Un''scam'' youself? Pyramid scheme

The Pyramid scheme is a luring scheme that invites its participants to believe in an easy money making formulae. It involves either in making one-off payments or buying a product to initially enter the scheme. Now, to start making money the participant invites others to join the scheme and takes a share of their investment as commission.

''A person (the originator) starts by sending a message to several people. Usually people he/she knows. The message in some round about way, will tell everyone to send him $5 or so...and then send the message to someone else. All the while adding names to the list, and each new recipient must send money to the first person, second person...etc''

(Source:http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/7045/online_business/mlm_pyramid_schemes_and_matrices.html)

However, there is no real product being sold. Hence, basically you unscam yourself by scamming other, not necessarily knowing that you might be scamming others. There are other names and forms of this scam such as the Multi Level Marketing, Ponzi scheme, and High-yield investment program.

Well what I aim to focus on here is the Ponzi scheme. Why? Because I believe this scheme is currently prevalent, in practice and has gone unnoticed. First an introduction:

''A Ponzi scheme is closely related to a pyramid because it revolves around continuous recruiting, but in a Ponzi scheme the promoter generally has no product to sell and pays no commission to investors who recruit new "members." ''

(Source: http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/dvimf16.shtm)

Major companies such as Vodafone, talktalk, etc... use this scheme under the label ''recommend a friend''. Here you’re encouraged to sell a product, or be it service, to you mate because you are lead by the greed to recuperate the cost of you initial payment. In a competitive market, we have to agree there might be better alternatives. Hence, encouraging to selling a product which might not really benefit your mate and is indeed, I believe, misleading.

So please let me know whether you think that ‘’recommend a friend’’ scheme flows in the same vein as the Pyramid scheme or its akin? Is it a scam? If so shouldn’t something be done about it?