It's nice to have competitions so we can evaluate how effective training methods are. However in competition as it is commonly practiced today, we have overconfidence in the reliability of our results. Instead of assuming that the champion is the best in the world, we should assume that he was adequately trained to defeat his last opponent: in a tournament you do not know where one fighter stands against all the other fighters unless he fights them all, and you don't know what training methods were most effective if one fighter is excluded from losing only two matches. Double elimination means the best over all fighter could easily lose because he just happened to be beat by two individuals who could take him, while most of the rest of the individuals in his division could not take him.
Sounds crazy, right? This is me fighting Zack, everything he knows about knife fighting he learned from me, and when I fight him you can see the disparity between my superior knife skill level and his:
Since I started participating in the North West Warrior Tipon Tipon in 2017, the fighter who has given me the most grief goes by the name of "Scott." There are no official winners or losers at a Gathering like this, but the tale of the tape speaks for itself. Mine and Scott's first match was something like a draw, maybe slightly in his favor, which was strange for me because he was spastic and new a the time. A year or two later at our second confrontation, it was very one sided over all in his favor as he caught me with a snake-arm disarm, landing many knife thrusts to my mid section in less than 30 seconds, and otherwise seemed to outpace me with his footwork. But most problematically a year or two after that, even after I had specifically trained to fight him and integrated more of my Tai Chi push hands into my knife dueling, and even as I hit him with an epic push hands projection counter throw, he still clearly dominated me in over all deadliness, and the commentary behind the camera says it all:
Going by tournament logic, if Ben can take Zack, and Scott can take Ben, then Scott can take Zack, right? Wrong:
And I have numerous other examples, but this is the one most obviously involving my own personal practice of the martial arts that has video evidence. Going forward keep in mind that being able to beat one person does not guarantee that you could have beat anyone that one person has beaten. Competition is a great metric for us to have for evaluating training methods, but we often have more confidence in that data than we should.
Submission holds have extremely limited application to civilian self defense scenarios. Submission holds can be faked out of. Submission holds can have severe asymmetrical consequences. Submission holds are complex movements prone to failure. Submission hold alternatives take less time to learn and are more valuable to civilian martial arts consumers.
In the South East Asian martial arts we sometimes see the "Principle of Overkill," were they refuse to stop attacking after the opponent goes down. These arts aren't training for casual bar brawls to defend the honor of open minded girlfriends, these arts are training for life and death combat between rival feuding parties. One sneaky strategy is to fall down early in a brawl, act incapacitated, wait until an opponent is not paying attention to you, then pull your knife and attack them from behind. Because of that these arts specifically train to overkill a downed opponent, to make sure that opponent isn't being sneaky.
The application to this for submission holds is obvious: in a serious self defense situation, what do you do when your opponent taps or says "uncle" or "ok, I give up, sorry!" How do you know they have sincerely repented and aren't going to attack again? How do you know if they just realized how outmatched they are and are about to pull a weapon?
The obvious alternative is to turn the hold into a full damage attack, dislocating a shoulder, breaking a leg, or choking them unconscious. This cure can be worse than the disease; the consequences from going that far can be worse than whatever the attacker was trying to do to you in the first place. Prison time itself can be life threatening. Any allies they have who are prone to drastic violence aren't going to soon forget that you maimed their friend. What happens if you hold a choke too long because you were worried they were "just faking it"?
That's assuming the submission hold works in the first place: all submissions are more complex movements than most strikes. Beyond that your mobility is compromised while you are executing a submission hold. Even if you somehow manage a submission hold while up on your feet, you are still giving up options to run or otherwise maneuver as long as you are applying the hold.
"But why not use a submission hold to control someone until authorities arrive and arrest the attacker?" Let's put aside the problem with the attackers friends showing up before law enforcement, and instead ask if a submission hold is actually the best way to control someone. Many grappling styles have various pins and other control positions that are far less complex and thus more likely to work than trying to use a submission hold. "Position before submission" is a best practice for grappling arts anyhow, and position is more key to controlling the attacker, not so much joint locks applied thereafter.
Training for superior position both on the ground and on your feet is much more valuable to the average civilian martial arts consumer than learning submission holds. If a well thought out self defense paradigm is used, grappling instruction can improve a civilian's mobility in a real confrontation instead of compromising mobility:
I got two shoulder impingements: one in the right shoulder in 2019 from a martial arts training injury, and the other in the left shoulder in 2021 from a car accident.The physical therapy required from the second helped me more fully recover the first and reminded me of many things my martial arts instructors taught me back in the 1990s. My martial arts injury was from taking a bad fall from someone accidentally isolating my arm while we were doing a double leg throw DRILL. (I have never been inured that seriously sparring no matter how crazy and gym-fight it got.)
I was studying JKD/Kali with an instructor who was teaching as directly as he possibly could from Dan Inasanto's system. I got to cover many bases in martial arts I hadn't tried before, namely Kali (my previous formal FMA training was in Arnis,) Wing Chun (my previous close range Kung Fu was Yang Style Tai Chi,) JKD (my previous long range Kung Fu was Choy Li Fut,) Silat (my previous joint locking outside of Kung Fu was Aikido,) Muay Thai (my 90's Sifu taught what would now be considered Dutch Kickboxing) and I got to stick fight a Bujinkan black belt (I am in the red shirt, and I am a founding member of weapon free sparring group Tres Espadas going back to 2010):
This Guro was very knowledgeable, but I have been doing martial arts off and on since the 1980's and in the year I studied with him I only learned a handful of techniques I hadn't seen before, and only a few of those techniques were good enough for me to add to my personal arsenal. The problem was that the shoulder impingement I got training with him was not worth the few techniques I was able pick up. This was the last straw: I realized that I already know more martial arts techniques that I would like to master than I have time left in my life to train.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a martial arts system that focused on the practical weapons, dirty boxing, and good posture to help old people like me be better fighters? Ironically I already practice that art, a sparring oriented form Yang Style Tai Chi heavily influenced by Choy Li Fut, Arnis and cross training in MMA, which I have abbreviated for my own use. This is me practicing against someone I taught Tai Chi saber to with real-weapon-weight sparring weapons:
I have considered martial arts lineage and rank a legal liability for decades. I don't charge money for teaching martial arts, so when I do teach others martial arts it's so that I can have sparring partners to train with. What I am actually known for publicly is my knife fighting, and I have demonstrated numerous times that I am reasonably good at it.
Some YouTubers talk about martial arts as if the most dangerous situation they will get into is someone insulting their girlfriend at a pub. My personal interests and professional requirements have taken me regularly through dangerous urban areas in Seattle and Pittsburgh. In MY environment knife fights happen more often than fist fights, and that is what I prepare for.
Why not just go to my local MMA gym? The first problem is most MMA coaches are too young to understand the training needs of a 50 year old martial artist. For example no I can NOT do 50 burpees for being late to class, the potential injury from that might take a year of recovery for me. In order to continue training injury prevention has to be my top priority, and it appears that I am the expert on that subject.
The second problem is MMA doesn't get there. Muay Thai gets close, but I have to prepare for very specific scenarios. For example: when on the ground I have to train to get up from the ground, which means I have to also train to retain others on the ground so I can understand the full dynamics of getting up. No, I am not concerned about someone on the street trying to catch me in a triangle choke or arm bar. Yes I may cross train MMA or Muay Thai more in the future, but no I do not necessarily need to. I need Wrestling for the Elderly you say?
There's Tai Chi again.
