Mechelle, a real professional gambler doesn’t use their own money. Their job is to take the money given to them by investors and increase it by gambling (playing poker). The player gets a % of the winnings. I knew a guy that make $15k – $200k a year as a professional gambler in the L.A. casinos.

Richard, at least by the 70s being a franchise holder was very profitable, as attested to by the lavish lifestyles and known cash hoards of some of them. The mission holders seem to have done a bit better at adjusting to changing times, though sometimes by resorting to the sort of hardcore tactics orgs are now infamous for, while the orgs were suffering from the waning of the youth counterculture movement, so Hubbard was definitely jealous – as well as typically paranoid. Also, with the advent of KSW Hubbard wanted to have tight ideological control of Scientology, and the franchisees tended to be too independent in that way, too.

Mechelle, St. Louis bought an “ideal” project building over a decade ago – and let it sit and deteriorate. For the past couple of years, they have quietly been trying to sell it, and then floating an alternate plan to remodel the current org building and put a large addition on it to meet “ideal” standards. They seem to be one of the SFOs (small and failing orgs) whose prospects for ever getting an “ideal” building seem unclear.

In alignment with the OT cosmology excess radiation might stir up the BeeTees. Not sure.. . . . . . . . . . . (joke)

Well Scientology has already been compared to North Korea on this site, including the empty buildings, leadership cult and smearing of defectors.

Here is an interesting discussion between Jordan Petersen and Michael Shellenberger, author of the book “Apocalypse Never”. They discuss philosophically idealistic and utopian trends, their negative effects on people and possible solutions. It focuses on environmental activism but expands to the subject in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLxZF_EWaLE

Just as speculation, being a Mission holder in the 50’s and 60’s might have been profitable. Sell scn while recruiting idealistic people to work for little pay and keep most of the Gross Income in your own pocket. Mr. Hubbard would obviously have a problem with that.

Never did understand the concept of “professional gambler”. To me that’s just a person who gambles because they don’t have a job. 😉

Maybe *too* much money exchanged hands to make Vegas ideal for LRH. I mean, back in his day wasn’t Vegas a Mafia’s playground?

Also, I find if hilarious that LRH would be afraid of Nevada because of its A Bomb testing history.

Thank you for your insights.

I think it was somewhere in Arizona. As I recall he was working on the admin aspects and trying to reduce all the squirreling going on and make sure any money coming in came his way.

its not it’s – I missed it on the edit – apologies to any grammar Nazis