COMPETITION AND THE CHURCH DISCLAIMER: The entirety of the following without exception is my opinion and my opinion only, expressed as true to my opinion as I could. There may be errors of a factual or otherwise nature, and I apologize for them in advance. Homer ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I wrote this in 1993 and it is as true today as it was then. It has to do with competition. In Russia they tell you what to make, who to sell it to and how much to charge for it. Marx tried to create the ultimate welfare state, to each according to his need, and from each according to his ability. The non producers OWNED the producers! America however was built upon free enterprise and competition. To each according to their ability to produce, and from each according to their need to consume. If they can produce a lot, they deserve to get rich. If they don't need to consume a lot, they deserve to save even more! In America people don't deserve to live just because they breathe or were born. People who consume more than they produce are granted some charity to keep them alive, but they are not granted the right to live the life of the real producers. And part of the rewards of being a real producer is being able to live a better life than those who are not as able. But that's not fair you say. Its quite fair, survival of the fittest. Otherwise the world becomes over populated with non producing consumers, parasites. Parasites have a very different concept of fair, "Hey you won't let me suck your blood, unfair!" America's founding fathers realized that competition was the essence of a healthy economy. Without competition, prices soar sky high, products are shoddy, there are no warranties, no terms, no after market support and no motivation to engage in innovation to improve or add new products. If you are the only one who can make boats, and everyone needs a boat, who cares if its a GOOD boat, you will make the minimum necessary boat (least expensive to produce) and sell it for maximum top dollar to those desperate for them. Ethics alone are not enough to guarantee a better market. So American business law recognized this and thus created laws forbidding monopolies. Sometimes a company becomes so successful that they just manage to wipe out all competitors in the course of things, and so they become monopolies. In other cases the owners of the company SET OUT to produce a monopoly using fear, intimidation and other criminal tactics to destroy the competition, my opinion. Reference: SIMON BOLIVAR and FAIR GAME. The general purpose of the government is to protect honest business people from criminals who would violate the principles of fair trade, and just so it is also their purpose to break up monopolies and punish those that knowingly and willingly try to create them. Now LRH had a problem, to wit: HCOPL 19 March 68, SERVICE "Competition is a trick of the weak to fetter the strong." LRH didn't think competition was a good thing, he didn't WANT anyone building another bridge or improving his own and he ordered the Church to take whatever actions necessary to destroy any competition. LRH SET OUT KNOWINGLY AND WILLINGLY TO CREATE A FINANCIAL MONOPOLY CORPORATION IN SPIRITUAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. That actually makes him a criminal by American Law. Imagine if Newton or Galileo or Edison or Einstein had tried to do the same thing? You know its not like someone stole a McDonald's hamburger and set up shop selling McDonald's hamburgers without franchise permission. No, people made their own hamburgers and set up shop selling them as their own hamburgers and STILL LRH came after them. LRH DIDN'T WANT ANYONE *HELPING* ANYONE EXCEPT HIS CHURCH, WITH HIS TECH, PERIOD END OF STORY. Even if he thought his own tech was the best, his efforts to stop others from tech finding and or improving on his own tech were inexcusable vainglory, greed and selfishness. Further if you take a look at the structure of the Church, there is no voting of people into positions of power or authority, its political structure is run like a fascism. So much as complaining about a Senior could get you demoted. And the Church's pay structure is run like a communism, from each according to their ability, work 24 hours a day until you drop dead, and to each according to their need, rice and beans, 1500 calories a day. And some parts of the Church at various times may have acted like a Spiritual Mafia, surrounded by enforcers or soldiers with license to destroy forming a Spiritual Thuggery, my opinion. Homer COMPETITION AND THE CHURCH ACT - 35 28 December 1993 Copyright (C) 1993 Homer Wilson Smith Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes. You gotta understand something about the Church of Scientology. It is a MACHINE. A machine for clearing people. It has its comm lines, and its production facilities, and its quality control section and it has lots and lots of people operating the various posts of this machine with various levels of training. Now although LRH said that absolutes were unobtainable in the physical universe, the people who own and operate this machine tend to think their production line is perfect or if it isn't perfect it is at least workable enough for anyone who isn't a total suppressive. But you have to understand that the THEORY behind the machine and the physical implementation of the machine are two very different things. The THEORY may be able to clear you, even though the machine falls short of the mark. You know you can ask the pc in front of you if he has an ARC break, (break in Affinity, Reality or Communication, an upset in other words) and ask him and ask him until the cows come home, and the meter won't read, and the pc will say 'I don't know' or give you some insignificant charge, and in the end you won't get the ARC break, and the pc will stay ARC broken and eventually leave. You can blame this on the meter, you can blame this on the Auditor's metering ability, you can blame this on his TR's, (Training Routines or session presence) or his ability to impinge on the pc's