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A reader on Joe Howard's (Dan Koon's) new blog on www.RediscoverScientology.com which was launched last night (click to visit) asked about the 10% price increases instituted by LRH in the 1980s. Instead of stopping once Church prices had been correctly adjusted for inflation, the Church continued to increase prices affecting not only services, but even the price of books.
In 1989, after learning the ropes in marketing as a project manager for two years, I took over as the "Dianetics Route Marketing Officer" in Central Marketing Unit, responsible for all marketing relating to the Dianetics Route internationally. One of my first self-determined actions after getting on post was to review the prices of LRH's Dianetics books internationally because they had somehow been allowed to spiral upward out of control.
I confronted an unbelievably suppressive situation. At the time I thought the situation "had somehow been allowed to happen" and must have been due to oversight and neglect. In some of the poorer nations the price of a Dianetics book was higher than the average wages for an entire month! Can you imagine a normal book made of paper costing over $1,000 today? Well, that's what it was like for people living in other countries where normal wages in US dollars were as I recall less than two bucks a day.
Even a small hardback book like Advanced Procedures and Axioms was priced at $36 in the US. So no one was buying them. DMSMH was bigger, but more important, so it had somehow been given a special "low" price of only $32 each. Tack on shipping and taxes, and by the time these books reached Haiti, Papua New Guinea, Eastern Europe, the Far East or anywhere in Africa the prices were astronomical. No one could afford to buy one. Even in the US the prices were way, way, way, way, way, way, way out of line.
My investigation found there was absolutely no valid reason for the prices to be so high. Books didn't even cost that much to produce! The LRH pricing formula and policies were not being applied. "Someone" had continued the 10% price increase that started in 1980 until book prices were astronomical.
BEI (Books Exec Int, who's name was Sandy) told me she had tried to adjust the prices of books about two years earlier, and got herself flattened. After that, she gave up.
Undeterred, I submitted my solution. It was a huge proposal, fully researched, which I spent a couple of feverish months working on... only to have it resoundingly rejected by guess who?
You guessed it: Adolf Hit... I mean, David Miscavige. The submission was forwarded through CO CMU, Bill Dendiu, and Marketing Exec Int, Ronnie Miscavige, (they both approved it). Both were driven out of the Church long ago by David Miscavige. Ronnie took my pricing submission "up the hill" and personally presented it to David Miscavige. Well, Hitler went atomic and said "No way are we going to degrade LRH's books" -- which was a non-sequitur smoke screen since no one was suggesting to do anything except what LRH advised, which was make his books affordable.
When Ronnie brought the submission back to me he looked shell shocked. He was apologetic and didn't have much to say about it. I could tell he had gotten blasted because he, being on-Source, had supported the handling.
That was proof that the suppressive book pricing -- i.e. denying LRH tech to millions of people -- was NOT an accident that "had somehow been allowed to happen" as I thought originally. Clearly Scientology was being suppressed from the very highest level: David Miscavige, Chairman of the Board RTC was counter intending dissemination, personally stopping people from buying LRH books on an international scale by making them so expensive no one could afford them.
Anyone attempting to handle this was branded for "intending to degrade LRH books" -- a total lie, of course. And within a year I was inexplicably assigned to the RPF. Today I know I had put the bullseye on my own forehead by spotting DM.
If you are on the fence about David Miscavige, think about the people in places like Haiti who were reaching for the tech but couldn't afford a book. Miscavige has zero compassion, zero interest in helping others, zero interest in the humanitarian mission of Scientology. And he's made anything to do with Scientology abhorrent to the world at large. How would you feel about an organization that offered "freedom, only $1,000 a book." At the 1989 SMI Mission Holder's Conference, about 200 people came representing "pioneer areas." They asked myself and MEI about the prices saying, "No one can afford to buy even one book!" Instead they would pool their money to buy one book, then pass it around until the pages were tattered and worn. All because of one man's insatiable avarice... or worse. LRH said "Books are Dissemination" so when you strike at books, you are striking at the very heart of Scientology and that's what David Miscavige has done.
If you were around then, I'm sure you remember the prices. There was no reason for it. In fact, the orgs were absolutely LOADED up with book stocks, which was another Miscavige ploy in the early 1980s to get the book sales (stats) out the roof to trick LRH into trusting Miscavige.
The guy is so foul there ought to be a picture of him in every urinal. You could replace the skull and cross bones on toxic waste with a photo of David Miscavige and have a warning that was truly appropriate.
Miscavige didn't want people reading LRH books. He never gave a DAMN about the poor, or helping people to create a better future for themselves. Where would some of these countries like Haiti be today if only they had been allowed to buy LRH books in the 1980s when they originally wanted them?
