I loved reading the comments posted by people who read the article. It seemed like there was a 50/50 split who thought Amway was nothing but opportunity and the other half who thought it was pyramid scheme.
Back in college, a guy (who I kinda-sorta knew from high school) approached me and put the Amway pitch on me. It wasn’t my kind of thing. He seemed irritated when I declined.
Afterwards, I thought “That’s weird. You’d think that he’d be interested in getting me to buy Amway products from him. Instead, he wanted me to be a sales rep. Something’s not right about this.”
The hilarious part is they don’t realize they work in a pyramid “scheme” organization.
ALL companies are set up in a pyramid.
Which end are they on?
Nothing wrong with either end but when they realize how a company is structured they will see who Network Marketing works to leverage the work of many.
Like taking 1% of efforts of 100 men or making 100% of your own efforts.
Either is fine but serve different objectives.
I’ll take “The bigger your army, the bigger the battle” model.
Political causes:
In the 1990s, the Amway organization was a major contributor to the Republican Party (GOP) and to the election campaigns of various GOP candidates. Amway and its sales force contributed a substantial amount (up to half) of the total funds ($669,525) for the 1994 political campaign of Republican congresswoman and Amway distributor Sue Myrick (N.C.).[51]
According to two reports by Mother Jones magazine, a liberal news organization, Amway distributor Dexter Yager “used the company’s extensive voice-mail system to rally hundreds of Amway distributors into giving a total of $295,871” to Myrick’s campaign.[51][52]
According to a campaign staffer quoted by the magazine, Myrick had appeared regularly on the Amway circuit, speaking at hundreds of rallies and selling $5 and $10 audiotapes.[51]
Following the 1994 election, Myrick maintained “close ties to Amway and Yager”, and raised $100,000 from Amway sources, “most notably through fundraisers at the homes of big distributors”, in the 1997–98 election cycle.[52]
In October 1994, Amway gave the biggest corporate contribution recorded to that date to a political party for a single election – $2.5 million to the Republican National Committee – and was the number one corporate political donor in the U.S.[51] In the 2004 election cycle, the organization contributed a total of $4 million to a conservative 527 group, Progress for America.[53]
In July 1996, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos was honored at a $3 million fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a week later, it was reported that Amway had tried to donate $1.3 million to pay for Republican "infomercials" and televising of the GOP convention on Pat Robertson's Family Channel, but backed off when Democrats criticized the donation as a ploy to avoid campaign-finance restrictions.[51][54]
In April 1997 Richard DeVos and his wife, Helen, gave $1 million to the Republican National Committee,[52][54] which at the time was the second-largest soft-money donation ever, behind Amway's 1994 gift of $2.5 million to the RNC.[52]
In July 1997, Senate Majority leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich slipped a last-minute provision into a hotly contested compromise tax bill that granted Amway a tax break on its Asian branches, saving it $19 million.[52]
In a column published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper in August 1997,[55] reporter Molly Ivins wrote that Amway had "its own caucus in Congress...Five Republican House members are also Amway distributors: Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, Jon Christensen of Nebraska, Dick Chrysler of Michigan, Richard Rombo of California, and John Ensign of Nevada. Their informal caucus meets several times a year with Amway bigwigs to discuss policy matters affecting the company, including China's trade status."[56]
A 1998 analysis of campaign contributions conducted by Businessweek found that Amway, along with the founding families and some top distributors, had donated at least $7 million to GOP causes in the preceding decade.[54]
Political candidates who received campaign funding from Amway in 1998 included Representatives Bill Redmond (R-N.M.), Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), and Jon Christensen (R-Neb).[52]
According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, in the 2004 election cycle, members of the Van Andel and DeVos families were the second, third and fifth largest donors to the Republican party.[56]
Dick DeVos, son of Amway founder Richard DeVos and past president of the company, served as Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee,[57] and his wife Betsy DeVos served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and 2003 to 2005.[58]
In May 2005, Dick DeVos ran against incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm in Michigan's 2006 gubernatorial election. DeVos was defeated by Granholm, who won 56% of the popular vote to Devos' 42%.[59]
In January 2012, Amway contributed $500,000 to well known anti gay National Organization for Marriage.[60]
Several sources have commented on the promotion of Christian conservative ideology within the Amway organization.[52][61][62][63]
Mother Jones magazine described the Amway distributor force as "heavily influenced by the company's dual themes of Christian morality and free enterprise" and operating "like a private political army."[52]
In The Cult of Free Enterprise, author (and former Amway distributor) Stephen Butterfield wrote “[Amway] sells a marketing and motivational system, a cause, a way of life, in a fervid emotional atmosphere of rallies and political religious revivalism.”[61]
Philadelphia City Paper correspondent Maryam Henein stated that “The language used in motivational tools for Amway frequently echoes or directly quotes the Bible, with the unstated assumption of a shared Christian perspective.”[62]
Businessweek correspondents Bill Vlasic and Beth Regan characterized the founding families of Amway as “fervently conservative, fervently Christian, and hugely influential in the Republican Party”, noting that “Rich DeVos charged up the troops with a message of Christian beliefs and rock-ribbed conservatism.”[54]
High-ranking Amway leaders such as Richard DeVos and Dexter Yager were owners and members of the board of Gospel Films, a producer of movies and books geared towards conservative Christians, as well as co-owners (along with Salem Communications) of a right-wing, Christian non-profit entity called Gospel Communications International.[52][62][64][65][66]
Rolling Stone's Bob Moser reported that former Amway CEO and co-founder Richard DeVos is connected with the Dominionist political movement in the United States. Moser states that DeVos was a supporter of the late D. James Kennedy, giving more than $5 million to Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries.[67][68][68] DeVos was also a founding member and two-time president of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing Christian-focused organization.[69]
Sociologist David G. Bromley calls Amway a "quasi-religious corporation" having sectarian characteristics.[70][71] Bromley and Anson Shupe view Amway as preaching the Gospel of Prosperity.[72]
Patralekha Bhattacharya and Krishna Kumar Mehta, of the consulting firm Thinkalytics, LLC, reasoned that although some critics have referred to organizations such as Amway as "cults" and have speculated that they engage in "mind control", there are other explanations that could account for the behavior of distributors. Namely, continued involvement of distributors despite minimal economic return may result from social satisfaction compensating for diminished economic satisfaction.[73]<< LOL
Servitude works out better when the victim is willing.