On this thought-provoking Blog, Englishman, David Brear, guides us to the dark heart of a modern-day, totalitarian labyrinth and shines a piercing light on its manipulative rulers and manipulated inhabitants. First, he provides a spool of unbreakable thread so that we can all find our way safely home. Blog readers may contact David Brear via: axiombooks@wanadoo.fr
The Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on September 18 issued notification (46/2018) which prohibits the business of multi-level marketing (MLM) in Myanmar. The ban will take effect immediately.
Action will be taken against all MLM businesses found to still be in operation after the date of the issued notification, under the Essential Supplies and Service Law. The law states that those found to be in violation of the regulations could be punished with a minimum of six months up to a maximum of three years in jail. There will also be a fine not exceeding K500,000.
The move comes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met with 41MLM companies and conducted audits on the companies’ books in February.
“We are taking action after studying this field and having found that many consumers have fallen victim to MLM strategies. At the regions and states, some regional governments have already prohibited MLM businesses from operating,” said U Khin Maung Lwin, assistant secretary of the MOC.
U Maung Maung, secretary of the Myanmar Consumers Union, said his organisation has “always been opposed to MLM. We have been calling for further regulation of this business model as many consumers have been negatively impacted by MLM,” he said.
This particular article can only scratch the surface
of the 'Multi-Level Marketing' phenomenon.
In reality, ‘MLM’ is merely the made-up technical-sounding title for the latest version of the age-old totalitarian fairy story, but this time it's been dressed up
as ‘All-American Capitalism.’
Right-wing billionaire Richard DeVos, who died at ninety-two last week, tried to cover up his life’s record — pioneering the cruel pyramid scheme Amway, attacking organized labor, fighting LGBTQ equality — with philanthropy. But he should be remembered as a bigoted con artist.
The New York Times obituary for Amway founder and former CEO Richard DeVos praised him for his civic service in Grand Rapids, Michigan, his philanthropy in medicine, education, and religion, and his mentorship of Shaquille O’Neal as owner of the Orlando Magic. But a more accurate portrait of DeVos’s legacy can be gleaned from a slightly less highbrow source: the subreddit r/AntiMLM (Multi-Level-Marketing).
The subreddit reads like an oral history archive of the destruction sowed by DeVos and Amway, the multi-level marketing company he co-founded with Jay Van Andel. In a thread titled “Be Especially Wary of Amway, Starbucks Baristas!,” the poster complains that the company “is known for scouting baristas specifically” and recounts how “Amway infiltrated the Starbucks I used to work at … and turned one employee and his fiance into the most insufferable assholes almost overnight.” In another thread titled “My ex got involved in Amway. Cue divorce,” a Redditor laments that “Every cent of our minuscule budget (in our 20’s) was spent on expensive products, ‘training’ materials and conferences.”
While the accounts vary, one theme is consistent: Amway has wreaked havoc on people’s lives. Through its blend of bootstraps ideology and evangelicalism, Amway duped millions.
The corporation operated as the world’s biggest pyramid scheme, and DeVos should be remembered as one of its primary architects. But DeVos’s misdeeds didn’t stop there. His conservative philanthropy, which earned him that glowing Times obituary, helped spur the unprecedented wealth inequality we see today. Perhaps that was DeVos’s greatest con: funding the policies that kept Americans poor, preying on that economic vulnerability to bring them to Amway and further enrich himself, and then repeating the cycle.
A Path to Redemption
Ironically, the free market crusader DeVos owes some of his riches to communism. In 1927, the Chinese Civil War forced American businessman Carl F. Rehnborg, who had worked for the U.S. Steel, Carnation, and Colgate corporations, back to the United States. Taking advantage of the budding vitamin and direct sales industries, Rehnborg founded Nutrilite, a dietary supplement company, in 1934.
Fifteen years later, grade-school buddies Van Andel and DeVos conceived of the exotic-sounding Ja-Ri Corporation (a fusion of their first names). Like Rehnborg, Van Andel and DeVos had an imperialist’s knack for exploiting foreign markets, and the short-lived business got its start importing wood products from Latin America. Facing weak sales, the company switched from mahogany to Nutrilite — Rehnborg’s creation. Amway, short for the American Way, was born.
