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Pyramid schemes causing social harm in China – crackdowns may not be working
- mmrezaie 9y agoThe same thing is happening in Iran. I didn't know it still exists but then I just learned that it is so rampant that Iranian shopping companies may very much start their pyramid section of their business officially very soon. More than anything I think we should have a proper education for the public about this. Funny thing is employees some of these companies hire have to pay the company if they wanna work in there, and the company that I am talking about had something close to 20 people working in there as far as I could see!
- hux_ 9y agoReligion gets spread the same way. Some people benefit.
- simonh 9y agoThat’s a very specific, very broad claim. Can you explain how (apparently all) religions structure and market their pyramidal incentive schemes? I’m not currently active in any organised religion, but I have been for long periods of time and didn’t really notice any pyramidal incentives. In fact there didn’t seem to be much in the way of proselytising at all and I was certainly not involved in doing so. What was I missing?
- andy_ppp 9y agoHmmm... https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-worth-1-trillion-study-economy-apple-google https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/201... NB I hate Google for breaking the above URL but I’m tired of fixing them...
- poizan42 9y agoHere: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-worth-1-trillion-study-economy-apple-google https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-wo...
- simonh 9y agoSome religions are wealthy and maybe you don't like that, fine. How is religion in general a form of pyramid selling though? I'm sure some religions are organised like that, or are used to run such schemes, but the claim seemed to be about religion in general. One particular religion, or groups of religions wasn't specified.
- andy_ppp 9y agoThe reward for the Ponzi scheme is the ultimate prize isn’t it; who wouldn’t want to live in paradise forever. All religions run this scheme, as far as I’m aware?
- willvarfar 9y agoWell, those who spread the religion gain ego boosting status as preachers or such and, often, financial reward too. Lots of vicars with posh cars and TV drives to buy the bishop a private jet etc.
- matt4077 9y agoBishops don't have private planes. The catholic church has its own set of faults, and it is very rich. But they also have smart PR people, and a pope who doesn't like luxury, and they keep their bishops on a short leash. Edit: I thought "bishop" was a specifically catholic title. It appears that some televangelists may have misappropriated not just the faith, but also the title.
- willvarfar 9y agoJust a quick googling for private plane bishops http://dustoffthebible.com/Blog-archive/2015/10/28/15-religious-leaders-that-make-more-money-getting-out-of-bed-than-youll-make-all-year/ http://dustoffthebible.com/Blog-archive/2015/10/28/15-religi... - not Catholic, but still..
- tialaramex 9y agoMost people think "Pope" is a Catholic title too, but Discordians believe all people (not even just Discordians) are Popes, and the crossover means that members of the Church of the SubGenius often acknowledge such Popes too. Anyway, Catholicism is a lot bigger than the Roman Catholic Church. You have other very explicitly Catholic churches such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, and you also have faiths like Anglicanism, which are a weird hybrid where most (Roman) Catholics would consider them protestant, but they refer to themselves internally as a "Holy Catholic church", they have Bishops too (but no Pope, their spiritual head is for historical reasons the Queen of England) and so on.
- simonh 9y agoYou are completely missing the point. I could say that of politics, academia, capitalism, country music. What has any of this got to do with pyramid selling?
- fpig 9y agoYou're right, relatively few adults these days convert because someone "sold" them on the religion and in my majority-catholic country the church doesn't even make any serious attempt to do this or tell their followers to do this. But christianity and islam are still the biggest MLM schemes in the world, however they work slightly differently. Instead of being incentivized to recruit people around you, you are incentivized to create your own recruits by having as many children as possible and it's absolutely expected that you will "recruit" them. Also they love proselytizing (religious education etc) in schools, even though they don't care about doing it to adults. They know children are softer targets, and if they don't convert them before they reach adulthood, they're way less likely to succeed. Basically it's all about proselytizing to children instead of adults. Get them while they're young!
- simonh 9y agoI get that you don't like religion, but how is it a pyramid scheme where e.g. Humanism, political beliefs, a love of Country Music, or any one of a million other beliefs or preferences aren't? It seems to me to be an extraordinarily specific and weak claim.
- fpig 9y agoBecause the followers are supposed to make kids and recruit them into the church at the earliest possible age. They don't want it to be about preference, they want to "lock them in" before they start thinking for themselves. This is literally a part of the catholic religion, you're expected to try to have children and expected to recruit them. It is not a part of any of your examples.
- simonh 9y agoTeaching children your culture is a pyramid selling scheme? Got it.
- AstralStorm 9y agoReligion is not the same as culture, and definitely is not the entirety of it. Nor should be. Anabaptist out of Christian sects had the right idea in my opinion.
- ainiriand 9y agoI was tempted to downvote you because of the apparent forced comparison. Care to explain a bit more? I find that comparison a bit offensive even if I am not a christian myself.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hux_ 9y agoDidn't mean to offend your faith. I am talking about the way faith spreads and not about faith itself. People who need faith are very similar to people who need a job or an income. They are all suffering. That is the commonality. One way faith spreads, if you are a student of history, is to claim faith is a "shortcut" fix to suffering. But if you know your faith, you know faith is hard work/just like keeping a job or earning a living honestly. That doesn't stop people from selling a "shortcut". Because selling a shortcut is easy. Neither does it stop people from buying into it.
