I know very little about life in Utah, but it seems to me that MLMs provide a way to monetize social capital, for those who wield it. It's well known that many MLMs do an insignificant amount of sales outside of the org, and mostly serve as a pyramid scheme, where earlier players are compensated by the startup costs of later players. Most players will never recoup their startup investment by recruiting or external sales.
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.