I remember once getting a haircut, and the barber starting to pitch me an MLM holistic health thing in the middle of the haircut. Tried my best to say no in the politest way.
It turned out to be a presentation on a health products MLM with some crazy amount of buy-in required up front. The presenter had a huge amount of the social capital that the research talks about. He was very charismatic in addition to holding the religious rank, so to speak.
Also relevant to another article on the front page, his wife walked in mid-presentation to show us the MLM pills she was taking to fight cancer.
I was very angry to realize that the meeting was MLM related. Meanwhile the local employment center run by the same church was staffed by a member of the boards of several high-profile fast food chains (you'd know them), and he basically showed us that there was a fax machine and computer we could use. He was a nice guy but this was very frustrating in comparison to the comparatively warm and attentive MLM pitch.
Many political advertising and online DTC mattresses companies (to name a couple) are based Utah.
One thing not mentioned in the abstract (but perhaps it's mentioned in the paper) is how many missionaries do door-to-door sales when the return home. Many don't, but a nontrivial number do. I suspect that that missionaries play a role in the popularity of MLMs: either because of former missionaries joining MLMs (because some missionary skillsets are applicable to MLM marketing/selling), or because a nontrivial number of people in Utah have a soft spot for missionaries and I think MLMs often exploit that same soft spot.
We tend to do well in corporate culture---which says good things about corporate culture, and bad things about us.
(Hint: after thoroughly ripping on Mormons for almost the whole episode, almost as effectively as they ripped on Scientology and Tom Cruise in the earlier episode "Trapped in the Closet", the episode takes a 90 degree turn and ends up being essentially a rebuttal to your comment).
But yes, if you're the sort of person who consciously joins a niche religion in adulthood, you're probably the same sort of person who will believe other pitches.
I will push the concept further: Are religions another form of MLM?
In both cases, we are trading our time, effort, and money for status within a community; there are hierarchical ranks, obtained by recruiting more people and proselytizing effectively...and MLMs and religion both seek to answer tough questions, whether that be creation or health, salvation or financial freedom. And both MLMs and religion rely upon false premises, mythology, peer pressure, and irrational fears.
Lastly, If MLMs or religion had extremely solid evidence behind them, would they truly be MLMs or religion? This seems the most important linkage, these institutions (and many others) prey upon inherent weaknesses in the human psyche for their own advancement.
Downvote brigade has arrived, I love receiving downvotes for playing devil's advocate; respond to me if you're disagreeing, don't downvote and bury what you dislike.
There has been a large increase in the number of female members serving missions since a few years ago though, but has MLM already been popular since before that?
These are verifiable things though, if you have the data.
There is a large amount of male returned missionaries who do stints at a handful of companies (e.g. some solar one) who do door-to-door sales though, and can leverage their former experience.
To me, the abstract reads like "water is wet". Both true and obvious to anyone experiencing it. Because I'm not willing to willing to pay for the actual paper, I don't know if it contains any inaccuracies or misunderstandings—there often are when describing Utah's peculiar culture—but scanning the citations it appears very well researched.
While MLMs are unreasonably successful in Utah, don't get the wrong idea. In my experience, the majority of Utahns dislike them just as much as everyone else. It's just easier for MLMs starting in Utah to target the willing minority and expand globally.
Update:
Having read the paper thanks to the free links in the comments, I can say it's pretty accurate. The description of Church programs is a bit idealized compared to messy reality, but that's to be expected. I really only disagree with one statement:
> In addition to the social capital and cultural explanations, legal institutions may also be contributing to the prevalence of MLMs in Utah.
It's a generous statement, but as a local I believe the opposite to be true. The prevalence of MLMs has co-opted legal institutions resulting in more friendly laws.
By the way, tech communities are not immune to it. It might not be MLM, but think about how frequently you encounter tech products and services that seem to be flying on nothing but hype and charisma.
I'm not aware of any mystical properties ascribed to the plates. They're just ordinary plates of gold.
> from a magic bag
I'm not aware of any bag, especially one with mystical properties. Joseph says the plates were retrieved from an ordinary stone box buried in an ordinary hill, not a "magic" bag.
You're welcome to be critical, but this is just disingenuous.
As a Washingtonian Mormon, the social system is different out of Utah than in. And again a change as you move out of the northwest to areas where there are less adherents again.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CZCGPUA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
For example, in the LDS film "the RM", the main character's parents are running a ridiculous MLM scheme called "LD3" (Latter Day Discount Distributors).
“How Mormons Built the Next Silicon Valley While No One Was Looking”
Direct link: https://marker.medium.com/how-mormons-built-the-next-silicon...
Edit: A few times in my life someone has given me a pitch, someone I knew, but it never seemed to use "position" as leverage, and there are policies against such things I've heard announced at various times, like an ongoing policy against using membership lists for marketing, buildings for business ventures, etc. But it's not surprising that if someone joins such a business they are asked to pitch to those they know.
#2 imho you have the order backwards. MLM is what happens when the profit motive, "consumer capitalism" and hustle-entrepreneur culture gets mapped onto religious communities/social-structures. Other religions arent a form of MLM, MLM is a new form of religion.
