Apex Predators
Multi-level marketing companies. Also known as pyramid schemes. They don't like being referred to as the latter, though in fact they are a barely-legal version thereof. The legality comes from the fact that only product sales earn people money -- there are no costs to join, nor are there bonuses for recruiting people per se, though you do take a cut of their profits. Some of these companies are less predatory than others, and while each must be examined individually, the basic math is inescapable. Those at the top of the pyramid make scads of cash, while the plebs at the bottom toil without realistic hope.
Aaaaaaand... thus the essence of the MLM scam. You can NEVER move up the pyramid -- only build more underneath you. In a pyramid, there must always be more mass below supporting the mass above, unless of course you are unfortunate enough to be stuck on the bottom rank holding everything else up. One block sits at the summit supported by several blocks underneath, those several supported by several more each, etc., etc.
And just like in a real pyramid, the people/blocks do not ever move upwards. Not really. Only money moves up through the pyramid, with everyone above you getting a cut of your sales and the sales of everyone beneath you, just as you get a cut of the sales of the people beneath you. Your money is made by recruiting more distributors/salesfolk/suckers, and having your underlings recruit/buy, and their underlings recruit/buy...
You see where we're headed. The pyramid needs to keep growing larger underneath you, and as we'll see next, the math is both terrifying and laughable at the same time. Life is great if you live at the top levels of the pyramid, and spectacular if you are the top block. If you love the product, by all means, buy away. Join as a distributor for a discount. But if you want to make real money, not a few extra bucks which hardly ever come close to paying for the products you buy, your success depends on the success of those you recruit, and those they recruit, and so on.
The Math:
Person one starts an MLM company. One person is in the 'pyramid'. Let's say everyone is equally successful in recruiting, and let's say the number of recruits the company recommends is three apiece, a somewhat low number given the pitches I've heard, but whatever. Obviously this is spectacularly optimistic, but this is a pyramidal utopia and we want everyone to be successful and happy.
So person one recruits three people. Our pyramid contains two levels and four people. Those three on the next level recruit three apiece, or nine new members. At the third level, thirteen people are members. We're getting lucky here!
Those nine people who entered at the third level recruit three people apiece to make twenty-seven people joining at the fourth level, for forty people total. At the fifth rank our pyramid contains 121 people. At the sixth, 364. As I hope you are getting a sense, the practice of adding the pre-existing number of members to the new recruits is fast becoming a rounding error.
Less than four hundred members. "What's the harm?", you ask? Well, following this math out with perfect success at every rank of our utopian MLM pyramid, the twenty-first rank contains 5,230,176,601 people. Over five billion human beings. The twenty-second rank surpasses the number of Homo sapiens available at 15,690,529,804. OVER FIFTEEN AND A HALF BILLION PEOPLE NEEDED TO SUPPORT THE PYRAMID. Ten billion alone are inducted at this twenty-second rank, already four billion more than were available on planet earth.
As I said. Laughable. And terrifying. Here is the actual mathematical progression:
1
4
13
40
121
364
1,093
3,280
9,841
29,524
88,573
265,720
797,161
2,391,484
7,174,453
21,523,360
64,570,081
193,710,244
581,130,733
1,743,392,200
5,230,176,601
15,690,529,804
And as I said earlier, three is a fairly low number of recruits per person. One pitch I heard depended on six, at which point the human population is surpassed at the thirteenth rank. See the attached graphic for the pyramid of the hopeless.
This is the logic for me that busts the pyramid scheme wide open and exposes the shitstorm raging at the center of every single one. The details differ, to the point that specific statistical quotes don't make tons of sense here. The people at the top profit greatly, while in the bottom few ranks reside the overwhelming proportion of the members with the least chance of making any money. In fact, virtually no chance. The only way you make money is by recruiting enough people under you to subsidize your purchases and generate a profit, thereby inducting people knowing that statistically, they have a lower chance of making more than you. Their hard work and success just props you up.
It's immoral. It's borderline criminal, and just barely this side of legal. You make money by fucking other human beings out of their profits. Some poor brainwashed folks will point out that EVERY corporation is shaped like a pyramid, with a CEO at the top and drones at the bottom. Superficially true, but while only money flows up through the pyramid in an MLM scam, PEOPLE can flow upwards through social/corporate/social security pyramids. You can get promoted and earn more. You can retire and receive social security. Mobility is available to you.
In an MLM, it never is. There is no upward mobility -- you remain forever at the level you joined, much like 17th-century European social classes. Born a baron, die a baron. Born a serf, die a serf. So if you joined at the 123rd level of the pyramid, your only hope is to create a few more ranks of misery to support you. And eventually, the system is not sustainable, as we run out of people to feed the monster at the apex.