Amway.

[Philostopher]

Religion? Cult? Simple pyramid scheme? Have you ever known a rationalist who got involved with Amway?

I never really knew all that much about the whole thing, the closest my folks ever got to Amway was Avon. My mother wouldn't even buy Amway products from people who called her. She wouldn't do the Tupperware party thing, either, though, and I know it's not a cult as such! My folks were/are Christians (Dad died several years ago, Mom's still living), but they clearly never let money or status force their hands in a decision.

I've never known anybody to get involved with Amway, myself (though my older sister did sell Avon for a while, and I don't think it's legitimately a pyramid scheme in the sense Amway is), though I had a friend who responded to one of those 'looking for a few good people who like to work hard' ads back in the Reagan/Bush I recession who came home from the seminar laughing his ass off that people actually believed it would work because it was a pyramid scheme. This one was a water and air filter sales racket, but structurally it was similar to any other MLM racket.

It just strikes me, from what I've seen and read about Amway over the years, Christians would be considerably more vulnerable to their sales pitch than non-Christians.

I don't know that much about MLM, maybe some of the programs are at least moderately legitimate. I've never believed there was any way to get something for nothing, which is what most of these programs try to convince people -- work hard for a few years, recruit enough lackeys and take credit for their work, and you'll never have to work again. I don't worship mammon any more than I worship God, so the idea of exploiting others for personal gain was never a big career motivator for me, so I never dug into any of the others.

From what I've read lately on some websites -- one in particular, MLM Survivors, got me thinking about it. Apparently, Amway people suck their 'downline' people in by using religious connections/imagery to manipulate them, then convince them they shouldn't waste time socializing outside their affiliate network. They sell tapes, have meetings and conferences that are supposed to be the sum total of what Amway affiliates get for entertainment and social connection. The 'downline' reps are supposed to appeal to their sponsors for just about everything -- including psychological counseling, credit counseling, etc. They use 'patriotic' and 'religious' imagery, but tend to pressure these people to stop attending their churches and associating with their families if their families don't at least buy into the Amway product line.

I knew Amway was a pyramid scheme, it always pretty much looked that way from outside, but I didn't know how deeply they mined religious organizations and Christians to accomplish their (some would say nefarious) business. Apparently, lots of GOP bigwigs have been buddy-buddy with the founders of Amway (Van Andel comes to mind, apparently GHW Bush has spoken at Amway motivational conferences, among others). So it's not only a fake religious organization, but they pretty much tell them who to vote for, too. Of course, using the old 'you can have a yacht/limo/private island' thing is more likely to appeal to those who are politically conservative anyway, since theoretically conservatism is more 'mammon worship' than liberalism (okay, maybe I live in a fantasy world).

So, have you ever had any dealings with Amway? Or is the 'something for nothing' business model something many agnostics, atheists and humanists are disinclined to 'buy into' by virtue of being more stubborn about believing in anything that can't be proved?

[fshrink]

1. Nope...

I can toy with fast success fantasies. But a belief is a fantasy which has the strength of an actual perception. So believers will in all likelihood go further than non-believers in that kind of crap. cf. scientology et al.

[Philostopher]

4. That kind of surprised me, but I thought of it, too.

The parallels between Amway and Scientology, I mean. Much the same thing, and the reason they're both insinuated to be cults -- cutting people off from their prior social and familial connections, convincing them to worship something (if they don't already) or to worship something other than what they did previously. It's the one thing I guess I can thank my prior religious training for -- I was made aware of the signs of a cult, and never had any question about things like Amway or Scientology when I ran into them.

[robbedvoter]

2. When I lived in NJ some vague aquaintances came over ans started

their spiel about Amway. I still have goosebumps when I remember the shiny eyes, the frozen smile, the frantic speech...I had no idea what Amway was up to that point. Since, I tenc to consider it a cult.

