Lessee…I’ve tried Amway (in the 70′s), Tupperware and Mary Kay (in the 80′s) and I finally figured it out. 
Since then I’ve run from any person trying to get me into any business that requires that I continually recruit new marks in order to make money. Who among us (women especially!) haven’t been to a house “party” where part of the pitch is to “become a consultant, distributor, partner, etc.”
These companies, and hundreds more like them, rely on the inability of most people to do the math and apply some critical thinking.
There is No Way you can make a living just selling the product. Like a pimp, you must constantly recruit and recruit and recruit. Seems to me if you want to make money you want more market share, not more competition! Furthermore, unless you get in on the ground floor of these highly unethical schemes, your chances of making any kind of go of it are next to nil.
Nice to see a website dedicated to the scam that is multi-level marketing. http://mlm-thetruth.com/
More information . . .
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4095
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4176
In the past I’ve discussed this with relatives who either contemplated or actually paid money to become self-sufficient and rich.
Yeah . . . they are still looking.
That’s also one of my aversions to Blogger awards . . . as you probably know.
Love Skeptoid. Not only am I a listener, I am a supporter. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2214589324776&set=t.1248842556&type=3&theater
Yeah, twice I year I send him a check (one is due this month).
What I find the driving factor is the value of what is being sold. Most times the product being sold almost becomes irrelevant to getting people to sign up. If the product truly has a value equal to what it costs to buy the product, than I consider it a wash.
One can say the stock market has become a ponzy scheme as well, in which now everybody expects stock shares to go up and down, and the key is to get in when the stock has “corrected” itself and is primed to go up after the correction. This wasn’t necessarily the case last century, this is a relatively new phenomenon in which everybody is simply trying to buy low and sell before the stock plummets again and that is no different than mlm.