This is one of those times where it is useful to separate socialists and liberals. Most people to the left of Bernie Sanders are going to be suspicious of capitalist get rich schemes.
I suppose you could get an authoritarian socialist group that works on an anti-capitalist pyramid scheme, but I am not aware of any that do.
The whole thing works on a combination of greed, desperation and wishful thinking, so yeah. But I’ve seen people get suckered into woo-based MLMs because they actually believed in the worthless products. Often, because they’re not as amoral as the people who suckered them in, they’re not as good at selling it. But I will say that I don’t think the woo MLMs focus as much on materialism as on a myth that they’re sustainable and beneficial.
In my 20s I had a friend with bad judgment about money and worse judgment when it came to women. I remember him telling me how excited he was about some MLM scheme his then-GF had gotten them into – “premium” home security products or something like that. He didn’t try to sell me, but he got raised eyebrows from me anyhow.
All employment is a form of pyramid scheme.
I know thats not exactly so, but close enough you should think about it.
It’s a shame that some people are incapable of feeling that shame.
My understanding is that they’re illegal in the same way that monopolies are illegal: bad as far as the books go, but unenforced for the most part.
“We didn’t tell you any inconveniently illegal lies. We just tricked you via omission and implied promises!”
Reminds me of a thought experiment I read recently (credit to Benjamin Kunkel), intended to illustrate surplus labor value:
Imagine the entire economy consists of a single firm, with however many employees. For the firm’s owner to realize a profit, the revenue from selling goods must exceed the wages paid. But since there are no other employers, the firm’s employees are also its sole customers. The only way a profit can come about is for them to take on debt. When one then regards the situation with a real economy, that has many such firms, the same logic still applies. Except other forms of financialization come into play: colonization of new territories, the invention of increasingly convoluted financial instruments, fractional reserve banking, etc. It’s an unsustainable process predicated on eternal expansion… So, yeah! Pyramid scheme.
Is that the sense in which you were thinking?
Yeah there is that whole problem that our economy relies on the idea of permanent growth. Which is thermodynamically absurd.
Well, yes, but I never did expect there to be any academic validation for what I was suggesting. In more plain terms, all employment relies on the business not returning the full value of the employee contribution so as to direct value to profit for the owners/shareholders. Although pyramid schemes are more Machiavellian as there is really no effort to ensure the worker a sustainable wage, in fact it often puts them into debt to channel value up the chain.
I think employee owned companies are perhaps the only business form that overcomes this, by putting all the shares in the hands of the workers pushing the value up.
All that said I’ve not thought this through with any rigor - several steps below thought experiment.
“queasiness is just ethics leaving the body” - I love that line sooooo much 
The woo-based MLM thing is huge here in Taiwan. I have a couple of friends who bought into it, they’re forever trying to hawk their garbage on Line. Thing is they make a little money, but neither saves a single dollar. As soon as they have any cash it’s time for a holiday, a blow-out meal, whatever. Because deep down they just know that unlimited wealth is right around the corner. Any time I try to explain what’s happening they shut me down right away, thinking about it is verboten.
They are basically targeting anyone who can’t do financial math. People who can do financial math tend not to be poor. Not necessarily rich but not poor. He made a good point about targeting immigrants and poor people in other countries. This is true. The schemes they run in developing countries are hilariously sad. There was a Russian guy Sergei Mavrodi who had one called MMM that swept all over the developing countries, especially Africa. It was so transparently a pyramid that it wouldn’t be legal in the US and people would have seen through it. In fact Sergei was completely open about describing it as a pyramid, and somehow justified it because he claimed it was going to destroy our current financial system and replace it with something else. Or something.
That’s only in a closed system under equilibrium, following the laws of conservation of mass and conservation of energy. To complete the metaphor, the system is neither closed or following conservation of anything. The government prints money, always expanding the total pool of “energy.” A single country’s economy is not closed, as there is trade with other countries. If we’re talking about the global economy as a closed system, it still doesn’t follow the laws of thermodynamics, due to the whole government-printing-money thing.
Depressingly accurate summary of my parents’ experience in Amway. At the height of their involvement, they used to attend big morale-building events monthly or every other month. You’d think they were going to rock concerts judging by their excitement, and the ticket prices. Another scam was morale-building books and audio tapes. If only you listen to & read enough of these things, you’ll get the techniques & motivation to finally put you over the top. Ugh.
Re: step 6, it seemed fishy to me that the network advised you to only talk with your “upline” people. Don’t get advice from members who aren’t directly in your network. Why wouldn’t other experienced people have good advice? Because the cult becomes too loose if a lot of members compare notes with each other.
Re: step 1, training materials admitted that although all Amway distributors were supposed to purchase products, the thing you should focus on selling is “The Plan”, recruiting other people to work under you so you’ll get a percentage of their sales. Sell them on the whole system of becoming an Amway distributor. Don’t spend too much time selling them cleaning products or make-up or whatever.
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