After I got that shoulder impingement in 2019, I was on the mat with a number of new people who were able to muscle through my superior technique because of my weakened state. No matter how tough you are, one shoulder impingement and you are the weakest person in the room, less able to defend yourself than if you had never done martial arts in the first place. This reminded me of my MMA coaches in 2018 encouraging me to focus on strength building as I largely already had the skill to execute techniques, but I generally lacked the over all body strength to execute them against people much larger or stronger than me.
This also reminded me of the focus on training good posture Tai Chi, as bad posture is what you have to correct to prevent or recover from shoulder impingement. I am going to continue training with friends in Tai Chi and participate in Tres Espadas, and I am not retiring from being a martial arts consumer advocate, but I am retiring from being a consumer of martial arts lessons. I need training time for strength training and perfecting the fraction of the techniques I already know that I find valuable to me personally.
The most formative sparring I have ever had happened in around 1995, when I weighed 135 lbs (61 kg) and went 3 hard kickboxing rounds against a friend of mine with 10% of my training but who was 6 inches (15 cm) taller than me and weighed 350 lbs (159 kg.) I thought I could take him because at the time I was the most advanced student in class (kickboxing & kung fu,) and was able to have my way with other students who weighed 200 lbs (91 kg.) The result was the worst beating of my life, as him landing a simple jab on the gloves protecting my face would knock my feet back 6 inches and afterwords 8 Ibuprofen didn't put a dent in my headache.
I committed myself to the study of how to beat larger opponents for the next year, grilling my Sifu on everything he knew on the subject and considering my previous training and experiences in self defense situations, Karate, Arnis and Aikido. The 350 lb opponent was only shook in those three rounds by one attack: my wide overhand right hook. But about a year later, I knocked out another friend of ours who was also significantly taller than me who weighed 325 lbs, using the lessons I learned since the first beating.
Since then I have had numerous experiences on the street that were dangerous self defense situations, where these lessons I learned above arguably saved me from being injured, killed, or going to jail. Here are the 5 tips in order of importance from first to last:
Stay off the line of attack.
Wide overhand hooks.
Leg kicks.
Rear Naked Choke
Weapons
1. Staying Off the Line of Attack
The key with this strategy is "evasive footwork" as is often taught in martial arts and combat sports. The line of attack is the front of your opponent where he can most easily strike and grab you. Don't be on his line of attack; don't stand in front of a larger opponent. There are many effective techniques for evasive footwork, but it's important to train in something simple enough during free sparring that you will use it for real if you have to:
Evasive footwork is the most important thing I learned in the aftermath of that original beating I mentioned above. I have actually used evasive footwork to resolve numerous violent situations without having to inflict injury on anyone. Evasive footwork buys you the time you need to act like an adult, and then only if necessary, attack like and adult. Notice how evasive footwork buys this fighter time against a much larger opponent:
2. Wide Overhand Hooks
In the NES game "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" the player character uses uppercuts to attack larger opponents. This is OPPOSITE of reality: as a shorter opponent your are LESS able to land uppercuts against larger opponents, because you are swinging your punch up against gravity above your own head. (And I have been knocked out twice in hard sparring from uppercuts from taller opponents, but never from shorter opponents.)
What really works on larger opponents are overhand hooks that swing down onto the opponent's jaw, with gravity on the side of the shorter opponent. Notice how this wide overhand hook palm strike -backed up with evasive footwork - brings down the larger opponent in the most famous David vs Goliath early UFC fight:
In that original beating I wrote about above, the ONLY strike I through that phased the 350 pounder was my wide overhand hook. Mike Tyson himself used hooks effectively against numerous larger boxers:
These wide overhand hook strikes are a potent tool that have been successful in MMA ever since that above early UFC fight:
3. Leg Kicks
Later when I KOed our 325 lb friend, it was with a right leg round kick to the jaw well above my own head level, BUT which I set up with numerous low leg (calf) kicks. (It would have been wiser for me to use a wide overhand hook instead of a high round kick.) As you may have noticed in the early UFC fight above low kicks to the leg tend to land on larger opponents. Bas Rutten established leg kicks as the solution for taking out larger opponents with iron jaws:
As you get older, or in real self defense situations where there is no time to warm up, it is harder to throw high kicks. This means that the most effective kick in MMA (the leg kick) is probably also the most effective kick on the street. The one time I used this kick outside of the gym, I landed three of these kicks and the whole confrontation concluded in less than 30 seconds, as most aggressors have no defense against this whatsoever:
4. Rear Naked Choke
I am not a fan of trying to use grappling submissions on the street, because it is so chaotic that once you have someone pinned down, you are still in danger. However the "sleeper hold," aka Rear Naked Choke (RNC,) is highly versatile and can be applied once you have a hold on someone from behind, and it renders them fully unconscious (and not simply trapped.) You could become very proficient with this technique after a few years of training in grappling a few times per week. Here is one of many examples of a smaller woman pulling this off on a larger man:
Though I personally have not used the RNC outside of the gym, it is a natural movement that you can use even when under pressure. It is also great move if you are looking for a nonlethal way to defend a friend who is being attacked:
5. Weapons
The elephant in the room is that martial arts without weapons are naked. When people are serious about protecting themselves they access weapons to do so:
The problem with guns is they usually cause more problems than they solve. However if you are a careful person who has disciplined lifestyle and you seriously train in firearms, the gun guys are not wrong about the self defense value of the firearm:
But what if you don't want to use lethal force? In my training and experience I have found that pepper spray is more versatile than advertised. (For example, you can shoot it behind you as someone chases you down a hallway or stair well.) Here's what it looks like to use pepper spray (with evasive footwork) against someone menacing you with a knife:
What if the attacker isn't even human, but a lion or bear? It turns out that bear spray specifically is effective enough to take on whole groups of predators:
I have been Yang Gang 2020/Forward Party since about 1994, politically associating with the Technocracy Inc. movement. I was raised conservative and can still see things from that perspective. Though my Yang Gang views are now considered moderate left, when I was in college they were considered far left anarchist.
One of the problems facing USA national politics right now is that since the 1970's, both the Democrats and Republicans had periods of time when they more or less had a monopoly on the objective truth. In the 1970's inflation got to be so out of control in the USA that the economic damage it was doing was inflicting more social harm than maybe any other issue by the end of the 70's. In addition to that, the world lived in constant fear of nuclear annihilation from the cold war between the USA and the USSR.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president, with popular support from Democrats and Republican voters. Yes his economic policy was incredibly flawed, but his optimism was contagious and markets stabilized (even as the manufacturing jobs left the USA like rats from a sinking ship.) With that borderline delusional optimism, he almost single handedly ended the cold war. On the most important issues of the 1980's, the GOP had the most important priorities, and most in the USA were content with their system of government. The GOP had the Luxury of Being Right.
However, in 2000 George W. Bush became president. The need to be truthful completely evaded the W, claiming the white house even when he had lost the election to Al Gore, and eventually starting the wars in the Middle East that lasted until very recently, based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. He intentionally shed doubt on the best climate science of his era, as was convenient for his family and friend's oil money.
For 8 years during the W's presidency the Democrats had a the Luxury of objective truth being more or less on their side on almost every issue, as the lies and Orwellian language spewed forth from the W. It turns out the "smart bombs" killed tons of families and children, and that "shock and awe" did not bring peace. It turns out that people you occupy are not guaranteed to want to adopt your system of government. It turns out the world really was getting hotter.
