MLM and Immanuel Kant

After Alvin Sim’s take on the naked truth about multi-level marketing (MLM), we received an interesting contribution from Christopher Ng Wai Chung, author of “Growing Your Tree of Prosperity”. We are privileged to have a glimpse from chapter 3 of his upcoming new book, “Harvesting the Fruits of Prosperity” which talks about some of the social ills that will deter you from building your economic wealth. Not surprising, MLM is one of those and Chris will tell you why it is related to the famous German philosopher, Immanuel Kant in a nutshell.

Contributed by Christopher Ng Wai Chung

What is wrong with MLM?

This segment of the book talks about multi-level marketing. Singaporeans should be very aware of what is wrong with MLM because MLM recruiters tend to be most active during bad times. The other problem is that MLM agents tend to be brain-washed by the techniques used by the marketers and often show many signs of true, uncompromising belief in their business system. People who live in modern societies should be inoculated from business schemes like MLM.

While many direct-selling schemes in Singapore are certainly legal, fundamental philosophical principles make MLM and similar schemes downright immoral. This can be traced to a very powerful philosophical concept known as Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative.

Kant’s idea is that if an act cannot be universalised as a maxim, it does not meet the basic requirement of being an ethical act. For example, if we can all steal from one other, a concept of personal property would no longer be valid. This makes stealing a logical contradiction. The same applies to the morality behind the murder of another human being. If we all kill each other, there would be no one left alive, making killing impossible. Thus killing and stealing are immoral acts by Kant’s analysis.

Now let us examine an MLM down-line. You recruit three people in your down-line and then they do the same thing ad-infinitum. The MLM people reason that you can become financially independent by doing this repeatedly with hard work and grit. As a hypothetical example, suppose we have a situation where everyone on planet earth were to be enrolled into this programme. It can be calculated mathematically that 2/3 of the world population would be feeding 1/3 of the world population through direct sales with no one else to recruit using this down-line system. Thus, MLM cannot be universalized by Kant’s categorical imperative as there will be no else that last 33% of the world population can market to. Therefore MLM, by Kant’s definition, is an immoral act.

If you can’t figure out the concepts mentioned here, just remember that you can reach financial independence without any assistance from MLM programs. Statistically, you are more likely to drop out without making much money throughout the process and you are much better off peddling curry puffs outside train stations.

About Christopher Ng Wai Chung: Christopher Ng Wai Chung ( B.Eng (Electrical Engineering) and MSc Applied Finance ) is risk averse and probably does not have the guts to be an entrepreneur, but he certainly respects those who can take a personal risk to make it big and build jobs in this country. His first book on personal finance “Growing your tree of prosperity” performed modestly in the bestsellers chart reaching number 9 in October 2006 and has lost $700 to date – his worst investment in 2006. Like many entrepreneurs who bank their personal pride on their businesses, he hopes “Harvesting the Fruits of Prosperity” his second book on reaching financial independence will actually break even.

His 2nd book, Harvesting the Fruits of Prosperity will be published in December. It details his personal journey to financial independence one year after the publication of his first book. Christopher does not dabble in multi-level marketing, is no sales-superstar, does not qualify to be a member of the elite in Singapore, and today still works as an IT project manager in a American multinational. This preview article comes from Chapter 3 of his second book.

He has recently published a blog entry in the famous Mr Wang Bakes Good Karma blog.

Editor’s Note: This article is copyrighted to Christopher Ng Wai Chung. If you seek to reproduce this article, please seek the author for further permission.

Comments