Agreed. Unfortunately, today's globalized world is very unlike a small town. So, a lot of crooks can scam a whole bunch of people before they are blacklisted as such.
That has always been true. ~130 years ago, crooks went from small town to small town selling snake oil cures - and they had to promptly leave in a hurry, they were almost always run out of town by their horrible reputations.
It doesn't guarantee perfect or instant protection, it drastically increases the odds of eventual consequences. The reason for that is, human knowledge (eg about someone's reputation) isn't acquired or shared instantly, it's a process requiring time. It's a 95% good enough premise, but not a 100% guarantee. Historically it works incredibly well over time.
The modern examples at a large scale are plentiful as well. Costco for example has a tremendous reputation, and I would argue it has substantially aided it in, essentially, besting Sam's Club. Costco proved you can defeat even the largest of incumbent in the market by doing things better for customers and employees.
On the other hand globalization has made it much harder to scam in many ways since information about scams spread instantly. Back in the days you could use any simple trick and people would buy it over and over again since they had never heard of it before. Nowadays the scammers need to be much more inventive.
I don't know if I agree. MLM companies need to put some serious effort into combating all the bad press they get on the internet (efforts which are inventive indeed!). Without globalization it would be a walk in the park.