bank. You can blame it on the fact that the auditor or the C/S (Case Supervisor) was a meatball who had more ARC breaks than the pc. Or you can blame it on the preclear, he becomes a dog pc. You can blame it on anything you wish, but the fact is that the pc had an ARC break, and the ARC break did not get pulled. Now assume for a moment that the fault is not with the theory but with the implementation of the theory. This presents a problem. Not everyone can be as highly trained as the next guy, not everyone can have his own case in as good a shape as he needs, not every C/S will have as many hours in the chair as every other one. So there is great variance across the quality of service that you might expect to find in any given Org at any given moment of time. Yet the pc has put his money down. Once in an Org he has no say about who should C/S him, or who should audit him, let alone, Lord forbid, WHAT he should be audited on. He is limited by time and work constraints and financial resources as to where he can go for services in the first place. Not everyone can afford to go to Flag just because the Mars Org is a bunch of degrades. (Flag Land Base, 'mecca of technical perfection', Clearwater Fl.) FLAG can't even afford to go to Mars Org to clean them up, don't you see? And even if it could, Flag would still suffer from the normal practical limitations that separate the implementation of a machine from its theoretical maximum workability. So the point is that as a pc, you puts your money down and you takes your chances. For some people those chances are pretty good, for others they are a long shot, even if they do go to Flag and blow their entire life assets. And it may have nothing to do with the theory, it may have nothing to do with Scientology being a con game and a rip off, it may just have to do with absolutes are unobtainable in the physical universe. But that is the best case scenario. There may be a worst case scenario. It may be that the theory is incomplete, it may be that the clearing machine has been infiltrated by smooth operators, it may be that the case and training levels of the people operating the machine has failed to get above a certain level due to rampant out ethics and false declares (certified attestations of attainment or competency.) So no matter what you do, you take a risk when you put your money down for auditing with the Church or ANYBODY for that matter. You know that anything you buy, any investment you make is a risk. There are no certainties in this world except that you exist and care, and it is impossible to make a move in the game of life without risking some of your capital assets. In Ithaca, every time you take a breath you risk your life, the air is so foul. Some things come with guarantees, some things don't. SOMEBODY HAS TO TAKE THE RISK OF ANY INVESTMENT CYCLE. If the seller can get away with it, he will try to put that risk off onto the buyer, by not offering a guarantee, or by threatening consequences if you do exercise a guarantee. WHAT OTHER COMPANY ON EARTH TELLS YOU THAT IF YOU RETURN ONE OF THEIR PRODUCTS YOU MAY NEVER BUY ANOTHER ONE IN THE FUTURE!? But one thing that makes it a lot worse in the Church is that they have no COMPETITION. They are the only game in town. If things don't work out for a pc, if he goes broke at $300 an hour for auditing, they just push him out the door and find someone else who is more accessible. Or more gullible, depending on how cynical you are. (Accessibility is ease of accessing case and resolving charge.) Because they have no competition, they have no motivation to do the research and development necessary to be effective on these failed cases, and they have no pressure to bring their prices down. This is a classic case of NO COMPETITION. Any production unit that is producing something of vital importance to people, something that is needed and wanted the world over, will suffer the exact same manifestations if it manages to get a monopoly on the market. This is invariable guys, don't think there are any exceptions to this, not even in Heaven, and especially not in L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology. Those manifestations are, 1. Shoddy products and no guaranteed product. 2. Sky Rocketing Prices 3. No Warranties 4. No Terms 5. No Customer Satisfaction Department. 6. No innovation to improve products or add new ones. With no competition, there is only motivation to make a sale. With competition there is also motivation to make a QUALITY sale. Let me ask you a question. Let's be frank. How many people in the world really love the Church and are still members in good standing? A few. How many people in the world really hate the Church who have been through some aspect of the Church but got burned, ARC broken? Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots.... Over time, which of these is increasing more: people in the Church who like the Church or people who have been through the Church who dislike the Church? You know if more than 50 percent of the people who come into your production line, your place of business, eventually leave it disgruntled and unhappy with the product or service they received, then you are going to be making more enemies than friends. However, if there is no competition and endless seas of other people who have not yet gotten the news of what a bad risk your production line is, you may not care because there is a long line of ignorant fools still waiting at the front door to get in, while the ARC broken ones are led out the back door never to be seen or heard from again under threat of terror, legal or maybe otherwise. "You don't like how our cars run, you say they are dangerous and life threatening, then fine, don't drive our cars, and if you speak about it publicly we will come and make sure you rue the day you were born." Am I being harsh on the Church? Nope, not even vaguely. This is the stuff of which hair raising blockbuster movies are made. Perhaps Tom Cruise and John Travolta would like to star in them. And it only makes matters worse when many of the people who are left