Debbie Cook is the latest in a line of high-profile Scientologists to say that David Miscavige is the problem with Scientology.
As outsiders, we know that isn’t the case – that the true harm in Scientology comes from the policies written by L. Ron Hubbard. But there is one aspect in which Ms. Cook has a point – the “crush regging,” Scientologese for the mad rush for money.
And now I’m going to tell you why that probably won’t change, even if David Miscavige is deposed.
The problem stems from Hubbard’s system of management by statistics, in which every job is assigned a statistic, which is the exclusive measure of job performance. But Hubbard’s idiotically over-simplified version does not use mathematically valid statistical analysis – instead, Scientologists are instructed to graph their stats and then judge their condition by eyeballing the angle of the lines on the graph. (Never mind that you can change your condition simply by printing your graph on a different size piece of paper.)
According to L. Ron Hubbard, if the line goes up from last week, your stat is in “normal” or “affluence” (“screaming affluence” if it’s really good) and all is OK. If the line goes down, it’s in “danger” and you’re in trouble. A sharp crash is “non-existance,” Scientologese for “deep shit.”
But the real problem comes if your stat line is slightly down or level, in which case it’s a condition of “emergency” – and long-term emergency is treated as danger.
That’s a key point: a long-term level stat is danger. So if Scientologist A sells $100 worth of services one week and $125 the next, she’s in affluence, but if Scilon B sitting in the next office sells $100,000 per week for 6 weeks running, he’s in trouble.
Now, we all know that there is a pinnacle of productivity in most jobs. In the real world, someone who sells $100,000 per week for a straight year will probably get a bonus and an award plaque. In Scientology, that same star sales person would get the Ethics Officer crawling up her ass with a flashlight and a baseball bat. In Scientology, there’s a constant demand for more, more, more. Never mind how demanding or demented David Miscavige is; that is what is written in LRH policy.
Now, for most Scientology jobs, there is a way around this: You have a “stat analysis” done, and find a reason that the stat is invalid. There is almost always a reason. Then you simply change your stat and start over. When you reach your pinnacle, you have the stat declared invalid again. Alternatively, one can meter one’s own job performance, improving just enough to keep the stat in Affluence but never working to one’s potential. I saw both things all the time during my tenure in a Scientology company. (This is one reason that companies that use Hubbard’s management “tech” only ever enjoy limited success.)
But when it comes to “registrars” – Scientology sales people – they can’t do that, because Hubbard put the registar’s stat in policy:
“The statistic of the Registrar is changed to the GROSS INCOME OF THE ORG. […] It is NOT how many people the Registrar sees, nor how many items sold but the gross income from all items sold.” — L. Ron Hubbard, HCOPL 14 July 1970, REGISTRAR STATISTIC
(This, by the way, is one of those things that makes me want to knock some Scientology heads together. Gross income? Hubbard is talking about a supposed religion here, you idiots! YOUR religion!)
So, you see, registrars can’t change their stat. And they can only meter their own performance for so long.
This is something Marty Rathbun and Debbie Cook can’t get around. Even if they took over the Chrch themselves, they would invariably assign the registrars the GI stat, and the registrars would inevitably hit a pinnacle of productivity, putting the stat in Danger and forcing them to keep making changes (per LRH’s “formula” for what to do when a stat is in Danger) until the stats start to go up. How do you do that? Well, sooner or later you get the idea to hit up your richest customers parishoners for donations, because that’s the only way to keep the stats rising. And when they dry up, you hit up everyone. And when they run out of money, you start advising them to mortgage their houses and max out credit cards. After all, LRH said that gross income must keep increasing. And as every Scientologist knows, LRH had all the answers to everything.
Marty, Mike, and Debbie can complain all they want about Miscavige’s focus on money, but that’s Hubbard policy. It’s not a new problem, nor is it exclusive to Miscavige’s management; David Mayo complained about it in the 1980s (MP3 link) and Paulette Cooper wrote about it in the 70s. The sad fact is that Miscavige, evil runt though he may be, is hog-tied by the policies of the Ol’ Fraud Hisself, L. Ron Hubbard.
And a long as Rathbun, Rinder, Cook, and other self-proclaimed Scientologists believe in Hubbard, they are going to run into the same problems.
ML,
Caliwog
Read more about Hubbard’s fucked-up system of management by statistics
Caliwog's Blog 
Good Morning Caliwog,
Another excellent blog, thank you. Hubbard’s “management by statistics” was one of his more obvious bone-head ideas that went very wrong.
