Comment by cyanydeez

you'd need to look at prior work associated with the Dot com boom and Enron. Economists rarely look into today's actual activity because America makes it nigh impossible to actually understand who owns what around the fringes; contracts arn't required to be publically disclosed and a bunch of other dark interests make it impossible to really know.

MLMs exist in the same murky waters and tread the same ephermal economics by pushing useless product but hiring people to hire people to hire people, etc.