Library Review: Cheng San Library

After having been stood up in dramatic fashion when my tuition student’s mother cancelled today’s session while I stood at their front door, I found myself in the middle of Hougang Central with nothing better to do. Nothing, that is, aside from paying a visit to the nearest library, which happens to be Cheng San Library.

The Ambience

Cheng San Library and I go way back. When the library first opened in 1997, I happened to be living in Serangoon and although I was really quite excited about the new library, I’d never found the reason or the opportunity to visit the place. Now, 12 years after moving to the east, I found myself standing in a library that looked like it still belonged in 1997, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. As most shopping centre libraries go, Cheng San library is relatively small, with almost every available inch of floor area crammed with shelves, giving it a very Spartan and cramped feel. Add a pretty dull colour scheme and four solid walls to the mix and you get a rather claustrophobic and dreary library, hardly an inviting sight at all.

The Facilities

If you thought the decor was bad, though, then be prepared to get even more disappointed by the facilities. A quick walk around the library revealed that there were no tables available for reading or doing meaningful work, and most of the available seating space consisted of uncomfortably hard wooden benches positioned around pillars, making them incredibly bad for posture. In fact, the entire library seems designed to give a slightly taller than average person a bad case of a stiff neck. The OPACs, for instance, are housed in locked cases around each pillar, and these terminals are mounted at such an absurdly low height that I had to bend over nearly 90 degrees just to be able to see the screen. Either the place was designed by dwarves, or most of the people living in the Hougang and Serangoon areas are.

The worst thing by far, though, was the lack of powerpoints. After searching for a good 10 minutes, it dawned on me that all the powerpoints around the library had been sealed up with a notice saying something along the lines of “This powerpoint has been sealed for your personal safety”. I don’t know if you’ve been to many libraries, but this clearly isn’t the case for pretty much every other library I’ve been to. If the rest of Singapore can be trusted to use public powerpoints safely, I don’t see why the residents of Hougang and Serangoon should be treated like little children when it comes to usage of powerpoints.

The Collection

The only saving grace of this library, it would seem, is its collection of books. Compared with Pasir Ris Library (another shopping mall-based library), Cheng San seems to have rather quite an expansive collection (and a small but decent comics collection – something that Sengkang Library and Yishun Library are greatly lacking). However, if you consider the fact that Cheng San Library serves quite a massive catchment area, encompassing the Hougang; Cheng San; Serangoon Central and Upper Paya Lebar estates, I highly doubt such a collection is even sufficient to meet the needs of so massive a population.

Final Verdict

All things considered, out of all the libraries I’ve ever visited (and believe me I’ve visited most of them multiple times), Cheng San Library has got to be the most piss poor excuse for a library that I’ve been to thus far, even surpassing Pasir Ris Library, the previous winner of this dubious honour. With a drab and uninspiring ambience, non-existent facilities and a mediocre collection considering the sheer number of people it serves, Cheng San Library is much more of a place where you’d nip in, grab a book and fuck off rather than a place to sit down and read or conduct any form of meaningful research. As a lending library, it serves its purpose without any bells and whistles, and for those of you who are even entertaining the thought of studying in Cheng San Library, forget it.

Rating

Ambience: 3/10

Facilities: 1/10

Collection: 6/10

Overall Score: 10/30

Why Is Biology So Difficult?

Mention Biology to any student and the word “memorisation” will inevitably crop up. A common misconception, most students, when faced with the sheer volume of biological facts, tend to find recourse in memorising everything they can get, from their notes to other people’s notes to their 700 page long textbooks. In this post, I’ll try to explain the reason why this understanding is fundamentally flawed, and why Biology really isn’t difficult at all.

Why do people find biology difficult?

According to the H1/H2 Biology syllabus document (found here on the SEAB website), the progression of biological education from Primary to Tertiary level is as follows

Primary 3 – 6: How life works at the systems level

Secondary 1 – 4: How life works at the physiological level

JC 1 – 2: How life works at the cellular to molecular level

Because most Biology students at the ‘A’ Level standard tend to have done Biology at ‘O’ Level as well, most ‘A’ Level Biology students are expected to have followed this traditional progression and the gulf between Secondary School Biology and Junior College Biology is the reason why the subject is commonly perceived as being difficult.

