Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Twenty-two years ago, a certain family relative initiated the first steps of his divorce in what has now become the customary American way: He invited me over to the apartment he shared with his wife, to tell me how much my life would be improved by a bottle of shampoo that was so incredibly concentrated that it would last me six months. I really needed to get in on this.
I do believe my hostility against the Cult of the Personality began there.
It was perhaps a dozen years after that, a young fellow who had previously been my next door neighbor, and since then hadn’t had anything whatsoever to do with us, dropped by. I’d had a girlfriend and he’d had a girlfriend, and since I moved away those two crazy kids went off and got married. He’d called ahead and I think we had some dinner ready, we offered an extra couple of plates but they’d have no time for it they were in such an incredible hurry. We thought it was a little odd to be looking up someone you hadn’t spoken to in a couple of years, on an evening in which you were so busy you couldn’t even sit down to a home cooked meal.
So they swung on by and delivered their pitch. I don’t recall any products in particular so perhaps the timing was not to their benefit. First words out of his mouth were “This is not MLM,” repeated a couple of times, then he proceeded to drop a pitch for MLM. We didn’t buy, and within a year they were divorced.
This has only happened to me twice, but the similarities between the two episodes still creep me out. The man does all the talking, making sure to put a smile in his voice. Which can be a bit creepy. The woman hovers around in the background, quietly, trying to find something constructive to do. Rather like a stalking panther. Nothing smiley about her at all. That will make perfect sense, of course, in a month or two when she petitions.
Oh and always there is some name. The founder of the organization, “This Giant of a Man” who is, in unstated terms, head & shoulders above the rest of us.
I’ve come to loathe everything about this. I still believe in the liberty of private citizens to engage freely in contracts with each other…but would I be contradicting myself to demand some exceptions to this? It doesn’t seem anyone else is. People demand “sensible regulations” all the time and still insist they’re good capitalists.
I have given up on figuring out if an impending divorce pushes a young couple into MLM, or if MLM causes the divorce. Most likely is: A youthful marriage causes free spending, which causes tight finances, which causes an immersion in MLM and a divorce. But I don’t really give a flying crap what it is anymore.
We don’t have to keep this legal in order to be good capitalists. We don’t need to limit how the transgressors are punished in order to remain a civilized society. In fact I would insist a civilized society would bring on the pain. Stocks. Leg irons. Whips. Dunking stools. Electroshock.
The fantasy that a man can bail himself out of a financial jam with his happy-talky Guy-Smiley amazingly wonderful charisma-or-whatever, goes way back. It is ancient, always popular, and it is particularly destructive to all who come into contact with it. It’s probably ruined more lives than that other dream of dropping out of school to become a basketball star, or rock musician.
Yes, I have some compassion. I would say a lighter sentence is in order for the “freshmen,” those suckers who just got done “investing,” and have yet to re-coup, than for the more senior members who have typically been more successful at turning a profit. Three hours in the town square being pelted with rotten vegetables, I’d say they’ve paid their debt to society. Really, most of ’em probably need nothing more than a firm whack on the side of the head. For the others, we’d need a deep dark dungeon.
Public viewing is not compatible with what I’d have in mind for them.
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MLM is a fake, cheese-ball infringement on our right to be left alone and is not much different that time-share sales for raw sleaziness.
- DirtCrashr | 06/25/2010 @ 08:36I have a deep, deep hatred of these pyramids. I’ve been approached by guys about this stuff, and at first I think it’s a gay pickup, but then they start spouting about this wonderful opportunity to make a lot of money.
Nothing about challenging work, nothing about growing as a person. Just money.
Now I love, love, love the things I can buy with money. But when the job pitch starts and ends with cash, you know there’s a problem.
The last one of these jackholes who approached me was at a project management institute meeting. I mean, you would think that a PM would have more sense, right?
But these groups seem to keep dangling that trip to Maui, that big house, the BMW (why always a BMW?), if you just keep working hard, and suckering more people to work under you. And then you’ll have MINIONS! Who will make money for YOU! With every sale! And then they’ll get minions! And you’ll make money from ALL OF THEM! From anywhere! From MAUI!
Selling the dream. Selling the lie.
- HoundOfDoom | 06/25/2010 @ 15:10Heh. The dinner meeting. It reminds me of the classic ruse – invite your friends and neighbors over for dinner, and then “casually” broach the subject of how your guests can get filthy stinking rich. I wonder how many friendships have been ruined this way, with the guest storming out of the house in a huff, furious that the invite had been an utter misrepresentation.
I’m always suspicious when the pitch has less emphasis about the product/service I’m supposed to be selling, and more emphasis on recruiting other people to do the same thing. The people who were among the first to get sucked into this -didn’t any of them think it was odd that the “real money” was in residuals rather than direct sales?
That they’d spend more time getting others to go along with it, than with actually pushing the product? As if actual high-pressure commission-based sales isn’t difficult and stressful enough WITHOUT the added recruitment aspect. The very fact that MLM schemes HAVE a residual income aspect (thereby creating the financial incentive to recruit people under you) should be setting off people’s alarm bells.
I remember back in 2003 or so, some girl I’d met at work that I was interested in, agreed to meet me for dinner. At the meal, she mentioned some MLM she had gotten involved with. I think it was about long distance telephone service or something. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was sitting next to her at some meeting being conducted by the guys at the top of the pyramid, being shown a slide show of these magnificent pictures of affluence and success. Presumably I was supposed to walk away thinking that these people had gotten rich standing around in a mall hawking phone service, and conning their friends and neighbors to hop on the bandwagon.
One slide actually showed a young man standing next to a helicopter. Uh huh. He bought that thing with his sales proceeds and residuals, and got a chopper pilot’s license too. Riiiiiight. Needless to say, I figured out pretty quick that this girl was interested in me professionally, not personally as I’d hoped.
I notice that starting in the 90s, MLM schemes started stressing that “hard work” was involved. I always believed that this was because people had started getting wise to these fantastic notions of easy money with little work. “Oh, you have unlimited income potential, but you have to work for it.” I always wondered how many suckers worked their butts off and still wound up with a garage full of soap, tools, water filters, carpet cleaner, lotion, cosmetics, or whatever it was. (In fact I think there was an episode of “King of Queens” about this very subject.)
Aren’t pyramid schemes already illegal? Or am I just thinking of the classic “Dave Rhodes”-style ones where you send a dollar to the name at the top of the mailing list, then add your name at the bottom and send it on to five more people? (I always heard that someone went to jail over that one.)
- cylarz | 06/26/2010 @ 00:45Domo Arigato Mr Roboto…
Morgan Freeberg writes at House of Eratosthenes and he shares my disdain for modern feminism. He’s not a fan of MLM scams either, which shows that his good taste in blogs is exceeded only by his intellect. …
- The WyBlog | 06/26/2010 @ 14:21Was there Love-Bombing involved?
I had a similar experience when an old friend showed up with a car trunk full of Amway products.
Only, repackaged under another name. Sigh!
- Kini | 06/28/2010 @ 02:10