When it comes to 'MLM', 'if', is a very big word

Shyam

What Mr Kasey Chang is now describing, is essentially what the 'Amway' Lord Haw Haw Mr. Steadson has steadfastly pretended to be reality.  

Mr. Chang states that I :

'don't see the dividing line between a true pyramid scheme (or a fake MLM) vs. a "normal" MLM!' 

and that :

'you CAN make money selling Amway stuff and not recruit ANYBODY.' 

Perhaps we should ask Mr. Chang:

Where exactly can we all go and see this famous dividing line between a 'fake MLM' and a 'normal MLM', which he describes?

Where exactly can we cross it and visit with all these normal 'MLM' participants selling 'Amway' stuff and making (overall) profits (and examine their audited accounts and tax returns) whom he describes?

How exactly did human civilization manage to get by without 'MLM', or 'Scientology' for that matter, until the 1950s?

Why exactly haven't the owners of 'Amway' sued me, if (as he believes), I'm wrong in my analysis, because I have no understanding of business and am pursuing some sort of personal quest?

Despite what Mr. Chang imagines, I have a vast experience of traditional business. Although I consider that they are to be generally avoided, I have no problem with viable, single tier, direct selling schemes with non-salaried commission agents who have made money by retailing an overwhelming majority of merchandisable products, and/or services, to the public for profit, but that's not what the participants of these so-called 'MLM' schemes have done. On the contrary, it's what their bosses and their bosses' apologists have merely pretended 'MLM' participants to have done. Each time one of these so-called  'MLM' schemes has been rigorously investigated, the overwhelming majority of active participants have been discovered not be regularly retailing anything to the public or making any profits. However, they were regularly buying the wampum themselves (at grossly-inflated prices) and desperately trying to recruit everyone they encountered to duplicate the same economically suicidal plan, because they had been conditioned to believe that it would lead them to 'total financial freedom'.  

Mr. Chang says that he is exasperated by my refusal to accept what he apparently genuinely believes to be reality, but he offers your free-thinking readers absolutely no evidence to substantiate his view that significant numbers of people have made money from what he calls normal 'MLM' schemes, by lawfully retailing a majority of goods and/or services to the public for a profit. It seems that his entire view of 'MLM' in general, and 'Amway' in particular, is based on his child-like certainty that nothing so big, and American in origin, can possibly be a fake. We, on the other hand, have drawn his attention to previous investigations and prosecutions which demonstrate that millions of individuals have been churned through 'Amway' and other copy-cat organizations shielded by so-called 'Direct Selling Associtions', and continue to be churned through them, and that effectively none of these poor people have ever made one cent of overall profit. Indeed, some have lost all contact with their friends and relatives, wasted years of their lives and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few have become so loaded with shame and guilt, that they have killed themselves.

In Kasey Chang's defence, I must say that the 'TVI Express' cult (which is a new-comer hiding behind a few corporate structures) is child's play to understand in comparison with long-established cultic groups like 'Amway' and 'Scientology.' The instigators of these shifty labyrinths began their criminal activities back in the 1950s, when they too hid behind just a few corporate structures. Since that time, the bosses of both these totalitarian gangs have used the age-old esoteric concept of hermetic circles. They have continued to organize the creation, dissolution, and subversion of further (apparently independent) corporate structures pursuing lawful, and/or unlawful, enterprises in order to prevent, and/or divert, investigation and isolate themselves from liability. In simple terms, the leaders of 'Scientology' and 'Amway' steadfastly pretend moral and intellectual authority whilst pursuing various hidden criminal objectives (mainly fraudulent). However, each organization has comprised a vast rimless wheel of countless ever-changing sub-groups which are, in fact, all joined together and controlled from the hub. The leaders of these sub-groups feed stolen cash and intelligence back to the central leaders. If a problem arises, the central organization will aggressively defend any sub-group, leader or adherent who faces investigation, or prosecution. But increasingly-embarrassing, or convicted sub-groups and individuals can be ultimately cut adrift from the organization and condemned as minority exceptions. It is extraordinary how effective this type of hermetic system can be, and how dim law enforcement agents, journalists and legislators have been when faced with it. 

Exactly like the 'Scientology' bosses, the 'Amway' bosses have produced codes of ethics and lists of rules which are merely designed to fool casual observers into believing that these organizations want to respect the laws in the various countries where they operate, but these much-vaunted self-regulations are a complete sham, because they cannot be, and have not been, enforced. I have previously described persons duped by these farcical documents as being like a group of Nevile Chamberlains trying to understand 'Nazism' by reading the laudable 'Code of Conduct of the Hitler Youth' (which was largely-copied from the Boy Scout movement). 

For obvious reasons, in the 'Amway' organization the various company officers and company employees around the world have had little knowledge of what they have actually been involved in. Consequently, if such persons are challenged by the press, arrested or brought before a judge they are not pretending to be innocent, they really don't have a clue. Indeed the Italian American Mafia has used the same tactics for decades. Often totally innocent wives and family members of Mafia bosses have occupied key posts in Mafia front-companies. 

If Mr. Chang is tempted now to imagine that I must be some sort of mad conspiracy theorist, he should try reading the Blakey report on 'Amway' http://www.amquix.info/blakey.html 

Thus, when someone like Mr. Chang confidently announces on this Blog that there is nothing inherently fraudulent in, or cultic about, 'Multi-Level Marketing' and then goes on to repeat 'Amway's' reality-inverting propaganda that the problem with the 'Amway' system has been a minority of rogue leaders acting against the organization's own code of ethics, and teaching some 'distributors' to recruit and consume and not to sell the products and, then selling 'tools', my reaction to his ignorance and naivety is hardly surprising. Mr. Chang might be surprised to learn that the 'Amway' bosses even went so far as to employ two self-styled 'cult advisers' in the UK, Mr. Ian Howarth and Mr. Graham Baldwin. These two penniless, but greedy, clowns didn't have the beginnings of a clue what they were involved in. Their role was, in fact, to prevent potential 'Amway' dissidents (and/or their relatives) from approaching the press, law enforcement agents or legislators. In 1993, 'Amway' was torn to pieces and exposed a cultic fraud in 'Time Out Magazine' by its news Editor, Tony Thompson. At that time, hundreds of 'Amway' victims began to come forward to Britain's three cult advice associations, so 'Amway's' billionaire bosses (using 'Amway UK Ltd.' as a front) simply offered to finance two of them (which were effectively one-man-bands) and delayed government investigation in the UK for another decade. The remaining, independent British cult advice association couldn't afford to compete. 

Surely Mr. Chang knows that, for years, 'Amway' has imposed what has laughably been referred to as a 'system of internal arbitration' i.e. a contractual clause which all new adherents were obliged to sign up for, but few (if any) read, and which attempted to prevent them from taking disputes with the organization before independent tribunals. Recently, it was revealed in a federal court in the USA that in order to get an unfair hearing under this Kafkaesque system, destitute 'Amway' victims first had to hand over a large cash sum (I believe it was $16000). The federal Judge in question refused 'Amway's' petition to have a private RICO prosecution halted on the grounds that the plaintiffs had signed away their rights to a trial when they signed their 'Amway/Quixtar' contracts. http://www.scribd.com/doc/30312727/Pokorny-et-al-vs-Amway-re-arbitration 

I'll confidently predict that an identical gagging-clause has appeared in 'TVI Express' contracts.  

David Brear (copyright 2011)