Why this is so can be attributed to the conceptual ‘paradigm shift’ between the molecular aspect of biology and the systemic and physiological aspects of biology. Both systemic and physiological studies are physical in nature, and by that I mean that the concepts translate into something real and tangible. When we learn about the eye, we can see what the eye looks like, and how it functions is thus understandable because we have a real point of reference from which we can conceive of the eye. Molecular biology, on the other hand, is almost entirely abstract. You cannot see molecules with the naked eye, and even with advanced microscopy techniques, it is close to impossible to find a physical representation of biochemical processes or mechanisms because they exist only on such a small scale as to be invisible to the naked eye.

Although many other subjects are abstract by nature too (Chemistry and Mathematics spring to mind as likely candidates), abstractness in Chemistry or Math would not be a new thing to most ‘A’ Level students due to their having been taught in that manner since Primary or Secondary School. For ‘A’ Level Biology, the paradigm shift from physical to abstract leaves many students bewildered. How, for instance, is one to understand the passage of an action potential along an axon via the exchange of ions without some physical frame of reference, especially since the concept of an action potential is an abstraction built on the already abstract notion of ion exchange across a membrane? When faced with such confusion and lack of understanding, the only way to remember these facts is to memorise, which is what most students of Biology end up doing.

The problem with memorisation, however, is that it runs counter to the whole object of understanding. Students who memorise biological concepts can rattle off a whole series of concepts and ideas, but when asked to explain these ideas, they draw a blank. We’ve learned, for example, that phosphorylation is a crucial step in ‘switching on’ or ‘switching off’ biochemical reactions in living organisms, but what exactly does phosphorylation do to make this switching possible? The difference between someone who understands this concept versus someone who memorised this fact is that the person who truly understands what phosphorylation does can explain the reasoning behind the chemical reaction, invariably making it easier to remember, while the person who memorised this fact will be left without an adequate explanation.

Do note here that I am drawing the distinction between remembering and memorising. Memorising is a blind process, while remembering comes with understanding and insight. The difference is subtle but important, and will be the subject of a future post.

So how do I study Biology if it’s so abstract?

The key to understanding biology lies in being able to visualise the concepts in a manner understandable by the individual. For those whose particular strengths lie in abstract thought, being able to mentally ‘see’ the way biochemical reactions or processes flow should be no problem. For those who cannot, however, the trick is to be able to physically flesh out the principle. This may manifest in several forms but the most commonly applied method is by drawing diagrams. Diagrams, wither it be simple stick diagrams or multicoloured cartoons, help us to imagine molecules or processes that we would otherwise not be able to perceive. It’s a technique that has been taught since Secondary School, and is especially important now in Junior College. By using diagrams, you’ll be able to see how individual processes function within the bigger picture to give rise to an entire mechanism or process.

Take for example the concept of evolution (though not a branch of molecular biology, evolution is just as abstract and is also part of the syllabus). We’ve learnt in school that humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and that both humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor with gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), and that all three species share a common ancestor with shrews (family Soricidae) and so on. Presented in this light, the concept remains difficult to apprehend and may give rise to the mistaken understanding that shrews evolved into gorillas, which evolved into chimpanzees, which later evolved into humans. If, instead, we represented the concept like this

as opposed to this

Shrew -> Gorilla -> Chimp -> Human

we are immediately able to see how the concept works and why such a misapprehension occurs.

There are of course, many other ways of visualising Biology. Whether they be animations on YouTube or 3D models of molecules, Biology should not be a difficult subject to understand, much less a subject that requires plenty of memorisation, given the tremendous amount of learning aids that exist in books or on the wide, wide world of the internet. In subsequent posts, I’ll attempt to demonstrate some techniques to help visualise aspects of Biology and if you personally use, or are aware of other effective methods for understanding Biology, do post them here in the comments section.