Obama was a normal president who was as honest as any other politician. Unfortunately two years into the Obama administration the Left had now enjoyed 10 solid years of the objective truth very much being on their side. The Democrats had the Luxury of Being Right.
It turns out that when you are right for 10 years, you stop questioning your own sources and facts. You no longer have to engage with the other side. You start voting for ideological zealots instead of politicians skilled at statecraft. Everything turns into ideological echo chambers with everyone outside of that chamber becoming "evil," with purity tests so extreme that almost no one can qualify to stay in that chamber. This delusional self righteousness had infected the W after the 80's, and it infected the left during the reign of the W.
On one hand there are cosmetic social issues, and on the other hand there are serious issues of forien policy, governance and economics. On cosmetic social issues, people's feelings get hurt and mental health problems can emerge, which can impact families. However these issues are not of the same magnitude of importance as economics, governance and foreign policy, where wars and famines can lead to genocide, famine, mass casualties and the end of societies. For example, voting rights will always be more important than marriage rights.
The real damage being done to our country from both the Democrats and Republicans having had the Luxury of Being Right is they are allowing differences on cosmetic social issues keep them from finding common ground on economics, governance and foreign policy. Meanwhile rival nations with far less benevolent practices grow in power and influence. In addition our economic practices become more and more outdated as we as a people fail to adapt to evolving technological realities because of our inability to consider each other's perspectives.
In Kung Fu every "sword" that only has one sharp edge instead of being sharp on both sides of the blade is classified not as a sword, but as a "knife." In some more recent films you see the basic saber translated in subtitles as "machete" instead of "broadsword" and it is more true to the culture. Though few people in our modern world care enough about this subject matter to realize it, we see the same distinction in English between swords and "sabers." The katana isn't so much a "Samurai Sword" but a "Samurai Saber."
Note for example the similarities between the Katana and the "Tai Chi Saber":
It's no secret that I am a big fan of the Tai Chi saber, but I have also mentioned that after my 1st year of Aikido my training was mostly with the Bokenjitsu as practiced in Aikido, focusing on Aikido strategy with improvised weapons. This sort of Bokenjitsu though infantile in its technique, is fast to learn and easy to use, and can challenge more advanced technique. Here is me (and someone who trained with me in the same Aikido and Arnis classes that I took) using this technique in a snow storm (integrated with some one-handed Arnis):
This basic Bokenjitsu as practiced in Aikido has very simple technique, which could be used with a weapon as simple as a baseball bat. If you imagine fighting with a base ball bat, but instead having a strong focus on keeping the bat between you and your opponent (instead of having no weapon to block with if you miss,) you very quickly get your basic Katana attacks:
For stance and footwork I am not going to get into the complexities of the Aikido footwork and how that is applied to self defense, I will instead here recommend that you use whatever sort of front stance you are used to using, as long as it has your hips or shoulders facing head on or 45 degrees to the opponent (you don't want to do this from a side stance, but a cat stance could work, a front stance is better.) You can see the front stance is commonly used with the Tai Chi Saber and it can work regardless of where you got your front stance from (as long as your front stance is not too deep, it has to be a front stance you can use in free sparring.) If you want to really have Aikido flavor to your fight, you should rely primarily in side stepping rather than lunging towards and away from your opponent:
For defense, this is the main drill you should practice, which is delivering those clean overhead attacks (which defensively turn into blocks when needed,) blocking those clean overhead attacks with upside-down "roof" blocks, and countering with more clean overhead attacks:
For sparring equipment, I strongly recommend getting "padded katanas" from Nihonzashi. Note: these weapons have a solid (not flexible) core and canvas as a skin, making their over all weight slightly heavier than a boken, about the same weight a real steel sword! This construction design should be easier to reproduce than the nylon & fiberglass sparring weapons of the past while being also far more realistic as far as technique goes:
"My _________ has got sucked into an MLM, what can I do?" The latest research on personality types presented at the last MLM Conference suggests these two traits make people vulnerable to joining an MLM:
Being in any way bad with practical use of numbers. Any failure with personal finance is a huge warning sign.
Being the kind of person who is overconfident in their own level of knowledge or wisdom. Most of us are like this in our late teens and early 20's and grow out of it, however it's an easy trap for naturally smart or wise people to fall into.
Anyone who has joined an MLM has failed to do adequate business planning: no one who has thought it through is going to start a chain restaurant like a McD's, if they think that other McD's are setting up in their area at that same time. Help your friend in MLM keep track of:
How much money they think they make each month.
How much they spend buying any product or service they get from the MLM.
How much they spend on any training materials or events that were recommended by the MLM.
How much they spend on any related expenses to participating in the MLM, including gas, coffee, etc.
Here are some other ideas...
Get a copy of Boss Babe The Game and play it with your fiends and family:
Ball Falls Ostrich Egg Consultants is a humorous anti-MLM group on facebook which pretends to be an MLM, in order to demonstrate the problems with real MLMs. Some members of this group use it to shield themselves from offers to join MLMs, but it also may be a way to reach out to people already in MLM.
Talk with your loved ones about scams. Why don't you give your bank account number to Nigerian Princes who contact you by e-mail? What is the difference between a Ponzi Scheme and a Pyramid Scheme? If you were going to do a scam, how would you try to get away with it?
The biggest epiphany I had watching the 2022 anti-MLM conference was that calling MLMs pyramid schemes drastically understates the damage MLMs do. MLM gurus and FTC regulators are both correct in refusing to say MLMs are pyramid schemes. Pyramids schemes are only 90% likely for you to lose money while MLMs are 99%. When a pyramid scheme rips you off for a few thousand dollars it moves on to find a new sucker, but when an MLM does the same it is just getting started with you...
Pyramid schemes don't try to milk you for money for the rest of your life.
Pyramid schemes don't try to hook you into a continuous payment plan on your credit card that is hard to cancel when you don't want to pay anymore.
Pyramid schemes don't make you sign contracts that make it impossible for you to sue them.
Pyramid schemes don't promise business training but instead deliver dumb visualizations of your wild fantasies.
Pyramid schemes don't try to dominate your ideology or spiritual practices.
Pyramid schemes don't wreck your religious congregation.
Pyramid schemes don't train you to lie about the lifestyle you are living in order to find more recruits.
Pyramid schemes don't try to fill your life with fake friendships that disappear when it all finally falls apart.
Pyramid schemes don't take much time away from your family.
Pyramid schemes don't tell you to drop out of school or quit your day job.
Pyramid schemes don't get you hyped about questionable products you would otherwise have no interest in.
Pyramid schemes don't train you to lie about products you are selling.
Pyramid schemes don't threaten your health by encouraging you to get into quack medical products instead of seeking legitimate medical treatment.
Pyramid schemes don't pay off politicians to legalize their unethical business model.
Pyramids schemes don't use the WTO and UN as vehicles to infiltrate developing economies.
Pyramid schemes don't encourage victims to get microloans intended to address poverty and then compound that debt by becoming MLM distributors.
Pyramid schemes don't leach a trillion dollars per year out of the global economy.
MLMs are not pyramid schemes because MLMs are far more lethal for individuals, families, communities and the world.
This conference was on two days, Friday June 10th and Saturday June 11th, 2022. These are my personal notes: my bias is written all over my blog, so don't consider this be a accurate source for direct quotes...
Day 1: Friday June 10th, 2022
Part 1: Introduction
(I wasn't taking notes on who was saying what yet...)
