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I think that you’re correct and what is happening is that, in our era of extreme inequality, pyramid schemes are being forced farther up the food chain. It use

I think that you’re correct and what is happening is that, in our era of extreme inequality, pyramid schemes are being forced farther up the food chain. It used to be that you could make a pretty penny soaking the lower classes directly with things like MLMs. But as their wealth was hollowed out by globalization and the Great Recession, you have to shift your predation upward to things like their pension funds, sovereign wealth, etc. While the people managing these resources can sometimes be more savvy than your average sucker signing up to a pyramid scheme, it’s very easy to pull one over on them with stories about “technological innovation” (counter to logic or evidence of profitability) because this is the grand, wishful story of our era.

CPLX 7y ago
Don’t forget “cryptocurrency”
- ghaff 7y ago
  Arguably crypto was more about FOMO. End result doesn't look much different of course.
klenwell 7y ago
Interesting thesis. But I'd guess pyramid schemes (or MLMs) are still all over the food chain and over-represented at the lower tiers. A variation on this theme, and this has basically been Matt Levine's take on SoftBank if I'm not mistaken: SoftBank, and Adam Neumann in turn, each spotted an opportunity for pyramid schemes at a higher tier of the food chain that hadn't previously been fully exploited. And they exploited it. Perhaps even unwittingly. They were incentivized by the market. From Levine's 10/23 column: Look, here I am speculating, and I don’t mean to speak for Neumann’s subjective experience of his WeWork career, but from the outside, in hindsight, objectively, one could describe it like this: He spotted a bubble in venture-subsidized fast-growing money-losing capital-intensive low-margin tech-adjacent companies, noticed in particular that SoftBank seemed to be on the long side of that bubble, and set himself up to profit on the other side—by raising money for his own ultra-unicorn, by setting up the governance of that unicorn in a maximally self-interested way, and by selling and margining a bunch of his personal shares. When investors like SoftBank were frenziedly buying unicorn stock, he was frenziedly selling it. He set himself up to profit from the collapse of the unicorn bubble, and accelerated that collapse. Lessons were learned, and he taught them. Now he’s rich.

CPLX 7y ago

Don’t forget “cryptocurrency”

ghaff 7y ago
Arguably crypto was more about FOMO. End result doesn't look much different of course.

klenwell 7y ago

Interesting thesis. But I'd guess pyramid schemes (or MLMs) are still all over the food chain and over-represented at the lower tiers. A variation on this theme, and this has basically been Matt Levine's take on SoftBank if I'm not mistaken: SoftBank, and Adam Neumann in turn, each spotted an opportunity for pyramid schemes at a higher tier of the food chain that hadn't previously been fully exploited. And they exploited it. Perhaps even unwittingly. They were incentivized by the market. From Levine's 10/23 column: Look, here I am speculating, and I don’t mean to speak for Neumann’s subjective experience of his WeWork career, but from the outside, in hindsight, objectively, one could describe it like this: He spotted a bubble in venture-subsidized fast-growing money-losing capital-intensive low-margin tech-adjacent companies, noticed in particular that SoftBank seemed to be on the long side of that bubble, and set himself up to profit on the other side—by raising money for his own ultra-unicorn, by setting up the governance of that unicorn in a maximally self-interested way, and by selling and margining a bunch of his personal shares. When investors like SoftBank were frenziedly buying unicorn stock, he was frenziedly selling it. He set himself up to profit from the collapse of the unicorn bubble, and accelerated that collapse. Lessons were learned, and he taught them. Now he’s rich.