Reposted from Student Oasis

Good Reads: Historiography

For those of you history buffs who wish to delve deeper into the world of historiography and the nature of history, I’ve taken the liberty of compiling a list of essential texts illustrating the key ideas and movements in the ongoing debate over the nature of history.

Although I must stress that it is NOT compulsory to read every single one of these books, I strongly encourage anyone who wishes to specialise in historiography or write an Independent Study related to historiography to make an effort to read as many books on this list as possible. Thankfully, most of them (save for a few) are very engagingly written and are, most importantly of all, mercifully short, so reading these texts should not pose that much of a problem.Please do note though, that this reading list is not an exhaustive one and will not suffice as a substitute for doing your own research and looking for other texts.

What is History? – E.H. Carr
By challenging the “Scientific” history thesis expounded by Geoffrey Elton (see next entry), Carr writes a clear and incisive introduction to the nature of historical knowledge. This book is a must read for all students of the philosophy of history because it outlines many of the principles that have shaped much of what historiography is today and is still very much a relevant part of modern historiographical debate. Be warned, though, the book gets quite unreadable near the middle section so you’ll have to be prepared to grit your teeth and bear it while he drones along.

The Practice of History – Geoffrey Elton
Although I have yet to read this text, Geoffrey Elton’s conception of history as a scientific enterprise (that historical facts are immutable, and that there is a definite notion of historical ‘truth’ that is independent of the historian) serves as an important counterpoint to the theories of history developed by Carr and his intellectual successors (including the Postmodernists).

Re-thinking History – Keith Jenkins
Re-thinking History is an important (and short) text that very thoroughly outlines the Postmodern view of history. By applying the principles of Postmodern theory (such as textual deconstruction, the death of the author, and the nature of intertextuality) to historical knowledge, Jenkins puts forward a radical theory of historiography that denies the existence of objective history, arguing that all history is the result of subjective interpretation of historical evidence by the individual historian. Naturally, this has raised many eyebrows and irked many a historian/historiographer (especially Geoffrey Elton), which makes this book an important read in understanding the development of our understanding of history.

In Defence of History – Richard J. Evans
In a brilliant response to the perceived threat of Postmodernist History, prominent historian of Nazi Germany Richard J. Evans debates the influences of the Postmodernist conception of history and tries to recontextualise the meaning of history in the aftermath of the onslaught of Postmodernism.

The Landscape of History – John Lewis Gaddis
Another brilliant introduction to historiography, John Lewis Gaddis, a familiar name to those reading H1/H2 History, weighs in on the historiographical debate with his take on what history means to him. Written as part of a homage to E.H. Carr, Gaddis relies on the use of numerous metaphors (ranging from Cartography to “The Wanderer” by Caspar David Friedrich) to illustrate his idea of historiography. While this writing style might get on the nerves of many readers, I personally find his explanations incredibly clear and easy to apprehend and strongly recommend this book as required reading.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History – Stephen Jay Gould
Although evolution is traditionally the preserve of the biological sciences, Stephen Jay Gould raises the very interesting point in this book that some aspects of the methodology employed in evolutionary studies find a strange parallel in the methodology of history. Written in the very engaging style typical of Gould, this book raises the age old question of where the boundary between the Sciences and the Humanities lie, and whether science is becoming more like history, or vice versa.

This entry was reposted from Student Oasis.

An Oasis of Calm

In an attempt to occupy myself post-ORD, I’ve recently joined Grace’s new project, “Student Oasis“, writing pieces on various study tips and tricks that students might otherwise not be privy to in a sort of “Lifehacker” meets the student community sort of way.

Consequently, many of the subsequent posts that I will be posting here will be reposts of other Student Oasis articles that I’ve written, so enjoy.

Earning a Quick Buck – Some Thoughts on MLM

Earning a Quick Buck

Having recently become jobless, I was called up by a friend of mine, saying he wanted to introduce me to a company he was working at so that I could earn a little bit of extra cash. BIG BONANZA! You might say, but a combination of several things made me more than a little skeptical about this “job offer”.

