When Will People Learn?

With compunction, I find myself obligated to revisit a matter previously discussed in this forum(http://musingsbymoffitt.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html) on April 26, 2006. The depth my societal responsibility mandates that I must look past the potential for offense against my closest family members (with apologies to my sister in law, an avid Sooner fan) and fulfill the mission thrust upon me. It is a thankless, oft o’er looked task but steeled is my resolve that I will accomplish it to the best of my ability. I can act no other way but captive to my conscience and thus, I press onward…

Bob Stoops, heralded coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, has run afoul of the law. Now before your imagination runs amok, he was not nabbed for illegal recruiting or for paying his players (that was last yearJ). No, much more egregiously, he bought into a pyramid scheme. Evidently, a salary of $3 million per year wasn’t enough money to spend in Norman, Oklahoma and live a pretty good life, so he got on board with a pyramid scheme involving music downloading. He says, “I did not see this as a money making opportunity. I invested because it was a way for my family and me to download music.” Further, Stoops said he was not aware it was a pyramid scheme but that, in total he “helped five or six other people sign up, all of whom are close personal friends or family members”. Bobby, a bit of free advice from me to you, I Tunes sells songs for 99 cents per song and, at $3 million per year, you can probably download enough music to fill up the I pods of your five or six close personal friends or family members.

Anyway, it would appear that my former diatribe on pyramid schemes largely fell on deaf ears and dim minds. Therefore I would be remiss to not again address this issue that plagues our society, yea even the wealthiest in our society. Thus, rendered freely is some of my invaluable time which could have been spent rearing young Samuel and rather I have put together a canon that should assist even the dullest member of humankind in the identification of pyramid schemes. Laminate, memorize, or otherwise store this forthcoming list for felicitously it will serve you. It is construed to be a pyramid scheme if:

1. An unsurpassed business opportunity comes your way and you need to sell the idea to five or six close personal friends and family.
2. The key point that caught your attention is that you can make more in one month than you do now in a year sitting in your pajamas, never leaving your home.
3. The conversation at your front door starts like this: “I’m raising money to go to camp this summer…”.
4. Someone tells you that you can get your set of knives for free if you convince five or six close personal friends and family to buy a set.
5. You have to buy $500 of worthless junk to become an authorized distributor. Why would I then by $500 of worthless junk from you so I can be a distributor of worthless junk when I can just use some of your worthless junk?
6. Your great investment opportunity includes a Nigerian who has inherited a dead relative’s fortune and needs $1,000 to get it out of the United States.
7. The name of the business is Amway, Advocare, Big Planet (thanks TS, I had to sell my computer in a garage sale to get rid of that software) or Cutco.
8. Your phone call to your friends starts out by saying, “You don’t have to buy anything; I just need to practice my presentation.”
9. It involves chain letters. As an aside, chain letters are the bane (how many banes is that now?) of my existence. I don’t have time to photocopy a bunch of junk to mail out at 41 cents per letter to 10 other people and hope to get a bunch of new junk back in two weeks. It’s the 21st century, that’s why we have carbon copy and blind carbon copy with email.
10. You find out about it from an infomercial that runs between the hours of midnight and 6 AM or the hours of noon and 5 PM. Another aside, I see the point but if you are looking for work, shouldn’t you be out job hunting between noon and 5 PM and resting up for more job hunting between midnight and 6 AM? Just a thought.

Though I’m sure there are others, I’ll dispense with this parting piece: the old adage says that to have friends you’ve got to be a friend. Au contraire, to have friends, you’ve got to stop preying on your friends with get rich quick schemes. Take it from me, you’ll be more rapturous in the long run. Now, I’ve got this amazing opportunity for you…