X-Message-Number: 4809
Date: 23 Aug 95 02:04:53 EDT
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: CRYONICS: MLM Heaven?
Dear Cryonics:
It's not my object to flame Peter Merel, but I do want to
point out why multi-level-marketing (MLM) schemes are the last
refuge of the tough-sell product, as well as the scoundrel. The
problem is that an MLM CAN make money for somebody, even without
ANY viable product, just like a chain letter or Ponzi scheme can.
Thus, many a product which nobody can really sell well directly
has been MLM'ed to make money for *somebody* who at least has
been able to convince a certain number of people that it OUGHT to
sell in a rational world. Heh.
An example near and dear to my heart is libertarianism.
Libertarianism is an attractive philosophy in many ways because
it offers "freedom." But there is one little problem with it
which results in a non-libertarian society: your neighbors aren't
really libertarians when it comes to you, only when it comes to
themselves. They don't really TRUST *you* with freedom. Also,
even when it comes to themselves, while they love freedom, they
would like to have it without any responsibility, and they will
take responsibility, if at all, only to the point that they hurt
themselves, after which they will scream "mommmmmy," and want to
take back any agreement they made as regards risk. Moreover,
when on juries, they will award money to people who scream
"mommmmy!" after taking dumb risks. This results in freedom
being lost very quickly, because of the golden rule of democracy:
People with the gold are going to make sure that as many
"protective" rules as are necessary will be made, in order to
prevent wealth from being taken from them in this fashion by
plaintiffs and juries.
Now all of this means that "libertarianism" as a practice is
very hard to sell to anyone with an IQ less than about 120 (i.e.,
most people), but this hasn't stopped libertarians from trying to
make a buck from this idea, anyway. Some of them publish
libertarian books, which are bought and read by libertarians (and
almost nobody else). One libertarian I know is not the
libertarian presidential candidate, BUT for a certain amount of
money he will sell YOU a kit of tapes and ideas which are a SURE
FIRE way to convince all your FRIENDS and NEIGHBORS to be
libertarians. Just send $59.95 or whatever to Mental Libertarian
Judo, Inc, or whatever the company name is. It reminds me of
those places where you can send $29.95 to learn the secret of how
to make money ;-9.
MLM is a sure clue to the fact that things are not going well
in the direct sales business. Have you ever seen an MLM for
socks or Pepsi, for example? I was recently told by a woman who
owns a dozen-year-old vitamin company that she knows of a great
many people who made squintillions in many fields of marketing,
and then lost their shirts when they entered the field of
prevention. I'm not surprised. Products which people need NOW
(beer or cigarettes or diapers or toothpaste-- 7-11 stuff) sell
well, and are easy to market. Stuff that requires "look ahead
time" is a much tougher sell, and that's why the MLMs. Even most
"nutritional" stuff like vitamins sells for purposes of looking
good (weight-loss, body building), and disease treatment, NOT
prevention.
Cryonics is a quintessential product which (as has been
pointed out ad nauseam) is one that you often don't need when you
might want it, and often don't want when you do need it. It's
also, by the way, a trouble about which unprepared people scream
"mommy" regularly in that brief and fleeting bit of time when
they realize they have been screwed by the universe and do need
cryonics protection, but don't have it and cannot get it. But
there have not hitherto been enough such people, and there hasn't
been enough total screaming that society has listened and
regulated the practice, so far. Thus, cryonics is still quite
libertarian, and it is just about as free of safety nets. It is
about as hard to convince people to contract with cryonics
providers as it is to get them to join the Libertarian party, and
for many of the same reasons. The same would be true of most
insurance companies but for the fact that most insurance is now
mandated by law, due to generations of lobbying screamers.
Remember what we said about the golden rule.
Mr. Merel probably knows the other reasons why cryonics is a
tough sell: It's not Tupperware. It requires not only a certain
philosophy and optimism, but also an unblinking look at one's own
mortality for the many hours necessary to complete the paperwork.
This, in a psychological environment where most people's mental
circuit breakers trip out after about 10 seconds of contemplating
their own dead bodies in the future, and what will be done with
them. Thus, signing up is not easy (even for scientific
materialists it represents a lot of mental circuit-breaker
re-sets. For most people, too many).
And finally, there is the real issue of intelligence. When I
read the mental-masturbation stuff about "uploading" from people
who are not themselves signed up with a cryonics organization, it
makes me think of Harlan Ellison's observation that the two most
common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. And
yet, is not quite right that to say that these people are stupid
in the conventional sense. Clearly, many of them are enormously
bright and creative people, like Minksy. Intelligence is not the
monolithic thing it's sometimes said to be, but rather it's a
whole collection of abilities, each of which may be missing or
present in any one person. Ironically it is Minksy himself who
has written most charmingly and convincingly about this. Minski,
then, is just being segmentally stupid about uploading vs
cryonics, even as conversely some people with far lower "IQs"
than Minski's have understood the basic problem of cryonics well
enough to have made arrangements to get suspended before they
needed to have them. One day, I predict Minski (or his family on
behalf of him) may scream "mommy." That's what most people do
eventually, bright or dumb. That's our nature, as still half-
animal beings with too-small frontal lobes, evolved in and
adapted to a short-future world very different than the one we've
built for ourselves these last paltry few millennia.
In any case, Mr. Merel, my bottom line message is the
recurring refrain from one of Pizer's poems in CRYONICS Magazine
of about 5 years back, addressed to those with monumental schemes
about how to sell cryonics to the world: "Yes, but are YOU signed
up, yet?" If you are, good for you-- but you may need to realize
that you are not LIKE other people in some weird mental-segmental
way, and thus selling them an idea that you took to easily may
not be the piece of cake you think it is, MLM or not. If you're
NOT signed up, on the other hand, that's a very valuable learning
state, since you can look to (into) yourself and come to know a
great deal about why most people aren't signed up, just by
examining very closely the reasons why YOU aren't (If you'll
learn the lesson, that is: every person seems to feel him or
herself unique here, I've discovered, and refuses to think that
other people's excuses are as good as his own). No, don't tell
us you're GOING to sign up-- that doesn't count. What counts is
actually having gone through with it. In terms of understanding,
that's worth any number of "Cheat Death Now; Ask Me How" badges.
You can construct an MLM for a product that won't sell at all, as
we said. But will you have done any good if you do?
Steve Harris
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