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Comment by DangitBobby | Hacker News Reader

Gotta wonder why these are legal.

Because they follow the law and publish how unlikely you are to make money with them. It isn't illegal to take money from stupid people.

https://www.amway.com/en_US/income-disclosure

https://www.marykay.ca/en-ca/pages/earnings-representation

https://library.youngliving.com/en/us/U.S.-Annual-Income-Dis...

https://www.lularoe.com/lularoe-income-disclosure-statement

I once read that business is the art of ripping someone off without pissing them off, and I've since made that a part of my life philosophy because it's very accurate.

These businesses are simply more devious manifestations of that art.

What about creating something of value?

value is the eye of the customer and in the marketing-skills of the seller

It wasn't always defined that way.

Honest effort and intent was at least somewhat common on both sides of paid service at one point.

Honor is a dead concept.

> Because they follow the law

Because they wrote the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway#Politics_and_culture [1]

[1] And if the surname DeVos seems familiar, that's because Betsy Devos was picked to be the Secretary of Education.

> It isn't illegal to take money from stupid people.

I don't care, it should be. Humans shouldn't be expected to be experts in every domain of their lives just to avoid being exploited.

You don't have to be an expert, you just have to know that things that look to good to be true are scams.

And if you don't know, this is how you learn!

They should be expected to have common sense. If they don't then this is just economic darwinism in action.

So the elderly, impaired, less intelligent people just straight up don't deserve to survive in our world?

It's illegal for a strong person to take money from a weak person by yanking their wallet away from them, and this isn't that different.

Except in this case the strong person fully disclosed up front that they would most likely take the wallet and run, but there is a chance they would give it back with twice the money. The weak person still made a choice.

Well when you put it that way, we have lots of regulations surrounding gambling for precisely the reason that a significant fraction of people hopelessly "fall for it".

"it's not illegal because it follows the law" is a completely useless tautology in the context of the parent comment...

Strong recommendation to listen to this podcast (season 1 of it): https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-dream

They discuss exactly this question in a lot of detail. The FTC had started to go after some early MLMs, but then strong lobbying and political connections created a situation where you could have a "legal MLM" by following some rules, and the rules were basically written by Amway.

Because they lobbied hard in the 80s, to prevent them from being made illegal.

It only becomes a problem when it turns into a pyramid scheme.

Recruiting others to sell more stuff isn't illegal, as long as you actually have stuff to sell.

AmWay did have stuff to sell.

The problem is, only AmWay reps bought it.

And the friends/family of AmWay reps. Until they decide to end the relationship, that is.

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