From the beginning, DeVos amassed his fortune by swindling ordinary people. He inspired in his adherents an unwavering belief in a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative — then offered them no other person to blame when they failed. “Those who really want to succeed, succeed,” insisted DeVos, “and the others didn’t try hard enough.”
Of course, this was a sham. At Amway, failure was, and still is, assured: in 2011, the Consumer Awareness Institute calculated loss rates exceeding 99.9 percent. Amway’s business model involves selling overpriced products (soap, vitamins, skin care, home goods) and minimizing the bonus payout to distributors through a complicated hierarchy of distributors, called the “downline” in Amway parlance.
In a 2008 UK case, government authorities reported that out of a distributor population of 33,000, only about 90 made enough income to cover the costs of running the business. Former seller Eric Scheibeler published an expose on Amway, Merchants of Deception, which showed, among other revelations, that DeVos had been aware of Amway’s pyramid-scheme practices for over twenty years.
DeVos, who has forked out $200 million since the 1970s to fund the conservative movement, including many evangelical groups like the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the Acton Institute, was never afraid to bring evangelicalism into his business.
Amway meetings have been likened to church revivals, and DeVos to the evangelical preacher Billy Graham. “Amvox,” Amway’s voicemail system, the primary way the company communicated with sellers (that they were also required to spend $15 a month to subscribe to), broadcasted a blend of free-market fanaticism and right-wing religious ideology to its distributors during the 1990s and early 2000s.
The gospel of Christian free enterprise permeated all levels of the organization.
“It wasn’t like any church I’d been to,” remarked one of Amway’s distributors to the Charlotte Observer in 1995. “I saw people professing their faith in Jesus Christ and not ashamed. … I didn’t see one person who reached high levels who didn’t acknowledge the Lord and give him credit for the success.”
The sociologists David Bromley and Anson Shupe have argued that what is unique about Amway is not its melding of God and capitalism, an amalgam almost as old as Christianity itself. Instead, the power of Amway lies in its ability to harness these ideologies “to motivate individual salespersons far beyond the scope of their actual remuneration or realistic prospects thereof.” Amway takes free-market worship a step further, garnering much of its wealth from selling the idea of prosperity itself. Upper-level distributors, the top 2 percent, don’t sell soap — they hawk instructional seminars, CDs, books, website access, voicemail recordings, and other sales “tools” to the lower-level sales force — at huge profit margins.
DeVos and Van Andel sold Amway not only as a path to wealth, but as a path to redemption for the alienated American worker. They recruited distributors by peddling a vision of small entrepreneurship and individual freedom in a corporate, bureaucratized, and —coinciding with Amway’s rise during the 1970s and ‘80s — increasingly economically unstable world. Bromley again: “The message [in network marketing] is: `We’re putting the family back in charge. The corporation doesn’t control you.’”
Central to this ideology is the notion, present in most Amway literature, that the individual seller could, through hard work and determination, control his destiny. “Amway is just the good old American dream,’ said William Campbell, a distributor for the company in Hilton Head, South Carolina, told the New York Times in 1977.“Everybody has the idea to open their own business and see it go. Amway lets you.”
This small business owner ethos is also reflected in the multi-level marketing model itself. Because salespeople rely on an informal network composed mostly of friends and family, distributor networks function as both extended family and business network. The model relies on a high degree of exploitation, as people’s social and family relationships become weaponized to coerce them into buying or sell Amway-brand protein powder or dish detergent.
As Amway prophet and profiteer Dexter Yager once noted when describing Amway’s model, “If you work just for money, you’ll reach a point where you may have enough and you’ll let up. We build relationships, and people don’t normally quit on people who love them.”
The valorization of the small business owner is in many ways a product of the twentieth-century conservative movement, but it’s also rooted in something deeper. In crafting their business ethos, DeVos and Van Andel drew on a relic of the old republic: the independent yeoman farmer. The yeoman farmer, always envisioned as a white man, was a symbol of the ideal American for founding fathers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The ultimate embodiment of settler colonialism as well as republican values, the yeoman farmer owned his own modest farm and profited from the labor of his own family. Above all, he was independent — unlike the wage-laboring class, he was not reliant on an employer to support his livelihood.
