Multilevel marketing companies promise that everyone can become a boss and get rich if they hustle hard enough. But they’re actually fraudulent pyramid schemes that, like capitalism writ large, require mass exploitation to enrich the few at the top.

In multilevel marketing companies (MLMs), the only relationships permitted are hierarchical ones. Participants can talk to their recruiters, who profit from their work, and to their own recruits, whom they profit from in turn. But they’re forbidden to talk to others in their same position in the chain of command, an infraction known as “cross-lining.” Why? Because nonexploitative relationships might lead to mutually honest conversations among equals — which could, in turn, lead to dawning awareness that the whole thing is a scam.

For this rea

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