The DSA enforcement wing mostly reports non-DSA MLMs to the FTC... LOL... DSA legalizes pyramid schemes state-by-state by getting "internal consumption" to count as retail sales. (For me this raises "company store" questions.)
Research shows risk factors for joining an MLM include materialism, "knowing it all," impulsivity, being not-good with numbers, financial illiteracy, and lack of access to accurate information (disclosures.)
FTC can only go after MLM case-by-case and their most effective tool is a $43k fine that the supreme court is probably not going to support drastic use of. SCOTUS shut down Koscot which now makes it very hard to get reimbursement for MLM victims. (Daffan much latter added that the FTC is more interested in shutting down an organization for making false business claims than it is trying to classify what exactly is wrong with the MLM business model.)
SEC cases are very difficult prove, and Pyramid Scheme accusations go to SEC, which is why RICO isn't invoked.
The problem with "internal consumption" is MLMs incentivise your own personal consumption, leading to you buying more than you can use or sell. For example "bonuses" are paid out in payments where you have to keep moving the same amount of MLM product as when you got the bonus in the first place in order to get the payments. This leads to sunk cost fallacy for staying in the MLM.
MLMers can been seen as in 3 groups: Recruits (most people who fall for the scam,) Grinders (who try to make it their day job,) and the Profiteers at the very top (who make most of the money.) Grinders are the most abused victims who lose the most to the MLM. "Major events" (hype conferences) use a lot of prayer meeting style visualizations instead of sales training to keep the person focused on staying in the MLM. Real employers pay money and provide benefits to retain employees while grinders pay to retain themselves in the MLM.
MLM use unique vocabulary and constantly changing definitions to obscure what is going on. The DSA said "everyone has their own definition of what is MLM." The top MLM people actually exaggerate their lifestyles to recruit down-line, so they know the business practice is deceptive from the beginning!
Part 2: LuLaRich
LuLaRich producer Blye Pagon Faust mentioned that MLM is part of the "affinity fraud" problem in the The LDS Church.
Faust recommended more mandatory transparency on income disclosure and how many distributors are already in your area, as well as regulation on how many distributors should be allowed to be recruited in one area.
LuLaRoe has numerous spin off MLMs by LuLaRoe family members. Faust's advice to potential MLM recruits is "be educated and know what you are getting into."
My question for her was first regarding weather or not the LuLaRoe founders believe in the MLM model, she answered "they are so performative it's hard to tell... they wanted to make a buck..." She also stated she believes LuLaRoe was a pyramid scheme.
In Q&A Jason Jones pointed out that there doesn't seem to be any such thing as a "good MLM" that doesn't manipulate. Douglas M. Brooks pointed out the FTC has maintained the legend of the "legitimate MLM." William Keep pointed out that MLMs claim to build entrepreneurs yet offer nothing to do that.
Part 3: Regulators
(Note the Q&A started with my question asking the FTC's Daffan if there was any such thing as an MLM that was not a Pyramid Scheme. When Professor/facilitator William Keep finally said "can any of us give an example of an well run model MLM?" everyone shook their head no... though Daffan mentioned Advocare went from being a Multi-Level company to just being a regular company. That said...)
Kathleen Daffan from the FTC... one reason why MLM is under reported is people blame themselves for why they didn't succeed in the MLM. First contact is through social media (49%.) Cryptocurrency and payment apps are preferred over others. Crypto currency scams are a massive problem for the FTC right now, and many crypto scams ARE MLMs. "Bitcoin Funding Team" was about "paying it forward," claiming it would help people pay for college or get surgery, but it ended up being highly focused on getting others to recruit.
Daffan mentioned Financial Education Services as a services based MLM. It was a credit repair "pyramid scheme." She encourages everyone to check out FTC.gov/Subscribe. Report suspicious MLM activities to the FTC, they use the reports every day! In the Q&A she said to mention what documents, videos, recordings, etc you have. She clarified that their MLM and Pyramids Scheme data is grouped together. The FTC encourages consumers in the case of MLMs to do careful business planning.
Irish regulator Paul Hanna mentioned there is a generally huge problem with consumer education. It has been evident this has been a problem with crypto scams, but some of those crypto scams some are heavily recruitment oriented (Pyramid Scheme.) They have searched property and pressed charges on wellness opportunity MLM in the last year (it's a 5 year prison offense in Ireland.) Witnesses seem reluctant to report MLM, victims go on to other MLMs. In Q&A he suggested all MLM have criminal conduct in the business model.
Marketing Professor (Munster Technological University) Maire O Sullivan notes that debt in general being marketed is a known problem. Lending Tree reported 1/3 females used credit card to get into MLM (1/10 actually got a loan!) 2/5 Americans report feeling pressure to buy MLM products in the last year. Microfinance has gone for profit raising questions to its efficacy to relieve poverty. Communities share credit pressuring individuals to repay.
O Sullivan explained Grameen America focuses on micro loans to female entrepreneurs in the USA. Their CEO is an AVON LADY!!! 1/3 of the loans go to MLM! The other 2/3 of the loans "relieved hardship," but the MLM loans did not. 15-18% Grameen loans going to get women into more debt from MLM. Herbalife locations are clustered around Grameen offices. They include MLM distributorship as a business opportunity unlike most other lenders.
Economist Dr. Elizabeth Villagomez - mostly female MLM membership makes this a gender equality issue. Feminism is used to push their schemes. MLM are pitched as a way to reconcile work and family life. UNDP (United Nations Development Program) has funding from Mary Kay. The UN is being used to white-wash MLMs. Villagomez asks "is it just a platform to recurit Mary Kay members in the future?" Likewise Herbalife has joined the United Nations Global Compact, bragging that they are helping with world hunger, mentioning their 3rd World distributors. Amway is involved informally. She pointed out in the Q&A that there are probably human rights violations going on in MLM with the manipulation, etc.
Polish regulator Dariusz Lomowski: the core pyramid scheme is 3 Rs "Return Relies on Recruitment" (no promotion = no pyramid.) MMM was a pyramid scheme by a Russian who promoted it as a pyramid scheme. The pyramid promoters in Poland are called "Jumpers" as they go from scam to scam. The scams are called "Phoenix" or "Chameleon" because as soon as you shut it down, it reappears with a new appearance. One specifically recruits people with disabilities! In Q&A: he mentioned this is an unfair business to business practice issue in Polish government & law.
Day 2: June 11th, 2022
Part 4: how we got were we are today
Robert L. Fitzpatrcik (author of Ponzinomics) - no documentary has been made on MLM over all, and education is lacking on MLM. He has a new podcast for educators and parents and educators called Ponzinomics 101. MLM destroys lives all the way to divorce and suicide. MLM has gotten much worse, MLMs globally now do 1 trillion dollars in business, and historically law enforcement has avoid it. "MLM is a financially lethal virus with no vaccine." India has accused Amway as being a 7 billion dollar ponzi scheme, but no news organization in the USA is reporting it. Economic anxiety is the environment in which MLM thrives. Mothers is the fastest growing MLM demographic. Another issue is "mind control" and how effective this has been at manipulating the general public. Governmental corruption and collusion is another problem. MLM has expanded massively since it was first exposed. Law enforcement and government has failed on this, as they continue to imply MLM is legit, without so much as one example of a "good" MLM. Politics "not questions of fact" that account for lack of government action. There is no way that our government doesn't know, but government officials go into a revolving door for working for MLM. MLM is able to claim legitimacy. MLM tells the voters that all their problems are on them so government's role in their problems can be ignored. Walter Mondale in the 70's proposed law to outlaw MLM, but in the late 70's congress allowed Amway to legitimize endless chain schemes. It takes a lot of effort to legitimize MLMs. "We have seen enough evidence... politicians are influenced by money... while public opinion is a malleable thing... they are dancing to the tune of their donors... congress does not reflect us..." The MLM cartel threatens small countries to keep them from outlawing MLM outright, and the WTO is compliant in this. MLMs do not compete with each other, they are part of the same cartel that only compete with each other for MLM victims.
