People join MLMs because they’re tricked. And they stay because they’ve already sunk costs, MLMs are usually high-control groups, and latent indoctrination into the cultural remnants of Puritan doomsday ideology has trained them to blame themselves for failing and believe they can still succeed if they work harder. Eventually, though, no longer able to ignore their mounting debt, they quietly leave. By my best guesstimate, about half of the members of any destructive cult eventually leave. (This is why recruitment is so important.) That’s exactly the number of people who quit MLMs each year.
