I've had this thought and am interested in others' thoughts. Are LGATs pyramids? Aren't pyramids illegal?

skeptic

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skeptic
I've had this thought and am interested in others' thoughts. Are LGATs pyramids? Aren't pyramids illegal?

skeptic

Immoral or at least sleazy certainly, but not illegal; there's no money changing hands from lower levels to higher levels. That's the beauty of brainwashing -- they do the labor for free.



Ellen

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elena


Immoral or at least sleazy certainly, but not illegal; there's no money changing hands from lower levels to higher levels. That's the beauty of brainwashing -- they do the labor for free.

Ah, ok. Money has to be involved. Deception and exploitation, alone, don't constitute a pyramid scheme.

Thanks,

skeptic

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skeptic


Ah, ok. Money has to be involved. Deception and exploitation, alone, don't constitute a pyramid scheme.

Here's a little ancient history about the pyramidal foundations of all these groups. Actually, they were a weird hybrid that turned into a moneymaker for a lot of the earlier players:

[perso.orange.fr]

"...The four-day trainings, which were largely experiential, caught on rapidly--not in Texas, where they were first offered, but in California, where Alexander was soon being invited to present them. As a result the headquarters of Mind Dynamics was moved to San Francisco in 1970. Interest in the course, however, was not restricted to California. During the four remaining years of the organization's existence, the course was taught throughout the United States and in Europe and Australia.

Looking back upon it, Alexander feels that the organizations expanded too quickly. It grew larger than he had originally intended, and was soon being controlled by the dynamic, young staff that he had recruited. Alexander brought in as trainers young men who were soon to become leaders in the human potential movement that spread throughout California in the 1970s and, later, across the country."

Mind Dynamics was a success and attracted William Penn Patrick's attention. He had a pyramid sales organization called Holiday Magic, which sold cosmetics. He also had a training organization known as Leadership Dynamics. He bought Everett's training in 1970 intending to use it as an additional training vehicle for his distributors. While Mind Dynamics was a non-confrontational course in self-hypnosis like the Silva Method, the Leadership Dynamics program was a hard hitting group encounter. The influences of both trainings are found in the training organizations which followed.

William Penn Patrick's Leadership Dynamics training organization went out of control in its methods according to a book called "The Pit, a group encounter defiled" by Gene Church (out of print). The resulting lawsuits pretty much shut down Leadership Dynamics as well as Mind Dynamics. The Holiday Magic MLM was busted as a pyramid scheme. Penn Patrick died when he crashed his F-86 Sabre at an airshow in Sacramento."

The following was posted on Freedom of Mind:


Scientology exhibit will not help the mentally ill
Columbia Daily Tribune, USA
Jan. 9, 2007 Commentary


[…]

Regardless of its tax-exempt status, the Church of Scientology is more
like a pyramid scheme than a church. A follower of Scientology pays to
take classes to receive the wisdom of Scientology, which is not
publicly available. The more classes you take, the more enlightened
you get. When you have completed the required curriculum, you can
start teaching Scientology courses and charge tuition to your
students

[...]