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The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

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Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#81

Post by owenmarshall »

hedvig wrote: post #79
jbob2000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you craft a law to make this illegal though? And then how do you enforce the law? How do you bring these companies to justice? A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets.

I don't get this common mindset here that people should just be left to the wolves. It's disgusting

Because lots of people here are the wolves, or think that they’re smart enough to become them.

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#82

Post by Buttons840 »

yellowapple wrote: post #33
devmunchies wrote: post #6

I wonder why MLM's are so rampant in the mountain west. I know "mormons" and "sales experience from missionary work" but the analysis can go deeper. From personal, anecdotal experience, a lot of these MLM people I've seen are moms. Could it be that that area is so sales heavy that stay-at-home moms want to run their own thing so they get into MLM on the side?

Having been raised Mormon, it ain't surprising in the slightest that so many of these are concentrated in and around Utah/Idaho. There are a multitude of factors at play here: - Like you mentioned, door-to-door proselytism translates well to door-to-door sales. - Mormon communities tend to be very tight-knit and immediately trusting of fellow Mormons, so once you have a critical mass of LDS followers selling your "in…

I worked at a small company in Utah, and we shared a building with a MLM company. I have 2 fun stories.

One day, when I was arriving at work there was a red carpet laid out and people opened the doors for me. I felt pretty good for a few seconds. Turns out I had arrived just before a "high level member" of their MLM, and so they were really putting on a show, but not for me.

The company eventually went about of business and was just giving away a lot of the fancy pins and badges that "high level members" of their MLM had worked so hard to earn, I took a pin just for the fun of it. I instantly became a "Black Diamond" level member (or something like that), whatever it was it must have been pretty good because the pin had fake diamonds on it. Kind of shows how silly the whole thing is.

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#83

Post by learc83 »

mysterypie wrote: post #68
badrequest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, if you receive income that is a royalty from the sale of products you sold to the person who ultimately sold them, it's taxed at 100%.

If that were the law, then the MLM's simple workaround would be to pay you a recruiting fee based on the success of the people you recruit. If the people you recruit sell a lot, you get a bigger fee because you did a better job at recruiting. I imagine it'll be tough to craft a law to target MLMs because if it's too broad it'll hit many kinds of legitimate business and if too narrow they'll creatively bypass the rule…

The IRS deals with people trying to exploit loopholes like that all the time. The law isn't a programming language.

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#84

Post by LeftHandPath »

jbob2000 wrote: post #16
elil17 wrote: post #2

This article doesn’t dig into the details, but these companies are really vicious. They aggressively recruit at my college and I’ve seen them to convince students to take what they would have spent on next semesters tuition and use it to buy “inventory” (i.e. more products than they’ll ever be able to resell) instead. These things ruin people’s lives

How do you craft a law to make this illegal though? And then how do you enforce the law? How do you bring these companies to justice? A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets.

> A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets.

Just because you're getting downvoted, doesn't mean you're wrong. Caveat emptor.

That said, the kids who make the options trades probably lose more than the ones who fall for the MLM scams...

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#85

Post by thaumasiotes »

Osiris wrote: post #44
throwawaysea wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, MLMs are required to repurchase unsold inventory: https://www.mlmlaw.com/library/cases/mlm/ftc/amway.htm

My wife did Mary Kay and they had a clause regarding buy back: They would pay 90% of what you paid to buy it and you'd be blacklisted - you could never by a MK consultant again. So even if an MLM has that type of program they probably make sure people know it'd be bad for them to exercise it.

> they probably make sure people know it'd be bad for them to exercise it.

The example you cite seems to undermine this claim. If you're doing terribly selling Mary Kay products, you get 90% of your money back and... you can't sell Mary Kay products anymore. Which you couldn't do in the first place; why would you care about being blacklisted?

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#86

Post by aww_dang »

LeftHandPath wrote: post #84
jbob2000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you craft a law to make this illegal though? And then how do you enforce the law? How do you bring these companies to justice? A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets.

> A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets. Just because you're getting downvoted, doesn't mean you're wrong. Caveat emptor. That said, the kids who make the options trades probably lose m…

At least there is a chance for success with day trading. You might even learn something along the way.

I notice that most people who are deep into MLMs usually don't have any sales experience. If they had invested the same effort generating leads for a business at least they would learn sales skills they could use to create their own businesses. Not to mention that they would be paid a fair rate for their work instead of loosing money.

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#87

Post by bdcravens »

hedvig wrote: post #79
jbob2000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you craft a law to make this illegal though? And then how do you enforce the law? How do you bring these companies to justice? A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets.

I don't get this common mindset here that people should just be left to the wolves. It's disgusting

A negative attitude toward those who are gullible enough to be sold on a dream, even though a very small % actually succeed. Ironic being this site is geared towards developers at startups.

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#88

Post by bdcravens »

solotronics wrote: post #70
badrequest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, if you receive income that is a royalty from the sale of products you sold to the person who ultimately sold them, it's taxed at 100%.

The companies that make routers sell their products to us this way, through VARs.

Reselling isn't nefarious; network marketing is.

Re: The MLM Epidemic in 13 Maps

#89

Post by [deleted] »

jbob2000 wrote: post #16
elil17 wrote: post #2

This article doesn’t dig into the details, but these companies are really vicious. They aggressively recruit at my college and I’ve seen them to convince students to take what they would have spent on next semesters tuition and use it to buy “inventory” (i.e. more products than they’ll ever be able to resell) instead. These things ruin people’s lives

How do you craft a law to make this illegal though? And then how do you enforce the law? How do you bring these companies to justice? A fool and his money are easily parted. If those students didn't blow their tuition on MLM garbage, they'd have blown it on something else. I'm sure there's a kid somewhere who blew his tuition making ridiculous option trades based on something he read on r/wallstreetbets.

[deleted]
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