Scomagia wrote:Kaltovar wrote:I voted to ban them because the structure is too damned easy to abuse and fucks over a lot of senile people with big savings.
That's true. It's just terrible for everyone when an older relative starts hawking an MLM.
"No, Aunt Helen, I don't want to buy your travel package. I know it says 'all inclusive' but last time I still had to pay for the hotel."
Unfortunately, I think older people might double up more often, so your Granny selling Avon may also sell Arbonne or Herbalife. But MLMs are hardly the only industry that preys on the vulnerability of the elderly.
I'm in an awkward position because while I don't hold the idea of a free market to be sacrosanct, I really dislike interfering with it on flimsy grounds because I think that unnecessary interference makes it less efficient. I can't think of a single positive effect MLMs have on the economy though ... I've never heard of an MLM that tended to improve the lives of it's average workers, or end them up with more money than they started. The whole business model is sucking wealth out of your own employees (who you insist aren't employees for legal reasons) and giving it to your managers, otherwise it's not an MLM it's just a business.
The thing is, I wouldn't want to ban some of the cool things that people have fun doing like that weird MLM that sold canned bacon and AR15 attachments ... I think anyone who was involved in that had waaay more than enough disposable income and was having fun.
Maybe they should just be be REQUIRED to buy-back stock they sold you if you're stuck with a garage full of scam-based shampoo products you can't sell, so that it becomes impossible to scam old people into buying stuff they think will make them rich and can't offload.
Edit to clarify stance on free market: I think the free market should be left alone when it's not hurting anything, but that the government should also branch out into things it can do more efficiently than private industry. I don't think private industry should be BANNED from competing in those areas, but I consider them secondary concerns. Examples include medical care, space exploration, and railroad building. Sure there's room for private industry there and they've even had some of the greatest breakthroughs, but if we'd just left the free market to it's own devices none of those private companies would even exist. They were all built off the back of state-funded research and spearhead projects that normalized their industries and created a primordial market for them to work in (The space market was VERY fucking primordial up until like 10 years ago for example)