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“ The epiphany that explains the crypto boom, Andrew Tate, “passive income” strategies, dropshipping, finance influencers, executive training programs, meme sto

“ The epiphany that explains the crypto boom, Andrew Tate, “passive income” strategies, dropshipping, finance influencers, executive training programs, meme stocks, etc is the commercial realization that American men are extremely susceptible to multi-level marketing schemes” https://mobile.twitter.com/jherrerx/status/1612339869707108352 https://mobile.twitter.com/jherrerx/status/16123398697071083...

derefr 4y ago
A thing is only an MLM if the people at the top of it are actually getting rich off of the backs of the people below them. Which is true of some of the things in that list. But for others (e.g. dropshipping — and also "freelancing" for companies like Uber) it's just participation in a sector-wide race-to-the-bottom, where the free competition and commoditization of every role in the system drives margins at every step to zero, resulting in literally nobody getting rich.
- Raed667 4y ago
  Pretty sure alibaba and über execs are doing just fine financially.
  - derefr 4y ago
    The people at "the top" of dropshipping aren't AliExpress/Wish/etc; they're rather the job-shop owners making the junk that gets sold on these sites. The supply chain originating from these factories existed long before these online dollar stores came into being as middle-men in it; before the online-ification of dollar stores, these factories used to directly contract with buyer-importers working for the brick-and-mortar dollar-store chains! These factories have never done too well for themselves. There's a reason they never achieve "escape velocity" into having brand recognition. Even before giant online dollar stores, their production (injection molding not-very-detailed plastic parts, etc) has always been a commodity; whoever's ordering runs of 10000 Alf stress-balls or what-have-you could swap Factory A out for Factory B at the drop of a hat. (And this is why you never hear of factories in China with genuinely good working conditions; the margins are too low for paying a living wage to be sustainable for the employer. And yes, this does imply that the businesses themselves shouldn't exist.) Also, while AliExpress/Wish/etc do make a profit, they do so on the back of a market distortion — the Universal Postal Union's special rates+tarriffs exception for ePackets shipped from China. Remove that, and such companies would collapse overnight.
    - Blahah 4y ago
      Surely the people at "the top" are the shareholders in AliExpress/Wish/Uber? The MLM is just a few levels, with everyone invested in making profits for the company that controls the platform.
      - derefr 4y ago
        Multi-Level Marketing has a very specific definition — it's a tree of people reselling ("marketing") stuff, on the expectation that the person at the next level will be able to resell ("market") it in turn to an even-bigger sucker. Or an end-user, maybe, eventually. Something being an MLM, implies that the original producer of the product — either literally the factory, or the business that ordered the product from the factory as a work-for-hire to then begin marketing it — is the root node in that tree of reselling, and so is the one getting the most rich, since everyone else in the tree has part of their profits flowing back to them. If a middle-man between the producer and consumer is getting richer than the producer is, then you're not looking at an MLM. You might be looking at some other kind of immoral market manipulation, but it's not specifically an MLM per se.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      I don't think they're "the top" of a pyramid. They're just selling their trinkets to whoever pays. If you want to buy a bunch of units, so much the better. Also, I think some of this is somewhat outdated: wages in China have risen, and the really low-quality and low-wage manufacturing has started to migrate to SE Asia.
      - derefr 4y ago
