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Growth Revisited |
Now that you've completed these 18 Segments and graduated from TOLFA, it's a good time to re-visit its growth model, introduced on the Home page.
You'll recall it's very simple: each graduate resigns any government job he holds, and brings one (or more) of his friends to the course each year and helps him through it as a "Mentor." The inevitable result of that simple work is an annual doubling, so embracing the whole literate US population within 28 years (228 = 268.4 million) and, counting the one-time boost in membership with which the Academy started, we're on track for that to happen in 2027.
There are some implications of this strategy:
- Until the Academy's membership becomes a significant fraction of the whole population, so that fellow-members are encountered in the ordinary course of meeting people, nobody will know how big it is nor who else is a graduate.
- Few members will know the identities of more than a couple of dozen others; those he introduced, plus a few of those they introduced.
This is deliberate, because at some point in the growth progression, when government people see their days are numbered, they will frantically try to kill off the Academy. Jim Davies' book "Transition to Liberty" visualizes some tricks they may try, but it's impossible to predict them all and torture will not be off the table. The less anyone knows, the less he can be forced to tell.
That is of paramount importance, but it necessarily brings the downside that nobody can say "look how we're growing" at any one time. It's always nice to prove we're part of a vibrant, fast- growing movement, it adds confidence and motivation. That, we will have to manage without.
Instead, everyone must keep quietly plodding on, doing his or her very simple part to liberate humanity: one friend or more per year, brought to and helped through the Academy. That's it. Nothing else is needed, and nothing else will work.
That said, one piece of news can be released as the fourth anniversary of our launch (in June, 2006) approaches: that launch has produced more than twice the number of direct or "orphan" joiners that was anticipated. That's why we can be rather confident that 2027 will be the year in which E-Day takes place. These early members came over a much longer period than expected, but the numbers are very encouraging. The flow is diminishing now, and will probably reduce to zero by 2013, but provided each graduate does his simple part as above the number of members introduced by that first wave of joiners makes that wave already a mere blip on the radar.