MLM = morons losing money

[tw]

Many such scams make themselves obvious. If they are promoting the money to be made or growth of their organization, they you know it is a scam. The only thing that matters is the product. Profits without a good product (ie General Motors, AT&T, US Steel, Listerene, the big and therefore unproductive Airlines, the ISS, Carly Fiorina in the HP / Compaq merger stockholder meeting, etc) all mean scam. If they are not providing mankind with a better product, then it is a scam. It's really not difficult to be informed and smart. The minute a stock broker calls about a great stock that is going to make so much money - classic scam artist. Fight him for details on the company's product and get no engineer's attitude. Another classic scam stockbroker. Notice how we are going to fix social security by playing more money games. Scam. Why would Amway, et al be any different?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by tw

Many such scams make themselves obvious. If they are promoting the money to be made or growth of their organization, they you know it is a scam. The only thing that matters is the product. Profits without a good product (ie General Motors, AT&T, US Steel, Listerene, the big and therefore unproductive Airlines, the ISS, Carly Fiorina in the HP / Compaq merger stockholder meeting, etc) all mean scam. If they are not providing mankind with a better product, then it is a scam. It's really not difficult to be informed and smart. The minute a stock broker calls about a great stock that is going to make so much money - classic scam artist. Fight him for details on the company's product and get no engineer's attitude. Another classic scam stockbroker. Notice how we are going to fix social security by playing more money games. Scam. Why would Amway, et al be any different?

Would you please expand on your position with respect to services?

Kid rolls up and knocks on my door, offering to cut my grass. His mower, his labor, etc. He cuts, I pay, bees migrate to neighbor's dandelion farm. No product, but this surely isn't a scam.

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Would you please expand on your position with respect to services? ..., bees migrate to neighbor's dandelion farm. No product, but this surely isn't a scam.

Bees? What bees? Are you a bee keeper now missing a few thousand employees?

[lookout123]

"When are we going after bin Laden?"

for about the hundredth time - i don't know. or care. if you could just understand - that guy from texas doesn't consult me. in fact, we don't even talk all that much... sure we exchange christmas cards and yeah, i told him that the former top New York cop would be great for homeland security, but other than that, i don't have a lot of contact with George.


there, now i answered one - would you care to try answering any of the questions i've asked you in the past?

edit: and give me a break tw. it's the cellar. i'm the only stockbroker here. you know that when you dis on stockbrokers here it is intended as a dig on me. it's no different than if i consistantly harped on the rigid, uncreative nature of engineers - it would be safe to assume i'm kicking sand at you. or commonly referring to car sales professional as salesdouches... that would refer to LJ. (except that is accurate, so that may be a bad example.)

[BigV]

Originally Posted by tw

Bees? What bees? Are you a bee keeper now missing a few thousand employees?

lawn gets mowed, dandelion blossoms cut off and chopped into pretty yellow green mulch with the rest of the tall grass, bees sad and hungry, buzz next door to greener or yellower pastures.

sorry, no pic available.

Now, without the flowery language, are you interested in explaining your thoughts on services with respect to your earlier post?

Originally Posted by tw

Many such scams make themselves obvious. If they are promoting the money to be made or growth of their organization, they you know it is a scam. The only thing that matters is the product. Profits without a good product (ie General Motors, AT&T, US Steel, Listerene, the big and therefore unproductive Airlines, the ISS, Carly Fiorina in the HP / Compaq merger stockholder meeting, etc) all mean scam. If they are not providing mankind with a better product, then it is a scam. It's really not difficult to be informed and smart. The minute a stock broker calls about a great stock that is going to make so much money - classic scam artist. Fight him for details on the company's product and get no engineer's attitude. Another classic scam stockbroker. Notice how we are going to fix social security by playing more money games. Scam. Why would Amway, et al be any different?

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Now, without the flowery language, are you interested in explaining your thoughts on services with respect to your earlier post?

Bee it as it may (the month that dandelions arrive), mrnoodle explained the same concept.

Yes, people make money. but they make it by selling the kit and training materials. in the long term, the amount of money you get from all the fabulously overpriced merch will start to add up, but only after you have a sufficient downline of misled people looking for a pot of gold. for anyone in amway to make money, there must be a substantial base of people who are not making money. those people on the lowest tier supply the funding for everything else.

The money comes not (so much) from the product as from the so many lower tiered who buy into the pyramid scheme. Only enough product is sold to give the scheme legitimacy. The investments clearly don't justify the profits generated by moving product. In short, these Amway schemes have no product (a product or service). One gets rich by promoting 'get rich quick' kits to many 'investors' who must take a loss on their investment.

Never enough money earned by the product line to justify that investment. Classic pyramid scheme. Sold only on what it can do for you and not what it provides to society. If society gets no benefit, then there is no product.

The investors don't even get franchise benefits other than to sell franchises to other 'investors'. Nobody concentrates on selling the products. There is no money in selling products. Selling the franchise - not the product - is where almost all money is made. Even with lots of franchises sold, the product from those franchises amounts to near zero profits.

Buy a Fiat. You will own product from the fastest growing car company in the world. Right. Where does he even promote the product? He does not. He promotes a scam that is really irrelevant to the product.

Carly Fiorina did same to promote the purchase of Compaq. She justified everything in terms of "HP and Compaq will be the biggest market in this business and second largest in that business". Does size (and the lie about 'economies of scale') mean stockholder value? Of course not. There was no product advantage to the HP merger with Compaq. All but the institutional investors (MBAs) understood that. Obvious because the deal provided no 'product'. Fiorina promoted a scam by selling something that provided no advantage to the HP product line nor provided HP customers with new or better products. Fiorina promoted the classic MBA scam using spread sheet spin. And that is also what the Amway, et al scheme is all about. Finance spin because there is no money to be earned on the product line.

[kerosene]

Originally Posted by tw

Carly Fiorina did same to promote the purchase of Compaq. She justified everything in terms of "HP and Compaq will be the biggest market in this business and second largest in that business". Does size (and the lie about 'economies of scale') mean stockholder value? Of course not. There was no product advantage to the HP merger with Compaq. All but the institutional investors (MBAs) understood that. Obvious because the deal provided no 'product'. Fiorina promoted a scam by selling something that provided no advantage to the HP product line nor provided HP customers with new or better products. Fiorina promoted the classic MBA scam using spread sheet spin. And that is also what the Amway, et al scheme is all about. Finance spin because there is no money to be earned on the product line.

And with this, I would like to say to those who voted for the merger joke: DUH!

(Sorry, I was an hp employee at the time of the scam)

[tw]

Originally Posted by case

And with this, I would like to say to those who voted for the merger joke: DUH!

I was in the meeting. The overwhelming attitude of the little stock holders was completely against the purchase of Compaq. Hewlett got a standing ovation. Only the institutions - blackmail against Deutsch Bank for their vote was suspected - supported the merger.

The 14th(?) speaker was an HP employee with his 6th HP patent pending. His first comment was that their group's #1 competitor was Cisco - and Carly Fiorina was a BoD of Cisco. Clearly conflict of interest. I wish his statement and question was written. It shocked Carly so noticeably that she soon terminated the meeting.

Even French HP employees had flown to the meeting because they were so against this merger that had no product oriented reason to occur. Fiorina - a midevil history major and a salesman for Lucent - had no concept of a product oriented perspective. Four years later, the MBA games appeared on the spread sheets - lackluster. Unlike Apple under Spindler and Sculley, the HP BoDs recognized this problem at its source. They forced the bean counter Carly out.