The situation was so suppressive it made me sick for a few weeks. But I never gave up, because giving up on the human race is not an option. I know you feel the same way or you wouldn't be reading this now.
Today we know what to do and we're doing it. We're saying NO! to suppression. Independent Scientologists together are greater than David Miscavige. It is a group situation and even a 4th dynamic situation and you are helping to make it go right.
Written by Thoughtful
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"Scientology has been taken over by a self-appointed dictator, David Miscavige, who has turned the Creed of the Church of Scientology, the Code of a Scientologist, and the Credo of a True Group Member on their heads and instituted the virtual practice of Reverse (Black) Dianetics..." 
Comments
I am from Nicaragua. The pro medium YEAR wages are 300DS! It always pissed me to no end the fact that "upstat" was defined as "having a lot", not "doing a lot"
A hard worker who works day and night is regarded as "downstat" compared to some kid in USA whose weekly stipend is 50DS even if has not worked a minute in is life!
This is a really right indication. Thanks.
In fact, I just checked his lyrics. Pretty appropriate:
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues, and you know it don't come easy.
You don't have to shout or leap about,
You can even play them easy.
Forget about the past and all your sorrows,
The future won't last,
It will soon be over tomorrow.
I don't ask for much, I only want trust,
And you know it don't come easy.
This love of mine keeps growing all the time,
And you know it just ain't easy.
Open up your heart, let's come together,
Use a little love,
And we will make it work out better.
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,
And you know it don't come easy.
You don't have to shout or leap about,
You can even play them easy.
Peace, remember peace is how we make it,
Here within your reach
If you're big enough to take it.
I don't ask for much, I only want trust,
And you know it don't come easy.
And this love of mine keeps growing all the time,
And you know it don't come easy.
Maybe you can help me one more time. I tried to post a comment to Dan's article and went in as a guest poster. All I get is please wait...forever. I couldn't figure out how to set up a user name either so would love some instruction or to at least notify the site that a poster is having trouble posting. This is the second time I have tried to unsuccessful comment on that site.
Thanks
for this revealing article. You are truly auditing the group engram of the 80s, a decade that due to financial irregularities destroyed the lives of so many dedicated scientologists. Even if the horrible facts make me wanna puke, it is a great relief to understand what was going on behind the curtains. Please, please continue, the TA is moving!
I was proud when I said that. I am not rich and I get upset easily but I am more than I look.
They look at all the poor as trash and even those who get upset. I want no part of a group that does so.
It would be worth looking over all the various advices that arose out of the 1982 Int Stat Analysis.
There was an advice in there that dealt with the Int GI and was commenting on the usual "one week peak" every month. First of all - and this is a paraphrase of course - Hubbard expresses amazement that "284" is still in force. And suggesting that Management needs to find a way to wean the orgs off it - lol. Hubbard points out that the prices are way too high. This is 1982... regges and crew members in the orgs were being commeved, put in conditions, declared for saying exactly that! I was reading this advice in 1984 and this problem had, even then, not been handled.
It is hard for me to convey how angry I was when I read this piece of crap advice. My wife was an FSC at the time and regularly, in 1984, got handlings because she thought the prices were too high. As I had I when I was an FSC. Two years after Hubbard had said it, two more dumb years of unhandled prices rises and people were being beaten up about it. Even though they were "right" and management was "wrong" and management knew it. [...]
www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?p=18669#post18669
Anyone else read or knew about that LRH advice on prices being too high?
Not only that but hundreds of Ron's lectures can fit on a small flash drive or can be downloaded through iTunes for much cheaper than what Miscavige is asking for a bulky set of CDs!
Ironic that with today's technology we can make the tech easily available to anyone who wants it, cheaply and more efficiently than we were able to in the past and yet the man supposedly responsible for the expansion of Scientology is preventing this from occurring!
You reminded me that I often would get asked about why we charge so much for "church" services. I had my standard patter about the costs of building rentals, utilities, etc. And I made no bones about staff pay. I always said that staff were here because they believed in the technology and wanted to help improve lives. They really didn't get paid much and they were more like volunteers. That was okay with me and those I was handling.
But looking at things in retrospect, all I was doing was justifying DM's corruption. The high prices ended up just benefitting the very few and the introduction of ideal orgs just completely threw staff and public into slavery.
I recall multiple emergency FP sessions just prior to and in the year following achieving ideal org status. Sometimes it was over a utiltiy bill, other times the mortgage. I watched senior execs beg public to help, public who already had been ravaged by IAS and building fundraising. Every time this happened, I knew the staff wouldn't get paid, they'd go a little more PTS, get a little more gaunt etc.
Public and staff need to open their eyes to the cause and effect of backing DM. His actions affect every Scientologist and staff member on the planet, if not directly, indirectly.
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