The coming of a new and prosperous day… Amway??

To put it bluntly, rural Moldova is a pretty uncultured place. I don’t say that in a snobby American way, I say that because certain things have not yet because norms (and other things remain norms) that we would consider not very cultured, like snot rockets (which everyone fires off) and burning piles of manure in the road creating a poopy smog for all your neighbors.

And yet, the pinnacle of culture and natural products has decided to enter the Moldova market - Amway. Moldova has more natural products than Amway has ever seen – and they probably never want to see them because real natural products don’t come smelling like mint and flowers – they usually smell like dirt, plants, vinegar, shit, or some combination.

I had not heard of Amway at all in Moldova over the past year, and in the last month there are at least 3 people in my town alone who are considering or already are Amway representatives. They all say the same things: I saw people who make 1, 2, even 5 thousand euro per month and they just stay at home. When you ask who in the world is going to buy the stuff, they use the same arguments too – who wouldn’t want high quality products (not the crap you find in a regular moldovan store) that last a long time. They even always start with the same example: “Let’s take your basic toothpaste as an example…”. When you ask, “isn’t this stuff a little out of your typical rural Moldovan’s price range?”, they just start the broken record again.

It amazes me that for all of the effort we put in to getting people raised in a command economy to understand the benefits of capitalism and a free market economy, ultimately it was Amway that stirred the Moldovan’s interest. Amway is like the American dream come to life, and there are always enough examples to make everyone think they have a chance, and to make everyone think they’ll enjoy being a toothpaste salesman. If I made a seminar about being a toothpaste salesman, I think I would have much less participants than Amway’s spin on the same subject – and to that, I give them credit for their ingenuity.

One of the people who was interested in becoming an Amway rep was a cabbage farmer… something which, to me, is a very real and profitable business. He has real potential in a real business, especially because of his good standing in town and his excellent knowledge of the business… and yet Amway has mucked up the space in his dreams with their system of “points”. Points are so simple, not like real life in capitalism where you have to worry about producing, finding buyers, paying workers, etc. etc., Like in the communist system, using Amway you can always imagine somehow that some smart person thought through the whole system (after all, I met people who actually make 1000 euro per month), and all I have to do is work a little and follow the rules, and I’ll win too. In a way, from the individuals perspective, advanced capitalism with large companies isn’t all that different than communism, other than the mentality of the those working as a result of the history required to achieve advanced capitalism.

Anyway, in the end, who the hell is going to buy this crap? I agree there are people, but if we have 3 representants in our town, we don’t have that many people who will buy toothpaste for 8 dollars a tube. Even if they do buy it, this isn’t helping the Moldovan economy, this isn’t adding value to anything, this isn’t producing anything, this is just handing goods from one person to another. Someone’s getting richer, but it sure isn’t Moldova.