An anecdote from Stephen Butterfield’s book Amway: The Cult of Free Enterpriseillustrates how the company’s leadership marketed this ideology to its salesforce. One “Emerald” (top-performing) seller relayed to his distributor network a brief history lesson, no doubt culled from the top brass, on the reason that people have jobs: “Americans got lazy and did not want to be in business for themselves anymore. Workers in short were in the working class because they ‘lost their Dream.’”
By holding up the independent distributor as the modern equivalent of the yeoman farmer, Amway played into sellers’ dreams of a life free from the tyranny of a boss — even as the company controlled every facet of sellers’ lives: personal, economic, spiritual, and political.
Indeed, DeVos and the Amway leadership did not limit their activities to privately funding conservative causes. They also enlisted the Amway sales force in that project. Butterfield notes that in “the elections of 1980 and 1984, Amway leaders everywhere were using their tax deductible business functions to drum up support for Ronald Reagan.”
A 1996 Mother Jones investigation revealed widespread use of corporate resources, including the Amvox system, to influence the election of Republican congresswoman Sue Myrick, in what may have been a violation of campaign laws. “They tell you to always vote conservative no matter what. They say liberals support the homosexuals and let women get out of their place,” Karen Jones, a former distributor, said.
Perhaps the investigation’s most bizarre finding was a leaked voicemail message forwarded from Yager to his distributors on the Amvox system: “If you analyze Bill Clinton’s entire inaugural address, it is nothing but a New Age pagan ritual. If you go back and look at how it was arranged and how it was orchestrated, he talked about forcing the spring. So what they’re trying to do is … force the emergence of deviant lifestyles, of a socialist agenda, and force that on us as American people.”
For a man so purportedly fixated on individual freedom, DeVos — like many American bosses — never had any reservations about coercing his sales force into doing his political bidding.
In fact, contempt for workplace democracy has been a hallmark of the anti-labor organizations and legislation funded by the DeVos largesse. An early supporter of “right to work” laws, DeVos was a Director of the Council on a Union-Free Environment, founded in 1977.
Throughout the years, he has contributed vast sums of money to anti-worker organizations like the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the American Conservative Union Victory Fund, the National Right to Work Committee, and the Public Service Political Action Committee. Most recently, the DeVos clan, led by DeVos’s son and daughter-in-law, Richard “Dick” DeVos, Jr and Betsy DeVos, funded the passage of right-to-work legislation in Michigan, which has provided a blueprint for other states.
A Life Marked by Fraud and Deception
The DeVos name has been in the news ever since Betsy’s appointment as Secretary of Education to President Trump. Of all of the curiosities in Trump’s cabinet, which has included at various times a fast-food CEO as nominee for the Secretary of Labor and a professional wrestling executive as head of the Small Business Administration, Betsy DeVos may be the most instinctually odious to the Left. She cleared the ground for the proliferation of for-profit charter schools in Detroit, which has resulted in the lowest scores the district has seen, as well as a “Wild West” ethos in which profiteering and mismanagement runs rampant.
Betsy’s bankrolling of anti-LGBTQ causes, to the tune of almost $2 million, also aligns perfectly with her father-in-law’s record. Richard DeVos’s hostility to LGBT rights traces back at least as far as the 1980s, when he served on President Reagan’s Commission on the HIV epidemic. He later reflected on the experience:
I listened to three hundred witnesses tell us that it was everybody else’s fault but their own. Nothing to do with their conduct, just that the government didn’t fix this disease … I said, you are responsible for your actions too, you know. Conduct yourself properly, which is a pretty solid Christian principle.
In a life marked by fraud and deception, the bootstraps narrative was one of Richard DeVos’s greatest swindles. The Redditor whose marriage fell apart because of her husband’s involvement with Amway might agree. Even as his marriage crumbled before his eyes, her soon-to-be-ex was intransigent: “Do not blame Amway for this!” he instructed as she walked out the door. “Amway is just a vehicle for success!!”
