A Visit to Giza with Farook
Farook invited me to join him to learn about an opportunity to make money. Needing something to write about, I reluctantly skipped the City 7 Wednesday comedy and went.
The presenter said he was from The Sudan, but I believe he was from Giza, since the opportunity definitely involved pyramids.
Many years ago, a programmer asked me if I would like to be in business for myself. I thought he was going ask me to partner with him in a technology business. He picked me up, saying that the location of the presentation would be very hard to find. We drove some distance, while he said it was impossible to make money in technology (Ross Perot was just getting started back then.) I was stuck for hours at a presentation about making money selling people the opportunity to sell soap. For $100, I could buy a sample kit, then, if I sold just two kits, and each of those two kit-buyers sold just two kits, & etc., I would get a commission on the two kits I sold, and on all the kits my customers and my customers' customers sold, and I would be rich beyond the dreams of Croesus.
The math requires logarithms, but, in short, a king (or perhaps a Sultan or a Raja, I forget which) was out riding when his horse was spooked on the corniche and the king (or Sultan or Raja) fell into the sea. Someone saw him fall and rescued him, and the king offered his rescuer a reward. The rescuer asked for just a chessboard, with only one grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, then double that on the second square, and double that on the next square, etc. The king thought this a trifling reward for saving his life.
As it turns out, the total amount of rice on the 64 squares of a chessboard would have been more than the entire world production since the first rice harvest, so the king (reluctantly, I'm told) had to have his rescuer executed.
For the pyramid scheme, by using logarithms, one can calculate that in about eight months, every person on the planet will have purchased a kit, and there won't be anyone left to buy another one.
In Dubai, it cost €2 to get in to listen to the presentation (back home, it was free). Farook wanted me to listen and tell him if he should invest $700 for a single channel, or $1,500 for two channels. If you can sell two just two people the first week, and they sell to just two people the next week, etc., each channel pays $250 a week. With those first six customers selling to just two more people each week, the $250 doubles, then quadruples. They said one lady earned more than $90,000 in one week. The math says this is impossible, except for the people who start the pyramid scheme, and even then it's difficult.
The presenter said he offered the opportunity to a tea-boy, who used logarithms to show that the scheme couldn't work. The tea-boy, the presenter said, is still a tea-boy, while the presenter now earns more than $120,000 a year.
Unlike the soap presentation I heard 30 years ago, this is a totally web based business, operating out of Hong Kong. Being on the web, they'll sell almost anything, as long as they can mark the price up by 10,000%.
Farook, after listening to the salesman in Arabic, was ready to hand over $1,500. After listening to me, he now wants to set up a similar scheme to sell Dubai properties like The Light House.
The presenter said he was from The Sudan, but I believe he was from Giza, since the opportunity definitely involved pyramids.
Many years ago, a programmer asked me if I would like to be in business for myself. I thought he was going ask me to partner with him in a technology business. He picked me up, saying that the location of the presentation would be very hard to find. We drove some distance, while he said it was impossible to make money in technology (Ross Perot was just getting started back then.) I was stuck for hours at a presentation about making money selling people the opportunity to sell soap. For $100, I could buy a sample kit, then, if I sold just two kits, and each of those two kit-buyers sold just two kits, & etc., I would get a commission on the two kits I sold, and on all the kits my customers and my customers' customers sold, and I would be rich beyond the dreams of Croesus.
The math requires logarithms, but, in short, a king (or perhaps a Sultan or a Raja, I forget which) was out riding when his horse was spooked on the corniche and the king (or Sultan or Raja) fell into the sea. Someone saw him fall and rescued him, and the king offered his rescuer a reward. The rescuer asked for just a chessboard, with only one grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, then double that on the second square, and double that on the next square, etc. The king thought this a trifling reward for saving his life.
As it turns out, the total amount of rice on the 64 squares of a chessboard would have been more than the entire world production since the first rice harvest, so the king (reluctantly, I'm told) had to have his rescuer executed.
For the pyramid scheme, by using logarithms, one can calculate that in about eight months, every person on the planet will have purchased a kit, and there won't be anyone left to buy another one.
In Dubai, it cost €2 to get in to listen to the presentation (back home, it was free). Farook wanted me to listen and tell him if he should invest $700 for a single channel, or $1,500 for two channels. If you can sell two just two people the first week, and they sell to just two people the next week, etc., each channel pays $250 a week. With those first six customers selling to just two more people each week, the $250 doubles, then quadruples. They said one lady earned more than $90,000 in one week. The math says this is impossible, except for the people who start the pyramid scheme, and even then it's difficult.
The presenter said he offered the opportunity to a tea-boy, who used logarithms to show that the scheme couldn't work. The tea-boy, the presenter said, is still a tea-boy, while the presenter now earns more than $120,000 a year.
Unlike the soap presentation I heard 30 years ago, this is a totally web based business, operating out of Hong Kong. Being on the web, they'll sell almost anything, as long as they can mark the price up by 10,000%.
Farook, after listening to the salesman in Arabic, was ready to hand over $1,500. After listening to me, he now wants to set up a similar scheme to sell Dubai properties like The Light House.
posted by Dubai@Random at 11:51 pm
1 Comments:
I thought you really went to Giza! It's much more fun than Amway, and other pyramid schemes. How is it people still fall for that crap?
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