Stephen Barrett, M.D. (creator of Quack Watch) - quack medical devices used by MLM would be simple for government to regulate but they don't. He has tried to get a distributorship in all medical MLMs, and all of the medical devices were useless. This creates medical harm when people do not get medical treatment they need. He knows a woman who recently died 4 years early because of reliance on one of these devices. Psychological, social, family and political harm also a results. Zyto is a quack device that scans your hand on your computer to get product recommendations using "galvanic skin response." Zyto got clearance from the FDA without the FDA knowing what the software actually does. "Healy" is another problematic MLM-related device. When it comes to quack devices MLM regulation, "case by case does not work." He wishes the FTC would revoke the rules that allow quack devices, and the FTC should force the franchise transparency rules on MLMs. On activism "you do the best you can, you push the buttons you can... you just have to realize there are many more competing messages... the internet is probably our best hope."
Jason Jones (private practice and now government lawyer) - we are in a bad situation with MLM. Finding solutions is complicated and not his area. Lack of enforcement vs lack of regulation. MLM companies are doing things that could be enforced criminally. Enforcement is very expensive/labor intensive. Every state and also federal laws have anti-fraud laws. The FTC gets 100,000 complaints a day and they don't have enough lawyers to go after the 1,000 MLMs out there, but FTC is very effective when they act. The FTC needs hundreds of more people to do their work better. This is comparable to the IRS being understaffed. Decreased mobility in USA culture creates conditions that the MLMs make the MLM anti-having-a-job pitch resonate. Pay inequality in corporate structures are part of those conditions. In the press it's hard to get anti-MLM posts through editors. There are pro-MLM in the media, often paid for by MLM money, then MLM refers to this to legitimize themselves to the MLM recruits. Related advertising is fraudulent, appearing on legit websites who don't screen their ads. Distributors use social media, which shows the "pestering" to the general public, but make it easier to target vulnerable populations. Since the beginning big powerful law firms have been willing to defend MLM. Lower level firms even bring defamation cases against MLM victims. MLMs put most of the liability on the distributors themselves. MLM uses cult techniques to sell fraudulent products to form a cartel of multiple MLMs, and they share information on how to manipulate effectively with each other. Self-help "tools industry" has spun off of MLM. "Blame congress... the enforcers are on our side... I hope we can do more lobbying... so much international MLM is exported from the United States... If congress doesn't act it will get worse." He wishes the leaders of Amway criminally prosecuted. Arbitration requirements should be removed from contracts. "There is not a lot of popular support for MLMs... call your congressman twice a week... they respond to pressure..."
D. Anthony Miles - the business model is flawed. They dismiss negativity, avoid feedback and make fake friendships with victims. Just because you have a relationship with someone doesn't mean you should be in business with them. He has a classification of 6 MLMs victim types: follower, unemployed, ambitious, uneducated, intelligent, gullible, cult member, junkie, wannabe entrepreneur, church member and humanitarian. He has found Freud's "gullibility" model helpful. MLMs exploit family, friend and professional relationships. MLMs appeal to greed. The Small Business Association will not give money to people involved in MLM and see MLM as problem of people not having good business education. Relationships are permanently damaged by MLM, and there have been related suicides and murders.
Part 5: social media creator panel (Q&A opened my question about is business education [example market saturation] being used to prevent MLM participation.)
Tailor Leigh (the Antibot) - anti-MLM content should be entertainment, advocacy, education and activist. Stories of MLM victims are powerful. Education is the main goal of MLM content. Reaction to individuals has become more popular. She has addressed Gurus who provide motivation to keep people in MLM so the MLM victims will keep buying this kind of training. Gurus serve as ring leaders in the MLM community. Deep dives need to make sure things in the deep dives applies to all MLMs. Content creators should have calls to action in their content. "Not all my goals are anti-MLM related... I want to get more viewers to report to the FTC more often." Educating people on business will be effective. The public perception has shifted, 5 years ago few people knew MLMs existed, now young people understand that MLMs are scams. She uses "commercial cult" to describe MLM.
Dave Vaughan (on Twitter and Instagram) - agrees with Tailor, and it also therapeutic and empowerment. "It's silly to say your are anti-MLM... it's silly to say you are against crime..." Stages of grief applies to MLM participation. Should we critique individual behavior at all? This strategy is now more educational than it was a few years ago. International downlines need to be covered more. We need to look more at the DSA... for the consumers themselves who ARE the distributors. We need to look at residual problems called by the deceptions of MLMs. MLMs are not businesses themselves. Design free courses on manipulation and small business. Educators are starting to focus more on financial literacy. A later question brought up: https://www.foolproofme.org/
Savvy (Savvy Writes Books) - it is all 4 (education, activism, advocacy and entertainment.) She tries to focus on the intersection of small business vs MLM scams. She is not just anti-MLM but pro small business. Critiquing individual behavior can show the lack of work life balance in MLM, and it's important to recognize that all MLMers are victims. It's also good to use deep dives to show how MLM is able to get away with their antics. We need to provide more information on how to work from home that is not MLM, more information on how a small business should operate. She will continue to work to keep MLM out of craft fairs, but also focusing on bad advice books the ultimately result in MLM participation. Educating public about differences between real business vs MLM is effective to prevent MLM. "Savvy Business Owner" is a related book she wrote. "An MLM won't do what it's doing if people don't sign up." The main thing we need to focus on is the core structure/flawed business model.
Monica Hayworth - it is a mix of all of these things. With reaction videos only get legal threats from individuals, but with deep dives you are more likely to get decease and desist orders. Reaction videos reveal MLM tactics. "Ad Hominem attacks to not help the cause at all." We need to find more solutions... come up with solutions for new moms... I want to spread more education... help new moms figure out what they can do instead of MLM.
Michelle Carpenter (mlmchange.org) - she got out of an MLM less than a year ago. Timing, platform and creators has a lot to do with entertainment vs. advocacy vs. education vs. actvism. There are different niches in this entertainment market. For critiquing individual MLM behavior, it is mostly entertainment. Deep dives are less polarizing and more helpful to people thinking about joining MLMs. We need content on how to prevent fraud and vocabulary often used by anti-MLM but aren't well understood (affinity fraud, love bombing, etc.) I want to make it easier to get involved and be self advocates. She is hopeful in that that MLM movement is accelerating quickly. She was recruited to MLM as a teenager.
Elaine Linga (Invested Lifestyle [Tagalog and English]) - it's mainly education and entertainment. She focuses on deep dives and goes for emotional reactions. Deep dives keep getting views, and the search engine delivers years later. She is harassed by MLMs outside of the USA that get dismissed because she's a USA citizen. There are more voices for MLM than against. More content need to use MLM tools against MLM... provide inspiration to speak up... if you are educated by someone you trust it will have more impact... educate the educators... one teacher she knows teaches her kids about MLMs... She wants to apply what she is learning about business and government professionally to anti-MLM... she may be going to law school... She made a video to encourage people to use their own safe business practices (like giving a 7 day break before making a commitment,) before starting any business, especially an MLM. In the Philippines it is the "Wild West" of MLM with no regulations. Greed is causing the MLMs to ask for $10,000 starter kits, so that public opinion may be turning on MLM there. MLMs know they are scamming people. Asking questions about MLM can get you terminated, and it results in them joining anti-MLM.
