This week, we're joined by Robert FitzPatrick, founder of Pyramid Scheme Alert, and co-author of False Profits: Seeking Financial and Spiritual Deliverance in Multi-Level Marketing and Pyramid Schemes. He'll discuss the promises and pitfalls of schemes, and how to tell legitimate direct selling from multi-level marketing scams. And on the podcast, we'll speak to Paul Piff, researcher at the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley, about his research on the relationship between social class and unethical behavior.
We record live with Robert FitzPatrick on Sunday, April 22 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, April 27.
More like this
One of my bibles of clinical medicine is Fitzpatrick's Color Atlas and Synopsis of Clinical Dermatology. It's basically a field guide to skin, with hundreds of pictures matched up with brief summaries.
I don't mean to beat up on Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick. I really don't. I realize I rather harshly criticized him yesterday for being so hostile to the concept of "denialism," to the point where he characterized even the use of the term as a means of "suppressing" free speech.
I've had a lot of fun thus far this week expressing more than a bit of schadenfreude over Andrew Wakefield's being ignominiously stripped of his medical license in the U.K.
Brian Lehrer was kind enough to invite me onto his show the other day along with Kathleen Fitzpatrick of MediaCommons and Kat
It always struck me that our whole economy is a bit like a pyramid scheme - all based on continuous growth. There must be another model to work in declining populations, but I don't think anyone has worked it out yet.
A circle, obviously. A pyramid works only if it is really a straight line that goes on forever, but it will usually self destruct because the basis for its exchange is always limited. (I.e., in truth, property prices can not sustain constant outrageous growth so an economy based on that crashes. Same with gold prices, etc.) But a circle could work ... think of it more as a snake that eats its own tail.