The reason why all types of pyramid schemes fail and have been declared illegal is because for every person that’s going to make money there will be thousands of others that will ultimately lose their entire investment when it quickly reaches its saturation point. The saturation point refers to the point that everyone in the world already bought in and there is no one left to sell it to.
This means that you can’t have everyone in B’klyn open up a pizza store . Once there are too many stores of a particular kind, the rest of them will have to close up!
Here is what the math would look like if everyone bought into the airplane game.
Additional people recruited. Total # of players. Total # of pilots. Total $ involved.
Split #2 16 31 3 $36,000
Split #3 32 63 7 $84,000
Split #4 64 127 15 $18,000
Split #5 128 255 31 $372,000
Split #6 256 511 63 $756,000
Split #7 512 1,023 127 $1,524,000
Split #8 1,024 2,047 255 $3,060,000
Split # 9 2,048 4,095 511 $6,132,000
Split #10 4,096 8,191 1,023 $12,276,000
Split #11 8,092 16,383 2,047 $24,564,000
Split #12 16,384 32,767 4,095 $49,140,000
Split #13 32,768 65,535 8,091 $97,092,000
Split #14 65,536 131,071 16,383 $196,596,000
Split #15
Split #16 Fill in the math on your own!
Split #17 ”
Split #18 ”
Split #19 ”
Split #20 4,194,304 8,388,607 1,048,575 $12,582,900,000
After only twenty splits we already have a total of over four million participants. In another few splits there will be no one in the world to sell it too and all the millions of people who bought in will all lose their money.