Quote Originally Posted by Alpha_One View Post
GasJunkie: Exactly what I was thinking. Ano bang pinagkaiba nito sa traditional retail? May kumikita parin naman at karamihan "just making ends meet". Kelangan parin naman ng business skills, luck, at connections. So what makes it so special? Because the interaction is ad-hoc? What's wrong with the traditional way anyway?

Take Amway for example. Sure, may konting kumikita, may iilang malaki ang kinita. But most of its members spend time in the system buying/selling rubbish from each other, in the end getting nothing (arguably, they even lose some).
half of my business is in traditional retail. the problem with retailing is ang hirap makipag-compete with some chinese traders. you know naman the chinese way of doing business, kahit 30-50 petot kita sa 5000 puhunan, kinakagat nila. they keep their operating costs down by hiring helpers/maids as emps, they tax-evade hell even evade custom-duties just to keep their prices so low to be true. my mother-in-law is in the customs brokerage business. she's got american, japanese, chinese importer clients. she once said to me na kaya bumabagsak ang ekonomiya ng Pilipinas is bec. of the Chinese traders underdeclaring isang container ng goods.

i'll give you an example. how much is an epson projector nowadays? diba 50k above. you know what they'll do, they'll declare it as printers. yun tig 3k na epson printers. grabe! isang shipment yan. very convincing kasi kasinlaki lang ng kahon ng projector yun printer d'ba? and we all know naman na limited ang alam ng customs officers dito (except on the art of making money hehehe), since epson are known for printers, baka nga printers yun!

I believe MLM is just one way to do retailing biz plus you get to maintain contacts and to have repeat sales. it's controversial I know pero if it puts food in the table for the common pinoys just to go through the day. pabayaan na lang natin.

you know why some MLM collapses, nag-panic ang leadership. and then they become greedy, they think only of themselves, and forget their network. I believe if a leader of a MLM is just as good as the top execs of fortune companies like PLDT, meralco, globe, bpi etc..., hindi yan basta-basta mag-collapse. in other words, dapat may legal dept ang MLM to protect themselves from the greatest aggressor of all private companies: the govt.


regarding naman sir sa computation mo about unsustainable pyramid scheme, it maybe true kung one-time sales lang and people in the pyramid only value monetary benefits.