This is not exactly news. (Teresa noted it ages ago.) But I’ve just heard that a relative of mine with perennial financial problems has decided to compound them by joining one of these things. She’s more than old enough to make her own mistakes, and maybe I should just figure it’s not my problem. But she’s got kids.

My next approach was to question the fundamental premise of multilevel marketing, the sketchy business of selling not a product, but a dream. The conversation was making Mark uncomfortable. I saw a flash of panic in his eyes before they glazed over. Then he said this: “They told us there’d be ripe apples who are ready — who see it. They told us there’d be green apples that weren’t ripe yet. And they told us there’d be rotten apples. ... You're a rotten apple,” he said. There was an uncomfortable silence. I smiled thinly and suggested we both go home.

You can make money in an MLM scheme, if you have the conscience of Al Pacino’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross and the tenacity of Alec Baldwin’s. But this relative of mine isn’t like that. She’s a ripe apple. And she’s going to get picked. Picked, peeled, sliced, steamed, boiled, and canned.