Take a relationship where both people work, mine: My spouse does laundry. I go food shopping and cook. To say that either of us is uncompensated for those tasks is a complete misapplication of the term, and a gross oversimplification that attempts to reduce the rewards of effort to solely lie in the monetary realm.
> You write as if there is a division of work between the couple. That would be true if men and women could decide who would stay at home and who would work at a company. In fact, men are required by their society to go to work, so this is in fact a relation of oppression.
So I reject your assertion that this is a relation of oppression, unless you are conceding that both members of the relation are equally oppressed (in which case, I would argue that nobody is).
You appear to be conflating value with compensation. Unfortunately society often seems to value the work done by the at-homeartner less. That is a different issue than compensation. The issue of compensation is personal to the relationship. To say one person is uncompensated completely ignores the fact that it is a partnership with a pool of resources and a pool of responsibilities. Sometimes there's more or less choice in involved in how those responsibilities are distributed, but dividing things into one person does this and gets this etc., acts as if there were two separate systems. There aren't. It's a relationship, a single system.
That feeling of performing uncompensated work is what OP is claiming MLMs are taking advantage of.
If your entire social and economic network is built around the totalizing influence of (the conservative end of a) religious institution, and if that institution says that women should stay at home, then there's a de facto barrier to full participation in the labor force. So, the stay-at-home parent will be the woman.
Fortunately, there's a "way out" that there wasn't in previous generations: "just" leave the church. Unfortunately, saying that's far easier said than done is the under-statement of a century.
My mother was a SAHM by social convention, but it's not what she wanted for her life. She was miserable and it effected our lives deeply. She went back to work full-time (making more than my father even after >10 years out of the labor force). My younger siblings went to a well-run up-scale daycare with professionals who were passionate about child development and had none of the self-loathing/depression of a reluctant SAHM.
Suffice it to say: I need therapy and my siblings don't.
I think the social value of the SAHM is vastly over-estimated. It's basically a "good old days" lemonade and football fallacy.
Really? Their SO pays for the mortgage that puts a roof over their head. Their SO pays for the groceries (i.e. food on the table). Their SO pays for the gas they use, the electricity they use, the internet they use, and so on. While this isn't the case for single stay at home mothers, to say "IT'S UNPAID LABOR" is just incorrect.
"But slaves sometimes even got a little spending money!"
Wew lad, I didn't realize you were an olympic athlete but you picked up those goal posts and rocketed 'em down field. Nevertheless I'll bite.
Average american mortgage: 1100$/mo Average food costs per month, with kids: ~350/mo. (Bit of wiggle room here, but I know plenty of stay at home moms that spend this or more on food.) Utilities: 150-200/mo, depending (water, electricity, gas) Internet: 40-80$/mo depending. maybe more Entertainment: differs from family to family so on, and so on.
What about future investments? A stay at home mother's work eases after a child hits their teens, because they can start helping out. Once they leave the house, things become even easier. Meanwhile their SO has been not only paying for everything this whole time, but also investing in their combined future via 401k, other retirement, etc.
Boy that sure is slavery!
I don't have the effort to deal with these fallacies. I've made my points, feel free to forget them and take none of it to heart for the rest of your days.
Plus my husband is working today so I'm taking care of the kids and my 2 year old just spilled spaghetti everywhere :)
MTurk is basically this, so they're far from "rare". They're just not very interesting for first-world workers.
I do think that the main difference is that the mechanical Turk work is just soul-crushingly boring.
I believe that the majority people dislike MLMs, but they may still participate to support their friend. Which also blurs the line between friend the customer uncomfortably.
The traditional full-time workplace totally disrespects that choice. SAHMs are not compensated for the hard work they do. It makes sense they would look for something part time to do to make a little money and think about something besides kids. But how can they do that in the traditional American workplace that expects 40+ hours a week and a resume with no gaps?
Many MLMs are built for SAHMs. They build on SAHM social networks and many of them are explicitly about making domestic life more bearable (kitchen gadgets, home goods, clothes, beauty and health products).
I think there’s a story here about SAHMs as a neglected overlooked and disrespected population, and how MLMs fill a need for them.
BTW, I hate MLMs generally, I’m just pointing out that Mormon missionary service isn’t the only thing attracting MLMs to Utah.