Someone wants to remind us of how this phenomenon we are examining is just part of the 'promise of future reward'.
" 'MLM' is a criminogenic phenomenon (i.e. it produces crime and is the product of crime). Therefore, by their very nature, 'MLM' groups cannot be reformed and made into entirely lawful enterprises.
The universal identifying characteristic of pyramid scams, Ponzi schemes, etc., is that they are all dissimulated closed-market swindles. i.e. No matter how they are camouflaged, their instigators trick victims into investing their money in the false-expectation of future reward, because pyramids and Ponzis have no significant, or sustainable, source of revenue other than their own participants. In the most simple terms, the instigators of pyramids and Ponzis are economic alchemists who peddle their victims infinite shares of their own finite money. In the late 1940s, a new more-sustainable type of dissimulated closed-market swindle appeared in the USA, and a typically-impressive-sounding jargon term, 'Multi-Level Marketing,' was made-up to camouflage it. Eight decades later, the 'MLM' phenomenon has spread all over the globe hidden behind literally thousands of legally-registered corporate structures. The instigators of these outrageous mass-swindles are currently being allowed to operate in plain sight, and the fact that they are being allowed to steal without hindrance, continues to convince many of their victims, and observers, that they can't possibly be thieves. Indeed, the comic-book term, 'MLM,' has even succeeded in entering dictionaries, and encyclopedias, and has been habitually repeated by regulators, legislators, journalists, etc."