#please do not think I am against gay people when I say I am antiMLM

[thewitchsstudy]

An Old Opinion Research Essay

Made this last school year. It’s about MLMs (Multi-level Marketing) and why I think they should be illegal

Thousands of dollars. You don’t make thousands, you pay thousands. You don’t sell thousands, you recruit thousands. You don’t get paid to work, you pay to work. Welcome to MLMs, the most unethical world of business where everything is a scam. It deserves to be banned, gone from the reach of the people who run them. For the safety of the workers. 

MLMs- Multi-level Marketing- companies pop up a lot in the modern day. Have you ever gotten a Facebook message from somebody, likely with an eye bleeding amount of emojis, claiming to know you from somewhere pitching a product? That’s an MLM worker, no doubt. While most see them as annoying at worst, these companies that these workers come from have been proven, as from testimony by former workers, the FTC, and multiple state lawsuits, to have destroyed finances, careers, friendships, and lives while breaking the law. Many have been accused of or been charged with illegal activity- operating a pyramid scheme. 

Any amount of research will bring up how horrible some companies can get. Being repulsed at the practices is one thing, but how do we prevent them from harming workers? I argue a full ban on the practice. With already tight regulations and monitoring by the FTC, MLMs are in hot water. Still, illegal pyramid schemes manage to bypass the law and operate until it’s too late (hello Advocare, like your lawsuit?). The best way to deal with MLMs is simply banning the practice.

Bans may not be the best, but they can be necessary. Prepare to feel a mix of shame, disguise, anger, and bitter hopelessness for humanity.

Corporate can be a dictator. Many people, including former workers, heavily argue the point that many MLMs are morally and legally wrong. They have no base pay and hide under a “make as much as you want” claim. In reality, workers buy products from the company to sell to consumers, and when they don’t sell, often due to the terrible quality and horrible company reputation, they are essentially being paid under minimum wage with negative wage counts! Financial reports show that, during a year in an MLM, the majority percent of employees lost money, some broke even with joining packages and product costs (which cost thousands of dollars), and less than 5% made money, and less than 1% reached or exceeded the annual national minimum wage ($15,080)

In addition, workers who quit MLMs are often shamed by supervisors and friends still in the company. They get harassed online through texts and Facebook for breaking free. Friendships are broken in split seconds. Lives are left fragments of what they once were. Families fight and argue and refuse to communicate with each other due to associating with these companies. A video by Vice News, which is highly recommended to watch, tells the stories of women who have left MLMs and the shame that was placed on them. In addition to their terrible financial situation, it documents how much shame was put on these women who are left friendless, leaving friends for the company and leaving the company with fake “friends”. MLM workers are encouraged to sell to family and friends, and one worker has stated that “every conversation turned into a sales pitch”. Any human would leave a friend who did that.

On the other hand, people argue that MLM products are legit and that they are perfectly legal and not pyramid schemes. They say that, without legal action, MLMs are fine to operate. They argue that a pyramid scheme is a solid definition that requires many boxes to be checked, and that MLMs don’t check enough. They may call them “Anti-pyramids”, which is a funnel and shows more on the top than the bottom and the money still goes to the one guy on the bottom and that’s still a horrible business model for a dozen reasons, but that’s beyond the point. These could have good backing to them. When the research is done, however, even on social media, these people are often corporate workers who run these MLMs and bank millions or other workers (who many call “Huns”) who are in denial about their workplace being a scam (they may also be arguing this case even if they understand the truth).

It is also important to understand that the other side will defend their word with flamethrower and shield, even if the flamethrower is a knockoff that doesn’t even work and the shield is a sad excuse for a thing made of atoms. Workers post pictures online of their new “expensive” things they bought with money from their “job”. Many have debunked these as fakes, including noted images of clearly empty bags that were supposedly filled with stuff (classic fake-rich tactic right there). This is easily found, since if the poster refuses to show a top view or take the items out, you don’t trust that anything is in the bag. Many in the Anti-MLM community  realize and share their findings on how the evidence and claims made by these people are next to nothing in value. It makes them incredibly petty and decays their point. Like rotting flesh.

Most of that evidence is little slaps to MLMs. The big problems come when states start suing them. Oh, yeah, MLMs from Advocare to Young Living to LulaRoe have been sued for years. States, ranging from Idaho to California, have accused these companies of operating illegal pyramid schemes. Warehouses have sued LulaRoe over not receiving payment for storage. LulaRoe has been sued over cross-state taxation (taxing buyers in states with no tax who purchase from workers in states with tax). Federal government agencies have reprimanded MLMs as well, most noticeably in a case against Young Living where a man died in a distillery due to severe safety code violations, such as lack of training and not providing respirators in the high-chemical environment. Note, these are only some well-known companies and their well-known lawsuits. 

