this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
14 points (93.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

4160 readers
18 users here now

There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!

Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!

Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice ๐Ÿ‰.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
admin@lemmy.ca
14
How common are MLMs in the economy? (piefed.social)
submitted 1 day ago by Swaus01@piefed.social to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

i still visit reddit via redlib to read BestOfRedditorUpdates, and a story i read this morning stood out to me because of its casual mentioning that a "protagonist" of the story works at an MLM and accepts this as normal.

Meanwhile I have always heard that MLMs are dangerous, 100% of the time, and can get cult-like, can underpay you (or not really pay you at all). Reading the post and thinking about them just accepting MLMs unsettled me because it reminded me that there are a few where i live, that i've seen some in job applications, and i started to wonder if the place where i work currently could be a sort of MLM. After all, plenty of workplaces in this economic system exhibit qualities in-line with MLM structure.

But my ultimate question is just this: How prevalent are MLMs? Are they just an accepted part of local economies? Do city councils work with them/allow them to exist despite the inherent shadiness?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] one_old_coder@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Ana [...] has a side business with an MLM

Ana is the idiot but she is the hero of the story? Reddit is weird.

Anyway, MLM kind of disappeared in France since the internet. I guess those scams were replaced by online scams.

Do city councils work with them

Why would cities care about national or international companies? I'm confused.

[โ€“] FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Why would cities care about national or international companies? Iโ€™m confused.

[This is OP on a different account + device] Good question, I didn't make it clear. So what I was thinking is, where I live,

  1. The city council has large control over the economy, choosing where businesses can put up their store and monitoring which businesses take up office space in the city.

  2. There's definitely some MLM presence (my local subreddit provided examples and often has people saying "don't work for this scam!")

  3. So... Does the city council just not care? Or are they perhaps less interventionist than I thought?

  4. Lastly, with just how many there are, from the vibe I'm getting from people online complaining about them, surely some of them end up doing business for the city council. So the council ends up getting ripped off or having jobs done to a poor standard.

Thanks for your comment!

[โ€“] one_old_coder@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I understand better. In France, most mayors and/or councils don't have a say on where businesses can be or what they can do.

Restrictions are usually for:

  • supermarkets (but they are big so control is more obvious)
  • tobacco shops and bars that sell alcohol
  • cults like scientology but it's a very special case

Actually, I don't think I have ever seen a "MLM place" anywhere, it's usually door to door like Tupperware (not an MLM but you see what I'm talking about).