by slimboyfat 45 Replies latest members campaign
Morpheus, it's okay to outline the facts of a situation (as SBF does) and to also offer opinion on what it all means and where it will lead (as SBF also does). Newspaper editorials do it everyday. It's called forming an opinion based on the presented facts.
Good to see you acknowledge there are aspects of SBF's thread you agree with and also explain why you disagree with others aspects.
1879- present- selling the idea that they are gods sole channel of communication and that only by association with them will you live forever. As i have expressed many times, the books and mags are just the means they used to separate the flock from fheir cash. They are using new ways. Nothing has changed.
If nothing has changed why are they abandoning print media, sacking special pioneers and missionaries, sending bethelites home, selling branches, assembly halls, kingdom halls, not printing new Bibles, cancelling yearbooks, calendars, day texts, and begging for money as never before?
Selling magazines and books was their basic business model. They have not yet found a viable alternative.
With their increasingly incredible overlapping doctrines, their teachings are as creaky and susceptible to collapse as their business model. Not an asset.
Additinally it’s not strictly true that WT preached an exclusive message of salvation from the beginning. Russell originally espoused something close to universalism - the idea everyone, or most people will be saved in the end.
Steve, i dont recall ever commanding slim NOT to start threads or implying he shouldnt or even taking any exception at all to it. I love these slim gloom and doom threads. With that as a back drop, im not sure what the point of your post was.
Slim one, in saying “nothing has changed” we both know i was pointing out that the commodity of the org is their special status as the desert gods spokespeople. Ive acknowledged on many of your gloom and doom threads that indeed they are morphing and changing. They are streamlining and revamping for sure. Ive even agreed that excesses of the 1990’s are long gone and that they simply cant support that lifestyle anymore.
That dosent equate to collapse. Print is, by and large, dying, and the org is changing as a result, but the baseline commodity hasnt changed. Special access to the desert god.
With that as a back drop, im not sure what the point of your post was.
The point Morpheus: It's perfectly okay to present facts and draw one's own conclusions (i.e., opinions) about what it means. Glad you clarified your view of SBF's threads. As for the "baseline commodity" not changing (i.e., special access to the desert god) the financing of promulgation of that commodity has changed big time in that print literature was once a pretty good and secure earner for the organization. But, yes, in general I agree with you: JW organization is well practiced in survivability.
SBF - the financial collapse took place in 2008. Do we know when they started planning Warwick and when they reached the point of no return where they were stuck with building it? I'm thinking it was after 2008 but given the fact that they aren't transparent with their financial matters, its really difficult to say. Is that an assumption you are making or do you have information to the contrary? I would love to see it if that's the case.
Also, I think the exit from Brooklyn was a net gain. Again, I'm not sure of the cost at Warwick and we can piece the Brooklyn stuff together. It's the scale of Warwick that catches my attention. They could have and if they had any business sense, should have, downsized greatly but that doesn't seem to be the case. If they had moved into a 4,000 square foot office building with 100 apartnements, then I would agree they are desperate. But, again they haven't proved themselves decent business people so maybe they are that stupid to overextend when they didn't have to.
Agree that there have been many branch closings but again, I see that as right sizing. Does every country in the EU need a branch? No, its a waste of money. Again, overbuilding based on the growth rate in the 80s-early 90s and when the growth slowed way down, they were overextended. Seems easy to cut the fat there.
I think in the early days, their business model did rely on book/mag sales, but print media as a sole source of revenue is a terrible business model today. As Morpheus points out, they want to separate the flock from their case, doesn't matter how. Certainly JWs were the chief source of any revenue they got from literature sales. They did screw up on going to a donation basis because they wrongly assumed that JWs would decide to contribute to the world wide work + what they contributed for literature. By offering freely, they devalued the literature and JWs simply didn't see the point of donating twice. I know when I was a believer, I didn't increase my donations when they stopped charging for literature. Of course, my experience may not be normal.
There's lots of fat left to cut. They are a poorly run organization that doesn't understand basic business and are deluded into thinking God is going to take care of them. He's not!
By the way, the WCOG STILL EXISTS! Much smaller and completely changed their beliefs but they are still around. As much as I want the WTS to blow up overnight and would be the first to dance on their graves, barring a black swan event, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
It will be a slow, death by a thousand cuts and I would wager that JWs as a religion will outlive me. I wish to be wrong on that, but crazy religious tend to stick around.
I wanted to add that I think some of the down sizing moves are likely the result of an outside consultant. Not saying I have any knowledge of that but it seems like that is the case. I also seriously doubt they took all the consultants recommendations into consideration because their egos won't let them. I also think that they likely have some sort of calculation of donations per publisher in combination with the real estate value of the various KHs to determine which congregations stay and which get merged. At least, that's what I would do.
Many of those merged congregations were not viable. If you have a building that holds 150 and average 70 at your Sunday meeting and there's another KH 15 minutes away in the same sized building with the same numbers, why would you NOT merge those 2? Especially if you aren't projecting any real growth? Seems like easy math.
I perhaps with a bit of wishful thinking feel the WT corporation has spread itself way too thin and unwisely started too many building projects in hopes of gaining valuable real estate and was force due to lack of funds and very bad credit ratings to stop work on them. Serious trouble in my book.
This was a very big blunder especially with all these lawsuit cases that are mounting worldwide. Let just say these demented fools on the Governing Body have very little business sense since they cut their own throats with forbidding colledge, and so they are not likely to take seriously and business advice given if it came from someone with a higher education and point blank laid out their stupidity.
So yeah I think the WT corporation is in deep deep doo doo. I think any kind of survival plan these dimwits have it's got to be very very poor from a nondelusional point of view.
I think in the early days, their business model did rely on book/mag sales, but print media as a sole source of revenue is a terrible business model today. As Morpheus points out, they want to separate the flock from their case, doesn't matter how. Certainly JWs were the chief source of any revenue they got from literature sales.
Thank you for pointing that out, db (httr!)... the public was never ever ever the primary consumer of wt literature, not even a fraction of a percent. The literature was always for the publishers. Always. It was a tool to separate the flock from their money. Now they are moving towards the perpetual loan scam and im sure there will be other things that come along, but book “sales” to the general public was never ever the money maker. At best it was a recruitment tool to create new customers. Thats why the conventions go on despite the lack of new releases. They make tons of money... not from the random public but from the members of the org who show up. Like tom sawyer of old the org charges for the privledge of letting them be there and they make it worth the orgs while to keep doing it.
Why when they have been making cuts since 2012 why are they even thinking about selling kingdoim halls off.
when they have not bben printing 50 million magazines a month for the past few years why should they get rid of all the senior bishops they had or D O s.
They are downsizing for sure but what areas are growing? Surely they are ploughing great gobs of money into the website for video production etc. I don't think we are anywhere near close to seeing the full amount of content WT has planned for that propoganda beast. And the JWs that remain loyal to the brand will happily donate to see more content. I would even argue that it's easier to "brainwash"/ indoctrinate people via screens than in person.
They could crash and burn financially as their waters dry up, I really hope they do, but I just don't see it ...yet. I'm still watching the space