Deception is rampant in MLMs, and consumers are being lied to almost constantly. Young Living used to claim a Seed to Seal standard and having 100% pure essential oils. Not only was it revealed that they source from multiple farms, which makes the Seed to Seal claim highly unlikely, independent lab tests show birch and jasmine oils produced by the company were, in fact, synthetic. Worse, one study done by the State of California showed higher than acceptable levels of a chemical known for producing cyanide inside the body in Young Living’s oils. This was not mentioned anywhere by Young Living- not on the bottle, not online, not anywhere, which is an offense in California. They were, like previously, sued over this serious health and safety matter since they sold their products in the state. 

It should be obvious that Young Living’s products are not the most trustworthy, regardless of your opinion on essential oils. That could be applied to all MLM products. LulaRoe leggings are notorious for ripping, even in the first wear. Herbalife’s powders and mixes, especially their soup reportedly, have been called by people such as John Oliver as tasting “like wood shavings” (this was a continued joke in his televised segment on Multi-level Marketing, another good watch for more info). When looking at prices, such as LulaRoe leggings costing $30+ bucks for a quality $10 Walmart leggings with better, non eye-bleeding designs far surpass, the word “scam” pops up in New York City lights.

John Oliver in his segment also went into detail on how, while distributors lose thousands on MLMs they work for, their founders and CEOs can afford meetings that I can only describe as an 80s metal concert if everybody there was on some serious drugs. Some things that occur range from overly enthusiastic live announcers, CEOs coming out as “Welcome to the Jungle” plays, and screaming at the grave of a man named Joe Nobody, dated 1952- about how much he could’ve done with his life if he had just joined his MLM. Are laughing out loud at the thought of all this? It’s real, and you can find the Joe Nobody clip and more in the John Oliver episode online. It’s on-the-floor-laughing levels of ridiculous. One can only imagine being at any MLM meeting, host, worker, or random guy, in person is an accurate simulation of an acid trip for all parties involved. 

How does this add up to a pyramid scheme? With the previously stated knowledge in mind,  look at the employees. Those Facebook messages from before? Those can be recruitment messages. These often target mothers, those of color, and those of specific religions depending on the MLM. For example, LulaRoe often has single or unemployed mothers as distributors. On its website, the FTC notes that promises of extravagant lifestyles, wealth, and “high-pressure tactics” during recruiting are prominent red flags for any business. Guess who milks these until the cow runs red? MLM recruiters. While I don’t trust Reddit for factual info often, there are credible accounts of this practice on such subreddits as r/AntiMLM and r/LuLaNo. 

The big problem is that MLMs may pay their employees for recruitment. The FTC says that “Your recruits, the people they recruit, and so on, become your sales network, or ‘downline’. If the MLM is not a pyramid scheme, it will pay you based on your sales to retail customers, without having to recruit new distributors”. The way it often works when a Pyramid Scheme is in place is that those higher up in the pyramid get a percent of commission from those they have recruited, those recruit’s recruits, and so on. Pyramid schemes require active participation for this often only check, which requires more money for products that will never sell and, as the saying goes, “get left in a garage.” The FTC notices this is a practice utilized by pyramid schemes. A former LulaRoe (funny how LulaRoe pops up so much) worker high up on the corporate ladder on the previously mentioned Vice News clip claims to have been receiving these commissions, with checks from the company proving it. MLMs have systems of ranks, which are often named after anything from crystals to management positions, and guess what those more than not focus on? How many people you recruited. Higher up you are, the higher percent of commission, the more money you get. 

That, fellow readers, are the bones of pyramid schemes. You don’t grow a business with a stable customer base and happy employees, you make more people fall into it and destroy their lives. Former work testimonies say that supervisors actively encourage recruiting over selling.  It’s a cycle of new and quitting members.

It should be obvious. Horrible quality, product not worth the price, constant lying to consumers, lawsuits galore, and the foundation of a pyramid scheme and its culture are what make MLMs scams, unethical and borderline illegal. We, as consumers and workers, should call for a ban on this business model to protect sales and underclass workers from a practice that harbors illegal schemes. If a company wishes to grow, it should in an ethical way that isn’t a pyramid scheme coverup! The FTC says that pyramid schemes “can look remarkably like legitimate MLM business opportunities” and so taking part in any MLM is a risky venture to the highest degree. Even legit MLMs have the same issues as pyramid schemes, since the lack of buying due to terrible reputation causes equal wage and financial issues as stated earlier. MLM and pyramid scheme operators milk money from their employees. As Bo Burham’s song “Repeat Stuff” says, they’ll “stop beating this dead horse when it stops spitting out money.” We need to stop them from beating the dead horse of MLMs so they can’t collect the money it spits out at them. And the best way to get rid of a dead horse is to bury it. 

Bury the horse, they cannot get the money. Will you grab a shovel and start burying it, or will you watch as people continue to beat it?