Aucbvax.6211 net.misc utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!wildbill Thu Feb 18 11:58:41 1982 Pyramid Schemes The savings bond deal is in fact a pyramid scheme. This hustle has been around for an incredibly long time (in fact, I expect that any time now, some archaeologist working in Sumeria or someplace like that will uncover a tablet reading, "This is a chain tablet. Send 5 ephaphs of silver to the person whose name is at the top of the list, and 5 ephaphs of silver to the person whose name is at the bottom of the list. Take the top name off the list and put your name on the bottom. Then send a tablet with the new list on it to two friends. They will each send you 5 ephaphs of silver and you will be even. When your name reaches the bottom of the list, you will collect 320 ephaphs of silver!!" A modern version of the game involving what were known as "Pyramid Clubs" was active in Northern California last year. You would go to a Pyramid Club meeting at a friend's house, and for $100 or some similar sum, you would receive a name list like the one in the chain letter for another $100 sent to the person whose name was next to the top of the list your friend got. The details varied slightly depending on where the club started, but the principle was the same--when you started your own club, you were at worst even, and when you got to the top of the list, you began to rake in the chips. The problem with this game is that it grows exponentially among a finite population, namely all people who haven't heard of the scam before. This is all well and good if you get in early, as the first few layers of people do indeed collect. However, by the time you get down even to the tenth layer (these are the people who are going to pay off the fourth layer of people in the pyramid), you need 2^10 people for that layer alone even assuming only binary branching, and 2^11 people for the entire tree. Since this number somewhat exceeded the entire adult population of the Bay Area, people who didn't get in extremely early were only able to recover their investment, and people who got in late were unable to even do that, since everybody who was interested in joining a Pyramid Club had already done so. The game died of its own weight just about the time the cops were beginning to get interested in it. As usual, people who look for "Something for Nothing" usually wind up with Nothing for Something instead. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.