From: choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.)
Subject: Re: MLM Fairness Disclosure (was Nuskin)
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 16:21:35 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.210832.4289@odin.corp.sgi.com>, bglazier@buffalo.asd.sgi.com (Bill Glazier) writes:
|> 
|> |> And, on a slightly different tack -- what's WRONG with dreaming, Bill?
|> |> Dreams are what help people rise above the muck of their everyday existence.
|> |> SOME people work with those dreams and make them reality.  Some don't.
|> 
|> Nothing is wrong with dreaming.  You and I both have our own dreams.  But, most
|> MLM owners/managers target the most economically vulnerable segment of society,
|> and in their marketing pitch casually drop how many gazillionaires MLM (or
|> their company in particular) have created.  The clear objective is to get
|> the potential enrollee to think he is just a few quick, easy steps away from
|> being independently wealthy.  I would like the MLM industry to impose
|> upon itself a simple fairness diclosure rule.  Every presentation to prospective
|> new members should include the following:
|> 
|> 	- the % of people still in the program 1 year after joining
|> 	- the average income of the average participant
|> 	- the salary of the 10 most senior members of the company, including
|> 	  benefits and stock rights
|> 	- the distribution of total sales commissions among the total
|> 	  organizational hierarchy for the past 12 months

                       :-)    (-:


          What's this?! New rules? Restrictions?
          Who's behind it? The LIBERALS!

          Well if it isn't just like you liberals to
          make me do what I don't want to do just
          because you say I should be doing it. That's
          just what almost destroyed this country, and
          you'd do it all again if you could get back
          into power wouldn't you?

          By golly! Let Mulroney be Mulroney!

                    - Bloom County
                    - Berke Breathed

I'm Canadian.

To be serious, all I've seen in person are greasy recruiting types. They
try to say "There's no life like it", but I say "Your momma wears army
boots." People today are overwhelmed with a range of screwball products.
We need increased organization. The universe naturally tends to chaos,
and mankind has achieved all that we have today through mind over matter.
Organization. We have to put our heads together and make cooperative
efforts on a large scale. Competitiveness and trying out ideas have their
place in a world of limited resources, but it's being done blindly like
lemmings madly racing toward the end of the earth. Maybe they see a pot
of gold at the end of the rainbow, but they don't look before they leap.

MLM is a system that depends on society, but the chaos in society makes
the system freak out. It's all a big craps game. Round and round she
goes, where she stops nobody knows. 

|> If this were done, the 'dream' as sold by most MLM owners/managers would be
|> much more sobering, the real prospect of the likelihood of success would
|> be clear, and an honest and fair choice could be made.  Instead of hard data, 
|> what new prospects get is the psychobabble, a few selected incidents where
|> someone made a lot of $$, and a hard sell.  

It's scary when everyone is trying to invent a better mousetrap. A hard
sell is the only thing that can be done to recover the expenses. If the
resources of the world are to be used in a more optimal fashion, there
must be better communications among inventors. Everyone just tries to
hide his little mousetrap until it's ready. Then there's a bubble sort
of mousetraps. This sorting is largely based on quality, efficiency,
effectiveness, and price, but you have to do your hard sell. These
mousetrap people get together all too infrequently. The mega mousetrap
just doesn't get built. Next year's model is only marginally better
while a ton of resources get sunk into duds. Part of the problem is
there are too many people, overpopulation, without clean intimate
communication. Another problem is that you don't ever get a perfect
mousetrap, cause no person or team is perfect. You can't ship mousetraps
to every part of the country so market share is how everyone can sell
duds. Supply and demand does not have all that it takes to catch mice
economically.

However, nature follows its course and if people screw up, they're
screwed. Too bad, so sad.

MLM people should pull together to do better than dog eat dog. A guy
who's been in industry for years tells me that MLM is a program for
housewives who have free time to burn. That people at the bottom don't
get ahead. There's a network here! People know people and can open up
ideas to each other. We need give and take. Then we can make our spare
time fun and rewarding without doing any con games. It can be real
step forward. People can say, "Yeah, I was a part of it! I helped to
make it all happen!"


IMHO
Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca