MLM Pyramid Schemes

At sometime in our lives, we have been or are likely to be 
approached by recruiters of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) and Network Marketing (NM) organizations, promising a great new business opportunity that only takes a few hours a week and yet will eventually net you a thousand dollars a week to put you on the road to becoming financially independent. As many of us know, the biggest of these organizations is Amway, followed by many smaller copycats, each with their own variations, all trying to make you think they're better than the other. If the recruiter is a stranger to you, he/she will usually strike up a friendly conversation with you and then ask you if you like the work you're in, and go from there. Many of you have probably had this experience. There are even MLM's that strictly operate on the internet now. 
Even if you've never been approached by them in person, if you use the internet then you have probably been incessantly bombarded with junk email soliciting get-rich business opportunities that all claim they are better than the rest. Most of them are MLM's, pyramid schemes or chain letters in disguise. (As reference to them, I shall mostly use the term MLM rather than NM because it is more commonly known, although they are basically the same.) MLM's are notorious for presenting to you a barrage of smoke and mirrors that mislead you with hype and emotionalism that feeds on your deepest needs while subduing your reason and common sense. They usually start with catchy lines like "Are you tired of working for someone else?" and "Would you like to be your own boss?" followed by "How would you like to earn an extra thousand dollars a week in your spare time?" and "What if you could do this part time while keeping your regular job?" 

Fortunately, many now see through the smoke and mirrors, but as P.T. Barnum and others once said "There's a sucker born every minute." Those who buy into this hype don't think critically through all the smoke and mirrors enough to see them for what they really are.