“Our Model is the Trapezoid”

“Outsider” and “Establishment” alike, Republican candidates support rubes being separated from their money:

Much has been made of the fact that the two leading contenders in the Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, lack any experience in elected office. Much less attention has gone to something else the two men share: a history of entanglements with companies that have been rightly criticized for hawking get-rich-quick schemes to the broke and desperate. The business model, which is perfectly legal, is called multilevel marketing.

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Of course, common sense would say people realize their chances of achieving millions of dollars in sales via these companies aren’t exactly high. There can’t be that many people who want to buy and sell large amount of vitamins, weight-loss supplements, cellphones, cleaning supplies, energy drinks, and other staples of the MLM business, right? But common sense, never in abundant supply in the best circumstances, all too often flies out the window when people are broke, desperate to get ahead, or simply unhappy with their current work or life situation. And the promises that companies like ACN peddle, sometimes with an extra push from someone like the Donald, can begin to sound pretty good.

So why haven’t the other Republican presidential candidates called Trump and Carson on this stuff? Well, bashing the multilevel marketing business model isn’t good for another business—raising money running for political office. Supporters of Mitt Romney’s presidential runs have included honchos from companies like Amway, Nu Skin, and Xango, yet another health care supplement company. Before Scott Walker withdrew from the 2016 race, Richard DeVos, the co-founder of Amway, along with two other family members, gave $25,000 apiece to Walker’s political organization Our American Revival. They’ve also provided financial support to Jeb Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise.

And maybe the other candidates see nothing to criticize here. It’s not like economic magical thinking isn’t rewarded in Republican politics. Remember that thing about raising revenue by cutting taxes?

Have you ever sat through an Amway pitch? I have. It’s a weird experience; I especially liked the bit where the guy told me to write down my expected future expenses and triumphantly noted that my future necessarily depended on me being able to badger my friends and family to purchase inferior cleaning products, purchased by me for only a modest upfront expense.

I have a fascination with all manner of these legal and quasi-legal cons in part because I spend my undergrad and first grad years in Montreal, when the unemployment rate was well north of 10%, and my French was mediocre. I spent a summer selling sports memorabilia over the phone, a morning generating leads for people pitching some sort of worthless but expensive jewelry, and two epically horrible days inside the “salesmen compensated only by commission sell poor people $2,000 vacuum cleaners” racket. I should probably write about that some time. Meanwhile, the Harper’s story about Mary Kay is really good.