Recently, there was a front page story about Ed Henry's remark that $50K / yr was "chump change". I was reminded of a similar remark made by a participant in everyone's favorite multi-level marketing organization, Amway.
In many ways, Amway is a microcosm of modern Republican ideas with the potential to go bad -- really bad. In many ways, it makes Wal-Mart look good. Amway has a frightening core inside it, one that's far more extreme than most rank-and-file Republicans, and represents a potentially dangerous direction the party (or country as a whole) might take.
So without further ado, a look into this organization and its relationship to current politics. More below....
A little background first. Amway (a.k.a., Quixtar, Alticor, and a bunch of other names) is a multi-level marketing (MLM) organization, in which participants ("distributors") attempt to (a) sell stuff and (b) recruit other participants (called their "downline"). Participants can receive income from both sources -- their "uplines" (recruiters) get bonuses based on their recruits' participation. Amway's "stuff" is mostly ordinary household goods, like food, laundry products, vitamins, and so on.
Most of us in the reality-based universe can see that the MLM business model is dubious at best. For now, let's skip those problems. With that caveat, Amway looks pretty harmless -- just another way to run a small business for oneself. What could be more wholesomely American than that? However, once someone gets into the Amway business, things take a hard right turn in a creepy way:
- Almost all the major players in Amway -- the ones who have risen through the ranks and control large networks of distributors -- have a loathsome combination of religious conservatism and extreme economic conservatism. This speech is pretty typical. To me, reading it is only marginally less disorienting than reading your average LaRouche screed. It's interesting that in many places, the free-marketeers despise the theocrats, yet in Amway, the two seem to coexist quite happily.
- Amway relies heavily on the worst aspects of fiscal conservatism to sell itself -- namely, greed combined with appeals to personal responsibility. You want to take charge of your life, and not be dependent on anyone (especially the government)? Then just start an Amway business and follow our rules. Unfortunately, the pitch rapidly gets crassly materialistic. It's hard to describe just how bad an Amway recruiting function can be, so I'll suggest you read some yourself to get an idea. Amway plays right into the "pre-rich" view of the universe -- where all you need is hard work to become wealthy, and wealth is just around the corner.
- It's a hideous scam. Amway's "rules for success" involve buying lots of "tools": books, motivational tapes, seminars, rallies, and other such things. An old line in Amway: "the tools are optional -- so is success." Unfortunately, no one gets rich in Amway by running a regular old business -- i.e., just by selling stuff to the public. On the contrary, many distributors, even those with significant gross income, lose money. Instead, the big money in Amway is in selling "tools"! That's right, you buy the "tools" from your upline, and most high-level Amway reps make most of their fortune from these sales.
In short, most of Amway is a big ol' pyramid scheme. It's managed to avoid prosecution by actually selling some legitimate products. Nevertheless, the core cash flow within Amway is
not a flow of money from outside buyers to individual Amway sellers, but an irreversible drain from most members upward to the highest level distributors in the organization.
OK, enough background. The take-home message is pretty simple, and more a little chilling:
- You can mix extreme theoconservatism with extreme plutocracy. They may not be as "wedge-able" as Democratic strategists hope.
- The traditional right-wing virtues of self-reliance and personal responsibility can -- instead of being virtues -- ruin people who are unknowingly caught in a scam. Amway distributors have successfully hijacked these concepts, using the promise of "self-reliance through financial stability through hard work and perseverance". The end result, for most, is broken dreams and a boatload of debt.
- Many people, especially Republicans, think Amway is a legitimate business. Even those who could probably see through the MLM crap still get blinded by both the greed and the buzzwords. One lovely Web site is Merchants of Deception, which is run by an ex-Amway distributor who saw the light, and shows that relatively mainstream Republicans think highly of Amway:
I met Newt Gingrich when he came in and was paid to speak for thousands of Amway distributors in the Harteis organization. In his speech he advised that, "Nothing would do more to help the people that used to live in what was called the Soviet empire to achieve prosperity, to achieve freedom, to achieve opportunity than to have sixty or seventy thousand Amway folks go over there and start recruiting".
and
Describing the events at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia where George W. Bush was nominated, the New York Times wrote, "For the party's top underwriters, there will be an array of gold-plated events in Philadelphia, including cocktails with Gen. Colin L. Powell and an evening cruise on the Delaware River aboard the `Enterprise,' the yacht owned by Richard M. DeVos, the Amway founder, who is a Bush supporter.
Do you want a society where you can't start your own business without exorbitant payments (enough to make your business fail) to other private organizations? Or where success is "guaranteed" if only you play by the rules -- and so any failure is completely your fault? Seems like many Republicans do. Thoughts?