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comment by jadedog
jadedog  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: #thisisapyramidscheme

If it were as simple as showing that the company is fleecing its customers or employees, one would hope that the government would have already been successful in one of its many cases against the industry.

One of the reasons that it hasn't been successful is because MLM companies have very few employees and the products they sell are not any different than any other company, for the most part. They did regulate the claims about the herbal products, but that's just one company and one small segment of the company's product line.

The products that MLM companies sell are diverse and mostly unremarkable. Off the top of my head, there's cosmetics, plastic containers, phone services, supplements, skin care, cooking supplies, crafting supplies, etc. Most of these companies are not making any claims about these products that anyone else selling them wouldn't make.

Most of the problems come from the distribution side of the industry. But those are the same class of people you're trying to protect. Distributors are not employees. Distributors are people who buy the company's product and try to resell it for a profit.

One of the initiatives I've seen is to create training for distributors about their claims and their practices. But who would be responsible for maintaining this training? It's a huge liability for anyone to undertake. Making it mandatory for the company would be like making it mandatory for any business who sells a product to instruct someone else how to resell it properly.