Selling Amway in the forest

As an observer of "mom culture", I've seen and heard a lot of silliness, from disgusting conversations about sex (carefully disguised as chats about NFP) to cloth diapering madness. (I myself used a diaper service until we moved to Texas, but I never felt inclined to put the girls in embroidered diapers. I bet that embroidery doesn't look so cute when you're rinsing the crap out of the stitches.) But here's the latest thing on the mom scene here: multi-level marketing.

Feverish activity in a closed economic system is a phenomenon that Darwin's father terms "selling Amway to each other in the forest". If you sell tupperware to a friend but turn around and order makeup from her, have either of you made money? If you invite the same people to all your shows won't your customer base dry up? I'll buy something the first time to support a friend, if there's something I need. But I can't be dropping Darwin's hard-earned money on items I neither want nor need. Heck, I don't even buy things I do want most of the time -- it just doesn't make good financial sense to be constantly spending. We don't live at the poverty level here. However, we can only keep from carrying ugly credit card balances by carefully reviewing expenses and curtailing impulse purchases. I may be part of the circle of friends, but I really don't want to be included in the tree-side Amway festivities.