was thinking the other day about how the franchise/MLM model is a metastization or evolution of the corporate model, in terms of liability avoidance.

• if, as some guy, you lie to your customers and sell them garbage telling them its gold, they can come after you directly and fuck you up for fraud.
• if, as the head of a corporation, you lie to your customers and sell them garbage telling them its gold, the corporation is convicted of fraud and your personal belongings are safe.
• if, as the head of an MLM/franchised organization, you train product ambassadors and franchisees to bullshit people in order to meet volume standards and purchase/re-sell your products as gold, your company can elide charges of fraud because it was the re-sellers fault, and they are their own independent little franchisees.

i don’t think it’s a coincidence that franchising and the “legal” MLM structure both came into their own in the US in the 1970s.