Posts by slimboyfat

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

In my congregation they've got an oversupply of elders - 11 elders for 55 publishers. I know that's not typical.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

So the "sanction" is they send a letter to the congregation and hope that anonymous donations increase. Good luck with that.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

sparky1 are you saying they didn't make a lot of money from the literature? From your figures they sold around 10 million Watchtowers per issue at 20c each. Double it to include Awake! (Slightly fewer Awakes! printed but I rounded the Watchtower figure down anyway) That's 20 million copies, 24 times a year. I make that just under 100 million dollars from magazine sales alone per year. Say production costs were as much as half of that, that's 50 million dollars profit from magazine sales alone.

Subscriptions didn't make a lot of money but they clearly weren't a loss. Because when the charge was dropped, subscriptions were dropped pretty quick too. Watchtower was not in the business of handing stuff out for nothing in return.

On top of that you had book sales, including quality hardcover reference books, Bibles, tapes, videos, calendars and everything else in the 1980s.

Plus my memory is that publishers would sometimes pay for the magazines themselves and give the money from householders to the world wide work in addition. I can also remember that householders would sometimes pay more than the cover price for the literature because it seemed so little.

Watchtower made its money not by charging large amounts, but through sheer scale.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

If it's a "mandatory" donation, what's the sanction for not meeting it?

If a Mormon doesn't pay tithe they can't hold any office in the church. And positions are much more common in Mormonism, much more than Elder, ministerial servant or pioneer, practically every active member has a role of some sort, and must pay the tithe. (There are exceptions for unemployed but this is somewhat stigmatised and not approved long term)

JWs don't even have a system for monitoring what individual donate.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

I think there is some confusion over what a tithe is. A tithe is a levy on membership of a religious organisation. If you don't keep up payments you are not a member. JWs don't tithe. Asking for congregations for money is not a tithe. There is no sanction or legal obligation. Watchtower may introduce a tithe as a last resort (although I doubt it) but they don't tithe at the moment.

If Watchtower thinks it can just ask for money and receive, they'll be as disappointed as they were in 1990 when they thought JWs would pay for the literature when the charges stopped.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

Morpheus, sorry, what variety of nonsense is this now? Watchtower never made much money from publishing in the first place? Good grief. Are you serious? Do I really need to prove this? Here goes.

Watchtower made a ton of money from selling magazines and books (which included pictures of pandas and paradise of course, but it was the book sales that made the money). That's why they didn't tithe their membership or pass collections round the KH. They didn't need to because they made a healthy profit from book and magazine sales. Their lack of collections was a unique selling point they could afford to advertise, precisely because they made enough money from print sales that they didn't need to beg for more.

How do we know? Inside testimony for a start. Another poster quoted a bethel insider who said Watchtower was making millions of dollars a week from magazine sales. Very realistic when you consider the cover price, the circulation numbers, and the low cost of production. How else do we know? Well just look at their activity, it tells you all you need to know. The 1970/80s was the all time boom in WT sales (I'm going to cover this in part 2). Just look at the increase in circulation of the magazines, and the number of books they were promoting in this period. Good quality hardback books: Aid book, Kingdom Interlinear, Insight Books, Revelation book, Live forever book (in small and large size), creation book (ditto), reference Bible, Byington's Bible(!), concordance, Proclaimers book. You name it, they were pumping out good quality books like there was no tomorrow! (In a sense true, because of the "generation" teaching) On top of that they branched out into audiocassettes, videos, calendars, daily text, Braille, and goodness knows what else. Business was absolutely booming and they couldn't release their products fast enough.

Then what happens? In 1990 they stopped charging for the literature and we have seen steady decline ever since. First to go were the hardcover books, replaced by very flimsy paperbacks, calendars gone, concordance gone, Kingdom Interlinear gone, Insight books gone, Byinton Bible gone, magazines cut in size, reduced in frequency. Now we are at the point where they are not even releasing paperback books at the convention any more, but instead telling members to download. Now they are even at the point of reducing language editions of the WT.