Firstly, this friend of mine (whom I still count as a friend and so won’t be naming here) was very vague about what the job entailed (“You have to come down and see to understand, too complicated to explain in person”). Secondly and slightly more obvious, he was rather insistent that I drop by his workplace to ‘see what was going on’. If alarm bells rang for you too, give yourself a pat on the back.

Turns out, he was running a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scheme for a company peddling TCM, fuel additives, slimming pills and diamonds.

Now I know many of us students find ourselves constantly strapped for cash, and the chance to earn a quick buck is always a welcome prospect and engaging in MLM schemes may be a tantalizing opportunity, but before you launch headlong into one with the hope of striking it rich, I think some understanding of the way MLM works and the risks involved should be properly laid out.

So How Does MLM Work?

MLM comes in several guises. At different times, it has been called Network Marketing or Direct Selling, though they all mean the same thing (for the purposes of this post, I’ll be referring to this phenomenon as MLM).

MLM schemes work by charging promoters an upfront “membership fee” in exchange for the license to sell the company’s products, which will have to be purchased at additional cost. In turn, these promoters (also known as Associates, MLMers, Partners or Investors) are rewarded for recruiting more promoters to the company. These rewards range from commissions on sales made by recruited promoters to elevated status. Examples of these include being appointed as a Director or gaining access to executive facilities. These serve as incentives to encourage promoters to recruit more and more people into their marketing network. The end result is a multi-layered network of marketers in the shape of a pyramid, with many marketers at the bottom level, and few at the top.

For the more visually inclined, this is what an MLM scheme looks like:

Bear in mind, though, that while MLM is commonly associated with a similar marketing tactic called Pyramid Schemes, the two differ on one fundamental point. While MLM participants earn money through the product sales of both themselves and the people they recruit, pyramid schemes merely deal with the exchange of money for introducing more people into the scheme. As such, the likelihood of a pyramid scheme actually having a product or service to sell is highly unlikely and is thus an illegal practice in Singapore (and in many other countries). For a similar kind of scam, you might be interested in looking up Bernie Madoff and Ponzi Schemes.

But Isn’t MLM Illegal in Singapore?

No it isn’t. Although pyramid schemes (see above) are banned by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), MLM schemes are legally permissible in Singapore so long as they conform to certain rules and regulations. You can find the terms and conditions here on the MTI webpage.

So Is MLM Bad?

Although MLM schemes have generally garnered a bad reputation in Singapore (after a brief craze in the early 2000s during which many fingers got burned), it’s not really entirely possible to judge MLM schemes as either fundamentally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. To be fair, there are successful companies that run highly effective MLM campaigns such as Tupperware and Amway and if you’ve ever been to a ‘Tupperware Party’, that’s MLM at work right there. Instead, it would be more beneficial if we look at the weaknesses and strengths inherent MLM as a marketing strategy.

Ok, So What Are The Weaknesses Of MLM?

As mentioned earlier, MLM as a marketing practice is generally frowned upon in Singapore, and all for a good reason. Although MLM schemes have the incredible potential to produce remarkable results when applied creatively, Multi-level Marketing has a great many inherent weaknesses and limitations that make it incredibly risky, especially for the uninformed.

