Multilevel Marketing Scams Expose Capitalism's Foundational Lie
I heard about this company (Lula Roe) a few weeks ago on WBUR's On Point podcast on Multi-Level-Marketing scams. I've never been involved with any of them, but a friend got suckered in the Amway cult some years back and everything I read here and heard about on the On Point podcast really rang true to me. Read On:
Pyramid schemes aren’t a corruption of capitalism — they’re a microcosm of how the class system arbitrarily creates winners and losers while falsely promising opportunity for all.
Back in high school, a friend of mine somehow got looped into attending a seminar concerned with spreading the good word about an exciting — though notably nonspecific — job opportunity. In retrospect, everything about the initial experience was less a series of red flags than it was a proverbial flotilla of giant crimson banners emblazoned with the words “obvious scam.” Adding to the aforementioned lack of specificity (just what the hell was this “opportunity”?), the event itself was to be held in a bleak-looking conference room at an airport motel — the kind of vaguely sinister and transitory location one associates with ugly carpets, mandatory office retreats, marital infidelity, and small-time hucksterism.
In retrospect, I don’t think the actual nature of the gig (such as even existed) was ever really made clear. From what I gathered at the time, attendees were shown a series of peppy, Tim and Eric–esque videos featuring would-be salt-of-the-earth types who had supposedly transformed their lives overnight using the One Weird Trick bequeathed to them by whatever shady LLC was hosting the affair. (My friend, to their credit, left after ten or fifteen minutes.) Were I a betting man, though, I’d put all my chips down on saying this was a multilevel marketing (MLM) scheme of one kind or another — perhaps a notch or two away from being downright illegal, but doubtless powered by a mix of sleaze, credulity, and human desperation.
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/multilevel-marketing-scam-lularoe-pyramid-scheme-capitalism-myth