Also the history of Watchtower magazine subscription is very instructive. For most of its history Watchtower signed up people for annual subscriptions to the magazine. It's easy to forget now but that was one of the major objectives of the ministry, to get new subscribers. What happened after 1990 when the cover price was dropped? They stopped inviting subscription! In fact pretty soon they phased out subscriptions altogether. Which makes perfect sense when you think about it. If you are making a profit you want as many subscribers as you can possibly get. But if you can't charge for the magazines any more then subscribers who pay little or nothing is the last thing you want!

The reason they produced tons of literature in the 1980s was because it was profitable for them. And the reason they have cut back printing so drastically since then is because it is no longer profitable and is in fact a financial drain. This is so self-evidently the situation that I didn't think it needed to be spelled out.

Watchtower themselves had the naive belief in 1990 that when they stopped charging for the literature the brothers would contribute the same anyway. They were wrong, as their activity since then demonstrates. You are making the same mistake they made when you claim it's not books and magazines, but "hope and a dream" they were selling. In turns out the brothers were paying mainly for the magazines and books, but the message they took as "life's water free" like the old kingdom song says!

Which puts Watchtower in a real tight situation. They told their membership for over 140 years that they would never beg for money. They didn't need to beg for money because they had a healthy income from print sales. But now those sales have dried up. In fact worse than dried up because instead of making a profit their publishing is now a loss making activity. So what do they do now? That's the question.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

And indeed JWs did face existential crises following 1914 and 1925. We know that they struggled on and survived (largely on the basis of determined and ruthless leadership by Rutherford) but they may not have done, it wasn't a fore gone conclusion. And in those instances they had their book/magazine selling business to fall back on. Now they don't have that.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

I've searched for information on downsizing to put it into some kind of perspective. One example I come across is General Motors which experienced poor sales and cut its workforce by around 20% in 2008/9. It needed a government bailout to keep operating.

Watchtower on the other hand has lost its whole market for book/magazine sales and in a single year cut bethelite numbers by more than 25%. Who is going to bail them out?

In percentage terms Watchtower layoffs seems to be the largest example of downsizing I can find. And that was just a single year. We don't even know yet if/how many they cut in 2016/7.

No evidence of financial difficulty. Are you kidding?

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

No evidence of financial problems? Watchtower has lost its core business of selling books and magazines. What more evidence do you need? Do you think it can run on thin air?

Your evidence that Watchtower is not in financial trouble is that they are "still there". But any organisation facing collapse is "still there" until it actually collapses. What sort of evidence is that? And besides it's about 25% less "still there" (by some measures such as bethelites and branches) than it was a couple of years ago (probably more than 25% in terms of declining print output) and shrinking rapidly. The question is can it shrink to a sustainable level, or will it shrink away entirely.

The point is to look for indications of what's going on. If cutting quarter of your staff in a single year is not an indication then what on Earth would be? Or cutting more than a quarter of your branches? Or failing to actually produce a physical product at your annual conventions - for the first time in your 140 year existence. If these are not indications (among many other things!) then what on Earth would be?

And again with the 1 or 2 billion from property sales. We have been through that. Yes it must have helped, but how much? How much did Warwick cost? And how many years can the rest cover the deficit? At their level of spending (quarter of a billion on full time servants outside bethel alone, every year) perhaps not very long!

Even if Stephen Lett and Samuel Herd hadn't said a word, observers would obviously have been speculating about their financial situation anyway, given these developments. Their announcements and the panicked look on their faces just confirms what we already know.

192

Question for SBF

by Fisherman in

slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

- this thread is your if you want it..

slimboyfat

Okay.

But wouldn't you also welcome a positive transformation?

To be specific the main reform I would require is to stop shunning. And that's basically it. Thereby making blood, free thinking, and most things matters of conscience. People disfellowshipped for "serious sins" (in practice mostly fornication) could be denied privileges but not congregationally shunned, but instead encouraged.

Plus I'd emphasise teaching God's name and rejecting participation in the military. I'd also reinstate book and magazine publishing with cover prices.

I'd also encourage education, programs to help the community, accept gay people, women elders.

But the most important reform is shunning.