[Philostopher]

6. Never had anybody approach me about Amway,

though a friend's mother sold Mary Kay and kind of tried to get us to 'hawk' it to our friends for her. It was kind of pathetic trying to push that stuff at a small, rural school where something like thirty percent of the town's population lived at or below the poverty level, but I guess if people are acquisitive they'll attempt anything that tells them it's easy to make money that way.

[fshrink]

8. Lol. "the shiny eyes, the frozen smile, the frantic speech"

That's so true it's scary!

[trotsky]

3. I had a roommate once who was into Amway.

This was in college - he didn't strike me as the religious type, but he bought in hook, line, and sinker. Even took a road trip down to Atlanta or somewhere for their annual meeting or something.

I found him annoying anyway so I never got that friendly with him, but once he swallowed the Amway kool-aid I made sure to keep my distance because he was hitting up ALL his friends - hard.

The DeVos family, founders of Amway, are HUGE Repukes. And I think you're right - the materialism angle harmonizes much better with modern "conservatism." Hey, at least that way they're only screwing their fellow right-wingers.

[Philostopher]

5. I already knew that about DeVos and Van Andel.

Sometimes I wonder how much the modern neoconservative movement learned from Amway in indoctrinating people -- convincing them that conservatism and religion were somehow interlocked in ways neither politics or religion was interlocked in the past. The modern GOP/neoconservative movement sometimes seems to be a vast pyramid scheme/MLM, doesn't it?

[trotsky]

7. MLM for votes - great observation. How true!

The neocons realize there's no way in hell an average working stiff is gonna vote for an agenda of endless war, tax breaks for the rich, and cuts in all the governmental services that benefit. You market, you promise, you show the yachts, and you mix in religion for good measure. Yep, sounds very much like Amway. Complete with financial windfalls for the powerful and squat for the stiff.

[Philostopher]

10. And also the aspect ...

of convincing working-class people that they'll someday be rich enough to enjoy the benefits of having Republicans in charge. There's that fantasy carrot they dangle, 'if you were rich like me, wouldn't you feel bad about having to pay all those nasty income taxes? Well, someday you can be rich like me!' Even though Republicans are the last ones to offer any real economic benefit to anybody who's not a millionaire. Pyramid scheme -- the guys at the top make all the dough, everybody else works their butt off for peanuts, chewing on the fantasy that someday they'll be at the top themselves!

[politicat]

9. Amway is the bane of my existence.

My step-grandmother sells it. My mother has been in and out for years. My father in law tried to get my husband involved; this ended their relationship entirely. My ex-partner's best friend tried to recruit us. I had to work lights and sound as a high schooler for their events at school when they rented out the HS auditorium. (Hey, at least it paid, but there were definitely drugs going around the place.)

Actually, it's MLM that bothers me. I know so many people who just don't get the math involved and end up selling every MLM that comes down the pike - Amway, Avon, health products, vitamins, Melallucca (sp), Pampered Chef, Tupperware, PartyLight, lingerie and sex toys.... I wish they would figure out that they only get rich if they get in on the ground floor (first 200 I think is the number) and only if they can manage to recruit 200 or more people. But it's a living of sorts for people who can't be bothered with bosses and schedules, or so I recall.

I'd say it appeals to the gullible. Am I saying my family is gullible? Well... the fact that we don't talk to them often and are not close at all should give you an idea of our commonality with the genetic donors....

Pcat

[Philostopher]

11. Apparently, many of the MLM programs convince the 'prospects'

that anybody can reach that level of 'free money' and that if they don't, either they're not working hard enough, don't believe in God, America and 'the business' enough, or are just plain losers. It amazes me, reading the guestbook I referenced in the original post on this thread, that Ambots will post in the site owner's guestbook and repeat the same phrases over and over, telling the owner s/he's a loser, couldn't handle his/her money, or didn't believe in Amway enough to succeed. They have something like a 90% annual falloff rate, so clearly not everybody who bails out on it -- once they realize they're being duped, or that Amway doesn't like 'uppity women' or for its salespeople/operatives to have an intellectual or social life outside 'the business' or whatever other reason (some of the posters in that site's guestbook were members of other religions, and were extremely offended at the evangelical Christian tone; others weren't conservatives, got dragged there by friends and realized it was a scam or didn't want to be told they were losers if they weren't right-wing enough) -- is a loser.

