xenu1 Clearly what you describe as 'MLM scams' are not just 'like cults:' they are cults, not because I say so, but because, despite their thought- stopping external 'commercial/capitalist' camouflage, internally, these groups have exhibited very specific identifying characteristics.
One of these tell-tale signs, is that inflexible core cult adherents always insist that they alone represent the truth and are excercizing free will, when all the independent quantifiable evidence demonstrates that virtually everything in the adherents' lives has become controlled by sociopathic, or psychopathic, self-appointed leaders with hidden criminal objectives, and that the adherents' controlled behaviour is, therefore (at best), misguided, and (at worst) downright evil.
The plain truth of the matter is that trade regulators have been completely unqualified and powerless to recognize, let alone combat, the historically significant criminogenic phenomenon that has actually been lurking behind the thought-stopping, pseudo-economic term 'Multi-Level Marketing.'
When you talk to 'The Powers That Be' in private, it's surprising how many of them are prepared to confess to their own ignorance of the cult phenomenon and, consequently, to their fear of openly discussing it, let alone tackling it. Thus, to date, virtually no member of TPTB has been prepared to tell the truth in public.
For obvious reasons, all manner of charlatans and co-opted academics have expanded into this tragicomic moral, and intellectual, vacuum, and they have flatly denied the existence of the cult phenomenon. They have also falsely painted well-informed observers as dangerous alarmists, merely for trying to raise public consciousness.
Legalistically, in the USA, and many other democracies, there is still no such thing as cultism, but ask any cosmopolitan person and he/she will freely-admit that cults most certainly do exist.