I would like to offer a few more points:
1. Hubbard’s stat system clearly produced a short sighted “this week” mentality, that actually produced a long term decline over time. But I suspect Hubbard knew this all along. Hub knew that, over time, he would be exposed as a fraud, so Hub went for the short term cash grab. Once Hub had taken enough suckers, and local law enforcement was starting to eye him, he would just pack up the carnival tent and move on to a new town with new suckers. Hubbard badgered his servants to get that money Now! Now! Now! because Hub knew the roof would be caving in pretty soon and he wanted to be pulling out the back drive 30 minutes before the police kicked in the front door. So, the short term cash grab was probably intentional. Steve Hassan says the same thing about Reverend Moon in “Combatting Cult Mind Control”.
2. The (lunatic) crush regging is further locked into Scientology behavior because, once it starts, it becomes a “successful action” which, in Scientology, you are not allowed to discontinue. You are required to do whatever got the stat up last week. Hubbard says so. No “org” is going to do the steady, honest, hard work of servicing customers and steadily building up a reliable client base, when they can just keep pressuring and bleeding the current donors.
3. Hubbard’s personality was not capable of steady, consistent, hard work over time. Hub’s behavior, historically, was to try and produce an instant and dazzling “success”, otherwise just drop it. This explains Hubbard’s inability to complete high school or college, and his poor performance in the Navy. (When Hub could not achieve instant hero status by bombing the phantom Japanese sub fleet off the coast of Oregon, he just dismissed the Navy as idiots for not recognizing his obvious greatness.)
4. Scientology has painted itself into a doomed corner because they can no longer get the one ingredient they need most: new blood to suck. Scientology can only bleed the current donors so much, eventually those donors will bankrupt. (On one trip to Flag I actually ran into (formerly affluent) Scientologists who were begging on the street in downtown Clearwater for food and travel money to get back home. True story.) Scientology can continue to recruit the children of Scientologists but those Scientology children will not produce any cash, only unpaid labor. No new people (victims) are coming in the doors. So, eventually the cash will run out.
I suspect Hubbard timed the cash grab to maximize coincident with his personal demise. So he could max the scam out before he croaked. Miscavige is probably thinking along the same lines. DM is in his 50s, he can easily keep the scam going for another 25 years or so, until it finally fizzles out. By then he’ll be dead or retired, and it will all be someone else’s problem.
Fiat Lux
It has already started Cali, just look how Rathbun and Rinder hit up the Indies’ for assistance with Debbie cook’s legal fees…It was classic Regging, freak’en CLASSIC!! ( and all the backslapping after the case ended!!! WTF?) you can’t tell me Marty would be any different if he where to be the leader of the Co$ or the Indy Guru!! he learned this shit from LRH got tutelage from DM and continues to do it TODAY !!! looks like a duck, walks like a duck, smells like a duck, yea its a fucking duck!!!
“Then you simply change your stat and start over. When you reach your pinnacle, you have the stat declared invalid again.”
The people at this Scientology company were out-ethics. If a person doesn’t honestly apply the condition formula for the condition he or she is actually in, then the formula obviously won’t do what was intended.
A person who has several successive affluences enters a condition of Power where the stats are expected to remain steady and not continue to increase. This is the missing condition in this article.
A person who re-defines his or her stats to avoid being found out is a criminal at best. David Miscavige re-defined his own stats and the stats of the church because he is a failure. Instead of moving people up the Bridge in record numbers, the church is actually moving less people and just opening more Ideal Orgs.
Crush regging is acceptable as long as it is moving the person up the Bridge. Straight donations for buildings or someone’s legal fees is off-policy and wrong.
Dear Jonathan,
I dig what you are saying. But, what you are saying is a sane and rational interpretation of management by statistics. It is just as possible to interpret Hubbard’s “tech” in an insane way. And, in my experience, this is usually how it was interpreted, but was still “on policy” even though the result was insane. When I was on org staff, staff members were routinely “put in lowers” because they had not met their daily call in quota for that week’s event. We would have some sort of event every week, accompanied by growling and menacing “missionaires” who demanded call in confirms be met each day (“product officering”, Hubbard’s term for harassing and threating subordinates). So, you were still in lowers even though your personal stat was up for that week and you had done your job (for no personal pay, I might add). This created an insane environment but was totally on policy because there was lots of LRH tech execs could point to supporting this. (This miserable environment was, per reports, what daily life on “the ship” was like as well.) So, with “LRH tech”, it all depends on who is driving the boat.