Or is this the University system?
Social capital is a very good thing indeed; it is the foundation of a truly inclusive society where people are not going to be marginalized and neglected in their most pressing needs, regardless of outside factors like income, class or socio-economic status. And we know of very few ways of sustainably fostering this kind of grassroots social capital, other than community-based groups, often based on some sort of established tradition or religion.
Having seen it first hand, the relationship between pausing college for a couple of year to go door to door discussing religion, followed by returning to college and paying for it by going door to door selling security systems, solar panels, kitchen knives, etc. has always been obvious.
Don't get the wrong impressions. Only a minority of returned missionaries go into sales. And most quickly become disillusioned because it's harder to stay dedicated to flogging a mediocre kitchen knife. But it only takes a fraction of a fraction of the population.
No. The lowest "tier," parishioners, generally have no interest in moving into leadership. The defining trait of MLM is that people join, hoping they can recruit someone who will generate them more income. This isn't why people join religions.
> we are trading our time, effort, and money for status within a community
I wouldn't call MLM a "community" in the same way, and donations to religious organizations tend to be private, so donating more doesn't lead to a better status.
> there are hierarchical ranks
This is true of most organizations.
> And both MLMs and religion rely upon false premises, mythology, peer pressure, and irrational fears.
These are standard sales tactics.
[0]https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/morm...
Coffee is a prohibited food for active members which is why he would occasionally send me a pound of Jack Mormon Coffee on my birthday.
Great guy, gracious, engaging, and always liked to laugh.
I've hit all four quadrants of the Mormon/Non-Mormon, Utahn/Non-Utahn matrix and from my perspective, we still shared much of the Utah culture (though I never would have admitted it at the time) when I grew up in another state.
The turn at the end was saying that all that doesn’t matter. They went off perpendicular to where they had been going, not opposite of where they had been heading.
I'm not mormon, but grew up in an evangelical christian community that held many similar cultural ideals, especially the importance of maintaining a "traditional" nuclear family, where the father is expected to be the primary breadwinner and the mother is expected to play the role of homemaker and often home educator.
I'd speculate that a big factor in its adoption is that it's an income supplemental that allows you to continue childcare or homeschooling.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-feb-15-la-fi-he...
The traditional full-time workplace totally disrespects that choice. SAHMs are not compensated for the hard work they do. It makes sense they would look for something part time to do to make a little money and think about something besides kids. But how can they do that in the traditional American workplace that expects 40+ hours a week and a resume with no gaps?
Many MLMs are built for SAHMs. They build on SAHM social networks and many of them are explicitly about making domestic life more bearable (kitchen gadgets, home goods, clothes, beauty and health products).
I think there’s a story here about SAHMs as a neglected overlooked and disrespected population, and how MLMs fill a need for them.
BTW, I hate MLMs generally, I’m just pointing out that Mormon missionary service isn’t the only thing attracting MLMs to Utah.
You might counter that religious beliefs shift more easily than sexual orientation. The prevailing narrative used to be that sexual orientation is totally static. It was useful and effective to frame things this way in the fight for gay rights; it asked, "Why punish someone for something they can't control?" But now that we're at a point in history where every brand under the sun is comfortable running Pride marketing campaigns, what was once an open secret is now more out in the open. LGBT folks have become more comfortable acknowledging that there is indeed fluidity and spectrum when it comes to sexual preferences, orientation, and gender identity. That doesn't mean that a person's orientation can be forcibly changed, but there is an acknowledgement that preferences can sometimes change organically, and we see that with religion as well.
It strikes me that the mid-level players who make it to profitability probably have enough skills that they would make far more money in something closer to a regular corporate or sales environment. If handy work and piece work were the original gig economy, and the app-driven gig economy is the modern incarnation, MLMs are the intermediate wave.
Really? Their SO pays for the mortgage that puts a roof over their head. Their SO pays for the groceries (i.e. food on the table). Their SO pays for the gas they use, the electricity they use, the internet they use, and so on. While this isn't the case for single stay at home mothers, to say "IT'S UNPAID LABOR" is just incorrect.
Take a relationship where both people work, mine: My spouse does laundry. I go food shopping and cook. To say that either of us is uncompensated for those tasks is a complete misapplication of the term, and a gross oversimplification that attempts to reduce the rewards of effort to solely lie in the monetary realm.
I intuited this interesting relationship when I worked in Utah for an MLM in 2007-2008.
But MLM's and LDS -- is not the end-all understanding of that relationship!
You see, if you wanted the bigger picture, the larger understanding, you'd compare the above things with Corporate Hierarchies, Government Hierarchies (foreign and domestic), Social Hierarchies, Financial Hierarchies, and even such things as the hierarchies of Ancient Rome (probably the biggest MLM (and later in its history) Ponzi Scheme that ever existed(!), in that the earlier you were a settler, the more you were rewarded (earlier settlers and their descendant families became Rome's Patrician class, at the top of the social hierarchy), while latecomers to that party got increasingly smaller shares of land, property, privilege, etc. ("Those who are tardy do not get fruit cup" -- to quote the Mel Brooks film, "High Anxiety" <g>))
Also, you'd clearly define MLM Vs. Ponzi schemes -- they're basically the exact same thing, except that one has an underlying good, service, or something of value which is fairly exchanged, whereas in a Ponzi scheme, the underlying good, service or value either doesn't exist, or exists only in a partial, malformed state. (That is, the value exchange in transactions is asymmetric -- due to fraud of some sort...)