unsatisfied, NEVER SAY ANYTHING AND NEVER RETURN THE PRODUCT FOR A REFUND because they are just too disappointed, or too ashamed of what you are doing, or too frightened of the consequences. Did you ever buy something that was totally a waste, but you never returned it because it was so bad? I have got an ACEX fax modem in my computer that is just like this. AND I AM STILL USING IT! Talk about apathy. And this is my third replacement, all of which had something wrong with them. The company never finds out. They think they are doing just fine, unless of course they KNOW the product is so bad that no one will return it and they are DEPENDING on this for their survival. But eventually word gets around. And so eventually competition starts up. Now I am going to give you a truth, it's a big truth, it's an important truth, it's a TRUE truth, and it can only be ignored at your own peril. WITHOUT COMPETITION NO PRODUCTION FACILITY CAN LAST FOREVER. THE PEOPLE WILL NOT ALLOW IT TO DO SO. Therefore the fate of the Church is absolutely sealed UNLESS someone cares enough ABOUT THE CHURCH to compete with it, regardless of the risks to themselves. We have learned a lot of things running our own business for 10 years. Competition always scares us, you always hear about the big guys pushing the little guys out of business. Maybe someone will come up with a better fractal than us, maybe someone will get in a store chain before us. Maybe some one-and-only opportunity will come along and fall into some one else's hands and we will starve to death. Fractal: http://www.artmatrix.com Every time we hear of someone else making fractal posters, or videos or postcards or T-shirts, the usual fear runs down our complacent little bellies, and we quickly consider what we should do to avert it. Maybe we shouldn't be giving away our fractal mathematics for free, maybe we shouldn't tell others how to digitally separate images to attain state of the art resolution, maybe we shouldn't let out the parameters of our images so that no one else can make them on their personal computers. It ALL boils down to exactly one computation. MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T HELP THE COMPETITION. Most people don't want to make their own fractals and go into competition with us, most wouldn't know how, and most have other things to do with their lives, but maybe, just maybe one or two will take that favorite image of ours, THAT WE GAVE HIM, and HE will get it into some store chain as a poster before we do. Maybe he has more backing, more money, more know how, more Gods, better animal sacrifices, maybe he's not a sinner, who knows, maybe, maybe, maybe.... Maybe, God Save us, he is a CHRISTIAN. Everyone knows that God helps Christians more than heathen pagans. But what about all those little kids who just want to know how to reproduce our favorite images on their pcs? They call us up and they want to know how to compute 'The Nautilus Shell' or 'Evil Q' or 'Crown of Thorns (High Times Center Fold, Dec 1993)', they just want to impress their friends, or their teachers, or their girl friend. But if we give them our parameters they might LEAK out to the big boys who will beat us to market with our own product! So maybe we ought to just clam up, not teach anyone what a fractal is, leave them all in mystery, prevent anyone from seeing our images on their pcs or compute them themselves, or learn the math that produced them. Who cares about a few little inquisitive 11th graders. Their education, the sparkle in their eye, is not as important as our own survival is, right? Some of these snot nosed nerds with an IQ of 250 might BE the competition to put us out of business 10 years down the road! GO FIND YOUR OWN DAMN FRACTALS, KID! You see how insane it all is? Now listen, and listen well. This is the lesson I learned living with imminent starvation for 10 years running Art Matrix. When we first started making fractals NO ONE ELSE WAS. We were totally alone, we were the first. Then there were others making them, two camps in fact, John Hamal Hubbard (no relation) and Heinz-Otto Peitgen, and we were one of them (Hubbard). Their fractals were better, but we had gotten the free advertisement (Scientific American Aug 1985, cover issue) by accident, and the money started coming into us. The problem was NO ONE KNEW WHAT A FRACTAL WAS. We called up stores, and they would say 'What? What's a fractual?' We mailed to 3000 Gift Store buyers in SCIENCE MUSEUMS, and we got back 3 inquiries, asking what a 'fractional' was. We figured, well of course people working as store buyers probably don't have PhD's, if they did they wouldn't be working in a Gift Store, now would they, right? So it makes sense they don't know anything about fractals or Science, even if it is a Gift Store in a GOD DAMN SCIENCE MUSEUM! We mailed AGAIN to the Executive Directors of those same Science Museums, that's 3000 PhD's in Science no doubt, and we told them they ought to get their Gift Store buyers an education, and a few wrote back saying yes, but there was nothing much they could do about it. The only way we could get our postcards into stores was to GIVE them to the store to prove to the owner that they would sell. THEN they would take them, AFTER they sold their first batch. This was miserable! Then other people started making fractals. First calendars, then videos and postcards, a couple of T-shirts here and there, and eventually posters. You know except for the calendars, we were the first to have all these items, and to this day no one has beaten our video. The DVD is at http://www.artmatrix.com. Then every once in a while, just out of apathy you know, we would call up one of these Science Museums to try once again to get our T- shirts into their store, only this time instead of being told 'What's a fractual?' they would say, 'Oh thank you for calling, we already have lots of fractal T-shirts in stock from some guy in Podunk, they are selling quite fine, we don't need any more right now.' So at first no one wanted our product because no one knew what they were, but then after we educated