Author: Andy Uyboco

Last week, I gave a general view of network marketing or multi-level marketing (MLM), and showed why it was a legitimate, and even brilliant, business model. Yet it has also gained an unsavory reputation because of two reasons, one of which I will discuss in this article.

There have been many instances where unscrupulous people have used the MLM method to perpetuate illegal schemes — the most famous of which is called the pyramid scheme. Until today, many people still interchange the terms “MLM” with “pyramid”, as if the two were one and the same. But one is a legal way of doing business while the other is not.

Anatomy of a Pyramid

In the late 1990’s, a friend of mine approached me with a piece of paper that had some colored diagrams on it. He then explained that if I invested a certain amount, I think around P10,000, then I can recruit some more people who will also pay P10,000 and I will earn some commission from these recruits. “Just invite 3 and you will have earned back the P10,000 you invested,” was the promise. And then, if these new recruits of mine go recruit more of their friends, and their friends recruit their friends, and so on until the 5th or 6th generation, then I will hit the jackpot and earn something like a million pesos.

At that time, I was fresh out of college, a neophyte high school teacher, and almost a complete idiot regarding finances and business. Also, this concept was pretty new to me so I consulted a friend about it. He didn’t know what to make of it then but said it sounded fishy so he told me to be on the safe side and not jump into it. I followed his advice and I’m glad I did because that was the perfect example of a pyramid scheme.

The FBI website warns against pyramid schemes in this manner: “The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by the sale of new distributorships. Emphasis on selling franchises rather than the product eventually leads to a point where the supply of potential investors is exhausted and the pyramid collapses.”

In other words, if a company’s marketing plan puts much of its emphasis on recruitment bonuses and how much you can earn when new downlines come in, be very wary and on your guard. Pyramids used to be very blatant, demanding that you put money up front for no product at all, simply an “investment.” However, because of the many scams that have hit the news time and again, more people have become aware of these schemes. So the schemers have created token products to avoid people saying they have no product. Yet, if their emphasis is still on earning via recruitment bonuses, then it is still running on a pyramid model and will eventually collapse.

In a legitimate MLM, the goal is not simply to make money off new recruits (in fact, some MLMs do away with this “joining commission” altogether) — the goal is to create a large network of satisfied users and sellers of your company’s products. For example, if you have a large organization of around 10,000 users and you earn an average of P10 for products that they buy from the company, then you have just earned P100,000. Of course, it takes a lot of time, effort and skills to build an organization of 10,000 distributors, but so does earning P100,000 in any other venture.

With this in mind, it makes perfect sense that a lot of the most successful MLM companies in the world sell products which are consumable, or have a wide range of products, where income is not dependent only on the purchase of a “Starter package” but on subsequent, regular and repeated purchases and sales of goods.

Be wary when a company promises “no selling.” That is almost a sure sign that it’s a scam of some sort. A legitimate company will never promise that you don’t have to sell. You will, in fact, have to learn how to sell and you will have to come to love to sell if you want to be successful in MLM, and a good company will provide the appropriate trainings and seminars in order to equip you to do well in it.

So I hope you have now learned to differentiate between a legitimate MLM and a pyramid scheme.

Next week, we’ll discuss some questionable and unethical practices of MLM distributors.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Violent Reactions? Send me an email at andy@freethinking.me. View past articles at www.freethinking.me.

I’m sure many of you have experienced this: A friend or passing acquaintance gets in touch and wants to meet you. Some will say it’s only for coffee. Others will make some vague reference to a possible business venture. Whatever it is, you show up, and discover that person is drawing circles on a piece of paper, is talking about too-good-to-be-true income, and recruiting you into a network marketing business.

Network marketing is also called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) or simply, “networking” — although “networking” is also used to mean a business activity where one meets other people to generate contacts. So to avoid confusion, I will simply refer to it as MLM.

Some people curse MLM and call it a scam. They don’t want to have anything to do with it and they look at its members as liars and deceivers. Of course, those who are involved in it, the “true believers,” would claim that they are doing legitimate business and they would bring out proof like being registered with the SEC, their longevity as a company, and so on.

