LDS vs MLM

As I mentioned before on this blog I am both LDS and anti-MLM, and have been since the 1990's. In fact anti-MLM has played a major role in my religious path and my religious convictions contribute to my concerns about MLM. I am concerned about trend in the anti-MLM community to be anti-religions generally and more recently be producing media openly hostile towards LDS specifically.

As an activist myself I know how easy it is to get caught up in Black and White thinking. When the rest of society thinks everything is fine but your issue is being ignored, you have to make strong statements and take sides. For example when I was with Seattle Indymedia in the early 2000's and marching in anti-war protests, most Americans thought Iraq was full of weapons of mass destruction and invading Afghanistan was a fine idea indeed. Meanwhile at Seattle Indymedia we were looking at the photographs of blown up children that the main stream media at the time was ignoring. "Saddam Hussein is the worst threat facing his own people" was the talking media point at the time, ignoring what the "smart bombs" of George W. Bush's "shock and awe" had done to the people of Baghdad. Under those kind of circumstances you have to simplify your message, "War is Bad."

However it's easy to go from "War is Bad" to "all GOP candidates are bad because the GOP likes War," to "all people who vote GOP are bad because they are burning children alive in the middle east." It is not in fact true that someone or some organization is objectively evil because we don't agree with their ideology.

And War IS Bad, there is almost no upside whatsoever, peaceful resolution of conflict is preferable every time. In that same sense MLM IS Bad, it's a hard cold fleecing of the general public. People want to compare corporations they don't like to MLM, but this dilutes how problematic MLM actually is. Many despise Wal*Mart for their problematic labor practices and adverse effect on the local economy, but the upside is that community has access to a wider selection of cheaper goods. As problematic as Wal*Mart is, it can't be said to be a hard cold fleecing.

And in my view the most obvious social problem with the LDS religion is that like Wal*Mart a major expansion of our faith in your community may have economic ramifications. With mandates against alcohol and tobacco local breweries, vineyards, gas stations and restaurants could lose vital income. More importantly the donations to The Church don't necessarily stay inside your community as much as they would with local pastors doing their own thing. However I see the trade off with this in that our local clergy is all volunteer and thus not profit-motivated behind what they preach, our consistent involvement in disaster relief around the world, our preaching of tolerance, our encouragement of making good life choices (discouraging YOLO,) and a religious doctrine which facilitates each individual personally contacting and developing a relationship with divine rather than relying on professionals to do that for them.

However the dark side to LDS expansionism that-even-I-can-not-justify is Utah cultural influence of MLM. I have never lived in Utah and also find Utah culture slightly odd. However what anti-MLM activists need to know is that leaders of The Church in Salt Lake City are openly opposed to MLM. 

The problem is that Salt Lake Leadership has not called out MLM specifically by name, but have in general opposed "Affinity Fraud", to include all forms of scammery, including many things the anti-MLM community finds annoying: bad actors in the education industry, fake business gurus, all forms of ponzi and pyramid schemes, other financial scams and any form of "unwise investment": https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/official-statement/affinity-fraud

Yet MLMs are exceedingly effective and convincing both politicians and common voters that MLMs are not "Affinity Fraud." Can you imaginable how potent would it be if the leadership of The Church in Salt Lake City were to come out against Mutli-Level Marketing specifically? Pop LDS apologist Kwaku El has, and Mitt Romney almost spits in contempt when he mentions Trump's "Vitamin Network." MLM is incompatible with the prescribed LDS lifestyle in that it:

• Defines happiness as fundamentally about "success" and materialism.
• Is inherently dishonest.
• Encourages participation in MLM instead of other important life activities like pursuing education.
• Is notoriously bad for marriages.
• Is financially unsound. 

Salt Lake is notoriously difficult to influence by activists, but more recently they have taken an interest in lefty social issues. Dan Reynolds (lead singer of Imagine Dragons) is an LDS member who is an LBGT activist, specifically concerned with LGBT youth isolation from family members, homelessness and suicide, especially in Utah. When he organized a concert around this issue, he asked Salt Lake to support his effort, even though he expected strong opposition from them. Instead they not only fully endorsed the concert, they also mentioned they had recently approved a children's worship song that was relevant. The former LDS lead singer of Neon Trees and Reynolds sang that song at the concert: 

As an LDS activist I can tell you that ever since the LDS community was chased out of the USA at gunpoint the Salt Lake leadership has reacted very poorly to outsiders making broad negative generalizations about them. The anti-MLM community making hostile videos towards The Church generally is probably the very worst thing they can do to get The Church on board with anti-MLM. This is a lost opportunity for the anti-MLM community's agenda.

The Church is often the whipping boy for organized religion generally, as a sort of best-case-scenario to argue against organized religion (as in the South Park universe for example.) Anti-MLMers including myself will point out the naivete of religious people as a vulnerability that makes them susceptible to MLMs. However, this is exactly why the anti-MLM community should not be alienating believers in organized religion, because alienating our target audience makes it much harder for us to reach them: