As long as suckers are born every minute, this will continue. I was thinking about MLMs before you got to them in your piece. I was exposed to one for quite some time in 2019 and 2020 when my very close friend got involved with one called Kayani. It was in the health and wellness field. At least the participants didn't have to buy inventory. Everything was purchased by the buyers on the web. Anyway, I heard countless presentations while she lived with me during the pandemic. They encouraged what they called embellishments. Embellish your credentials, embellish the products. My friend was so caught up in it that she couldn't see the outright lies. The company claimed, unverifiabley, that the founders were billionaires. They claimed one founder owned Idaho Potatoes. When I showed my friend that that trademark is owned by the state and moreover that this founder wasn't on the list of the largest growers of Idaho Potatoes, I still couldn't break through to her. She loved the story of billionaires starting a company purely to help others and give their profit to charity and anything I questioned just made me a cynic in her mind, and she was desperate to improve her life and fell for their pitches hook, line, and sinker. At least the products tasted good so I didn't mind using them but then she was so lost in confirmation bias that she decided that she decided that my improved mood and frame of mind was all because of the products as opposed to the work I was doing on myself. Sigh.