- yorwba 9y agoAlthough the reasons people join a religion may be similar, there is a qualitative difference between the spread of religions and pyramid schemes. In a pyramid scheme, the participants are mostly busy recruiting new members, and the tangible benefits of membership are tied to the stream of recruits. Once that stream stops growing, people start dropping out and the same pyramid structure that accelerated the growth also leads to accelerated collapse. Religions that have endured over generations have a very different balance of promises and recruitments. Instead of large immediate rewards that can't be kept up over the long term, they rely on hopes about the indefinite future (e.g. paradise) or benefits that are proportional to the size of the community, not it's growth over time (e.g. caring for their sick). Religions do rely on missionarizing to grow, but they can remain stable even without growth, and mostly propagate themselves by parents converting their children.
- viraptor 9y ago> Instead of large immediate rewards that can't be kept up over the long term, they rely on hopes about the indefinite future (e.g. paradise) I think that's ignoring many immediate things people get from religion. Immediate sense of belonging, getting to listen to someone who's "got life figured out", getting some motivation, and many other reasons. Whether that's provided by a megachurch, a local friendly priest, an MLM convention with a charismatic speaker, or another way doesn't matter. I met a masonic priest who joined the group because his wife died and he needed people who would take him out for dinner once a week. I come from a country that's virtually 100% Catholic (or at least was) and don't believe that many people really cared about the final paradise. Or at least that wasn't really the reason they turned up to the church every week.
- sidzpah 9y agoThis is very rampant in India as well, local facebook groups get at least 5-10 posts a day regarding pyramid schemes and offers. The response is equally high to these post averaging 50-100 comments whereas other posts barely receive any. Showing the promise land of instant riches without hard work via flashy ads and illogical math creates such greed amongst the low-income community here (which is the majority of the population, btw) that it is almost heartbreaking to see them lose their everything eventually. MLM/Pyramid scams cannot be stopped via government bans or awareness programmes as such, it needs an equal rival which not only makes the same promises but magically also fulfills them somehow. As much as I have observed, the amount of hard work they do for recruiting new members can well be exchanged for a handsome salary with a steady future income promise leading to a better financial gain over time.
- otp124 9y ago> it needs an equal rival which not only makes the same promises but magically also fulfills them somehow. How do you propose to "magically" fulfill a pyramid scheme without a pyramid scheme?
- ddorian43 9y agoHe's just saying stupid gonna stupid. Can lower them with education. But I've told people "yo it's 100% MLM" after first sentence and still had a "I want to believe!" mentality. People that have finished university.
- bluecalm 9y agoI don't agree. Make MLM's illegal, punish people who recruit. They will dry up in no time. The problem now is that they are perfectly legal (or can be made legal by introducing sham product to make it less like a pure pyramid) so recruiters can scam others out of their life savings with impunity.
- viraptor 9y agoIs there any country with a working anti-mlm law? I think the line is so fuzzy, it would be really hard to define what's a scam and what isn't. What's the difference between a franchise/dealership and an MLM where some product really exists and you're expected to pay for the stock up-front? If there was a law against one of them, how close would they get?
- ciguy 9y agoMLM scams are massive in the Philippines right now as well. The baffling thing to me is, when I've laid out how this works to friends talking about joining up, they agree with the math but join anyway! It's like they need something to believe in subconsciously even if their logical mind knows it's bullshit. Maybe these schemes really sell hope to those that need something to believe in, replacing religion on some level. Except in this case it's economic hope, the belief that if they work hard enough they will be rewarded. I've noticed a trend amongst participants. The people at the top are straight up psychopaths looking to exploit human greed for their own gain. But the lower level minions are usually simply poor. They have very little to lose, so why not try it? Ultimately they usually end up poorer, but there's always the story of Bob and Betty who made a million dollars last year and came from nothing to be top sellers.
- vog 9y ago> It's like they need something to believe in subconsciously even if their logical mind knows it's bullshit. A simpler explanation is that they just love to gamble. Essentially, they bet on ending up in a higher position of the pyramid.
- ciguy 9y agoThen you haven't experienced the religious fervor with which they defend the scheme once they're hooked. It's definitely more like a cult than any form of gambling addiction and once inside the relentless brainwashing begins. Many of these schemes even have weekly "meetups" aka services akin to those of religious congregations. These usually include an iconic leader who admonishes the minions for the coming week and encourages them to cut out any family or friends who dare to question them.
- bane 9y agoEven here in the U.S., I've known several people, with good stable money making careers to give it all up and start selling vitamins or beauty care products or whatever. It's truly bizarre and the desperate sell-to-everyone-all-the-time behavior that seems to appear afterwards drives all their friends away. I'm not sure what these schemes seem to be exploiting but man if it doesn't smell like religious radicalization.
- walshemj 9y agoThe experience of Albania in 96/97 caused massive disruption and the deaths of around 2k people when the schemes collapsed. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm Id imagine this is worrying the Chinese government
- sexydefinesher 9y agoMaybe they will face the same fate as their eternal ally Albania
- bane 9y agoThey're also massive in South Korea and a pretty entertaining movie about them came out in South Korea in 2016 called "Master" [1]. It's highly dramatized, but has a few scenes in it of the big sales gatherings of some of these scams. They have much of the appearance and feel of a mega-church gathering (also common in the country) and seem to use many of the same "make people feel good and then exploit them along the way" techniques. It's my understanding that the movie was made simply to help raise awareness of these predatory groups as the population they tend to target don't have the resources to do it themselves. 1 - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5735464/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5735464/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DiNovi 9y agoI mean I've seen this here in the US everywhere... specifically skin care shit