You fail to mention how restrictive the Amway contract can be in other ways. Doesn’t it basically limit the manners in which you promote the business? Doesn’t it severely limit how you and others promote the affair online? It does strictly limit your ability to even negotiate contract with Amway before you sign it.

Where is the ‘independence’ in being a supposedly ‘independent’ business person? All terms of the relationship between them and you is written in stone by Amway; and, as you found out, where is the independence in that. Amway distributors are actually selling a ‘chain’ of ‘business opportunities’ and if products are bought, they generally are bought by the recruited distributors, not necessarily sold to (non-distributor) actual retail buyers and customers. The only real market for Amway wares are the believers in the Amway ’systems’ and just as in the former Soviet Union, their 2 to 5 year plans, and other reality inverting nonsense that recruits are told about during recruitment. The products become merely ‘props’ in the selling of these business opportunites. Other MLM companies use something as simple as fruit juice in a fancy wine bottle as prop in order to sell their particular ‘business opportunity’ as well. Amway has many clones seeking to operate basically the same disguised product business. Additionally believers are told that if they want to succeed, they must buy how to information (known as tools) from the top distributors in their ‘line of support’. Distributors are taught to be their own best customers and to blame themselves if, in the end they fail.