Part 6: Leaving an MLM
Talented Ladies Club: entertains people with educational business content, and her anti-MLM message is just part of that. She presented a great video presentation that I will be posted on YouTube, but ultimately encourages someone currently in MLM to make a simple profit & loss statement and to leave if they aren't making money.
Alanda Carter (Recovering Hunbot,) & Roberta Blevins (featured in LuLaRich,)- People need to know they not alone when they are leaving MLM. 79% of people felt shame in leaving their MLM, 98% would not do it again. 59% saw MLM as a scam they couldn't involve anyone else in. 42% said the thing that helped them the most was true stories of others in MLM. 82% said they had been given a step by step plan that could be exactly copied to become rich. People still in the MLM often feel bullied. Contracts have been cancelled for speaking out against others in the MLM being mistreated. Sam from LuLaRich has a court date coming up this summer. MLM leaves people psychologically damaged. We need to be patients with ourselves when we get out of MLM. All MLMs are basically authority cults. To get the FTC to look into a specific MLM, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Steve Hassan (creator of BITE model) - It is important to keep the door open to people within MLM. Possibility: get a financial advisor to "help" them in the MLM. "Identity interruption" is in the DSM 5. There can be negative psychological impacts after leaving a cult. He has an "influence continuum." Leaving cults is hard because of family and friends in the cults. We should respect that we are all a unique expression of God. Being too empathetic can lead to burnout.
(Note: there was a lot of problematic association of Trump supporters and LDS being in cults in this session. The day before Blye Pagon Faust tried to explain LDS beliefs about paying more tithing in order to get a higher rank in the LDS church* as making them feel like they had to "be successful," using the first use of the phrase "affinity fraud" in the conference. It seems like we LDS have a PR problem from hell here if we don't distance ourselves formally and specifically from MLM.)
My immediate take away from this conference:
Pyramid Schemes (PS) have a 90% chance of you losing money, while MLM have a 99% chance. PS don't fit the BITE model, but MLMs do. The FTC wants to pursue MLM for deceptive practices rather than for being a PS. PS rip you of one time, while MLM tries get you to be a "grinder" causing much more financial and social damage over your lifetime. PS don't use the UN and WTO to force their way into developing economies like MLMs do. Are the MLM Gurus right about MLMs not being Pyramid Schemes? Are MLMs instead something far worse than Pyramid Schemes?
*Fausts take on LDS tithing had good intentions, but from an insider POV doesn't hold water for the following reasons:
It's an all volunteer organization and it doesn't make much sense to want more responsibility in it. People who want to be promoted in the Church for social status are called things like "aspirerers" and are generally considered by most other members to not have a life.
What does get you promoted within The Church is higher ranking church members feeling that you can be relied upon because you have: a stable and happy home life, a devout spouse, tolerance for giving up your free time for serving The Church, a love for people, popularity, good personal ethics, and good people skills. Income does play a factor in having a happy home life, so Faust is indirectly not-wrong here. This is why self-depreciating humor is so common with LDS is because we are NOT trying to get volunteered for greater responsibility within the organization.
True story: when I was in the Skyway Ward of the Kent stake, I would play single-player Poker on my Linux netbook in the church lobby when waiting for others to get done with meetings. I successfully avoided any official church duties this way for years. Unfortunately they discovered that my gambling problem was fake AF and I ended up serving a year or two in the Elder's Quorum Presidency (a non-trivial time commitment.)
I am concerned about the threat MLM poses to the economy in the USA and the global economy as well. In the third world MLMs are turning microloan opportunities for the developing world into pyramid-scam garbage. The pyramid scheme advocacy lobbying group called the "Direct Selling Association" says MLMs did 34 billion dollars of business in 2018, and that same year total box office revenues were around 40 billion dollars (so that it's safe to same MLMs probably made more money than the global movie industry did over the pandemic.)
That is a whole lot of money going up in smoke. That money could be better used anywhere else besides MLM, regardless of how we look at it from individual household to the entire global economy. In a time when our economy has needed that money the most, it is instead being turned into family destruction and shady bank accounts.
But perhaps even worse, MLM wrecks potential entrepreneurs. Regardless if you are a Socialist or a Libertarian, everyone agrees small business is a good thing and the primary source of employment. Everyone who falls for an MLM was enticed by the idea of being an entrepreneur. Once in the MLM they are not going to have the resources they need to start a real small business, and once they get out their heads will then be filled with bad business advice from MLM and self-doubt.
It seems to me that we have here a crisis of education. If we as a civilization value business so much, how come enough business topics aren't covered in basic GED-level education to prevent someone for falling for a scam so obvious as an MLM? The best K-12 program for teaching business right now is not-nothing, but it is an optional after-school club:
So injecting enough business education into basic education to be able to put together a decent business plan is probably not realistic. But in our world of barrages of scam phone calls and shady e-mail offers, we should provide some kind of education to prevent harm from scammery. There are lots of scams out there similar to MLM like other ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes and exist schemes, as well as tons of MLM adjacent scams like fake business gurus, motivational speakers posing as business experts, etc.
But I doubt we are going to see this kind of education reform any time soon. So then my question is what is the best way the anti-MLM community can educate the general public about scammery? One is a board game called "Boss Babe The Game" which does us the favor of focusing on the problem of MLM generally and related issues around market saturation key to understanding pyramid and Ponzi schemes in general:
There have been some good documentaries on MLM, including Betting On Zero about Herbalife and LuLaRich about LuLaRoe. There is a hilarious fake MLM group on facebook that is great for showing the problems with MLM through humor. There's also now a wealth of good anti-MLM information on YouTube. All of these things are going in the right direction.
From an academic perspective I have noticed something over the course of the pandemic which I call Four Phase Change Cycles. First let's note that the human mind already categorizes seasonal changes this way:
Winter is a time of stasis, were we huddle down and live off of stored resources, brutally enduring the status quo whatever that may be.
Spring is a new time of opportunity, were we are able to go out and explore the changes that may have happened while we were hiding in Winter.
Summer is when we are following through on our best opportunities we discovered in the Spring, and discarding the others.
Fall is when we finish up our year's work. Harvest time is when we collect the bounty that we previously worked for. This prepares us to survive another Winter.
The most obvious Four Phase Change Cycle is the "OODA Loop." OODA loops were discovered as the US Military learned to train fighter pilots better, and this same OODA Loop concept is now sometimes used to train other types of soldiers, police and security. OODA Loops give us a model for how humans make split second decisions:
Observe: this is status quo, just paying attention to what is going on in your environment.
Orient: when a threat emerges in your environment, you consider the implications this for has you.
Decide: this is when you decide what you are going to do about the threat.
Act: this is when you react to the threat.
Three points about OODA Loops. First in an emergent situation it is important to be able to course correct quickly based on new information: when fighting against an opponent whoever is making decisions faster will have an advantage, because the chaos of combat requires us to adapt quickly, or in other words "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Second the number one job of training is to make your OODA Loops faster: if you have trained a low kick thousands of times, you don't have to think about how to do the low kick once you have decided that's what you need to do. Third is that in a split second decision, the Winter or "status quo" is observe, Spring or "new opportunity" is Orient, Summer or "following through" is Decide, and Fall or "harvest" is Act.
