<story><title>You’re Not a Girlboss – You’re Just Trapped in an MLM Scheme (2020)</title><url>https://thefinancialdiet.com/the-spirit-of-the-girlboss-is-alive-in-mlm-schemes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thewebcount</author><text>I feel like this could describe a lot of the culture around startups, too:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Until we all begin to acknowledge there’s more to life than “the hustle,” and that struggling financially is not a personal failure, MLMs will continue to recruit and exploit aspiring girlbosses under the guise of female empowerment.&lt;p&gt;You could easily change that to:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Until we all begin to acknowledge there’s more to life than “the hustle,” and that struggling financially is not a personal failure, startup culture will continue to recruit and exploit people under the guise of [getting rich, disrupting tech, changing the world, etc.].&lt;p&gt;I mean, it’s not an organized thing like an MLM, but I see a lot of the same toxic language and behavior around startups.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>irjustin</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll buck the trend and downvote.&lt;p&gt;I dislike the hard-link comparison to startups. I personally know people who got sucked into MLMs and are almost exclusively lower income families. There are literal playbooks, talking points from the organized MLM&amp;#x27;s themselves on how to &amp;quot;recruit&amp;quot; your families and get them to buy their own product so they raise in &amp;quot;status&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re connected to military moms&amp;#x27; or lower income groups you know how pervasive and destructive these MLMs can be to these families. Not sure if you have any idea, but it is incredibly frustrating, disheartening to talk to them about how it&amp;#x27;s hurting them. In my case, it was their own cousin who got them involved and ultimately into debt. Not a 20&amp;#x27;s single-no-attachment, but this friend has a family to care for. I get angry simply remembering this. The only thing worse was for profit education.&lt;p&gt;Startups simply aren&amp;#x27;t at that level and even bringing this argument into play detracts from the focus of how destructive MLMs are.</text></comment>
<story><title>You’re Not a Girlboss – You’re Just Trapped in an MLM Scheme (2020)</title><url>https://thefinancialdiet.com/the-spirit-of-the-girlboss-is-alive-in-mlm-schemes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thewebcount</author><text>I feel like this could describe a lot of the culture around startups, too:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Until we all begin to acknowledge there’s more to life than “the hustle,” and that struggling financially is not a personal failure, MLMs will continue to recruit and exploit aspiring girlbosses under the guise of female empowerment.&lt;p&gt;You could easily change that to:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Until we all begin to acknowledge there’s more to life than “the hustle,” and that struggling financially is not a personal failure, startup culture will continue to recruit and exploit people under the guise of [getting rich, disrupting tech, changing the world, etc.].&lt;p&gt;I mean, it’s not an organized thing like an MLM, but I see a lot of the same toxic language and behavior around startups.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vinay_ys</author><text>Information asymmetry is everywhere. In some cases this asymmetry is through organised structured hierarchy (employee vs manager&amp;#x2F;boss vs ceo&amp;#x2F;founder vs investor) and in some other cases there is no apparent overtly visible hierarchy – like open markets.&lt;p&gt;Markets are &amp;quot;efficient&amp;quot; at transferring money from &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; people. Here &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; is directly related to lower or higher in that information&amp;#x2F;power hierarchy.&lt;p&gt;This hierarchy is also self-amplifying in that it grows the asymmetry gap rapidly such that it becomes a very tall&amp;#x2F;pointy pyramid. So you could call it a &amp;quot;pyramid scheme&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Some schemes are overt&amp;#x2F;explicit pyramid schemes where flow of value from people lower in hierarchy to people higher is explicitly structured and visible (like most MLM schemes) and some schemes are obfuscated&amp;#x2F;implicit in this aspect (like corporate job ladder with perf&amp;#x2F;promo process within employees and between employees vs founders&amp;#x2F;execs and investors).</text></comment>