The following deconstructed analysis has been formulated to sharpen the critical and evaluative faculties of all unwary persons approaching so-called'Multi-Level Marketing'from the dangerous (subjective) point of view that it must be a business/industry, rather than from the safe (purely-objective) point of view that they don't really know what it is.
More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:
the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as'Multi-Level Marketing'(a.k.a. 'Network Marketing')is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational, cultic, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap.
the impressive-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,'is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as reality, by the instigators, and associates, of various copy-cat, major and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim 'Long Cons*' - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles**, a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as'legitimate direct selling income opportunites') and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as'legitimate: training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,'etc.).
Apart from an insignificant minority of shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend thatanyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100%.
*A 'Long Con' is a form of fraud maliciously designed to exploit victims' existing beliefs and instinctual desires and make them falsely-believe that they are exercising a completely free-choice. 'Long Cons' comprise an enticing structured-scenario of control acted out as reality over an extended period. Like theatrical plays, 'Long Cons' are written, directed and produced. They involve leading players and supporting players as well as props, sets, extras, costumes, script, etc. The hidden objective of 'Long Cons' is to convince unwary persons that fiction isfactand fact is fiction,progressively cutting them offfrom external reality.In this way, victims begin unconsciously to play along with the controlling-scenario and (in the false-expectation of future reward) large sums of money or valuables can be stolen from them. Classically, the victims of 'Long Cons' can become deluded to such an extent that they will abandon their education, jobs, careers, etc., empty their bank accounts, and/or beg, steal, borrow from friends, family members, etc.
**The enticing structured-scenario of control fundamental to all 'rigged-market swindles' is that people can earn income by first contributing their own money to participate in aprofitable commercial opportunity, but which is secretly an economically-unviable fake due to the fact that the (alleged)opportunity has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own ill-informed participants. For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate rigged-market swindles by offering endless-chains of victims various banal, but over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment payments, on the pretext that 'MLM' products/services can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities via expanding networks of distributors. However, since 'MLM' products/services cannot be regularly re-sold to the general public for a profit in significant quantities (based on value and demand), 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money (in the false expectation of future reward). Thus, in 'MLM'rackets, the innocent looking products/sevices' function has been to hide what is really occurring - i.e The operation of an unlawful, intrinsically fraudulent, rigged-market where effectively no non-salaried (transient) participant can generate an overall net-profit, because, unknown to the non-salaried (transient) participants, the market is in a permanent state of collapse and requires its non-salaried (transient) participants to keep finding further (temporary) de facto slaves to sustain the enticing illusion of stability and viability.
Meanwhile an insignificant (permanent) minority direct the 'Long Con' - raking in vast profits by selling into the rigged-market and by controlling/withholding all key-information concerning the rigged-market's actual catastrophic, ever-shifting results from its never-ending chain of (temporary) de facto slaves.
Although cure-all pills potions and vitamin/dietary supplements, household and beauty, products have been most-prevalent, it is possible to use any product, and/or service, to dissimulate a rigged-market swindle. There are even some 'MLM' rackets that have been hidden behind well-known traditional brands (albeit offered at fixed high prices). Some 'MLM'rackets have included 'cash-back/discount shopping cards, travel products, insurance, energy/communications services' and 'crypto-currencies' in their controlling scenarios.
No matter what bedazzling product/service has been dangled as bait, in 'MLM' rackets, there has been no significant or sustainable source of revenue other than never-ending chains of contractees of the 'MLM' front companies. These front-companies always pretend that their products/services are high quality and reasonably-priced and that for anyone prepared to put in some effort, the products/services can be sold onfor a profitvia expanding networks of distributors based on value and demand. In reality, the underlying reason why it has mainly only been (transient) 'MLM' contractees who have bought the various products /services (and not the general public) is because they have been tricked into unconsciously playing along with the controlling scenario which constantly says that via regular self-consumption and the recruitment of others to do the same, etc. ad infinitum, anyone can receive a future (unlimited) reward.