So what is the truth? As with most things, it is not a plain “Yes, it’s a scam” or “No, it’s not”  answer, but lies somewhere in between. This is my experience: I and my wife joined an MLM company 15 years ago. In 6 short months, we had achieved the top rung of our company’s “Ladder of Success” which entitled us to maximum rebates and overriding bonuses. However, I left the company after two years. Having seen the inner workings of the business, I came to a realization that my personality, inclinations and talents were not the best fit for it. I left with no animosity. I’m still a legitimate “manager” of that company. I still purchase products for personal consumption, and I still get discounts and rebates when I do.

My intention in writing this is not to turn you into MLM fans, nor to make you anti-MLMers. I simply want to share my insights and experiences, as a disinterested third-party. I have no hidden agenda other than to provide you with a better understanding and information of what MLM is — for two reasons:

1) So that you will not think that all MLMers are scammers just out to get your money. I still have many friends who are doing MLM in a legitimate and ethical way and it pains me to see them unfairly lumped together with known scammers.

and

2) So that you will not readily swallow everything an MLMer says. Some MLMers have a tendency to exaggerate or misrepresent what the business is all about. If you are thinking about joining an MLM company, I hope to provide a rational guide in making a sound decision on whether this is for you or not.

So first of all, what is MLM?

In its simplest form, MLM is a modification of direct selling. In direct selling, if I sell product A, I get a commission and earn money. In MLM, if you recruit me to join your organization, and I sell product A, I get a commission, and you get what is called an overriding commission (the terminologies may be different depending on what company you’re exposed to, but the ideas are mostly the same — also, if you are the recruiter you are called the sponsor or “upline” and I am called the “downline”). To extend the analogy further, if I recruit my friend Adam as my downline, and he sells product A, he gets a commission, and you and I get overriding bonuses as his uplines.

Because of this, I sometimes refer to MLM as direct selling on steroids.

The basic concept is that given a large enough organization, I can make decent money on overrides. That is what drives MLMers to constantly keep recruiting people and training them to go out and recruit some more. There is nothing wrong with this practice. Insurance managers do this all the time, recruiting agents and training them to sell, and then earning overrides when they do.

Some companies offer recruitment bonuses, giving you extra rewards when you grow your organization like when you personally sign up a new distributor into your group. This is most popular in binary-type MLMs. You get additional pay when you meet a certain criteria, like getting a pair of new distributors on your left leg and right leg. Again, nothing wrong with this. It is a legitimate way of attracting people to join your business. It is not that different from a “signing bonus” that some companies offer to people they want to hire.

So where’s the scam?

I hope I have established by now that MLM by itself is neither good nor bad. It is simply a way of distributing products and it is a marketing strategy. In fact, I would even say that it is a brilliant concept that utilizes peer-selling and word-of-mouth endorsement.

Unfortunately this idea has been marred by two things:

1) Questionable/unethical practices of distributors

2) Using the MLM concept to perpetuate illegal schemes

More on this next week.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Violent Reactions? Send me an email at andy@freethinking.me. View past articles at www.freethinking.me.

 

Amidst protests from various religious sectors, the Department of Education has announced that it will release a new vision statement, despite only having revised it recently. The issue traces its roots back to when the Filipino Freethinkers (FF) wrote to DepEd last February 2013, protesting the wording of the previous statement which said “By 2030, DepEd is globally recognized for good governance and for developing functionally-literate and God-loving Filipinos.”

According to FF, this is a clear violation of  the principle of secularism as it “enshrines theism as a preferred belief system and imply that those who do not subscribe to belief in a deity are at best second-class citizens who have flawed or incomplete values.”

Seemingly in response to that, DepEd recently released a new vision statement which states “We dream of Filipinos who passionately love their country and whose values and competencies enable them to realize their full potential and contribute meaningfully to building the nation. As a learner-centered public institution, the Department of Education continuously improves itself to better serve its stakeholders.” This change elicited strong reactions from different religious communities.