        Well, yeah, that's what I said: dropshipping isn't an MLM. There's no pyramid there. It's just a race-to-the-bottom, but one with lots of hangers-on at various steps realizing they can "sell shovels in a [self-proclaimed] gold rush" to various parts of this logistics chain if they can convince them they need the help.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  The guy who sells guides to "starting your own business" by drop shipping is not exactly running an MLM I suppose, but he's taking suckers for a ride all the same.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Unless you don't have the time/energy/learning style and want to learn about drop shipping you pay for a course. Many developers are self taught but others paid for someone to teach them.
    - unmole 4y ago
      This is assuming that the person teaching the course actually has a clue.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      Yeah but the different is that the drop shipping course is typically marketed in a misleading way that misrepresents how much one stands to gain.
- margalabargala 4y ago
  With dropshipping, there are a lot of "pay me $500 and I'll teach to you get rich dropshipping!" classes. It's not quite the same as an MLM because the teacher doesn't get continuous income off the people they recruit after they finish the class, but it is like an MLM in the sense that the people recruiting people to their class are the only people making any money. And they tend to create "levels" of classes, etc to keep people paying.
  - mantas 4y ago
    This is „selling shovels in a gold rush“ and has flat hierarchy. MLM requires the mid tier to aggressively re-sell it down the line. Which is where the worst part comes from.
    - fxtentacle 4y ago
      You mean like those guys that purchased an online course on how to run a walled-garden online course and then are aggressively selling their own online course (on how to run a walled-garden online course) ?
      - mantas 4y ago
        Yes. But courses on dropshipping don't teach you how to teach others to do dropshipping.
- brtkdotse 4y ago
  > A thing is only an MLM if the people at the top of it are actually getting rich off of the backs of the people below them … otherwise it’s just sparkling scam? ;)
- vinay_ys 4y ago
  It depends on the context – at the peak of Uber/Ola in India I met and spoke to a lot of drivers – they came from villages where they left behind agricultural land and large joint-family life (agriculture is hard/risky work no doubt, joint-family can be judgemental and lack personal freedom) for the promise of romanticised independent city life and being your own boss. What they didn't understand fully was that they were being saddled with a car loan and a commitment to drive 16+ hours per day and sleep in the car and eat poorly for several years just to meet the car loan payments, fuel and maintenance for the car and also send some leftover money back home. Performance incentive bonuses paid by Uber/Ola were strong early on to attract and grow this base. But it quickly dried up after the first few years. So, the drivers who did well in those first few years became the brand ambassadors to recruit more drivers. Those who joined in the later years are screwed. Meanwhile the company valuation grows exponentially and goes public and helps transfer more money from retail investors to early institutional investors etc. In this there are examples of multiple levels of information asymmetry resulting in a few getting rich off the backs of sweat and tears of a lot of people.
golemiprague 4y ago
[dead]
DrFunke 4y ago
>American men are extremely susceptible to multi-level marketing schemes Men are under extreme environmental pressures to be successful providers. Perhaps it's why they suffer the highest suicide rates. Equating their eagerness to provide for loved ones with susceptibility (i.e. stupidity) is misguided.
concordDance 4y ago
These don't seem like MLM schemes... He also calls Trump and the Proud Boys MLM schemes, which shows he's using some definition completely different to the normal one. Probably just wanted to say "stupid people".
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
MLM targets mostly women, not men (probably because more socialization is required for that particular kind of scam). Everyone loves easy money, we have reached perfect gender equality in that respect )

