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Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#111

Post by Akronymus »

msla wrote: post #6
_aleph2c_ wrote: post #4

MLM: Multilevel Marketing scheme

It's the politically-correct term for pyramid scheme these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing > MLM salespeople are, therefore, expected to sell products directly to end-user retail consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing, but more importantly they are incentivized to recruit others to join the company's distribution chain as fellow salespeople so that these can…

Doesn't MLM also apply to ponzi schemes and such?

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#112

Post by TheCoelacanth »

javajosh wrote: post #109
TheDong wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the end-game will be an MLM-as-a-service (MaaS) Arguably, the ICO boom was a realization of this end-game. There were guides to create a new etherium-backed crypto token in minutes, services to help create and manage them, and so on. Each ICO functioned as its own MLM, with the differentiating factor usually being branding, sales, and whitepaper quality.

I'm sure it's a great comment but "ICO" doesn't signify. I pretty sure I used to know what it meant, but when I try to retrieve the knowledge, it's like peering through a hazy fog in the moonlight, and the meaning just slips away...

Initial Coin Offering, i.e. create your own cryptocurrency

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#113

Post by antisthenes »

seneca wrote: post #110
antisthenes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gives merit to an argument is whether something has been researched and the accuracy of information behind it, not the occupation of the person presenting it. If your research into the Subway franchise indicates otherwise, I'm all eager to hear the counterfactuals.

> What gives merit to an argument is whether something has been researched and the accuracy of information behind it, not the occupation of the person presenting it. That's not really the point. I'm not disputing the correctness, I'm saying your argument is flawed. Imagine I told you "the sky is blue, my cat told me so". Well sure, the sky is in fact blue, but that doesn't make my cat a good source of information. A…

> I'm saying your argument is flawed. Imagine I told you "the sky is blue, my cat told me so". Well sure, the sky is in fact blue, but that doesn't make my cat a good source of information.

I think we just have a different approach to communication. If you told me "the sky is blue, my cat told me so", I would probably just verify the color of the sky and completely disregard the 2nd portion.

And no, that doesn't make your response flawed, because it mentioned a cat. It just makes it padded with irrelevant information. Part of comprehension is filtering irrelevant stuff like that from text in order to arrive at distilled facts that can be checked or verified through an experiment.

Same way that my mentioning John Oliver doesn't really impact the weight of my arguments, since the facts within accurately reflect reality. It was just an irrelevant padding for context, not something that was supposed to give extra weight to my arguments.

Does that make sense?

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#115

Post by seneca »

antisthenes wrote: post #113
seneca wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What gives merit to an argument is whether something has been researched and the accuracy of information behind it, not the occupation of the person presenting it. That's not really the point. I'm not disputing the correctness, I'm saying your argument is flawed. Imagine I told you "the sky is blue, my cat told me so". Well sure, the sky is in fact blue, but that doesn't make my cat a good source of information. A…

> I'm saying your argument is flawed. Imagine I told you "the sky is blue, my cat told me so". Well sure, the sky is in fact blue, but that doesn't make my cat a good source of information. I think we just have a different approach to communication. If you told me "the sky is blue, my cat told me so", I would probably just verify the color of the sky and completely disregard the 2nd portion. And no, that doesn't make…

Yes, that makes sense, and is fair enough. Can you see how that stands out as a strange decoration on an otherwise sound argument though, and why someone may point it out?

I also feel the need to acknowledge that I'm slightly entertained to be conversing with "antisthenes" under the handle "seneca".

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#116

Post by asapitts »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72
antisthenes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franchises offload the risk on the franchisee and collect their percentage fee regardless of the performance. There was a segment on John Oliver's program about Subway being particularly predatory about this, as well as deliberately maintaining information asymmetry to mislead franchisees. In which sense do you think franchises are counterfactual here?

> In which sense do you think franchises are counterfactual here? Plenty of franchises have sustainably made money for the franchiser and the bulk of their franchisees. That stands in stark relief to the history of MLMs.

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