No it's definitely a pyramid scheme, just carefully structured to avoid that legal definition for pretty obvious reasons.

I believe a narrow definition of pyramid scheme is if the payment is made solely for signing someone up under you. If the payment is made through commissions of sales rather than the merely based on new participants sigining up, ai don't think it's legally a pyramid scheme, more of an multi-level marketing scheme, though personally a practice I wouldn't sign up regardless...

Except the products are 100% overpriced knockoff junk. They're only there, as GP said, to make it just barely not a pyramid scheme in the eyes of the law.

Nobody joins Amway because they believe in the products, they join because they believe in the pyramid concept.

I don't know if it's still the case, but when I was involved for ~18 months ca. 2007/8, the cleaning products were actually very very good. I heard from others (not affiliated with Amway) that back closer to the start of the company they were some of the best non-commercial cleaning products you could get.

But I agree with you that nearly everything else was garbage. Some of the food was good but I was not concerned with health in 2007/8 so it may be garbage from a health/nutrition standpoint.

Now we're doing Amway's job for them. I don't give a shit what the legal definition is.

MLM is equivalent to a pyramid scheme in a practical sense. What the lawyers are paid to say is none of my concern.

You can have any opinion you want if your response to challenging thought is to just say "well I don't care what the facts are, damn it"

Edit: I have neither the skills nor desire to be successful in MLM, but to imply that all MLM is a pyramid scheme is idiotic. I don't see nearly the vitriol for Pampered Chef that I do for Amway, maybe because Pampered Chef isn't a $9.5 billion global enterprise? Because the majority of people have either done Amway, know someone who used to, or have been asked to, and they resent hearing about it over and over? I talked to probably ~300 people in the short time I was involved in it and I only remember 2 who had never heard of Amway before.

This isn't a court of law, you can drop the song and dance. MLM logic breaks down at a first glance. You can't sign up 7 people who sign up 7 people very long before you've signed the entirety of mankind, living and dead.

If you've bought into MLM, as I suspect you might have, get out now. That money might as well have been set aflame.

Skills to be successful at MLM? What skills are those? Sociopathy?

I commented enough elsewhere in this thread that my experience with MLM generally and my distaste for Amway specifically should be pretty clear.

I know, I got invited to a Quixtar "opportunity" meeting back when they launched that scam. You can go legalese all you want with the definition of a pyramid scheme, but my brain convieniently hashes all those and their like to the "bullshit" bucket. No further processing required.