So they don't view themselves as evil, they think they're doing GOOD by pushing you to buy these things
You have no idea how right you are. I have a relative who essentially raised me while my parents finished school, and her career was, if I remember correctly, being the third person from the top in a pyramid scheme. (Yes, she became a millionaire after a decade or two, but she took me out of her will because I moved away and didn't tell her my address or phone number. So don't be jealous lol)
She spent the first 10 years of my childhood trying to convince my poor mom to join this scheme. She told me that if my parents joined the pyramid scheme, I could go back to being raised by them, and she coached me to ask my parents why they hadn't joined the pyramid scheme every time they came to pick me up from her house. I can still remember the sad, haunted look in my mom's eyes when I told her that if she really loved me she would join the pyramid scheme so I could spend every day with her. I think I was in kindergarten. I'm pretty sure she cried after I went to bed that night.
It sounds evil. Manipulative. Sociopathic. Well, this woman was manipulative and sociopathic [obligatory "I'm not a psychologist but I'm using this term because she acts like Hollywood's version of a sociopath so it's a concise way to convey a complex set of personality traits"]. She was so manipulative and sociopathic that it should come as no surprise that she was successful in her pyramid scheme, because she was the personality equivalent of a greasy used car salesman.
But she wasn't evil. I know this woman as well as I know my own mother and she truly, sincerely, believed that everyone was capable of becoming a millionaire just like her if only they worked hard enough. And they were all capable of working hard enough if only they put in the effort and prayed to God every night and went to church every Sunday! He would reward them all with success if only they signed up for this pyramid scheme!
I should mention that she was one of those "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and so should you" conservatives, to the point where she'd make Mitt Romney sound like a hippie. And that's a horrible thing to think, but it's not evil. It's just a horribly ignorant thought that maybe causes people to act evil, but it's ignorance through and through. She sincerely, ignorantly thought that all the poor people in the world were poor because they didn't work hard enough - but she was a devout Christian who loved and pitied all of us, and thought of us more as lost souls who hadn't heard the gospel of hard work, not as lazy or bums or moochers like some other conservatives seem to think. And she twisted religion and pyramid schemes together into some kind of weird cult mentality which made it all the more manipulative.