep growing over the decades regardless of what their actual size truly is.
Meanwhile, their focus has changed away from spiritual counseling and seems to now be focusing more on land and building aquisition as a means to achieve, preserve and grow their wealth.
Lakey