MLM and M&Ms - The Fate of the First Network Marketer

There once was a boy named Johnny in a town called Slothville. A spoiled and undisciplined little kid was he. Johnny had a sweet tooth something fierce, and loved to stuff his mouth full of candy. He especially loved M&M's, and he especially, especially loved them when he didn't have to do chores or use his own pocket money to get his hands on them. He couldn't stand the sight of others eating them when his stash had run out. So Johnny spent hours and hours cooking up ways to get the largest possible amount of the candy, with the least possible amount of effort. One way or another he was intent on lining his pockets...even if it killed others (or if it killed him, rather, as he no doubt would've pointed out).So it came to be in the Spring of '76 that scheming little Johnny started a lawn-mowing business. He rounded up 3 of his pals, and recruited them to go around the neighborhood cutting grass. He'd contract out the workers, and the customers would pay him. For every job they did, Johnny was paid 10 M&M's. 8 of these he kept (I mean, come on...the business was his idea after all), and his friends were able to keep 2 for themselves. He hastened to inform his pals though that should they manage to recruit one of their pals to cut grass as well, that he would give them 2 M&M's back for every willing little employee they hired. Bonus! Before long, Johnny's pals were recruiting their pals, and Johnny was bathing in M&M's. He had M&M's for breakfast, sneaked them inside his lunch-box to snack on at school. He was in M&M heaven...living it large off of the sweat of others.It wasn't long before every yard in the neighborhood had at least 2 kids mowing, pulling and even eating grass. Salivating lawn-mowing recruiters could be found in every classroom, locker room and living room across the town. Johnny and his 3 pals would sit in his M&M tree-house and watch the neighborhood slowly turn into a semi-desert. There were fewer and fewer lawns to mow, more and more kids doing the mowing, earning less and less M&M's than the kids before. In the end, the bulk of the kids in the neighborhood could barely put together their own M&M doghouse between themselves, and they even started mowing pets out of desperation. I wish I could say that no animals were harmed in the telling of this story, but a few cats lost their whiskers, while the kids that were recruited into this venture towards the tail-end of the exercise resorted to recruiting anything with a pulse and mowing anything with a few hairs. The scene got ugly.Little is known of what actually became of Johnny in subsequent years. There was the odd rumor or two. Best as anyone could tell, he made his way to Desperado and started his own business. He was reportedly last seen on the porch of the big house overlooking the valley, surrounded by barbed wire and electric fencing...a '76 lawn-mower rammed through the windshield of his Porsche.