I've been examining the 'MLM' phenomenon for around 20 years. During this time, I've yet to find one so-called 'MLM' company that has voluntarily made key-information available to the public concerning the quantifiable results of its so-called 'income opportunity'.
Part of the key-information that all 'MLM' bosses seek to hide concerns the overall number of persons who have signed contracts since the front companies were instigated and the retention rates of these contractees.
When rigorously investigated, the overall hidden net-loss churn rates for so-called 'MLM income opportunites' has turned out to have been effectively 100%. Thus, anyone claiming (or implying) that it is possible for anyone to make a penny of net-profit, let alone a living, in an 'MLM,' cannot be telling the truth and will not provide quantifiable evidence to back up his/her anecdotal claims.
Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by commercial regulators, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades. The quantifiable results of the self-perpetuating global 'Long Con' known as 'Multi Level Marketing,' have been fiendishly hidden by convincing victims that they are 'Independent Business Owners' and that any losses they incurred,must have been entirely their own fault.
Blog readers should observe how (in the above linked-videos) chronic victims of 'MLM' cults are incapable of describing what they were subjected to in accurate terms. Even though they are no longer physically playing along with the 'Long Con's' controlling-scenario, they unconsciously continue to think, and speak, using the jargon-laced 'MLM' script - illogically describing themselves as 'Distributors.'
Chronic victims of blame-the-victim culticrackets who have managed to escape and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For years afterwards, recovering cult victims can suffer from psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse):
depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/ anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/ nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness, fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc. David Brear (copyright 2018)
The following deconstructed analysis has been formulated to sharpen the critical and evaluative faculties of all unwary persons approaching so-called'Multi-Level Marketing'from the dangerous (subjective) point of view that it must be a business/industry, rather than from the safe (purely-objective) point of view that they don't really know what it is.
More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:
the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as'Multi-Level Marketing'(a.k.a. 'Network Marketing')is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational, cultic, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap.
the impressive-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,'is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as reality, by the instigators, and associates, of various copy-cat, major and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim 'Long Cons*' - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles**, a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as'legitimate direct selling income opportunites') and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as'legitimate: training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,'etc.).
Apart from an insignificant minority of shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend thatanyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100%.
*A 'Long Con' is a form of fraud maliciously designed to exploit victims' existing beliefs and instinctual desires and make them falsely-believe that they are exercising a completely free-choice. 'Long Cons' comprise an enticing structured-scenario of control acted out as reality over an extended period. Like theatrical plays, 'Long Cons' are written, directed and produced. They involve leading players and supporting players as well as props, sets, extras, costumes, script, etc. The hidden objective of 'Long Cons' is to convince unwary persons that fiction isfactand fact is fiction,progressively cutting them offfrom external reality.In this way, victims begin unconsciously to play along with the controlling-scenario and (in the false-expectation of future reward) large sums of money or valuables can be stolen from them. Classically, the victims of 'Long Cons' can become deluded to such an extent that they will abandon their education, jobs, careers, etc., empty their bank accounts, and/or beg, steal, borrow from friends, family members, etc.
**The enticing structured-scenario of control fundamental to all 'rigged-market swindles' is that people can earn income by first contributing their own money to participate in aprofitable commercial opportunity, but which is secretly an economically-unviable fake due to the fact that the (alleged)opportunity has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own ill-informed participants. For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate rigged-market swindles by offering endless-chains of victims various banal, but over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment payments, on the pretext that 'MLM' products/services can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities via expanding networks of distributors. However, since 'MLM' products/services cannot be regularly re-sold to the general public for a profit in significant quantities (based on value and demand), 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money (in the false expectation of future reward). Thus, in 'MLM'rackets, the innocent looking products/sevices' function has been to hide what is really occurring - i.e The operation of an unlawful, intrinsically fraudulent, rigged-market where effectively no non-salaried (transient) participant can generate an overall net-profit, because, unknown to the non-salaried (transient) participants, the market is in a permanent state of collapse and requires its non-salaried (transient) participants to keep finding further (temporary) de facto slaves to sustain the enticing illusion of stability and viability.