I guess I'm lucky my folks weren't especially acquisitive and didn't want things they hadn't earned themselves, and that my dad had an A-1 bullshit detector (I inherited it) for that kind of stuff. He used to kid my older sister about selling Avon, though my mother always bought it, no matter who was selling it to her. My sister used the products, too, though I don't think she often made more than enough money out of it to pay for her periodic sample restocks. She always had a regular job while she was doing it, I don't think she ever thought she was going to be able to quit that to sell Avon -- nobody I know ever did.

[politicat]

15. I know one person who makes a living selling avon, but

she's partially disabled, has been selling it for 25 years or more, and was the first one in her area (NE AZ) and is the senior for most of the territory. She's put as much or more work into it than if she'd been running any other business. (She's my mother's dear friend.)

I hate to see her working so hard and keeping so little of what she makes, but one can't talk to them once they've drank the koolaid. It's very much like a religion.

Pcat

[Philostopher]

17. My mother bought all her Avon, when I was a kid,

from a woman who was mildly handicapped -- one of her legs was slightly shorter than the other, so she used to walk around town with her Avon case and her orthopedic shoes, one of which had a built-up sole. I always got the feeling the reason she did so well selling the stuff around there, especially with people like my mother -- who admitted it -- who felt sorry for her and bought more stuff than they might have from someone who wasn't partly disabled.

Mom would have bought the stuff anyway -- she liked it, and continued to buy it after that woman quit selling it -- but Mom admitted she bought more because she felt a little sorry for the woman, and was impressed by her determination, carrying a sample case up and down the street in her orthopedic shoes.

Not saying Avon looks for handicapped people to recruit because they sell more -- just interesting that you mentioned that and it reminded me about the woman who sold the stuff when I was a kid!

[Kolesar]

13. I figured they would need 10 million worker bees to support 200 sultans...

...in a scheme that was being used to sell "discount long distance" though a MLM network 10 years ago. I don't recall what the exact numbers were. However, they make it sound easy to get four levels of people below you, but at the rate at which you have to recruit--about 10 contacts below each boss--you end up approaching the limit line of "diminishing returns". There just are not enough people in this country.

[Philostopher]

18. I did know some people who tried that MLM long distance stuff.

You're right -- I think they prey on people who don't understand the mathematics of it. Even if you break even or make a little money with that stuff, the only way you could possibly do as well as the people they show as examples of the success of the programs is to have been in on the first two or three levels. Otherwise, mathematically you reach a saturation point in your locality rather quickly, since a small number of people are going to want to attempt to sell this stuff. It's the fact that these pyramid schemes don't make the majority of their money on moving retail product to retail customers -- instead, they pressure their 'program members' to buy the products, and other 'educational' and 'motivational' products -- that makes them so successful for people who get in early, and so impossible for those who came in late.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

12. The woman who cuts my hair - her father is a major Amway exec

I just started going to her this year and in the course of talking about politics she talked about her upbringing in her conservative Republican Catholic family. Her father is a control freak authoritarian and has been involved in Amway for decades - even moved the family to the town where they're headquartered. Yeccchh.

