Pigs Might Fly - The Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie

 The Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie. 

I managed to live more than three decades without ever hearing the words, 'Multi-Level Marketing (MLM),' or the phrases, 'MLM industry' and 'MLM is legal.' Today, I wish this dangerous nonsense had never entered my life, but unfortunately, I had no choice in the matter. 

'MLM' The American Dream Made Nightmare: 'Amway' : Was I a victim of an 'MLM' cult? (mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com)

Anyone reading the published account of my own nightmare encounter with the original 'MLM/commercial' cult known as 'Amway' (corruption of 'American Way'), should bear in mind that, at the time these events started to unfold, I had no idea of the danger I was in, or of the true nature, extent and power of the phenomenon I was confronted with. As yet, there was no full and accurate explanation of 'MLM' cultism publicly-available, and certainly not in the media. That's why I began the thankless task of compiling one, as long ago the 1990s. However, at that time, I was still trying to find the right words to identify it accurately. Even when eventually I did find the right words, I discovered that the ugly, but ultimately absurd, truth about the 'MLM' cult phenomenon was still unthinkable to most people. 

The truth being that what has become habitually-referred to as, the 'MLM industry,' has actually been nothing more than a classic example of the notorious, reality-controlling, totalitarian propaganda tactic known as the 'Big Lie.' That is to say, the spreading of a falsehood which is so colossal and outrageous that the average person cannot even begin to conceive that anyone would have the audacity to invent it. Indeed, when I first began to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie, I was faced with the daunting situation where it had been repeated so often, and for so many years, that many apparently-rational people (including, journalists, editors, regulators, law enforcement agents, academics, legislators, celebrities, and even certain world leaders) had come to accept it as the truth. 

Today, the situation is still daunting, but it has begun to change in that (largely due to the Internet) an increasing number of courageous 'MLM' cult survivors have found mutual support, enabling them to come forward and tell the truth about their essentially-identical nightmare experiences. Also, whereas in the past most 'MLM' recruits were men (who naturally found it difficult to admit to the world that they'd been duped), lately the overwhelming majority of persons being lured into 'MLM' cults have been women. 

Amazon.com: Ponzinomics, the Untold Story of Multi-Level Marketing eBook : FitzPatrick, Robert L.: Kindle Store

Furthermore, in the Spring of 2019, my associate, Robert FitzPatrick, published 'Ponzinomics.' In this, Robert not only goes a long way towards identifying the true nature, extent and power of the 'MLM' cult phenomenon, but he also traces the history, and origins, of the Big 'MLM' Lie, and explains how a pair of its earliest creators managed to obtain the highest-level of political protection in the USA. As a result, politically-appointed senior Federal Trade Commission officials raised the white flag of surrender when, in the 1970s, despite mounting-complaints, they ignored an established legal precedent which automatically banned endless-chain recruitment frauds (previously labelled as, 'pyramid selling schemes'), and chose not to shut-down the corporate-front for the original 'MLM' cult. This was evidently because the bosses of 'Amway,' Messrs. DeVos and Van Andel, with a Bible in one hand and the Stars and Stripes in the other, had purchased association their local congressman (fifth Michigan district) with significant quantities of stolen money. 

 Gerald Ford (centre) Jay Van Andel (left) Richard DeVos (right) at the 'Amway' Grand Plaza Hotel in 1986. DeVos and Van Andel were Charter Members of the Board of Trustees at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation.             

Trustee Rich DeVos - Gerald R. Ford Foundation (geraldrfordfoundation.org)

The beneficiary of these ill-gotten gains was none other than Gerald Rudolph Ford Jnr. - a politician not exactly noted for his intellectual capacity, but nonetheless someone of great influence.

For those readers who are perhaps too young to remember him, Gerald Ford was leader of the republican party in the House of Representatives 1965-1973, US vice-president under Richard Nixon 1973-1974, eventually becoming US president 1974-1976 after Nixon was forced to resign. He is also the president who granted a pardon to Nixon, for the crimes he'd committed whilst in office.

