Comment on My friend on social refuses to see how this is a pyramid scheme
Empricorn@feddit.nl 10 months ago
If you get a book back, it’s not a scam because it’s not designed for you to profit, either monetarily or materially. It’s obviously misleading saying you’ll get “up to” 36 books back, but that’s not guaranteed and shouldn’t be expected. If someone joined such an exchange (and it was trustworthy), they should think of it as a random book swap and expect to get a surprise book back in exchange for theirs. Anything extra is simply a bonus.
1 for 1: no one gets rich, and no one gets scammed, in theory…
Yeah it’s very simple if you send one and get one back it’s just a trade. If you send one and get more than one it’s a piramide scheme.
It’s not terrible or anything, but at some point (the bottom) of the piramide a lot a people end up without any books, no way around that.
Pipoca@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If everyone is putting in one book, for you to get 36 books, 35 other people have to get 0 books.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 10 months ago
“a maximum of” 36 books.
Again, it’s unrealistic to expect 36 good books be sent to you, but I guarantee some people will send along more than 1 book, which I assume accounts for the “bonus” ones…
Pipoca@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Right.
As described, for you to get two books, someone else got zero. For you to get three books, two people got zero.
The median person gets zero books. A few lucky people get 2-36 books.