Post by Cory Doctorow
Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In *The Bezzle*, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you.
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As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.
A "bezzle" is #JohnKennethGalbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."
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In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer - but only the scammers are *actually* cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.
MLMs are particularly ugly, because the
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They necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.
It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are told to suck in friends and family by tel
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