There can be absolutely no doubt that in 1979, the chiefs of an important civil regulatory agency of the US federal government played politics and completely failed in their appointed task of protecting the American public. As a consequence, the FTC actually enabled the birth of the meaningless phrase, 'Multi-Level Marketing is legal.' Thus, an insidious, and highly-profitable, endless-chain recruitment fraud was effectively-authorized in the USA. Furthermore, this major American regulatory-lapse allowed the profitable racket of 'MLM' cultism to be extensively duplicated and exported all around the world; now hidden behind the outrageous false-claim that the 'Amway/MLM had been examined and approved by the US government.' Not surprisingly, subsequent generations of politically-appointed senior FTC officials have all continued to play the same amoral game - flatly-refusing to admit publicly to their predecessors' catastrophic failure - for which, one day, the American government might possibly find itself liable. Meanwhile, this eyes-wide-shut federal policy enabled the Big 'MLM' Lie to transform, and expand, into a well-oiled machine for laundering money on a global scale - each year bringing billions of stolen dollars into the USA, and all right under the noses of regulators who have been allowing this plunder to be falsely-declared (with the compliance of some of the world's largest accountacy firms) as 'retail sales revenue.' 

However, plenty of senior FTC officials, as well as high-ranking US politicians (including a certain Donald John Trump), have had their snouts planted in this almost bottomless trough of foreign and domestic loot, which has been set before them by the bosses of various copy-cat 'MLM' rackets whose camouflaged criminal activities they have conveniently failed to identify. Indeed, the number of senior FTC officials who have accepted, and continue to accept, tempting offers of well-paid employment from 'MLM' front-companies, and/or law firms contracted to recite the Big 'MLM' Lie, is truly astonishing.

All this begs the question: other than enabling a bunch of devious American criminals to rob from the entire planet for the best part of half a century, what exactly has been the point of having such a spineless, easily-corrupted and, therefore, useless government agency, as the FTC?, when in 'Ponzinomics,' one independent American does far-more to protect his fellow citizens from the Big 'MLM' Lie, than the entire 1500 + FTC staff (including more than 500 attorneys and 70 economists, with an annual budget of more than half a billion dollars) have ever done. In fact, Robert explains in great detail why, completely-contrary to the ambiguous and misleading message broadcast by the FTC for more than 40 years, it's not just been a few bad apples, but all 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'MLM Income Opportunies' that have been centrally-controlled rigged-market swindles, hiding their inevitable effectively-100% overall net-loss/churn rates of endless-chains of ill-informed participants.

In reality, the crack-pot pseudo-economic theory which has been falsely-labelled the 'MLM business model,' was maliciously designed to be flawed-commercially, to the point where it would be impossible for any so-called 'MLM' company to derive a majority of its revenue lawfully from persons who are not its own contractors. In even more simple terms, 'MLM' cults have comprised groups of ill-informed persons who have been conditioned to believe that:

Endless-chain recruitment + endless purchases by the recruits = endless profits for the recruits.

For this reason, Robert FitzPatrick coined the word, 'Ponzinomics,' in an attempt to place an accurate label on the economically-suicidal anti-commercial activity that, to its enternal shame, the FTC has allowed to be peddled all around the world as a 'viable and legal part of the direct selling industry.'

What the FTC has consistently refused to acknowledge, is the undeniable fact that any claim, or implication, that one penny of extra (net) income, let alone life-changing sums of money, can be generated lawfully by the operation of a so-called 'MLM business,' is dangerous comic-book nonsense designed to deceive. Indeed, it is blatantly obvious that the Big 'MLM' Lie is far-too-good-to-be true, whilst it's no secret that what used to be the traditional direct selling business (a.k.a. door-to-door peddling), has long-since died out. Its demise being due to many evolving social and economic factors - not least the arrival of supermarkets, hard-discount stores and online shopping. Furthermore, 'MLM' products/services have been offered at fixed (often exorbitant) prices, rendering them effectively-unsaleable on the open-market to persons with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties; whilst no so-called 'MLM' company has ever set common-sense limits on the number of contractors being recruited, or on the areas of population where these so-called 'distributors/direct sellers' are supposed to find customers. 

Just imagine for a moment if McDonalds:

• fixed the price of its hamburgers and other products at more than twice that of its competitors?
• offered its franchise owners a commission payment on each overpriced-product they bought themselves? 
• offered its franchise owners a commission payment on each overpriced product bought by any further franchise owners whom they recruited, and on the recruits of their recruits, etc. ad infinitum?
• set absolutely no common-sense limits on the number of restaurant franchises being sold?
• placed absolutely no restrictions on the locations where all these millions of insolvent over-priced, self-consuming restaurants were supposed to be operating?

