The company’s that everyone knows are MLM trash (HerbaLife, JuicePlus, ect). When I was looking for a job I naively joined a seminar discussing CutCo Knives. Come to find out these dud muffin companies have been around since my mom was growing up, and are somehow still operational? Wouldn’t the BBB or whatever business bureau operates in the US (FTC?) have these scams shut down by now? I understand that new ones are popping up all the time but im referring to the ones that have been around forever now.
In: Economics
The big ones are MLMs or SLMs.
Typical business involves the business selling to consumers.
Something like a used car lot will hire people to sell the used car. That’s legitimate.
An MLM would be like if you could recruit people to sell used cars and got a portion of the funds of the sales from the people you recruited attributed back to you, and everyone they recruit. It’s a legitimate(ish) business that can work if there’s actually a demand for the product from legitimate consumers.
A pyramid scheme on the other hand is literally just like pay me $100 and then recruit two people who each pay you $100 and I’ll get $50 of that, then every 2 they recruit they give $100, you get $50, I get $25, etc. no legitimate product is being sold to consumers.
Where MLMs become problematic is that they often require you actually buy their goods, which is also a legitimate tactic for business / but they also often have their own sales people as their major consumers. If you’re buying their goods to sell to other sales people or just to keep your status in the organization rather to meet demand of consumers then you’re in a bad MLM lol
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