MLM scams are massive in the Philippines right now as well. The baffling thing to me is, when I've laid out how this works to friends talking about joining up, they agree with the math but join anyway! It's like they need something to believe in subconsciously even if their logical mind knows it's bullshit.<p>Maybe these schemes really sell hope to those that need something to believe in, replacing religion on some level. Except in this case it's economic hope, the belief that if they work hard enough they will be rewarded.<p>I've noticed a trend amongst participants. The people at the top are straight up psychopaths looking to exploit human greed for their own gain. But the lower level minions are usually simply poor. They have very little to lose, so why not try it? Ultimately they usually end up poorer, but there's always the story of Bob and Betty who made a million dollars last year and came from nothing to be top sellers.
This is very rampant in India as well, local facebook groups get at least 5-10 posts a day regarding pyramid schemes and offers. The response is equally high to these post averaging 50-100 comments whereas other posts barely receive any. Showing the promise land of instant riches without hard work via flashy ads and illogical math creates such greed amongst the low-income community here (which is the majority of the population, btw) that it is almost heartbreaking to see them lose their everything eventually. MLM/Pyramid scams cannot be stopped via government bans or awareness programmes as such, it needs an equal rival which not only makes the same promises but magically also fulfills them somehow. As much as I have observed, the amount of hard work they do for recruiting new members can well be exchanged for a handsome salary with a steady future income promise leading to a better financial gain over time.
The experience of Albania in 96/97 caused massive disruption and the deaths of around 2k people when the schemes collapsed.<p><a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm</a><p>Id imagine this is worrying the Chinese government
The same thing is happening in Iran. I didn't know it still exists but then I just learned that it is so rampant that Iranian shopping companies may very much start their pyramid section of their business officially very soon. More than anything I think we should have a proper education for the public about this. Funny thing is employees some of these companies hire have to pay the company if they wanna work in there, and the company that I am talking about had something close to 20 people working in there as far as I could see!
They're also massive in South Korea and a pretty entertaining movie about them came out in South Korea in 2016 called "Master" [1]. It's highly dramatized, but has a few scenes in it of the big sales gatherings of some of these scams. They have much of the appearance and feel of a mega-church gathering (also common in the country) and seem to use many of the same "make people feel good and then exploit them along the way" techniques.<p>It's my understanding that the movie was made simply to help raise awareness of these predatory groups as the population they tend to target don't have the resources to do it themselves.<p>1 - <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5735464/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5735464/</a>