“This small minority has some nerve trying to speak for all Filipinos. If they do not want God, that is their problem, but majority of Filipinos believe in God and we have to shout louder and show them our numbers,” wrote Reverend Sye  D. Sins of the Winning Christ Church.

“This is the beginning of the end. When you remove Brahma from your life, evil things will follow. This is bad karma,” wrote Rajesh Chotrani of the Hindu Society of the Philippines.

On the other hand, the DepEd also received a complaint from the Philippine Fellowship of Isis stating, “We decry both atheism and sexism. Not only should you bring back God-loving but also include Goddess-loving for those of us who worship the Divine Mother.”

There was also a handwritten letter with dark-red ink, whom some suspect to be dried blood, from the Secret Satanic Society of the Philippines, “How about Satanists? DepEd should include Satan-loving also for us. We want to educate people about Satan as he has often been unfairly portrayed as evil. That is certainly not true. Demanding God-loving or non-God-loving is both offensive to us.”

Meanwhile, Red Tani, president of the Filipino Freethinkers said in a recent video podcast (see video below), “We are not trying to remove God or impose atheism. In fact, if the constitution were to have a clause forcing people to be atheists, we would be against that as well. We are simply ensuring that DepEd does not violate any constitutional provisions by favoring one religion over another, or even religion over irreligion, as said by constitutional expert Fr. Joaquin Bernas.”

However, mounting pressure from hundreds of religious groups all over the country have taken their toll on Department Secretary Armin Luistro, who released a statement saying “When we revised the vision, we did so in the spirit of fairness to the other religious and even non-religious in the country. However, our office has now been literally flooded with letters of complaints, suggestions, and even threats. Our staff are working overtime to process these letters and emails as well. Almost every religious group has written in with their official statements on the matter demanding action from us.

Of course, as a national institution, we try as much as possible to weigh the different options available to us, and in the end, we have decided to once again revise our vision statement to appease everyone concerned. It is not yet in its final form as our committee is still reviewing it to see if we have left anything out. But we can already release the working copy to the media, and even in this form, I hope there will be no more complaints that we are no longer a God-loving institution.”

This is the working copy of the new vision statement of the Department of Education:

“We dream of Filipinos who passionately love their country, who are functionally literate, can think critically, and for those so inclined, be God-loving, Goddess-loving, Allah-loving, Brahma-loving, Shiva-loving, Vishnu-loving, Zeus-loving, Isis-loving, Satan-loving, Buddha-loving, Jesus-loving, Aphrodite-loving, Yahweh-loving, Na Tu Kong-loving, Bathala-loving, Baal-loving, Bast-loving, Ra-loving, Dagon-loving, Odin-loving, Jupiter-loving, Shangdi-loving, Lakapati-loving, Quetzalcotl-loving, Coyolxauhqui-loving, Ah Peku-loving, Kamilaroi-loving, Bundjalong-loving, Colel Cab-loving, Cthulhu-loving, Quiboloy-loving, Flying Spaghetti Monster-loving…”

The final copy of the vision statement will be officially published once DepEd has finished including all the deities of all religious groups in the Philippines, no matter how small, to ensure that no one is left out.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Send me your thoughts at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me. And to those who are wondering, yes, this IS satire with some smattering of fact scattered here and there. Religious organizations and characters mentioned are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental and unintentional.

If you are based in Davao City, you are invited to join the next Filipino Freethinkers Davao Meetup on September 6, Saturday, 7:30PM at Cafe Demitasse, F. Torres St., Davao City. Topic: The Pursuit of Immortality – A Secular Perspective; Speaker: Mr. Arnold Vandenbroeck. 

In a previous article, A Second Look At Biblical Inerrancy, I promised to tackle the resurrection of Jesus in my next article, which was last week. However, that was the week Robin Williams died so that article took a back seat while I wrote a tribute to an actor who played a role that made a major impact in my life.

