Home |
Book |
Charlotte Observer, Sept. 22, 1997
Money As The Way To Salvation - And Vice Versa
By Alex Coffin, special to The Observer
Any book that goes after multi-level marketing(MLM) and pyramid schemes such as Amway can't be all bad. Except for being a bit repetitive, this is a good book that renders a valuable service. One of the authors, Robert Fitzpatrick, is a former Charlotte News reporter and now an industrial relations consultant. The other, Joyce K. Reynolds, is a corporate trainer in Ft. Lauderdale. The publisher, Herald Press, is located on East Boulevard in Charlotte. Much of the book is devoted to FitzPatrick's personal experiences in Florida with a pyramid scheme informally known as the Airplane Game. While it clearly was a scam, as the authors make clear, tens of thousands were taken in during its heyday 10 years ago. Although promoted with religious fervor, not unlike the New Age craze, it really appealed to greed.
"If enlightenment was our salvation," the authors write of their involvement in the Airplane Game, "abundance was our state of grace. It was an outward sign of inner triumph ... Many of us who had been taught to feel guilty (by religious upbringing) for making money, now felt guilty for not making enough." Maybe I've been suckered by other scams, but it's hard to understand how anyone could bite on the Airplane Game as FitzPatrick and so many others did.
Once as a reporter for The Province, a morning newspaper in Vancouver, I infiltrated Glenn Turner's Dare to be Great program and was likewise perplexed at how people could be taken in so easily. Posing as an ex-shoe salesman, I was told I could make $1,000 a week with a $3,000 investment. I couldn't even get away from the sales pitch by going to the restroom. They followed me there twice.
The sales pressure was designed "to appeal to the man who believes that money can buy happiness, that the love of money is not the root of all evil and that man should build up treasures on earth," I wrote in November 1972.
Perhaps that is why I see overkill here. But the book does a valuable service by warning of something that remains a current across the nation rather than a historical anomaly.
The total MLM industry is estimated at five million to 10 million distributors who sell between $10 billion and $20 billion in goods. But it's estimated that 90 percent of MLM companies go out of business within two years. The success of a few depends on the failure of many, the authors point out.
Pyramid schemes are fraudulent because they are based on endless enrollment and exponential expansion. Collapse is inevitable. The authors call MLMs and pyramid scams "kissing cousins." They thoroughly discredit multilevel schemes and, along the way,
examine Amway, the biggest of all MLMs," with references to Amway distributors Dexter Yager of Charlotte and, by title, not by name, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick
In an interview, FitzPatrick he had been taken to task by one reviewer for not offering alternatives for pursuing contentment in the workplace, since he did not think multi-level marketing, pyramid schemes or New Age approaches are the way.
Fitzpatrick, in turn, pointed out that the reviewer didn't offer alternatives, either.
Let's break that cycle here and now by quoting author-theologian, Frederick Buechner, who in 'Wishful Thinking," defined vocation in this way:
"The kind of work God calls you to do is the kind of work that (a) you need most to do and (b) the world most needs to have done.... Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
Alex Coffin is a Charlotte Public Relations consultant.
Many Hands, Fall, 1997, (http://www.manyhands. com)
False Profits is a philosophical, historical, and journalistic inquiry into how popular and profound spiritual practices such as prosperity consciousness and creative visualization have recently evolved from their original spiritual meaning and values into being used today for strictly commercial or even illegal purposes.
Skeptical Inquirer, July/August, 1997, A journal of rational, scientific perspective (http://www.CSICOP.org)
The first book-length analysis and critique of the multilevel marketing industry in America. Examines the delusions surrounding multilevel marketing and pyramid schemes, with special emphasis on the Airplane Game pyramid scheme that swept cities and campuses in the late 1980s. Although not as extreme as UFO beliefs and other such frauds, such delusions are strong enough to lead otherwise ethical people into fraud and folly.
Independent Publisher, Jan./Feb. 1998, and The Pilot, daily newspaper of Southern Pines, NC
FALSE PROFITS, By Robert L. Fitzpatrick and Joyce K. Reynolds, Herald Press, 1235-E East Blvd., #101, Charlotte, 28203, $12.95
Book Is A Call To Americans
By Shelby Stephenson
False Profits is about the "old" American dream and the new which, at its worst, turns a longing for inner prosperity, to greed. 'False Profits' is a true story about some who lost faith in the prophets, profits and promises of pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing but gained profound knowledge of themselves." It is a call to look into the self and come out changed.
False Profits is a call for Americans to abandon all tendencies toward greed. In this sense the book is a "confessional" story, a variation of Henry David Thoreau's experiences at Walden Pond. The love of riches by Americans, of course, is complex, a long story going back to the days the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, hoping for freedoms that had been denied them.
In a style available to casual reader and seasoned business person alike, False Profits succeeds in giving another perspective to what dominates so Americans - the obsessive need to get rich quick. This book asks us to consider another self -- the soul that is inner and waiting for recognition.