sticker club ponzi scheme

i got a letter about a week ago from one of my favorite cousins.  well, actually it was a letter for abigail from my cousin's daughter, inviting her to be in the "sticker club."  it only takes reading the letter to realize that it's a ponzi scheme... send one pack of stickers and get 36 packs of stickers in return.  with the copies and the mailing to friends and all the other instructions, i won't lie, it kinda sounded like a time consuming sort of pain.  but this was from my beloved cousin and i trust her judgement more than my own, so i decided to be a yes man and just do it.

i can't remember what it was but while i was sending them out, i googled "sticker club" and then my stomach sank.  apparently moms hate this stuff.  well... some moms are totally fine with it but some take this huge stance against it and reading a million comments people had written online made me step back and actually think where i stood with this.

i am happy to report that i am okay with it and i think sticker ponzi schemes are not a bad thing.  here's why.

the worst that can happen is that you gave a $.99 pack of stickers to a precious little child and received absolutely nothing in return.  that isn't a bad thing in my book.  ponzi schemes are illegal because they aren't sustainable and eventually there are people at the bottom that give without ever receiving.  when it's your entire life savings that you're going to use on retirement, this can be a very bad thing.  when you're "losing" a pack of stickers that will actually bring joy to a child, that is actually a good thing.  it's call a "gift."  moms commenting on these threads were ranting about everything from "this chain letter is bullying my child into participating" to "my daughter was like  'why would i want to send a pack of stickers to someone i don't even know?'" to "i just threw it in the trash because i didn't want to do it and i didn't want to look bad to the mom that sent it to me" to "my kid loved this and it made her day" to "i took this as an opportunity to talk to my child about pyramid schemes" to "this was a great way for me to explain letter writing and the postal system."  and it wasn't hard to find a blog post with a mom venting about how they think it's absolutely terrible and then there were 15 comments from other moms saying "i'm glad you wrote this!  now i'm not going to feel guilty about throwing the letter away!"

so i'm sure i could go on for ten more paragraphs about this but really, you send one pack of stickers and then you get between 0 and 36 packs of stickers.  if you get 20 packs of stickers, that's still a good deal.  if you only get two packs of stickers that's still a good deal.  if you get one pack of stickers you've broken even.  and if you get zero packs of stickers, you've done a good deed.  and who doesn't like to be charitable?!  i'm a psych major and i wish i remembered the name of this study i'm thinking of  (if you know it, comment below!) but the result was that the people in the study actually received more gratification from a task when they received no compensation.  and the people that were well paid for their time/effort received less gratification.  that's true for me.  like how i enjoyed nannying just fine when i was getting paid $20/hr for it.  but last week i spent six hours of my time watching kids that were not my own.  like i knew a friend had a lot to do before she went out of town so i told her to drop off her kid for a few hours while she got stuff done.  and then later in the week i watched another friend's kid for several hours while she and her husband when out house hunting with their realtor.  i enjoy that kind of kid watching much more than i ever enjoyed the paid kind.  it's just the nature of giving.

and here's the other thing.  the letter specifically states "if you can't participate, let my mom know."  here's my plan for any of my mom friends that tell me they don't want to participate... i'm just going to send a pack of stickers to whoever they were supposed to send them to.  that's it.  then their part of the pyramid ends but there is no adverse effect for any of the previously participating kids.  i don't mind buying extra packs of stickers to send to my cousin's kid... so, beloved cousin (you know who you are), if your dear daughter gets several packs of stickers from me... you'll know why.  ;-)

moral of the story: sticker ponzi schemes make kids happy and the ones on the end just learn to be givers.

that's my story and i'm sticking to it.

*i realize that there will be plenty of people that disagree with my opinion... and i'm okay with that.