But this also applies to group development. "Tuckman's Stages of Change" identifies four inevitable phases a group will go through in order to do a job effectively for a any real length of time:
Forming is the honeymoon phase where everyone is polite and tries to stay out of each other's way.
Storming is the choas that happens when people get comfortable enough to start being really honest with each other about their disagreements and personality differences.
Norming is when the group creates ground rules and processes to get things done as they resolve disagreements and determine what issues have to be compromised on.
Performing is the amazing work a group that has been through the first three stages together can get done.
BEWARE THE NAYSAYERS who want to add extra phases to this. For example people want to end an "adjourning" phase, but that is delusional because when groups terminate it is usually with very little warning. Beyond that it is more likely a Performing group will have new membership throwing them back into the Forming stage than it is that the group will terminate. These change cycles evolve their subject.
And I will go one step further than all of the above and dare say that the Transtheoretical Model of Change, also known as "stages of change" in addictions counseling, also only has 4 phases:
Maintenance: status quo, whatever your habits already are.
Contemplation: you realize one of you habits is bad and it needs to go.
Preparation: you put everything together you need to in order to get ready to quit.
Action: you stop your habit. When your habit has been stopped for a long time, you find yourself back in the Maintenance stage with a new status quo with healthier habits.
Some naysayers feel that "Maintenance" is a 5th stage and the 1st stage should be called "precontempaltion" (aka "denial.") However if we see you as a continuously evolving individual we do not define you buy your original bad habit. Instead we recognize you have moved on, possibly to quit another bad habit you have. Other naysayers want to say there is another stage called "relapse" which is just as irrelevant to this model as "adjourning" is to Tuckman's model above. (Of course things don't go smoothly, but that's exactly why adding another phase is a bad idea: complicating the model doesn't keep unexpected things from happening.)
And thus we see that coming from very different disciplines, humans generally construct and make effective use of models of change with four phases:
Winter: maintenance, forming, observe.
Spring: contemplation, storming, orient.
Summer: preparation, norming, decide.
Fall: action, performing, act.
I get impatient with people who develop a victim mindset from having unrealistic expectations for change. The world is rapidly becoming a better place but of course that is messy. Have some perspective.
Most striking martial arts intentionally develop effective wide-hook hand strikes as part of their curriculum. These are as fundamental to Choy Li Fut as jabs are to Boxing:
Mike Tyson was famous for powerful overhands and hooks. However one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time used these kind of punches as a core part of his effective strategy that often won by KO:
A lot of people on the internet criticize punches-that-are-not-straight-punches as "wide," "swinging wild," "sloppy," "hay makers" or "wind up punches." Here's an example of someone stereotyping all wide punches like this:
When emotion takes over technique is replaced by the body's natural attack mechanisms. When a fight escapes control of the judges and referee, what gets used are:
those wide punches used by Tyson and Fedor,
low kicks,
clinching and
grappling for position on the ground (without submission holds.)
I would add that these are legitimate techniques, so you can train to do them well. But are these the most important techniques to get good at to protect yourself in a street fight?
On Amazon in around 2006 I left a nasty review of "Under the Banner of Heaven" (UBH) by John Krauker. What is strange is people who read my critique of UBH reached out to me trying to correct my Mormonism, ignoring my critiques of the book. (I am sure I will enjoy the TV series based on his book because I love me some true crime drama, and because I have enjoyed related media like the series "Big Love.") Here I will regale you with that tale and then illustrate how my views have matured since then.
UBH attacks LDS as a whipping boy for organized religion, using fringe cases of murder by extremists Mormons who aren't even LDS. Krauker blames LDS by way of association for these criminal actions, digging up Mountain Meadows Massacre drama, ignoring the historical context of how violent the Old West was in general. And he absolutely follows that up with anti-theist rants that struck me as somewhat Islamophobic when I read this book back in 2006-ish.
After reading my review a sad man e-mailed me complaining about my review of UBH. LDS was bad because a friend of his had to sell space on her body for a tattoo artist to practice when a bishop wouldn't help her with rent money. (It was the Problem of Evil applied to LDS specifically: if God is Good, and God made Everything, how come Evil exists?) The sad man asked me how I dare defend such a violent religion, and complained that the LDS religion destroyed his family. The sad man's wife didn't leave him exclusively because of his abandoning of his faith, but apparently he wanted a lot of other things to change about their lifestyle and the wife and kids were not having that.
So I replied to the sad man,"you say God could not have a church where in some cases it does not work as well as advertised for families, or a church where leaders make mistakes. But in school I have studied numerous global human services problems, and the one that haunts me is child soldiers in Africa. Those kids are forced to kill their own family members in front of the rest of their village so that they can never return, and then are used as sex slaves for that army until they are old enough to use an AK-47. If we can have a God that would allow something like that to happen, then I think that same God could have a Church with flawed leaders and flawed members." His reply expressed disgust for my my cynicism, and the conversation ended when I sent him the lyrics of this song:
LDS believe in the REAL divine, whatever that may be, and we do dare name that divine "Jesus." We live in the world we do, and it is a dark place. Jesus may have a very different value system from the rest of humanity. Or at least that's how I saw it then.
A few years ago I became interested in LDS apologetics because I had a younger friend who was interested in LDS and I thought he deserved betters answers than my dark rivethead views on life. Kwaku El on YouTube pointed out something I had always known about LDS but I didn't realize the philosophical significance of before: the LDS reject entirely the premise of Ex Nihilo.
Ex Nihilo is the belief that God makes things out of nothing. The problem is ancient peoples never experienced anything like that, and never believed anything like that: everything that was created in the ancient world was created from other raw materials. Ex Nihilo wasn't even formalized until the 2nd Century AD, so that none of the Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Romans, Philistines or anyone else you read about in the Bible ever actually believed that God "created the universe out of nothing."
The actual belief is that 1st century Christians and others at their time or before had was that God created the universe out of chaotic unorganized matter. LDS see all of humanity as "children of God," so that our mortal existence is part of an ongoing act of creation, as we become more God-like through trying to be better people and through our eventual Resurrection from death. Life is then an ongoing battle between God and chaos.
As someone with a lefty activist background, I never really identified with the "warrior codes" (Chivalry, Bushido, etc.) found in the martial arts, because I didn't see myself as a warrior, but as part of a resistance against oppression. But seeing Kwaku El's point here helps me appreciate the role of the warrior, because we like God fight to establish the order we desire in a chaotic and unforgiving universe. The world is indeed a dark place, but that's not God's fault.
So again I reject Krauker's anti-thesim in UBH. In Tai Chi we realize that when things are good it is time to watch out for vulnerabilities, but when times are bad it's time to search for and exploit opportunities. A dark chaotic world is an opportunity for us to create the world WE want to have, and we do so primarily by choosing what rules we want to live by. You may not like the can-of-answers that is the LDS religion, but your contempt for my empowerment sounds like a you problem.
"Sham Focus" is focusing on the fact that MLM is a sham first, before being distracted by other annoyances (cult overtones, personal health consequences, poor product value, etc.) For those who don't understand why MLM doesn't work, every MLM ever has convincing arguments as to why their specific MLM is not like the others. Thanks to a Trump endorsement, ACN did significant financial and reputation damage to multiple people I know after those same people had already sworn off other MLMs:
Part of why I was able to get out of Herbalife in the 90's as quickly as I did was that I did not recruit downline. A few of my friends warned me I was getting involved in a "Pyramid Scheme," even as other friends were trying to join my downline. However, once I was out of Herbalife I didn't really understand what was wrong with MLM until I ran into an endless-chain-scheme that worked in 3 phases:
I read an advertisement in the paper which read "turnkey mail order business, send self addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to [a post office box.]"