1. Supply without the demand – The main problem of MLM is that it messes around with the rules of Supply and Demand. While I may not be an economics student, it is quite plain to see that MLM creates a system which ignores consumer demand in favour of a situation where supply remains well in excess of any kind of projected demand. By requiring individual promoters to buy stock directly from the company and having these promoters recruit more and more promoters, the number of promoters and by extension the supply of products will increase exponentially. What you will eventually find is a market entirely saturated with that particular product since it is not consumers that shape the demand, but rather the number of promoters at any one time. In a situation where a product is fairly unique and popular, this might not pose so much of a problem because natural demand is already very high (as is with Tupperware). However, if the company’s product fails to draw a sustained amount of interest to drive a continuously high level of demand, then sales per promoter will eventually plunge as the numbers of promoters grow. Although promoters do have the option of selling stock back to the company for a refund, bear in mind that by the time promoters realise that the product isn’t selling; the market has probably already reached its saturation point. At that point, the product would be worth less than it originally did and the promoter would end up selling the product back to the company at a loss, and the company earning just enough to cover overheads with minimal risk.
2. Potential impact on personal relationships – Although many consider this to be a trivial issue, the reality is that being part of an MLM scheme can deeply affect your personal relationships with others and has a high likelihood of causing strained relationships with both family and friends. While much of the problem stems from the already tarnished name that MLM has among Singaporeans, part of it is also due to the nature of MLM and its target audience. By selling through referrals and networking, MLMs rely on an individual’s ability to use his or her own circle of family and friends to not only advertise but also recruit new promoters. All this, with the sole aim of generating revenue through direct sales and downstream commissions. The reason why this is ripe opportunity for friction to develop is because MLM breaches the boundary between work and friendship, thus exploiting personal relationships for the sake of profit. It creates a situation the breaking point will come when either the promoter runs out of friends or when his/her friends run out of patience, and neither of these are desirable consequences.
3. What’s my motivation? – The third problem with MLM lies not so much with the system, but the kind of people the system attracts. For what reason will someone join an MLM scheme? Although companies involved in MLM are prohibited by law from advertising MLM as a get-rich-quick scheme, it is implicit in many MLM pitches that MLM offers an easy way to earn a quick buck, and many (if not most) MLMers sign up simply because of the money. At its very core, MLM schemes hinge on tapping an individual’s desire to earn more money, also known as Greed. It’s a moral question, without doubt, and one that you will have to ask yourself before taking part in any MLM scheme; do I care about what I’m selling? Or is it just about earning as much money in as little time as possible? Add the fact that family and friends are usually the ones on the receiving end of MLM, and you have a situation where MLM promoters are essentially earning money at the expense of the very people they care for. Be mindful though, that while this issue is one of grave importance, it is a generalisation and is by no means true for every single MLMer. There are those who genuinely believe in the product they are selling and are incredibly passionate about what they do, though they are more often than not viewed as exceptions to the norm.

The points mentioned above are but a fraction of the inherent weaknesses of MLM as a marketing strategy, and from the ones raised it is quite clear that there are some serious deficiencies associated with the practice of MLM. While this doesn’t mean MLM is evil or bad (value judgements we should seek to avoid), it means that anyone who wishes to be part of an MLM scheme must be aware of the potential problems that MLM can cause in order to take steps to prevent unwanted consequences.

So What Are MLM’s Strengths?

Although I’ve just painted a rather grim picture, MLM is not without its redeeming features. Flawed though it may be, MLM does have several properties that make it an excellent learning opportunity for young people and could possibly, under the right circumstances, make for a rewarding and meaningful job experience.

1. An excellent opportunity to gain sales experience – An important transferable skill, knowing how to market a product is something that is highly likely to come in useful later in life and MLM offers a good opportunity for people to pick up such skills. In selling a particular product or service for a company, you will learn how to craft a proper pitch and deal with the inevitable cases of rejection. But more than that, since MLM usually entails selling the product/service to family and friends, it will also be possible to get constructive feedback from these people on how best to refine your sales techniques, something that would not be so readily available were you to be selling to complete strangers.
2. Plenty of opportunity for self-enrichment – Another reason why MLM can prove to be incredibly useful is because many of them offer training courses and seminars for MLM participants. While these courses are unlikely to be professionally accredited by external bodies, they present a valuable opportunity to learn something new or at least engage in some form of self-enrichment. Although these course are more geared toward improving sales and recruitment numbers, do approach them with an open mind and who knows, maybe you might acquire a new skill, learn something about yourself and come out of it a better person.
3. Autonomy over how you work – For those who prize job flexibility as a very important point, MLM can also be attractive because it allows participants to work in any way they want. In an MLM scheme, you set your own working style and you work whenever you want. Obviously the harder you work, the more rewards you are likely to reap but if you already have academic commitments and still want to earn some money on the side, MLM does offer a potential way of earning some much-needed cash. However, whether or not that cash is earned through morally justified means or whether the amount earned is significant enough to matter is up to you to decide.

So as you can see, MLM isn’t all bad. In fact, when approached with the right attitude and a proper understanding of the risks involved, MLM can potentially be a very rewarding learning experience and you might even earn some money through it.

