'I dislike Amway, because its marketing strategy is a glorified pyramid scheme and its products are mediocre and overpriced (per Consumer Reports tests) '
Let the consumers decide that? After all Consumers are the best judge in a free market economy and if a company is selling overpriced inferior products at the market place it would not last long.
'Liking or disliking the practices or products of a particular company doesn't mean one doesn't believe in a free market economy'
Ok, but just blatant attacks on Companies(like Walmart) without any rational thought does not help the argument.
The problem is not with Amway ripping off consumers. It is with the high-level distributors using cult tactics to brainwash their lower-level distributors to the point where families are shattered. Amway is not the only company to do this.
I'd rather decide that for myself, thanks. With the help of objective sources like CR that I've learned to trust.
After all Consumers are the best judge in a free market economy and if a company is selling overpriced inferior products at the market place it would not last long.
You have a lot more faith in the Invisible Hand than I do. A free market is no substitute for judgment. Are the books at the top of the bestseller list the pinnacle of contemporary literature, the top songs on he pop charts the best music recorded today, McDonald's the best of American cuisine, and Thomas Kincade the best artist in America? If so, may God help us.
To drag the argument kicking and screaming back into the realm of evolution, success in the marketplace does not depend on anything you or I would find moral or aesthetic or even efficient -- survival of the fittest is a question of adapting to the environment. It is a mechanism that has no malice, but it also doesn't have any mercy or discernment.
It often depends on marketing, price point and availability. Anheuser-Busch spills more beer in a year than Sam Adams makes, but I suspect most Freepers would prefer to order the latter. Michael Jackson made enough money to buy the rights to the whole Beatles catalog. Mos Def outsells Mozart week after week.
But in the end, the quality of the household products scarcely matters, because Amway isn't in the business of selling household products -- it's in the business of selling distributorships. They're selling so much sizzle that the steak hardly even has to be there. They use high-energy pitches and high-pressure tactics to sell a chimera.
'Liking or disliking the practices or products of a particular company doesn't mean one doesn't believe in a free market economy'
Ok, but just blatant attacks on Companies(like Walmart) without any rational thought does not help the argument.
There are perfectly rational objections to the business tactics of Wal-Mart, Amway, and just about any other company. I, an Apple partisan, resisted the urge to add Microsoft to that list in the last post, but I can't do it again.
The fact that a poster doesn't enumerate reasoned objections to a particular company doesn't mean that they don't exist. Most posts on FR, or on any message board or blog, are quick hits that the audience is assumed to understand, and which can be explained later if need be.
Short-term success in the marketplace demonstrates that a product (or a message) has found its place and time. It is not a measure of of objective or subjective quality or whether a particular company's practices are good for anyone -- society at large, its shareholders, its customers, or its employees -- in the long run.