Once the total absurdity of the so-called 'MLM business model,' is fully-understood, anyone with a modicum of common-sense, and/or the most-rudimentary hands-on experience of commerce, should be immediately able to deduce that no so-called 'MLM' company can ever have been, or will ever be, found by the FTC voluntarily disclosing the true results of its activities and operating lawfully. Indeed, this ongoing situation is beyond farcical, because when asked the most-obvious of questions, American regulators, and their academic advisers, have never been able to suggest even one solitary example of a so-called 'MLM' company that would be able pass inspection. Yet despite decades of evidence proving that there can be no such creature as a 'viable and legal MLM income opportunity,' FTC officials, guided by a cabal of academic advisers, came up with an utterly pointless test for legality. This boils down to trying to determine on a case-by-case basis that a so-called 'MLM' company (suspected of being a pyramid scheme) has not been deriving the overwhelming majority of its income lawfully from authentic retail sales (based on value and demand) to members of the general public (i.e. persons who have not been contractors of the so-called 'MLM' company). 

Laughably, the FTC has listed some of the other 'pyramid scheme red flags' to look out for, and has even publishing warnings that 'MLM companies have caused, and are still causing, extensive damage to consumers, because  some 'MLM' companies are actually pyramid schemes in disguise.' At the same time, American regulators have continued to repeat the Big 'MLM' Lie by insisting that 'MLM is a viable and legal branch of the direct selling industry.' Yet no one at the FTC has ever seen a shred of quantifiable evidence proving that this pernicious fairy story can be true. In fact, when asked in the most-specific of terms, if they have ever seen such evidence, it as been impossible to get a truthful answer to this simple question. Another highly-revealing question that FTC types have obviously shied away from answering truthfully is: What would be your own reaction if an ill-informed vulnerable individual you care about suddenly underwent a radical personality transformation, and declared that he/she had signed up for a so-called 'MLM Income Opportunity?'

In respect of their Orwellian closed-logic refusal to tell the truth publicly, and identify the Big 'MLM' Lie, Robert FitzPatrick has compared the obstructive behaviour of FTC officials, and their equally-inflexible academic advisers, to a group of scientists who have been earning their living by investigating a claim that 'pigs might fly,' but after decades of examining hundreds of grounded pigs with no wings, they still insist on continuing their pointless, but profitable, quest, whilst systematically refusing to accept the obvious conclusion that there is no such creature as a 'flying pig.'

At this point, I should perhaps again point out that, although I am an 'MLM' cult survivor, I was never an adherent of an 'MLM' cult. Unfortunately, I found myself shackled (financially) to a person (my only brother) who, at a time of vulnerability, had fallen completely under the spell of the Big 'MLM' Lie. Again, at the time these nightmarish events started to unfold, I still had no idea that my brother was an ideal subject to be lured, defrauded and used to lure and defraud other vulnerable persons; all for the benefit of a little gang of santimonious American billionaire-crooks posing as 'Compassionate Christian Capitalists,' and whom he had never met. I only later came to understand that my brother was an ideal subject to be deceived and enslaved, for the simple reason that he was completely convinced that he could never be deceived and enslaved. 

Initially, I failed to grasp just how dangerously-deluded, and devious, chronic 'MLM' cult adherents (like my brother) can be. That said, like the majority of people whom they approach, I immediately realised that they are living in a parallel reality - completely obsessed with trying to recruit you into what is quite clearly a pyramid scheme, but which they insist is 'part of the legal MLM Direct Selling industry and definitely not a pyramid scheme.' What took me much longer to fathom, is that core-'MLM' cult adherents are also living in a parallel system of morality. They are acting under the self-righteous guided-delusion that, by recruiting you, they are helping both themselves and you to achieve future redemption in a secure Utopian existence - a form of Capitalist Paradise Earth - where no one has a job, but everyone is a happy, healthy, wealthy and free 'MLM business owner.'

Thus, it should always be remembered that chronic 'MLM' adherents' belief can be quite genuine, but what they believe in (and have bought into body and soul) is a colossal and bedazzling fake.The irony of all this being, that the Big 'MLM' Lie continues to be perpetuated, because its deluded adherents have been tricked into wasting their own time and money spreading it and hiding the truth about it, combined with law enforcement agents' and legislators' chronic, and catastrophic, failure to identify it accurately.

Although they have no idea what they are really involved in, active 'MLM' adherents are, in fact, proselytising-evangelists for a camouflaged ritual belief system (call it a 'perverted religion' if you like) which has been maliciously designed not only to spread like a virus - attracting, deceiving, robbing and exploiting susceptible individuals - but also to load its victims with shame and guilt for their inevitable failure to succeed, and thus, prevent them from facing reality and complaining. Consequently, whilst they remain under the control of the BIg 'MLM' Lie, its most-dangerous adherents should be seen for what they really are - the deluded deployable agents of a syndicate comprising the bosses of some the most widespread, socially, psychologically and financially damaging organized cultic crime groups to have emerged in recent history.  

David Brear (copyright 2024).