the shrewdness of apes

i'll stick with the cushy desk job, thanks

one of the biggest hidden and widely unknown evils out there today is the multi-level marketing (MLM) scam, an intricate pyramid scheme that essentially builds itself on the sale of worthless products by large teams of deluded, lowly paid salespeople for the benefit of a few "motivated" and "dedicated" people who have "succeeded" at the business. but their success comes at the expense of hundreds and thousands of peons who can not infiltrate the higher levels of the pryamid which are, by definition, limited in size. Amway is more or less an example of this type of thing that everyone is familiar with, and depsite their being the butt-end of jokes since the 1970s, they're still alive and kicking. another more recent example is Herbalife, which is ulimately responsible for many of those "work from home" and "lose 10 lbs. in 10 days" signs that you see in subway cars and on telephone poles. for an in-depth discussion of Herbalife, i highly recommend checking our the work done by Rob Cockerham of cockeyed.com. it's very long and involved, but the work he did in exposing the company and it's practices is highly worthwhile.

i bring this up because nearly everyday when i get off the subway on my way to the office, there is a morass of young men and women pulling large boxes down the stairs and into the station. they're typically dressed in shirts and ties and there are 1 or 2 people seemingly in charge who are leading them around. this has gone on for the 3 years that i've worked here though the people i see have changed constantly. given the whole demeanor of the situation, i assumed that they were likely involved in a similar type of MLM that required them to go out and sell whatever crap happened to be in those boxes. but it was only this morning that i made a note of the company stamped on the boxes - Innovage - and decided to do a little digging. as it happens, Innovage (whose website is amlost certainly intentionally vague) is tied up in someway with a company called DS-Max (Direct Selling to the Max!) which is ambiguously involved in so may different things it would take months to get it all straight. the points is that these kids ae basically being exploited by an organization that preaches about opportunity, making your own success and six figure salaries but on which most people end up losing money - only to hear themselves described as "quitters" and "lazy" by the lucky few who make it to the upper echelons - when the deck that's been stacked against them finally chews them up. but apparently there's always a few more ready to take their place.

but the truly amazing thing is the number of people who come to their defense and claim what a legitimate business it is and how much they believe in it, to the point where one post i read on a site devoted to this topic claimed that "without us there would be no Christmas" after someone posted that the quality of their products was equal to that of products sold in dollar stores (and in fact, much of the merchandise they peddle IS sold in dollar and other discount stores).

for more insight on how they operate, check out this glossary of terms which is sort of like leafing through Satan's playbook (example - Atmosphere : Happens once in the beginning of the day before the morning meeting and once at the end of the day after people come back from the field. In atmosphere people should be constantly "juiced" about the opportunity, be either practice pitching, telling a pro ds-max descendant story about how you succeeded with the marketing system, or some elses success story, be explaining the 5 and 8 to others and loud motivational music should be playing. Nothing negative about the business should be said. No new people should be allowed to be near each other or they might talk each other out of the business. An aura of excitement should pervade the room.). also check out the Rip Off Report for numerous stories of people getting sucked into this cult-like atmosphere who want to prevent others from making the same mistakes.