Boss Babes and Predatory Optimism: Neoliberalism, Multi-level Marketing Schemes, and Gender

Abstract:

Capitalism always depends on relentless sales efforts to battle against its endemic tendency toward a lack of effective demand. Multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs), which offer individuals the “opportunity” to earn income by becoming independent direct-to-consumer salespeople, emphasize and epitomize the optimism, meritocracy, and work ethic particular to our current stage of capitalism—neoliberalism. This research focuses on the co-evolution of multi-level marketing schemes and neoliberalism with a specific focus on their predation on women through “#BossBabe” rhetoric. Multi-level marketing schemes emerge from the tradition of traveling salesmen in the early twentieth century. Prior to WWII, women composed the minority of the door-to-door salesforce, their market primarily restricted to beauty products. After WWII, the number of women involved rose until women took over the majority of direct selling. Fed by the ideological imperatives of neoliberalism, growth of MLMs have increased dramatically since the 1980s, and exploded in the age of social media. Multi-level marketing schemes reinforce neoliberalism and exploit existing gender divides through faux-feminist rhetoric about female empowerment.

Keywords:

• neoliberalism
• prosperity gospel
• Veblenian social practices
• multi-level marketing
• Boss Babes

JEL Classification Codes:

• B52
• N32
• Z1

Notes

1 In personal correspondence Jacobsen confirmed she was unable to find any published research by feminist economists on direct sales or MLMs. Our own survey found a single article explaining that behavioral economics could construct an argument for why any rational person might participate in an MLM. See Liu 2018 which is mentioned for scholarly completeness rather than probity.

2 Taylor’s estimates are made using data from court cases, his own survey of tax preparers, and MLM companies' responses to FTC complaints

3 His study used a data set including 10,000 participants from seven MLM companies constructed by Pyramid Scheme Alert organization.

4 While early MLMs targeted women and continue to do so today, the endless need for new distributors to keep the scheme going has resulted in MLMs targeting other vulnerable groups, in particular Hispanics and unemployed individuals with student debt (Braun 2016). The AARP study also surveyed people who had never participated in an MLM, of those who refused to join a MLM, 60% said it was because they “thought the business was a scam” (DeLiema et al., 7–8).

5 See also Keep and Vander Nat (2014) and Vander Nat and Keep (2002).

6 Nathalie Luca (2011) in exploring MLMs in different cultural contexts, argued that the growth of MLMs depended on three cultural specific factors: the context of belief, the content of belief, and belief attitudes. We have chosen to use Veblenian social practices to explore these aspect of MLM culture.

7 Others have noted the PG has evolved with neoliberal ideology in a synergistic manner (Bromley 1995, 136).

8 Note that the myth of the entrepreneur has little to do with Schumpeter’s portrayal of individuals who invent new products or develop new processes for producing existing products, into the economy.

9 Getting internal materials from MLMs is difficult. Current distributors do not share them. They are copyrighted so they are not online. Private coaches sell books of techniques but they are not company specific. So the content of materials is only available when introduced as evidence in FTC actions, documentaries and newscasts, and testimonials of former distributors, unless you want to join an MLM.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary V. Wrenn

Mary V. Wrenn is a fierce independent scholar living in Bristol, UK. William Waller is a professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York.

William Waller

Mary V. Wrenn is a fierce independent scholar living in Bristol, UK. William Waller is a professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York.