I got a convincing letter back in my SASE that said if I send them just $10 they will send me a package that will get me started in the business.
In return for my $10 was the final "package," another letter that read: including the final letter I was now reading, the first letter I received in my SASE, and the advertisement I originally read in the paper, I now had everything I needed to run my own turn key mail order business.
Obviously there was no way for that business to work because sooner or later if everyone who lost $10 started pulling the same sham, they would eventually run out of people gullible enough to fall for it. Understanding this endless chain scheme helped me see why MLM does not work and thus avoid any further participation in MLM. I challenge you and your friends to openly discuss the following:
Why don't you send money or bank account information to a Prince who contacted you randomly by e-mail?
What is "Affinity Fraud" and why should you avoid it?
What is an Exit Scam?
What is a Ponzi Scheme?
What is the difference between an Endless Chain Scheme and a Pyramid Scheme?
What would you have to do to "legalize" a scam in order to get away with it and avoid prosecution?
How would "legalization" of a scam impact that scam's victims?
What is the difference in risks between owning stock through an Index Fund, vs investing your time and money in a semi-legalized pyramid scheme (MLM)?
How does the risk of participation in MLM compare to the risk of participating in an illicit pyramid scheme or gambling at a casino?
Why are people who are interested in real business concerned about "market saturation?"
However most of us are not going to get together to discuss THAT over the weekend. Here are some other strategies I have seen that I like for getting hip to the MLM sham:
Balls Falls Ostrich Egg Consultants is a spoof MLM that illustrates what is wrong with MLM through humor. Right now I believe it is mostly good for keeping people from joining new MLMs after they got out of previous ones, but their proselytizing of Balls Falls Ostriches is a notable example of reaching out to people caught up in scammery.
I have a strategy for undermining the MLM mindset by building on the victim's doubts regarding their upline and downline. My "How to Succeed at Network Marketing" ploy aims to educate the MLM victim regarding market saturation and what a legitimate business model might look like.
Encourage anyone considering joining an MLM to make a business plan considering both time and money they will be spending to participate in the MLM. Ask "could you possibly become financially independent doing this direct selling without recruiting others? Considering that others are being recruited to sell the same thing in your social network and community, how much of this stuff do you think you can actually sell month after month?"
Ask anyone currently in MLM to keep financial records of all time and money spent on the MLM, and have them go over their records with you. Help them include anything they have forgotten in their records, including the cost of training, inventory, travel and how much they value their own time they could have spent not doing the MLM. When they see issues, explain to them the problem is the corrupt business model, not their lack of effort or ability.
VanDruffs "What's Wrong With Muti-Level Marketing?" is the document that recruited me to the cause of anti-MLM in the 90's, long before Reddit ever existed. It does a great job of putting the problem of MLM being a sham first, before explaining their other annoyances regarding MLM.
There are a lot of good YouTube videos regarding MLM now that emphasize the fundamental business problems with MLM. I think this one video helps illustrate the problem faster than anything else:
I hypothesize there have been two main stages of Martial Arts Evolution so far (1.0 and 2.0,) and we are now moving into a 3rd stage (3.0.) First understand that children wrestle and swing sticks at each other in mock battles naturally without adult supervision. Free sparring is fun and natural and anthropologically speaking probably predates formal martial arts training. Martial arts that do NOT have free sparring have degenerated into incomplete (0.?) martial arts. These incomplete martial arts are usually based on older arts that did have free sparring.
Martial Arts 1.0: Traditional Martial Arts
Martial Arts that have been around a long time and have a systematized form of free sparring are what I would call the first generation of complete martial arts, or Martial Arts 1.0. This includes Fencing, Wrestling, and many Eastern Martial Arts. These Traditional Martial Arts have curriculum driven by two main factors:
Tradition - often based on drills taught to soldiers for life and death combat, techniques continue to be studied even when considered obsolete by modern soldiers.
What works in free sparring with other people studying the same martial art.
In the 80's and 90's people experimented with full contact competition rules that would work for different Traditional Martial Arts to compete against each other. The Martial Arts that competed in these kind of competitions were influenced by other styles, and new Martial Arts formed based on that mindset of training. Examples of these kind of competition formats and styles include Combat Sambo, San Shou, Pankration, etc.
Martial Arts 2.0 curriculum is based on two main factors:
The strategies inherited from the multiple Traditional Martial Arts that the individual Martial Art 2.0 was based on.
What works when competing against other styles of martial arts.
A great example of Martial Arts 2.0 is Kudo (Judo augmented with Karate):
Martial Arts 3.0: Evolved Self Defense
We are now in an era of the evolution of martial arts where Martial Arts 2.0 has been around a while. Thanks to social media like Facebook and YouTube, martial arts consumers are able to learn a lot about the downsides of martial arts training before they get involved. In fact there seem to be Seven Deadly Sins of martial arts including:
Neglecting Beginners: is failing to get real skill into the hands of new students quickly enough. This is often giving beginners too much to practice, so that they don't get good enough at any one skill set to use in self defense while still beginners.
Over Specializing: is focusing on one specific type of self defense technique while neglecting other import types of self defense training. For example some styles focus almost exclusively on high kicks while neglecting other strikes, take down defense, knife attacks and situational awareness.
Neglecting Sparring: is not having enough free sparring. Usually being Evolved Self Defense will require a martial art to have multiple forms of free sparring instead of focusing on sparring with only one set of rules.
Over Training: is putting performance ahead of safety. Combat sports for example are notorious for seriously injuring people while preparing for fights or while fighting in fights.
Ignoring Consequences: is ignorance of legal needs of today's martial arts consumer. Just because ground-and-pound is a good idea in the cage doesn't mean that it is a good way to stay out of prison.
Assuming Enforcement: is misapplying strategies for police, security and military to civilian martial arts consumers. Most martial arts consumers need to focus on personal safety rather than enforcing rules.
Neglecting Weapons: failure to train for dealing with improvised weapons (especially knives.) Contrary to what you see in the movies, knives and other improvised weapons present both a self defense opportunity and personal safety threat to most martial arts consumers much more often than firearms.
It doesn't take long for the potential martial arts student to figure out what is available to them could take too long to learn to be worth their time, make their life a lot worse through training related injury, not actually work at all, potentially land them in prison, give them bad habits for a real self defense situation or ignore basic self defense scenarios people are likely to encounter such as a knife attack. As time goes on, Martial Arts 3.0 curriculum is likely to be based on:
Techniques and strategies from Martial Arts 1.0 and Martial Arts 2.0.
Fixing the above Seven Deadly Sins with the martial arts training already available.
Christopher Hein teaches a form of Aikido augmented by his experiences in other internal martial arts, training in MMA, participation in Dog Brothers, and careful examination of what his Aikido students really needed. Hein's Dojo (Fresno Aikido) appears to be teaching a form of Martial Arts 3.0, Evolved Self Defense:
It's time for martial arts consumers to think deeply about what we do and do not want out of martial arts training. One possible exercise is to think about what changes a martial art would need to make in order to become Evolved Self Defense. For example I did such a thought experiment with Brazillian Jiu Jitsu here: https://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/2021/06/how-to-fix-bjj.html
