"Women Empowering Women". This
pyramid scheme is spreading like wildfire in the UK, with huge amounts of money involved. Basically you get a lot of people to put up say £100. The more people you attract to add money to the pyramid, the better chance you have of moving up and becoming entitled to many times your initial outlay. However, no investment occurs; this is simple cashflow juggling. Someone I work with gained £12000 on it in under a month - now everyone wants in the act. But (and I've pleaded with these people) the participants don't seem to appreciate the sheer idiocy of such schemes. Their attitude is "
my husband goes to the betting shop, it's just my bit of fun". In the end, if you gain money, you're taking it
directly from another participant. This is exploitation of people (normally hard-up, heavily mortgaged parents, it seems), is
morally wrong and should be illegal -
but it isn't in the UK. Here's
a link to a BBC feature on pyramid schemes (aka trading schemes). This
really boils my piss, but it carries on because individual participants can benefit from the fraud themselves. I understand women are targeted in this case as men are more likely to get in fights when they realise they've lost large amounts of cash.
posted by boneybaloney
on May 3, 2002 -
18 comments
Why Big Oil Backed The Fuel Protests In Europe -- "Watched from a distance, the oil blockades in Britain look like spontaneous popular uprisings: regular working folk, frightened for their livelihoods, getting together to say, "Enough's enough." But before this David and Goliath story goes any further, it deserves a closer reading...."
posted by johnb
on Sep 21, 2000 -
11 comments
