eli5 How do multi-million dollar pyramid schemes stay around for so long?

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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

41 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because actual MLM isn’t a pyramid scheme, it’s just a shit deal. But from the FTC’s regulatory perspective, if you sell stuff and get paid for the stuff you sell, it’s not a pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme distributes payment based on recruiting new members and is defrauding said members by pretending there is some other revenue stream than money paid in by new members. That also doesn’t mean an MLM can’t be doing enough bad things to be illegal for other reasons.

That’s oversimplified, but this is ELI5

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