them about the product they still didn't want our product because some how the competition had gotten there first! While we were sitting back in apathy at other's ignorance and lack of inspiration, our efforts to educate them had actually worked, and when these other manufacturers came a calling, they got accepted with out trouble, because we had led the way. OK, that sounds pretty miserable right? But wait there is more. WE GOT THEM BACK! We LET the competitors get into stores and sell their stuff for a while there. This convinced the store buyers that such products would sell. So now they not only knew what fractals were from our efforts, they also knew that they would sell from the competitor's efforts. THEN we went back to each of these stores and offered them once again our products, which in many ways were better than the competitors. And what do you know, we got in and the competitors were kicked out. Or we sold side by side. And over and over again, we now find that stores that have already sold the competitors fractals, are very easy to approach with ours, and even if ours aren't better, the store is much more willing to take ours in ALONG with the competitors, because they know ALL fractal products sell well. This happened all over again with posters. We had the finest poster on the market, it was the ONLY poster on the market. We went to all the big poster companies, and no one wanted to touch it. We tried to get stores to carry it, big store chains said no way. Then a couple of competitors of ours, people who had learned about fractals FROM US years before, people who were SO MOVED by the Mandelbrot Set they decided to devote their entire lives to disseminating information about it, sold a few of their images to Poster Service, one of the leading suppliers of posters through out the United States. THEY got into chains and poster shops through out the US. So WE sent OUR poster to one of these chains, bypassing Poster Service altogether, and that chain took our poster instantly. Since we are not dealing with a distributor, we get all the profits of the sale to this chain, while our competitors are taking a miserable number of pennies per poster. Further this chain we got into NEVER takes stuff directly from small people like us. They ONLY deal with the big time distributors. But there we are, selling away in their store. So I learned this lesson. Competition is the best thing there is for us. They do all the work, and we take all the rides. Sometimes we do all the work and they get the free ride, but then we come back for the second punch. There is so much market for posters on this planet that there could not be enough people making fractal products, and the day there is only us left, we will be in real trouble, because that means people don't want them any more. And yes that day eventually came. Do you want to be the last one standing in a dying market? It always SEEMS to the SELLER that having no competition is market heaven. But the seller's greed drives prices up, so many people can't buy, the seller gets rich off those who can, and finally crucified or hung from a tree by those who can't. With one producer, there is nothing to stabilize the price at market sustainable levels, prices only go up, and quality comes down. There is a simple experiment you can do with pricing a product, simply raise its price by 5 percent every month until your profits start to people fall off. Yes more and more fall off the bottom and stop buying but the rich continue to shore up profits until not even they can make up for the lost customers falling off the bottom. DO YOU REALLY WANT THE SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGY TO FREE A BEING TO BE A MONOPOLY FOR THE TOP LEVEL RICH IN THE LAND? That's the only possible end it can reach without competition. Just one competitor, however, willing and able to undercut the present market price, and prices come down to market levels, and now the race for quality is on. It starts as a race for a lower price, to see who can undercut who and take market share away from the others, but it ends up being a race for quality, for the price can only go so low, and then the only way to take away customers is to make a better product for that lower price. It is as simple as that. One competitor can save the market from a life of corruption, temptation and seduction. Who cares how much money you have in the bank when you are hanging from a Cross. You got that? So look. Take a hint. If you love the Church, COMPETE WITH HER, force her prices down, deliver a better product, give thanks on the day that she delivers a better product than you for a while. A FINANCIAL MONOPOLY IS UN AMERICAN AND UN PATRIOTIC. If you don't compete with the Church, it will get very rich and then go down in flames. It can not happen any other way. And in the mean time, while she is getting rich, her product will be declining, because no one will have the motivation to make it better. Their bellies will know no fear. Without thriving competition it is so much easier for the monopoly to find new dupes for the old product, to chintz on the old product to make it worse, or to make it obsolete before its time so that the rich have to come and buy again. QUALITY FOR THE CONSUMER ONLY COMES FROM COMPETITION. You got that? SO WHY AREN'T YOU DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT? So if you care about yourself, if you care about your pcs, if you care about the fate of planet Earth, if you care about the greedy and the short sighted, if you care about the work of L. Ron Hubbard, who is clearly one of the greatest men to ever live, then for God's sake COMPETE! LRH's one mistake was to be an ONLY ONE. He did not see how helping other's to compete against him, would make him the best. HCOPL 29 March 68, SERVICE "Competition is a trick of the weak to fetter the strong" -LRH Let's correct that error before it becomes a fatal error for all of us. Homer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink (607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com Mon Jul 12 16:41:47 EDT 2010