Is religion the best proven business model for success?

[ignoramus]

It has passed the test of time ...
It is not affected by geopolitical instability ...in fact, it thrives on it ...
It has extremely low product materials overhead! (I know I'm cynical but it looks like the product is almost non-existent)

There's obviously a pattern to this ultimate business model which many behemoths are copying...
To sell or give away something which brings sadness or inconvenience and then sell the end user the solution...

Google do it by giving us all the shits with youtube and then asking for money to remove the annoying ads...
Yeah, yeah, I know, if I don't like it, go to another huge video site like ....uhhhmmmm...
I just remembered, for this business model to work, you need to remove any competition.
Easy, you buy them up like Google or write shit like, you shall not worship any other God ...

That business model is so brilliant, only a God could have come up with it!

[Succubus]

The Catholic Church is the oldest, richest, most powerful, most non productive industry in all of human history.

So yes, it does appear to be quite an effective business model.

[brewer]

These are very disturbing thoughts. Make wild and vague promises and never have to deliver.

[vorlon13]

um . .

I think the Mormons are a bit more into worshipping Mammon than the Catholics are . . .

[The Grand Nudger]

There's obviously a pattern to this ultimate business model which many behemoths are copying...
To sell or give away something which brings sadness or inconvenience and then sell the end user the solution...

I suspect that religion is far more effective at selling the cure in an area where there are a great many people who already feel like hopeless degenerates whose lives have no value.  

That business model is so brilliant, only a God could have come up with it!  

It's no different than any other business model.  It's so common and so similar that generic models of market behavior describe and predict religious economies.

---

um . .

I think the Mormons are a bit more into worshipping Mammon than the Catholics are . . .

Amateurs playing catch-up, by comparison.

[Anomalocaris]

The Catholic Church is the oldest, richest, most powerful, most non productive industry in all of human history.

So yes, it does appear to be quite an effective business model.

Not sure it is the most nonproductive industry in human history.  Catholic Monks and nuns sometimes grew their own food, ran their own crafts and industry, and copied non-religious manuscripts. Catholic Church actually runs a world class astronomical observatory in Arizona from which respectable scientific papers emanate.

Buddhist Clergy are actually prohibited by religious stricture from performing any productive work such as cooking, much less growing, food. Nor can they dabble in any pursuit that would provide insight into any thing other than their own navels.

[Succubus]

The Catholic Church is the oldest, richest, most powerful, most non productive industry in all of human history.

So yes, it does appear to be quite an effective business model.

Not sure it is the most nonproductive industry in human history.  Catholic Monks and nuns sometimes grew their own food, ran their own crafts and industry, and copied non-religious manuscripts. Catholic Church actually runs a world class astronomical observatory in Arizona from which respectable scientific papers emanate...

All this? After 1,200 years of almost total domination of Europe and unlimited resources. Seems like a poor return on investment to me. What did they invent in all those years, what did they discover, what did they write. What did they produce?

They produced nothing!

[Chad32]

It has passed the test of time ...
It is not affected by geopolitical instability ...in fact, it thrives on it ...
It has extremely low product materials overhead! (I know I'm cynical but it looks like the product is almost non-existent)

There's obviously a pattern to this ultimate business model which many behemoths are copying...
To sell or give away something which brings sadness or inconvenience and then sell the end user the solution...

Google do it by giving us all the shits with youtube and then asking for money to remove the annoying ads...
Yeah, yeah, I know, if I don't like it, go to another huge video site like ....uhhhmmmm...
I just remembered, for this business model to work, you need to remove any competition.
Easy, you buy them up like Google or write shit like, you shall not worship any other God ...

That business model is so brilliant, only a God could have come up with it!  

What do you mean it passed the test of time? The longer a religion lasts, the more divisive it gets, and the more changes it goes through. In the modern world, it's pretty much dying off. The only reason christianity survived is because of a roman Emporer. These things only survive through force. Remove the force, and it dwindles to nothing.

[Anomalocaris]

Not sure it is the most nonproductive industry in human history.  Catholic Monks and nuns sometimes grew their own food, ran their own crafts and industry, and copied non-religious manuscripts. Catholic Church actually runs a world class astronomical observatory in Arizona from which respectable scientific papers emanate...

All this? After 1,200 years of almost total domination of Europe and unlimited resources. Seems like a poor return on investment to me. What did they invent in all those years, what did they discover, what did they write. What did they produce?

They produced nothing!

Some decent architecture, some decent art, back when science and historic scholarship were in their infancies and an overly self confident church actually believed in its own bullshit and thought science and scholarship would help it gild its own lilies, It patronized science and scholarship.  The church certainly had some aspect of nonproductive monasticism, but on the whole it didn’t preach salvation came through nonproductivity, even for its own clergy.

All in all, at various times it had been both a source of and a drag on progress.  It might be argued that in recent centuries it was far more drag than source, but I am not certain I would claim that starting from 476 AD, an ulternative western world that didn’t have the unifying and preservative influence of the Catholic Church through the 14th or 15th century would have been ahead of where it actually is today.

Buddhism actually seems have more consistently preached the highest and truest enlightenment can only come through nonproductivity, and thus doctrinally to be enlightened is to be parasitic, not just the actuality of those peddling enlightenment are in reality parasitic. So it’s clergy is forbidden from anything that even smelled of productivity. How big of a help can such a creed be to human and social progress?

[The Grand Nudger]

The western world already -had- unifying and preservative influences.  These were destroyed by the church as competitors..................not that this influence ever stopped any of them from warring against each other in the first place.

The amount of brass balled religious affrontery that;s weaseled it;s way into our appraisal of history is tremendous. "What would you have done without us" - Difficult to say, assholes,since you fucking killed everyone else in the run-up to fleecing us. Roman Catholic Christianity effectively -destroyed- the very first empire to assume it. It consumed the rest as willing participants in favor of it's own aggrandizement until the reformation - when we'd finally had enough of their bullshit.

The RCC didn't preserve or promote culture, holding it all for us until the post reformation enlightenment..muslims did. Christians were chiefly engaged in destroying it. Christian monks (and the enitre christian apparatus), all throughout the height of RCC's power... were precisely the sorts of parasites you paint buddhists as. We laud the examples of productive monasticism precisely because they are and were exceptional, not representative. The picture of christian piety had always been the picture of parasitism. A begger in rags eschewing this mortal world and taking no care for the morrow. The story of jesus, after all..is not the story of a hardworking carpenter.

It's only in weakness that christianity has had to repair it's image by doing something of redeeming value.