Their philosophy "Is to create a decentralized system and empower people financially.". But money doesn't come out of thin air. To keep paying the first users new users would be a necessity otherwise the value of BCC would fall due to more supply than demand. Putting more pressure on the 'bot' to return those payments in dollar terms. That said whether it is a pyramid scheme or not, so is Amway and Herbalife and those companies seem to be doing just fine so far...