Meanwhile an insignificant (permanent) minority direct the 'Long Con' - raking in vast profits by selling into the rigged-market and by controlling/withholding all key-information concerning the rigged-market's actual catastrophic, ever-shifting results from its never-ending chain of (temporary) de facto slaves.
Although cure-all pills potions and vitamin/dietary supplements, household and beauty, products have been most-prevalent, it is possible to use any product, and/or service, to dissimulate a rigged-market swindle. There are even some 'MLM' rackets that have been hidden behind well-known traditional brands (albeit offered at fixed high prices). Some 'MLM'rackets have included 'cash-back/discount shopping cards, travel products, insurance, energy/communications services' and 'crypto-currencies' in their controlling scenarios.
No matter what bedazzling product/service has been dangled as bait, in 'MLM' rackets, there has been no significant or sustainable source of revenue other than never-ending chains of contractees of the 'MLM' front companies. These front-companies always pretend that their products/services are high quality and reasonably-priced and that for anyone prepared to put in some effort, the products/services can be sold onfor a profitvia expanding networks of distributors based on value and demand. In reality, the underlying reason why it has mainly only been (transient) 'MLM' contractees who have bought the various products /services (and not the general public) is because they have been tricked into unconsciously playing along with the controlling scenario which constantly says that via regular self-consumption and the recruitment of others to do the same, etc. ad infinitum, anyone can receive a future (unlimited) reward.
I've been examining the 'MLM' phenomenon for around 20 years. During this time, I've yet to find one so-called 'MLM' company that has voluntarily made key-information available to the public concerning the quantifiable results of its so-called 'income opportunity'.
Part of the key-information that all 'MLM' bosses seek to hide concerns the overall number of persons who have signed contracts since the front companies were instigated and the retention rates of these contractees.
When rigorously investigated, the overall hidden net-loss churn rates for so-called 'MLM income opportunites' has turned out to have been effectively 100%. Thus, anyone claiming (or implying) that it is possible for anyone to make a penny of net-profit, let alone a living, in an 'MLM,' cannot be telling the truth and will not provide quantifiable evidence to back up his/her anecdotal claims.
Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by commercial regulators, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades. The quantifiable results of the self-perpetuating global 'Long Con' known as 'Multi Level Marketing,' have been fiendishly hidden by convincing victims that they are 'Independent Business Owners' and that any losses they incurred,must have been entirely their own fault.
Blog readers should observe how (in the above linked-videos) chronic victims of 'MLM' cults are incapable of describing what they were subjected to in accurate terms. Even though they are no longer physically playing along with the 'Long Con's' controlling-scenario, they unconsciously continue to think, and speak, using the jargon-laced 'MLM' script - illogically describing themselves as 'Distributors.'
Chronic victims of blame-the-victim culticrackets who have managed to escape and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For years afterwards, recovering cult victims can suffer from psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse):
depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/ anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/ nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness, fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc. David Brear (copyright 2018)
Richard Marvin DeVos Snr. was one of the instigators of 'Amway' which itself was a copy-cat of 'Nutrilite/ Mytinger & Casselberry,' the original blame-the-victim 'MLM Income Opportunity' cultic racket. www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/transplant.htm
Up until very recently, only one journalist had ever contacted me specifically about DeVos Snr. This was in the late 1990s, when it was suddenly discovered that, in 1997, DeVos Snr had somehow managed to jump a long queue of ailing British citizens, and pay £60 thousands to undergo an emergency heart-transplant operation in a UK National Health Service hospital (after he'd been refused treatment in the USA, because he was too old). However, although several highly-critical articles subsequently appeared in the UK press, what I told my inquisitive media-contact about DeVos Snr. (particularly, about the criminal origin of his fortune), was not published.
Last week, it was widely-reported that DeVos Snr. has finally died aged 92. However, so far, the media (particularly in Devos' home State of Michigan) has only published apparently factual obituaries, generally describing him in glowing-terms as:
a conservative Christian businessman/philanthropist.
co-founder of Amway.
owner of Orlando Magic basketball team.
friend and supporter of several US Presidents, but particularly of Gerald Ford.
major financial backer of the Republican party.
former Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
proponent of conservative/right wing religious policies.