So to get back on the topic, let me do a quick recap. The previous article dealt with inconsistencies in the details of the resurrection of the four gospels in the Bible. A reader wrote in to say that there may have been inconsistencies, but they were all unanimous in stating that there was indeed a resurrection — and that was the most important point. I responded then that my goal was not to prove or disprove the resurrection but to show that it is erroneous to claim biblical inerrancy, for how can four different accounts be inerrant? They cannot all be right. That is but a logical conclusion.

So now, let’s go to the reader’s other point: was there indeed a resurrection?

There are many ways to approach this question and I have read a good number of literature from both sides of the fence. That being said, there is no way I am going to make a comprehensive case for or against the resurrection in an 800-word article as different scholars have written whole books on this subject alone.

Instead, what I will attempt now is a simple argument for the layperson, someone who is not well-versed in the deeper issues, and doesn’t need to be (at this point). If you are the scholarly type, I’m sure you have answers to my arguments and you’re more than welcome to write me and discuss those with me and maybe I will devote a future article focusing on your particular argument.

For now, let me begin with this phrase popularized by the late Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

For example, if I tell you that I met with a couple of friends from Manila last week, you would probably not have any reason to doubt that statement. It is normal to have friends from other places. Manila is an actual place and last week is a reasonable time to have met them. If you do challenge me, I could just show you my Facebook page where I posted a selfie with these friends and that would be the end of it. You probably would not allege that I edited that picture and that it’s fake, because there is no apparent reason for me to do so. It is an ordinary claim, hence ordinary evidence will suffice to make it believable.

However, if I were to claim that I had dinner with Robin Williams (yes, the dead actor) last night, on the planet Saturn, you would be the most gullible person on earth if you believed that at face value. When I made such preposterous claims to my daughter when she was still 6 years old, even she would raise an eyebrow and say, “Oh yeah, Daddy? Prove it.”

But what if I showed you a photo of me and Robin Williams in a restaurant with a backdrop of what appears to be Saturn’s rings, would you believe me then? You still probably won’t because photos can be faked. What if I showed you a short video clip? Well, it’s a more difficult process, but videos can be faked as well. What if several people claim to have been there with me and witnessed the event? You probably wouldn’t believe them either and think it’s all an elaborate joke.

What makes the second claim so hard to believe? Well, it is an extraordinary claim and what I need to prove it is not just evidence but a preponderance of it, or in the words of a Philippine senator, a whole truckload of it.

Now, what do we have for the resurrection? We have the gospels as the principal accounts for it.

I have pointed out in the previous article, however, that the gospel writers were not eyewitnesses. They were simply relaying a story that has been told and retold thousands of times in the past few decades. Some people claim that the eyewitnesses were still around at the time the gospels were being circulated and could certainly verify or refute whatever was written.

But that is a dubious claim as it transmutes modern standards of life expectancy, literacy and literary circulation into ancient times. The earliest gospel, Mark, is dated at around 70 AD, forty years after Jesus’ supposed death. Historian J.D. Crossan has estimated that the average life expectancy during first century Palestine is 29 years. Biologist Caleb Finch seems to agree with this estimate although he gives a broader range of 20-35 years. That means that an eyewitness who was 20 years old during the crucifixion/resurrection event itself would most probably be dead by the time Mark came out.

Some would argue that it was entirely possible for them to have lived longer, and yes, I’m not saying it’s impossible. All I’m saying is it’s on the wrong side of the probability spectrum. Also, books weren’t published en masse as they were today. It took a lot of time for them to be copied by hand and more time to be circulated, and since the general public were mostly illiterate, they couldn’t read them anyway and could probably not have refuted them outright.

In his book, Sense and Goodness Without God, historian Richard Carrier notes “The early Roman Empire in particular was replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men were mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them. Skeptics and informed or critical minds were a small minority…This was an age of fables and wonder. Magic, miracles, ghosts were everywhere, and almost never doubted…this can be credited to the complete lack of any mass public education…and the lack of any mass media, or any organizations dedicated to investigating and getting at the truth and publishing the results.”