But let's kick those understandings up a notch!
Let's throw some gasoline on that fire!
To this ecclectic mix, to really get an understanding, you'd throw on some Jordan Peterson, specifically what he says about Dominance Hierarchies in society!
And then to season it, you'd add to this some Adam Smith, who can probably be said to be not only the guy that codified Capitalism, but could safely be said to have been the ultimate master of games relating to anything having to do with finance, but more broadly, with the broadest definition of capital.
Basically what Sun Tsu was to War -- Adam Smith was to Capital, in its broadest definition.
So, if you really wanted an understanding, you'd take all of these ecclectic ingredients, mix them all together, season, heat and serve!
But this article is a great first step in that direction!
If your entire social and economic network is built around the totalizing influence of (the conservative end of a) religious institution, and if that institution says that women should stay at home, then there's a de facto barrier to full participation in the labor force. So, the stay-at-home parent will be the woman.
Fortunately, there's a "way out" that there wasn't in previous generations: "just" leave the church. Unfortunately, saying that's far easier said than done is the under-statement of a century.
Likewise, I think you would be more forthcoming in admitting that while LDS does not believe there are any "mystical properties" ascribed to the plates, there were indeed "mystical properties" ascribed to the glasses, the Urim and Thummim, used by Joseph Smith to translate them.
My mother was a SAHM by social convention, but it's not what she wanted for her life. She was miserable and it effected our lives deeply. She went back to work full-time (making more than my father even after >10 years out of the labor force). My younger siblings went to a well-run up-scale daycare with professionals who were passionate about child development and had none of the self-loathing/depression of a reluctant SAHM.
Suffice it to say: I need therapy and my siblings don't.
I think the social value of the SAHM is vastly over-estimated. It's basically a "good old days" lemonade and football fallacy.
> You write as if there is a division of work between the couple. That would be true if men and women could decide who would stay at home and who would work at a company. In fact, men are required by their society to go to work, so this is in fact a relation of oppression.
So I reject your assertion that this is a relation of oppression, unless you are conceding that both members of the relation are equally oppressed (in which case, I would argue that nobody is).
Wew lad, I didn't realize you were an olympic athlete but you picked up those goal posts and rocketed 'em down field. Nevertheless I'll bite.
Average american mortgage: 1100$/mo Average food costs per month, with kids: ~350/mo. (Bit of wiggle room here, but I know plenty of stay at home moms that spend this or more on food.) Utilities: 150-200/mo, depending (water, electricity, gas) Internet: 40-80$/mo depending. maybe more Entertainment: differs from family to family so on, and so on.
What about future investments? A stay at home mother's work eases after a child hits their teens, because they can start helping out. Once they leave the house, things become even easier. Meanwhile their SO has been not only paying for everything this whole time, but also investing in their combined future via 401k, other retirement, etc.
Boy that sure is slavery!
You appear to be conflating value with compensation. Unfortunately society often seems to value the work done by the at-homeartner less. That is a different issue than compensation. The issue of compensation is personal to the relationship. To say one person is uncompensated completely ignores the fact that it is a partnership with a pool of resources and a pool of responsibilities. Sometimes there's more or less choice in involved in how those responsibilities are distributed, but dividing things into one person does this and gets this etc., acts as if there were two separate systems. There aren't. It's a relationship, a single system.
I do think that the main difference is that the mechanical Turk work is just soul-crushingly boring.
I believe that the majority people dislike MLMs, but they may still participate to support their friend. Which also blurs the line between friend the customer uncomfortably.
But now that other people have flagged the comment it's not obvious what I selectively replied to.
That feeling of performing uncompensated work is what OP is claiming MLMs are taking advantage of.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rolltodisbelieve/2018/02/28/ov...
I don't have the effort to deal with these fallacies. I've made my points, feel free to forget them and take none of it to heart for the rest of your days.
Plus my husband is working today so I'm taking care of the kids and my 2 year old just spilled spaghetti everywhere :)
Mormons are taught: "when the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done".
That said, hitching one's identity to unfalsifiable beliefs ("there is nothing science can't understand", "this book is the word of god", etc.) is immature and stunting. It's human nature, but that doesn't make it worthy of respect or celebration. We should strive to get comfortable with the frightening uncertainty in our mental models of the world.
Therefore, insulting religion or irreligion isn't inherently problematic in my book. (Coincidentally, offending people is a terrible way of encouraging them to be more open-minded, but that's a different question.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines by repeatedly posting unsubstantive, snarky comments. We've asked you multiple times to stop. Please fix this.
HN commenters simply downvote things they disagree with, even if it pushes the narrative further and promotes more thought. IMO, downvotes should be reserved for low-effort wastes of space comments, not dissenting viewpoints.