Selling the Dream

 Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans, by Jane Marie

This is an expose of MLMs -- multi-level marketing schemes -- which are pyramid schemes that keep just within the letter of the law.   You know them: Amway, Avon, Mary Kay, Arbonne, Doterra, Lularoe, and many many others.  Some are more respectable than others, but they all promise you the ability to run your own business from home, be independent, and make money at your own pace.  The trouble is that the product they're selling, whatever it is, is not where the profit lies; that's in your downline.  The more people you recruit to be sellers, the more money you'll make, but as the layers add up, the money runs out.  The people at the top make plenty, but you won't; in fact, you'll probably lose money and end up with a basement full of product you can't move.

Marie dissects the biggest MLM companies, analyzing how they attract people (predominantly moms looking for flexible ways to earn money), promise wonderful results, and then blame workers for their lack of success (Lularoe was the most egregious at this; when people complained that their shipments of product were arriving water-logged and moldy, they were blamed for having a bad attitude) when in fact the system is rigged.  The house will always win.  It's impossible to sell enough, recruit enough, or be peppy enough to earn the promised riches.

The histories are often fascinating stuff.  Amway and Tupperware especially stick in my memory.  I was particularly tickled by the Amway story, which explicitly mentions that the diagram they use to recruit people into Amway was changed to a flower shape so it wouldn't look like a pyramid.  Once long ago, some friends of our got into Amway and wanted us to join.  They showed us a diagram the looks like a flower, sure enough.  (As soon as we figured out what the heck they were even talking about, earning money in our spare time?, I started kicking my husband under the table.  He was impressively diplomatic, while I pretty much lost the ability to speak coherently.)  When I mentioned this detail to my husband, he pointed out that a flower is mathematically the same thing, just in all directions rather than one.  

She then discusses how the schemes skirt the law and why they're so difficult to prosecute.  It's fascinating and infuriating.  And of course, these days the companies have gone global anyway; prosecution is becoming more difficult, not less.

Give this book to all your friends who have tried to sell you Arbonne, pressured you to buy expensive products or host a party, or tried to recruit you into their Amway downline (I can't remember what Amway's name is now).  Some benefactor should put this book into every waiting room!