The gospels then are not unique in their tale of miracles and wonders. Even older tales and stories contain resurrection narratives. If one believes in the gospels, then why not these other tales as well?

With all that being said, the gospels themselves do not constitute the necessary preponderant and extraordinary evidence to conclude that an extraordinary event such as the resurrection of Jesus did indeed happen, and thus I am doubtful as to whether it really did. If the writer of Matthew could spin tales of a massive earthquake and dead people climbing out of their tombs to again walk the streets (Matt. 27:51) — an event that surprisingly no other contemporary historian writes about (not even the other gospel writers) — who knows what other tall tales he could conjure?

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Send me your thoughts at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

 

The one movie that perhaps has the greatest impact on my life is Dead Poets Society, where Robin Williams plays the part of Professor John Keating — a radical teacher in a school that valued tradition above all else.

My first encounter with it was in 1989 when my high school English teacher (whom I consider Mr. Keating’s real life counterpart), showed us the movie. He wheeled in a TV and Betamax player set, and around forty students crowded around it trying to see the action on the small screen and listen to the dialogue amidst the noisy chatter of some less-interested classmates. Needless to say, I didn’t really understand the story that first time and only had a very rough idea of it. But I was intrigued and wanted to watch it again when I had the chance.

I had that chance when I was in college, this time in the audio-visual room which was equipped with a large screen and better sound system. I came out inspired, even considering the possibility of being a teacher, one of the last things I would ever dream of doing.

My childhood classmates might probably remember that I was very quiet in class, but not because I wasn’t interested or didn’t want to participate. I had a huge problem. Like Todd Anderson, one of the characters in the movie, I stuttered badly when I talked in public and I was so embarrassed by it that I mostly kept to myself in class and would rarely volunteer to do anything that involved reciting or talking.

I watched, enraptured, as Mr. Keating broke the self-imposed mental barriers in Todd’s mind, and somehow I knew that the barriers in my mind were broken as well. When the characters shouted “Carpe Diem! Seize the Day!” I shouted along with them as well (in my mind, of course). There was a sense of exhilaration, joy and freedom and I knew then that I wanted to live a life like Mr. Keating’s — to inspire others to feel what I felt, to learn to trust themselves and experience their own greatness. I eventually did become a teacher.

My opening spiel on the first day of my first year as a teacher was a shameless copy of one of Mr. Keating’s lectures when he says, “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.And medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for.”

I also shamelessly copied the stunt of standing on the table to demonstrate that we should learn to look at things from other points of view. Later in the year, I showed them the movie and we all had a good laugh when they recognized what I did.

One of the best lessons in the movie was a courtyard scene. Mr. Keating asks three boys to walk around the courtyard. At first, they walk at their own pace, but pretty soon, they were marching in step with each other while the other students started clapping in rhythm. Mr. Keating jumps in to join the boys and starts chanting while the others echo his chants. Then he calls a halt to the entire activity. He then uses this example to show how easy it is for us to conform, and to want to conform to the status quo because of the pressures around us.

We may start out walking at our own pace, but eventually, unconsciously, we find that we are marching to a different drumbeat. We strive for standards of success that that others have set for us. We scramble towards goals and dreams that are not our own. We gravitate towards beliefs, customs, practices that others deem “normal” and “acceptable” even though we can’t understand why they are so. Against these, Mr. Keating warns, “Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, ‘That’s baaaaad!’ Robert Frost said, ‘Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.’” Indeed that one idea has made a very big difference in my life.

As I go through the different tributes and messages in the aftermath of the tragic news of Williams’ death, I see that people remember him for different reasons and different roles. To some, he is Patch Adams. To others, he is Peter Pan, or Mrs. Doubtfire, or Mork or Aladdin’s Genie, or one of many other roles that have touched people in one way or another.

But to me, he will always be O Captain, My Captain.

Farewell, and good journey.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Send me your thoughts at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.