Further, I respectfully disagree with your statement “Crush regging is acceptable as long as it is moving the person up the Bridge.” There is, ultimately, no actual “Bridge” to get people up. The basic premise of Scientology is the ultimate (this life time) sublimation to an actual operating spiritual state. Hubbard claimed attainment of this state, and this was the rationale behind preserving Scientology “at all costs”, hard sell, attacking church enemies, etc. But Hubbard’s statement is a lie. Hubbard invented the concept of “OT” to get people to suspend their notions of right and wrong and suspend their common sense. Because it was this “brief breath in eternity” etc. But no one has ever attained, even partially or temporarily, this “state” claimed by Hubbard. Hubbard just invented it. So there is no reason to crush reg anyone, or have billion year contracts, or isolate church members from the “wog world” and control their access to information, etc. Those are all nothing but cult control devices based upon the OT lie.
Fiat Lux
Fiat Lux: Good point about the successful actions.
Johnny D: I suppose you are correct, those Indies are “out exchange”.
Jonathan: I would think that getting into Power on GI is almost impossible, because there are bound to be fluctuations. Obviously someone who hits $100k in sale is not going to make $100k every week, One $99.5k week is emergency. Or if you’ve scaled your graph properly according to Hubbard, $99k could be Danger or even Non-E. So much for power.
Besides, Power is “normal in a new high range,” is it not? Flat sales are not Normal, they are Emergency. You would have to have a long-term gradual increase in order to attain Power.
Out-ethics or not, that’s what I saw happening, and as I understand it happened in the Church too. And there’s no way around it. The truth is that a person can only do so much. But Scientologists believe the “tech” is never wrong, so they had to find a way to prove it was right. A stat analysis does that nicely.
ML,CW
Yup. Taking software out of a broken computer and putting it into a new one DON’T FIX NOTHIN.
Debbie cook and David Miscavige.
Again, here we have Debbie writing down the impossible words of “Scientology works”… and who does she blame for the lack of results? David miscavige.
It is a broken record.
For over a decade, Debbie was in charge of making OTs (I-VII), and L Rundown completions. Also, she oversaw delivery of the Superpower to selected individuals (yes, it was pre-released in 1994).
Although debbie can rattle off a stat like “4,000 OT 7’s made in a decade” or WHATEVER, she can not tell you how any of their lives are going, which ones are bankrupt or those with destroyed families.
What Debbie can tell you is that Scientology works.
Magically, and apparently, the only thing wrong with Scientology is how people are treated.
And of course, the indis jump up and down as yet another “powerful executive” defied DM and leaves.
Yet they miss the entire point.
Debbie, nor DM or Marty have ever produced one clear or person who is OT.
All three of the above named individuals all gladly accept the new definitions of OT despite it being “squirrel” to downgrade the impossible expectations LRH made for his stupid and worthless tech.
All three abve have had nothing shoved down their throats other than LRH since they were teenagers.
Not a single one would know that a good conversation with a friend solves more than an auditing session – if anything, an auditing session ensures you do NOT talk to your spouse about problems.
But like LRHs family who were torn apart, Dabid Mayo’s family, MSH’s family, DM’s family, Martys Family and now debbie’s family the antagonists (David, Marty and Debbie) will all tell you how great it is.
Somehow, there is always a victim, and the victim is the victim of an evil person who failed to apply scientology.
You would think that there is nothing but misery in the world the way Scientolgoy portrays everything.
And as such, now debbie is singing the same old song…”the world is evil, but Scientolgoy is good” and yet the most evil we have seen has stemed from Scientology.
It is sick that Debbie still sings the praises for Scientology. For a person whoc laims she can evaluate, she has stopped right at her own beliefs and blamed someone else for her total failure as a daughter, mother and a spouse – although those “hats” do not mean much to a Scientologist.
As an outsider (meaning never sucked into the cult), this is a terrific post. You’re as clear and satisfying as Marty is foggy and irritating. Marty is telling his followers what they want to hear. They want to believe that Hubbard would have known what to do about exposure on the web when the scam wasn’t designed with the web in mind, at all. Yet, they never suggest how he would have done that.