'Amway' and its copy-cats are a new form of Imperialism

Shyam 

Most Indians believe that they got rid of mass-exploitation (dressed-up as benign British Imperialism) in 1947, but a new form of mass-exploitation (this time dressed-up as benign American capitalism) has returned. Their complete failure to identify this ongoing threat to democracy and the rule of law, is a damning indictment of India's current, elected leadership and of the mainstream Indian media, not to mention an insult to all the men, women and children who perished so that (after centuries of foreign-rule) Independence could finally be established in India.

After reading some of the recent, senseless Amspeak comments posted on Corporate Frauds Watch, I think it's again high-time for some more common-sense, and plain speaking.

Originally, the English noun 'pedlar' (spelled 'pedler' in the USA) meant someone who sells goods (often door-to-door) in small quantities. Yet, trying to reason with inflexible 'Amway' pedlars, like 'Renjit' and 'Raj', who (in defence of their self-esteem) need to believe in the 'MLM income opportunity' fairytale, is a waste of time. These arrogant little sheep always bleat the same closed-logic, anecdotal arguments presented in their group's thought-stopping jargon. Therefore, I shall continue to speak to your free-thinking readers (particularly the courageous Indian police officers challenging 'Amway India Enterprises' in Kerala), in accurate, deconstructed English.

In respect of 'Amway' (corruption of the popular phrase, 'the American Way'), when translated into plain language, the made-up impressive-sounding terms, 'Multi-Level Marketing', 'Direct Selling' and 'Independent (MLM) Business Owner' are all puerile inversions of quantifiable reality. Indeed, just a moment's critical-thinking should reveal to the average person that no one can achieve prosperity and success by becoming a latter-day pedlar, no matter what impressive-sounding title he/she is given. Many years ago, everyday items were commonly peddled door-to-door by salaried, and non-salaried, commission agents and certain individual entrepreneurs who, if they offered the public good-quality, competitively-priced merchandise, were presentable, honest, good at selling and prepared to work hard, could build a regular clientele and make a living (provided they didn't have too much competition). However, today this traditional practise has effectively vanished in most countries. Many people are not at home during the day and they are not interested in receiving unsolicited callers in the evenings. When the average American/European wants to buy some everyday item today, he/she will invariably turn to the Internet or go to a local supermarket, where there is an almost unlimited choice of price and quality. The average person's own experience is that he/she does not regularly buy goods from pedlars and, furthermore, the average person does not know anyone who does .

Since the 1950s, a growing number of criminogenic cultic organizations like 'Amway' have been allowed to create and maintain the reality-inverting, self-perpetuating myth that millions of people around the world supplement their incomes by becoming 'Independent Business Owners/Direct Sellers' and that countless of these 'IBOs' have retired from their traditional low-paid jobs, and gone on to become MLM 'multi-millionaires. Yet there is absolutely no quantifiable evidence (in the form of the audited accounts, particularly income tax receipts) proving that this 'MLM income opportunity' fairytale is true. Amazingly, an outrageous lie has been repeated so often that it has become generally accepted as the truth. Indeed, if one even suggests to government regulators and mainstream journalists that the whole of the so-called 'multi-billion dollar direct selling industry' has been nothing more than a collection of dissimulated money circulation scemes, regulators and mainstream journalists are automatically convinced that this itself must be an outrageous lie.

This is hardly surprising, since government regulators and mainstream journalists do not wish to admit that they have been deceived themselves, and are (in part) responsible. However, in effect, without the slightest verification, governments and the mainstream media currently accept that the members of numerous latter-day gangs of pedlars not only earn money from selling goods themselves, but also from recruiting their own sub-gangs of pedlars who can also earn money from selling goods and from also recruiting their own sub-gangs of pedlars, etc. ad infinitum. Thus, even if the members of these mythical, geometrically-expanding, latter-day gangs and sub-gangs of profitable pedlars' manage to find some genuine customers, they illogically endeavour to destroy their own clientele by tranforming it into their own competition.

David Brear (copyright 2011)