ESP uses company store approach to keep students in debt and prevent executive success

Company Store?

In a previous post, I referred to Executive Success Programs (ESP) as the ‘company store.’

In the early 1900s, mining corporations owned entire towns in remote locations.  Workers were attracted to move to the company’s town by the lure of high wages. Once there, they discovered the cost of living was higher thanelsewhere, since the “company store” was the only place to purchase the necessities of life.

The mining company paid high wages, but got the money back as profits at the company store. No matter how hard the workers tried, they could never make enough money to live and would always be in debt to the company store. As long as they were in debt, the company could legally prevent workers from leaving.

Espians who live in NXIVM Village are in a similar situation.

Students are attracted to NXIVM Village by the lure of classes that will teach them to make money. They are given jobs to help them as they learn but they are always in debt because of the endless courses.

How does it work?

Keith Raniere has given a directive that there is never to be an end to the ESP curriculum.  That’s why ESP always has new courses. It’s not like a university where one day you graduate with a degree and you’re done.

The more you advance in ESP, the more it costs.

For instance, a new Jness track may cost $15,000.  A Level Two intensive might be $8,500. One of the ways Keith Raniere keeps people dependent is the company offers students an opportunity to attend a training for no up-front cost.

A student can move ahead on the stripe path if they take enough courses and attending one of the advanced courses sounds promising. As an advanced student, you can attend to help staff it. You will have duties – to provide toilet paper, put out the food, clean up afterward etc.  If you attend this training to staff it, you are offered three methods to pay for it. You can pay for it in full, or pay monthly, or you can staff three more classes where you work in exchange for that training.

Most people take the payment plan option.  Soon enough, a student winds up owing a fortune and is making high monthly payments that absorb much of the lower wages they are getting in NXIVM Village working for Clare or for the Knife or at ESP.

You don’t have to live in NXIVM Village either.  Lucas Roberts lives in Vancouver. He keeps coming to NXIVM Village for more advanced courses. He owes $120,000 in training.

The higher level training classes should be bringing in thousands of dollars from students but actually most people in the class are taking it for nothing up front.

Then these advanced students owe increasingly larger sums of money on payment plans.

Some of this they work off or exchange for services. Some make monthly payments. Some put it on their credit cards. One woman said she spent more than $100,000 over four years in cash and trade of services. While she was offering her services to NXIVM, she could not work elsewhere. She was trapped in an endless cycle of taking classes and working to pay them off.

The whole idea of Jness Tracks is to charge an exaggerated price since it is meant to ensnare and keep people in debt. Many students owe $100,000 and they think they have to stay with the company and work until they pay off their debt.

Yet they may never pay it off,  Some have been there for a decade. They always take new courses and their debt gets higher. And make no mistake about it: the ghouls of Raniere put a lot of pressure on advanced students to take new courses.

Not taking them frequently enough will lead to a student being shunned.

What a great system to make the most money off of students, while keeping them trapped by the company store.