If you’ve done some background reading, however, you will notice that I’ve left out many of the traditional plus points commonly cited in MLM’s favour. Very often you will hear these points being raised when a company representative is trying to convince you to join an MLM scheme, a ritual which I call ‘The Pitch’, and more often than not, these points are half-truths, fabrications or outright lies. As such, I’ll be going through some of the most popular points cited by MLM companies to convince people to join their little scheme.

The Top 10 MLM Misrepresentations

When you sit in for an MLM Pitch, you’ll usually be facing a very proficient smooth-talker, someone who can go on and on for 2 hours without losing your attention. During his/her speech, he/she’ll try to convince you why you should join their MLM scheme, and much of these will be fallacious or quite simply untrue. In this section, I’ll briefly run through some of the common misrepresentations bandied about by MLMers to convince people to sign up and why they might not be entirely true.

1. MLM offers a cheap way of running your own business –Many MLMers will tell you that joining an MLM scheme is a cheap and easy way of running your own business; you don’t have to pay taxes or settle bills or handle any of the administrative matters, just sit back and let the money roll in. While running an MLM operation does emulate a business-like setting in many ways, all that the MLM company has essentially done is to outsource the sales and HR aspect of the company to you, along with all the risk of running a company. You will be responsible for making your own sales, recruiting your own people, and when you fail it will all be your own fault and not because the product is unpopular – the company doesn’t lose anything at all except for a rubbish salesperson. You’re not running your own business; you’re just purchasing all the risk of running one.
2. Having a pyramid-structure doesn’t make MLM bad, all corporations are pyramid-shaped too – When the company rep said this to me with a straight face, I couldn’t believe my ears. He cited the example of a school having only one principal, many teachers and even more students, and this is a typical example of a false analogy. The only parallel between a school and an MLM scheme is the shape of the structure. Teachers do not have to recruit students, and neither do they have to pay a portion of their salary to the principal for recruiting more students. Just because other things are pyramid-shaped doesn’t make the structure of an MLM right or wrong, good or bad. Likewise for corporations, each employee works for the company and as such each company has a vested interest in the welfare of the employee (the employee is paid directly by the company too). In an MLM scheme, the flow is inverted. Instead, it is the employee that invests in the company and the company is not obliged to care about the employee or his/her productivity. Because of this there is no basis on which to say that an MLM’s pyramid structure can in any way be compared with that of other “conventional” companies.
3. Our product is very respectable and reliable because celebrities endorse it – This is a good example of another common fallacy, the appeal to authority. Companies that resort to celebrity endorsements (regardless of whether or not they are MLM companies) rely on the supposed authority and influence that celebrities command in order to sell their product, and not on the salient qualities of the product itself. Whether or not a celebrity endorses a product rarely has anything to do with the effectiveness of the product or even whether the celebrity actually uses the product. Their only incentive is getting paid a buttload of money in return for plastering their pretty little faces all over the company’s advertisements. In some cases, even if the celebrity does use the product being advertised, he or she might not be aware of the effectiveness or potential side effects of the products. Probably the best known local example (for our Singaporean readers) would be the infamous Slim 10 saga, where Andrea de Cruz fell violently ill after taking the slimming pills, resulting in her husband having to donate part of his liver to rescue her failing one. Never assume that celebrities know better; after all, they’re human too.
4. By selling this health product you’re helping your customers too – You will often hear this during pitches, especially if the company in question markets some form of health, slimming or ‘wellness’ product. The logic behind this is that, assuming the product works as advertised, not only will you be earning money from your friends and family, you can do it without guilt because hey, you’re making their lives better. However, with health being the sensitive topic that it is, it is always important to verify that the product you are selling has been adequately and rigorously tested in compliance with America’s Food and Drug Authority (FDA) standards. Very often if you ask to see some form of clinical documentation, you’ll be shown some vague lab reports, often from individual success cases and not as a result of comprehensive and methodical tests of the drug with adequate controls. Just because a treatment works for one person doesn’t mean it works for everyone else. And even if the treatment does work, are you confident enough or qualified enough to be prescribing any form of therapeutic treatments? And what if there are unknown or long term side effects? I hardly think it is necessary for me to point back to the Slim 10 case to illustrate this point.