Father-In-Law of Donald Trump's Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.
Several reality-inverting reports have gone so far as to say that DeVos was:
responsible for promoting an entirely-new multi-billion $ industry around the globe.
responsible for helping millions of people to start their own business.
a true patriot who represented the American Dream.
In 2012, Forbes magazine listed Richard DeVos Snr. as the 60th wealthiest person in the USA and the 105th richest person in the world, with a personal fortune estimated at $5+ billions. However, I have yet to find any accurate explanation in the media of how, and from whom, DeVos Snr. actually acquired his mountain of money. That said, if you read the comments sections underneath his obituaries, you discover that a significant number of people are openly-rejoicing at the news of DeVos Snr.'s death. These commentators know damn-well that he was an otherwise-mediocre little charlatan who, for decades, got away with pretending absolute moral and intellectual authority whilst running an abusive blame-the-victim 'long con' that has caused, and is still causing, damage to millions of vulnerable people around the world (and not just financial damage). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/27/jimmy-savile-sexual-abuse In truth, what has generally been published and broadcast about Richard DeVos Snr. in the immediate aftermath of his death, puts me in mind of what was generally published and broadcast about Jimmy Savile in the immediate aftermath of his death. The UK media eventually published explanations of how Jimmy Savile had got away with decades of abusive crimes, because of the 'Halo Effect' of his public philanthropy and his many associations with the great and the good.
Readers of this Blog will know that in the 1990s, I personally witnessed members of my family in the North of England undergo sudden radical personality transformations as a result of their falling under the influence of the pernicious 'Amway' fairy story . Over the years, I have had contact with various people who have all witnessed similar transformations as a result of their loved ones falling under the malign influence of cults hidden behind the camouflage of 'Multi-Level Marketing/ Direct Selling.' My advice to these people has been to remain calm and to try not lose contact with their loved ones, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, 'MLM' adherence does not last long. This is for the simple reason that most 'MLM' recruits cannot attract their own recruits and they cannot afford to continue. However, in general, the more cash, property and/or credit an 'MLM' recruit has access to: the more danger he/she is in. A significant minority of deeply-deluded victims have remained enslaved by the pernicious 'MLM' fairy story, sometimes for decades. I know from my own nightmare personal experience that 'MLM' cult bosses can persuade their most-deluded victims to disclose personal information; particularly, concerning finances. In the worst cases, 'MLM' adherents will obey their group leaders 'advice' and then beg, and/or steal, and/or borrow, to continue to play their group's game of make-believe.
The most-courageous, and entertaining, warning about the real nature of the'MLM'phenomenon ever to be broadcast by the mainstream media, has come from the British-born satirist, John Oliver. At one point, he rightly began to compare 'MLM' groups to 'Scientology.'
A Blog reader who has only just discovered John Oliver's piece, has asked me what I would recommend as the best serious documentary about MLMs?
That said, an independent company, 'West Beach Films,' once began to film a comprehensive history, and analysis, of the 'MLM' phenomenon, but this ambitious project was never completed. Indeed, I was due to be interviewed for this film at the time its makers ran out of finance.
Years before I started my Blog, I met with a television producer. This man was responsible for a team of award-winning investigative journalists - some of whom had previously been examining the so-called 'Amway Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunity.' I was told that 'victims' had been found in the UK who admitted wasting substantial amounts of time and money in 'Amway.' These witnesses also said that the organisation was 'cult-like' and they had begun to describe their overwhelming feelings of joy and excitement when they first got involved. However, it was obvious that the journalists had made the mistake of approaching'MLM'from the dangerous (subjective) point of view that it must be some sort of dodgy business, rather than from the safe (purely-objective) point of view that they really didn't know what it is.
The producer told me that it had been decided to abandon a project to make a documentary about 'Amway,' not because it was feared that the company might sue, but on the grounds that the subject matter was 'too technical' and didn't concern, and wouldn't make sense to, most viewers. David Brear (copyright 2018)
