Pyramid Scheme Quotes

“Her reaction had not been unusual. Anti-natalism—the idea that humans should not breed—was not a popular view. Not even amongst most green freaks. This despite the fact that all the troubles that existed in the world existed solely because of human beings.

Despite the obviousness of this idea, admitting this to the average person was like confessing to a murder. Even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where all that existed was misery and squalor, humans, in their never-ending capacity for delirium, would without a doubt still continue bringing new people into this world instead of realizing that doing so was both cruel and insane. That was how strongly the delusion that life was good was embedded into us. It had to be since otherwise there wouldn’t be any humans around. Life was like a pyramid scheme that had to be constantly shoved down the throats of new victims in order to keep the scam going.”
― Keijo Kangur, The Nihilist

“The promise of easy money is but a wolf's trap laid out for sheep seeking taller grass.”
― James Jean-Pierre

“A job is the ultimate pyramid scheme.”
― Ken Poirot

“Cities pour forth a virus. Humans are infected and told to build cages that no one should want to live in. Or cities are a pyramid scheme: everyone is supposed to be there, I am an everybody, so I will move there and bring two others, who will bring two more.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“I silently absorb the statement. He's not the first person to call me an idiot. In fact, he's one of many. I guess I just have one of those faces, y'know? But in an age of cynicism, I choose to live with my senses open to the universe. Okay, yes, I did obliterate my trust fund on an MLM - well, technically, more than one - but that's a small price to pay for a universe of possibility.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“To those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“According to technologist David Rosenthal, speculation on cryptocurrencies is the engine that drives Web3—that it can’t work without it. “[A] permissionless blockchain requires a cryptocurrency to function, and this cryptocurrency requires speculation to function,” he said in a talk at Stanford in early 2022.4 Basically, he’s describing a pyramid scheme: Blockchains need to give people something in exchange for volunteering computing power, and cryptocurrencies fill that role—but the system works only if other people are willing to buy them believing that they’ll be worth more in the future. Stephen Diehl, a technologist and vocal critic of Web3, floridly dismissed blockchain as “a one-trick pony whose only application is creating censorship-resistant crypto investment schemes, an invention whose negative externalities and capacity for harm vastly outweigh any possible uses.”
― Harvard Business Review, Web3: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review