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Dodecahedron Scheme

Limited alternative to a pyramid scheme
 
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On the whole, MLMs are pyramid-shaped. That is, there's someone at the top who makes all the money, then people underneath who might make a bit if they're on the first tier and at each level there are more people, which is the problem - the scheme potentially exploits more than the entire population of the human race so that a few or only one person profits.

There are various ethical problems with this, but the main one is that it fans out. I'm also not convinced the base is really flat and that's geometrically offensive. It's more likely that people bail out at various different levels. Moreover, it's probably more like a cone. The top person is not screwing three (tetrahedral) or four (square pyramidal) people, but probably a different number. It just is not a pyramid. There's an apex but a ragged base and an unknown number of edges.

Here then is my solution to this offensively non-platonic form of MLM:

A dodecahedron scheme. There are five people at the top who sell to each other in order to provide the edges for the top face, but they don't earn commission. They do, however, each earn commission from the single person immediately beneath them. Let me stress that: there is only one person from whom they immediately get money, although these people pass on money from below them. On this second tier, there is trading between the people via a second set of five people, with no money coming in to them. However, this second set each has one person below them who do pass money up. These also trade with each other. That's the end of the whole scheme. The exploitation ends there.

So, suppose you have 1% commission being passed up from the bottom tier. The next tier up gets that 1%, but it only gets paid up one level to one person. The initial sale downward is the only point at which the top people get money. No more than twenty people can be involved in the scheme.

There are also three trading rings, which can move in either directions.

The chief point of this is to find a MLM which is not a pyramid scheme, and to find a use for the dodecahedron.

nineteenthly, May 12 2019

1:20 mark https://ca.video.se...87ace11&action=view
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 12 2019]


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Annotation:







       MLM?
MaxwellBuchanan, May 12 2019
  

       Multi-Level Marketing, also known as pyramid schemes. A method for getting the mathematically impaired into serious debt and alienating all their friends and relatives while sending you lots of money they haven't got.
nineteenthly, May 12 2019
  

       Ah. Now it all makes sense. I assumed you were referring to the Marmoset Lubrication Machine.   

       What I'm not seeing, though, is quite how anyone gets rich here.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 12 2019
  

       // to find a MLM which is not a pyramid scheme, and to find a use for the dodecahedron.//   

       A business can be considered to have a sphere of influence. This sphere can be likened to a bubble.
Connect enough bubbles to one another and the center of these spheres of influence naturally assumes a dodecahedral shape. [link]
  

       Hope that helps...   

       // What I'm not seeing, though, is quite how anyone gets rich here. //   

       That's because your family have got rich by the simple but brutal process of sending a couple of companies of men-at-arms to just go and take whatever you wanted, slaughtering anyone who stands in their way, setting fire to the women, raping the houses, driving off the children and selling the cattle into slavery.   

       By the way, you really need to start breeding a slightly brighter sort of armed thug; the current ones, while earnest and dilligent, just aren't getting it right most of the time.   

       MLM is slightly different from a Ponzi scheme in that Ponzis only have a couple of levels at most, but the end result is the same - impoverishment for the many for the benefit of the few. Just like governments, really.
8th of 7, May 12 2019
  

       [8th] we haven't done that sort of thing for absolute ages. In fact I'm pretty sure we haven't invaded anyone in the whole of 2019.   

       Also, I think Ponzi schemes get a bad press. After all, the government runs one called the National Lottery, wherein millions of people are diddled out of a pound to enable a handful of winners to become millionaires. If I bought a lottery ticket and didn't win, I think I'd be quite cheered by the thought that my pound had helped some lucky undeserving sod to get rich instantly.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 12 2019
  

       Oh, hang on, there was a small Indonesian town in February. Memory like a wossname.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 12 2019
  

       Should be renamed as the Dododecahedron Scheme.
xenzag, May 12 2019
  

       //How long ago was that?// Well obviously I don't go into a public shop and buy the thing myself, do I?
MaxwellBuchanan, May 12 2019
  

       Not any more, no. Not since the time when you "went down to the newsagent to buy a paper".   

       How could anything so simple go so wrong ? Even the Queen has more understanding of how to purchase small items for cash, even if she does hold up the banknotes next to her face and ask if it's a good likeness.   

       Just because the footmen couldn't get your sedan chair through the doorway was no reason to have your guards smash the front of the shop in with their axes. Unsurprisingly, shouting "Kneel, scurvy knave ! !" at Mr. Bannerjee didn't go down well, and expecting his wife to lie on the floor so you could take the two steps to the counter without getting dust on your silk slippers was a trifle tactless; as to the things you said about his daughter, they were totally out of order - ye gods, she's only twelve. "Have her washed and send her to my room" is no longer acceptable to most parents living outside the boundaries of your estate.   

       And it was a shop. A mercantile establishment. We explained. There is an agreed protocol by which the customer gives money to the proprietor in exchange for goods. You don't just help yourself to stuff while shoutiing and hitting the shopkeeper with your whip, then rifle through the till and urinate on the bubble gum machine as you leave. About the only thing you did right was kicking the cat, and even that looked like an accident.   

       That's why you should leave these things to your servants.
8th of 7, May 13 2019
  

       Pah. Typical gutter-press reporting. They can't even get their fabricated facts right. The local newsagent's is run by a Mr. Usami, who is of Scots/Pakistani extraction, and let me assure you that Ewan and I are on the friendliest of terms.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 13 2019
  

       Why do Ponzi schemes and other scams always have to be in the form of platonic solids?
hippo, May 13 2019
  

       Strictly speaking, a pyramid isn't a platonic solid since not all faces are of the same shape - and variations on "Tetrahedron scheme" never caught on.
zen_tom, May 13 2019
  

       Good point! I retract my earlier erroneous query.
hippo, May 13 2019
  

       In fact, such schemes need not even be three-dimensional; the only requirement is that the proponent should be at a minimum two-faced ...
8th of 7, May 13 2019
  

       You can get tablets for that now.   

       // They can't even get their fabricated facts right //   

       Just a hint, when you have your goons beat people up, turn your GoPro off.
8th of 7, May 14 2019
  


 

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