derefr 4y ago

A thing is only an MLM if the people at the top of it are actually getting rich off of the backs of the people below them. Which is true of some of the things in that list. But for others (e.g. dropshipping — and also "freelancing" for companies like Uber) it's just participation in a sector-wide race-to-the-bottom, where the free competition and commoditization of every role in the system drives margins at every step to zero, resulting in literally nobody getting rich.

Raed667 4y ago
Pretty sure alibaba and über execs are doing just fine financially.
- derefr 4y ago
  The people at "the top" of dropshipping aren't AliExpress/Wish/etc; they're rather the job-shop owners making the junk that gets sold on these sites. The supply chain originating from these factories existed long before these online dollar stores came into being as middle-men in it; before the online-ification of dollar stores, these factories used to directly contract with buyer-importers working for the brick-and-mortar dollar-store chains! These factories have never done too well for themselves. There's a reason they never achieve "escape velocity" into having brand recognition. Even before giant online dollar stores, their production (injection molding not-very-detailed plastic parts, etc) has always been a commodity; whoever's ordering runs of 10000 Alf stress-balls or what-have-you could swap Factory A out for Factory B at the drop of a hat. (And this is why you never hear of factories in China with genuinely good working conditions; the margins are too low for paying a living wage to be sustainable for the employer. And yes, this does imply that the businesses themselves shouldn't exist.) Also, while AliExpress/Wish/etc do make a profit, they do so on the back of a market distortion — the Universal Postal Union's special rates+tarriffs exception for ePackets shipped from China. Remove that, and such companies would collapse overnight.
  - Blahah 4y ago
    Surely the people at "the top" are the shareholders in AliExpress/Wish/Uber? The MLM is just a few levels, with everyone invested in making profits for the company that controls the platform.
    - derefr 4y ago
      Multi-Level Marketing has a very specific definition — it's a tree of people reselling ("marketing") stuff, on the expectation that the person at the next level will be able to resell ("market") it in turn to an even-bigger sucker. Or an end-user, maybe, eventually. Something being an MLM, implies that the original producer of the product — either literally the factory, or the business that ordered the product from the factory as a work-for-hire to then begin marketing it — is the root node in that tree of reselling, and so is the one getting the most rich, since everyone else in the tree has part of their profits flowing back to them. If a middle-man between the producer and consumer is getting richer than the producer is, then you're not looking at an MLM. You might be looking at some other kind of immoral market manipulation, but it's not specifically an MLM per se.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I don't think they're "the top" of a pyramid. They're just selling their trinkets to whoever pays. If you want to buy a bunch of units, so much the better. Also, I think some of this is somewhat outdated: wages in China have risen, and the really low-quality and low-wage manufacturing has started to migrate to SE Asia.
    - derefr 4y ago
      Well, yeah, that's what I said: dropshipping isn't an MLM. There's no pyramid there. It's just a race-to-the-bottom, but one with lots of hangers-on at various steps realizing they can "sell shovels in a [self-proclaimed] gold rush" to various parts of this logistics chain if they can convince them they need the help.
emodendroket 4y ago
The guy who sells guides to "starting your own business" by drop shipping is not exactly running an MLM I suppose, but he's taking suckers for a ride all the same.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Unless you don't have the time/energy/learning style and want to learn about drop shipping you pay for a course. Many developers are self taught but others paid for someone to teach them.
  - unmole 4y ago
    This is assuming that the person teaching the course actually has a clue.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Yeah but the different is that the drop shipping course is typically marketed in a misleading way that misrepresents how much one stands to gain.
margalabargala 4y ago
With dropshipping, there are a lot of "pay me $500 and I'll teach to you get rich dropshipping!" classes. It's not quite the same as an MLM because the teacher doesn't get continuous income off the people they recruit after they finish the class, but it is like an MLM in the sense that the people recruiting people to their class are the only people making any money. And they tend to create "levels" of classes, etc to keep people paying.
- mantas 4y ago
  This is „selling shovels in a gold rush“ and has flat hierarchy. MLM requires the mid tier to aggressively re-sell it down the line. Which is where the worst part comes from.
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    You mean like those guys that purchased an online course on how to run a walled-garden online course and then are aggressively selling their own online course (on how to run a walled-garden online course) ?
    - mantas 4y ago
      Yes. But courses on dropshipping don't teach you how to teach others to do dropshipping.
brtkdotse 4y ago
> A thing is only an MLM if the people at the top of it are actually getting rich off of the backs of the people below them … otherwise it’s just sparkling scam? ;)
vinay_ys 4y ago
It depends on the context – at the peak of Uber/Ola in India I met and spoke to a lot of drivers – they came from villages where they left behind agricultural land and large joint-family life (agriculture is hard/risky work no doubt, joint-family can be judgemental and lack personal freedom) for the promise of romanticised independent city life and being your own boss. What they didn't understand fully was that they were being saddled with a car loan and a commitment to drive 16+ hours per day and sleep in the car and eat poorly for several years just to meet the car loan payments, fuel and maintenance for the car and also send some leftover money back home. Performance incentive bonuses paid by Uber/Ola were strong early on to attract and grow this base. But it quickly dried up after the first few years. So, the drivers who did well in those first few years became the brand ambassadors to recruit more drivers. Those who joined in the later years are screwed. Meanwhile the company valuation grows exponentially and goes public and helps transfer more money from retail investors to early institutional investors etc. In this there are examples of multiple levels of information asymmetry resulting in a few getting rich off the backs of sweat and tears of a lot of people.

golemiprague 4y ago

[dead]

DrFunke 4y ago

>American men are extremely susceptible to multi-level marketing schemes Men are under extreme environmental pressures to be successful providers. Perhaps it's why they suffer the highest suicide rates. Equating their eagerness to provide for loved ones with susceptibility (i.e. stupidity) is misguided.

concordDance 4y ago

These don't seem like MLM schemes... He also calls Trump and the Proud Boys MLM schemes, which shows he's using some definition completely different to the normal one. Probably just wanted to say "stupid people".

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

MLM targets mostly women, not men (probably because more socialization is required for that particular kind of scam). Everyone loves easy money, we have reached perfect gender equality in that respect )