5. Our product can’t possibly fail because of its mass market appeal – If you look at MLM companies very closely, you’ll realise that most, if not all of their products are targeted at mass market consumption. Slimming pills; “Wellness” treatments; Traditional Chinese Medicine, these aren’t niche market goods, these are aimed at appealing to a very large and very broad customer base. However, if you’ve read the bit earlier about MLM and market saturation, you’ll realise that no matter how massive your market may be, MLM is designed to ensure that the market is so flooded that it eventually kills itself. This statement is only true from the viewpoint of the company. While a goodly amount of product will end up getting sold, the chances of you being a significant contributor to overall sales is low.
6. Look at our top earner; he’s driving a Mercedes Benz! – I think it goes without saying that this argument very simply appeals to what has been discussed before, the greed impulse. You’re supposed to go “Hrmm, if he can earn enough to get a Mercedes Benz, I can too!” and this is clearly not going to be the case. Why? It’s simple. When you sign up for an MLM scheme, you are led to believe that you’ll end up like this:Whereas in reality, this is more likely to be the case:What MLM companies try to mislead people into thinking is that there is an equal chance of success. However, following from the market saturation argument, the further away you are from the top (i.e. the later you join), the less chance you have of even running a substantial network of salespeople and subsequently, the lower your chances of even coming close to even considering buying a Nissan Sunny.
7. Many people from your school participate in MLM too – Another popular technique often employed by advertisers is very much evident here as well: the Bandwagon. Other people are doing it, and so should you. No you don’t. Other people in your school are failing their promos and getting retained. Should you follow suit? I’ll leave that decision entirely up to you.
8. You can make money with minimal effort just by having a wide customer base! – The main problem with this argument is that it assumes your customer base/sales force is either growing or unchanging. However, remember that people come and go, and not everyone will find your product interesting over the long term or wish to continue with MLM and as numbers fluctuate, your revenue will also fluctuate. I’m not being cynical here, just realistic.
9. Friends and family are easier to sell to than complete strangers –Just because people know you doesn’t mean they’re them more gullible or susceptible to your charms or wiles. Your family and friends are (hopefully) thinking people too and if the product you are selling one of questionable quality or relevance, then no amount of personal relationship or cajoling will convince anyone to buy your product, family member or not.
10. Look at all these newspaper articles showing how effective MLM is – When the MLM rep starts pulling out all these newspaper articles, very rarely will you have the time to read the article in full. In fact, they’ll helpfully highlight a sentence or two to draw your attention to a line saying that MLM is good. If you actually take the time to read them in detail (and take note of the publication date), you’ll realise that many of these articles are quoted out of context or are completely outdated. Don’t be fooled by a misleading headline or a misquoted sentence.

So Should I Or Should I Not Participate In An MLM Scheme?

That, unfortunately, is a decision only you can make. While I personally disapprove of MLM and discourage most students from taking part, I can only go so far as to tell you what the weaknesses and strengths of MLM  are and ultimately, whether or not you actually join an MLM depends on a combination of factors unique to you. Do take your time to evaluate the pros and cons and if you feel MLM is a viable option, then be sure to take the necessary precautions to avoid getting cheated and go in with the right learning attitude.

If you wish to learn more about MLMs, here is a list of sources that I’ve consulted in the process of writing this much extended article. While everything you see here is (to my knowledge) written in my own voice, do let me know if I have inadvertently lifted or plagiarised any particular author’s work in any way. Also, if you should have any comments you would like to make or any inconsistencies with my arguments that you would like to point out, I strongly encourage you to post them here.

• Ministry of Trade and Industry’s page on MLM
• The Wikipedia article on MLM
• MLM – “The Naked Truth Revealed” on SGEntrepreneurs
• What’s Wrong With Multi-Level Marketing? By Dean and Laura Vandruff
• The Truth About MLM by Jon M Taylor