Procter & Gamble has filed a number of lawsuits against Amway for spreading the rumour that P&G is affiliated with the "Church of Satan" and that their products carry the mark of the beast - the "man in the moon" trademark. (P&G removed the logo from their product packaging but a 12-foot-high stone relief of it still graces the wall near the elevator bank at their Cincinnatti headquarters.) They have not successfully sued Amway but did win a judgement against an individual Amway dealer. However, judging by the way they do business, I wouldn't be surprised if the corporation was involved.

http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/procter.asp

[Philostopher]

16. I'm from Cincinnati, and was aware of the lies about P&G,

so maybe that's why so many people where I'm from knew about Amway. P&G is a big (halfway decent) employer around there, and very high-profile in Cinci, so people who grow up around there may be more likely to take a jaded view of somebody like Amway trying to hurt their business.

I'm guessing they're also the source of the rumors about one of the design houses that also owned a personal cosmetics and fragrance division (which Amway also sells) -- can't remember, maybe it was Liz Claiborne -- back in the '80s also being affiliated with satanists. In fact, any time I hear a rumor about some company that makes a product Amway might sell being involved with satanists, I pretty much assume the rumor came from Amway, having watched the whole 'man in the moon is satan' thing from those folks. I liked the man in the moon, though I eventually came to take a more jaded view of P&G for other reasons. I thought it was sad, but even then I didn't know Amway was using religion so heavily to get and keep people involved.

[Kolesar]

14. That "air filter company" has a product that emits toxic ozone

My brother got suckered into that scheme. They have a product with a name that "sounds like" an ion air filter (which is a good product). Somehow, the designer at that company got the idea of "cleaning the air" by creating ozone. I googled the subject and determined that the product emits a lung irritant that may lead to bronchitis or other diseases.

I presented that to my brother and he refused to believe it. Pathetic.

[Philostopher]

19. Well, most of these MLMs indoctrinate.

It's like when you ask a 'true believer' in the literality of the bible to explain fossils -- they'll tell you 'either God put them there to fool us, or satan put them there to fool us.' You get the same sort of answers from people who've been suckered into these MLM product scams -- all the information that reflects badly on their product was produced by people who compete with their product.

It's sick enough that these companies lie to their recruits, but what really sickens me is that so many of them mix jingoism and religion in, as well. In some ways, WalMart (post Sam Walton, anyway) is a similar scam, and uses God and the American flag in many of the same ways, convincing people if they fail that they're lazy, insufficiently religious and unpatriotic if they quit because they've realized they'll never break even or that they're being used. They set their marks up so that even if they bail out on the system or program, they'll feel guilty and defective -- that way, those people never complain or 'out' the bad practices. They're convinced the failure is in them, not in the system or the company.

It's the kind of thing that almost makes me wish I believed in karma or an afterlife -- knowing that some of these assholes who manipulate the ignorant and easily led by twisting religious and patriotic imagery are going to go to their graves never having paid for doing it. Sadly, if they're that good at manipulating others, they've already manipulated themselves into thinking what they're doing is okay. Most of them will get by with it, since they grease the right palms and settle out of court if they're legitimately sued over their business practices instead of fighting it out and having their practices publicized.

[Kolesar]

20. My brother is secular, and he took the bait

He is impressed with big money and folks that have amassed millions. He wishes to emulate them. This is not the first MLM that has drawn him in. He has also shown poor judgement for selecting business partners and companies to work for. Always swinging for the fence--not happy with trying to get on first base.

[Philostopher]

21. Secular or not, that would seem to be the mentality MLMs draw.

Though it is interesting that, as much religious hammering as they supposedly do, anybody secular would find any comfort operating within the ones who use it. I know some don't -- Amway seems to, though, and some of the Amway offshoots (they split off several divisions a few years ago, apparently, for reasons I don't know in detail, perhaps just to give them 'clean' names since most people I know cringe when they hear the word Amway). I'd assume since it's been successful for them, some of the 'AmWannabes' probably hit it hard, too.

Kills me that anything that dirty would use religious imagery, whether successful or not. Guys like Asimov and Harlan Ellison were right, I guess -- if you put a cross and a picture of a gray-bearded guy in white robes on a bottle of arsenic, some people would drink it if they were told it was 'the host.'