TheOriginalBigBlue
Gold Meritorious Patron
Since I have been in since the late 60's, there has been an evolution of Scientology itself. It was relatively cheap in the beginning - for like $400 in 1960's money you could buy grades senior Dianetics through grade 4, power was $500 and the BC was $1500 The whole focus was on case gain, training, auditing. The staff was paid shit money - like $15-$2 / week for a person like me with no training, no staff statuses, no divisional training. As you got trained, did post and divisional courses, had a higher up post etc., you got more points, and thus more pay.
Then, some time in the eighties, it all changed. It turned into a bureaucracy. I saw the handwriting on the wall - it was for the rich. It no longer cared about the average Joe. The prices increased monthly, the IAS was formed. Before that, they believed in the tech admin ratio - they had a good amount of staff in tech and qual delivering scientology. About the time they bought the manor, I found an internal posting base letter - and it showed they had a vast amount of people posted in pac base on admin staff and a few on tech and qual.
That's where I think it started to take a turn for the worse, it became all about the money - actually that's not accurate - it became about jealousy and greed. Hubbard and Miscavage were jealous of the Missions, some of which were out producing the orgs, and were making really good money, and paying their staff well, and in their greed to take that money away from those "sp mission holders" they cut their feeder network.
If they had truly been smart about the money - they would have asked themselves, what are they doing that is successful that we aren't doing? They would have geared up for mass delivery of the lower grades and life repair in great volume. But the dynamic duo couldn't have someone else running it better than they could. So they killed the goose that laid golden eggs.
Then they pushed the ot levels, flag services, the L's etc which had reduced workability compared to the lower levels and when that failed, they switched to all donos all the time with no delivery. Thus it became imperative to build a legal shell to protect themselves from refunding gobs of money.
So the need for lying evolved all along. Hubbard just couldn't accept that the only workable part was the lower level talk healing that the grades and life repair were working and what the public wanted, and the rest was better shelved. Think how different it would be if they switched horses in the sixties, and said Hubbard was deep in super confidential upper level research - and never released a single OT level. A rumor here, another sighting of Hubbard and his super elite squad there, a slick dog and pony show, but they pushed the lower levels, got people training and delivering those talk based processes in volume. Other than the dog and pony show that would never produce fruit, they would never have to lie, fair game etc. It would be the largest self help group in existence.
Think how much richer they'd be, with almost no legal repercussions. No need for disconnection, fair gaming etc. Nope. What's wrong with Scientology then and now is the same sickness - know betterism at the top.
Mimsey
I think LRH ordered the price run ups around 1980. Within 6 years he would be mentally incompetent or dead. If he was going to stamp his name in history, the crunch was on. Those last desperate years probably most defined what the organization would become to this day.
Enter the age of monument building.
