Asklemmy

Chiropractors.

Private health insurance is the biggest fucking scam ever. The private insurance companies benefit by getting the aggregate healthiest population into their plans (working adults). The most likely to be expensive people, i.e. old people (on medicare) or poor people (on medicaid, or not even on an insurance plan) are on government, tax payer insurance plans. There is literally no reason except for corporate profiteering that Medicare should not be expanded to cover all people.

Also all those conversations, especially in the 2020 election period, were totally bullshit. You say something like M4A will cost 44 trillion dollars or whatever, which sounds like an insane amount of money. What is often left out of the discussion is that estimated cost was 1) over 10 years and 2) has to be weighed against the current costs we already pay for insurance. So the deal was very simple: the overall costs would go down because the overall spending would be less, and at the same time millions of people without coverage would be covered, and at the same time you don't have to contemplate stupid bullshit like in network, out of network providers. Or ever again talk to your insurance about why something is or isn't covered. Boils my blood when I think too much about this.

Not even gonna weigh in on things like how medicare can't negotiate prescription drug prices (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/medicare-drug-price-negotiations-lawsuits.html), or how dental, vision, and hearing are treated separately from general healthcare, or how med school is prohibitively expensive, or how the residents after med school are overworked because the guy who institutionalize that practice was literally a cokehead. Those are all just bonus topics. The point is we are getting fleeced.

The stock market and publicly traded companies. The idea that a business that is making consistent profits isn't good unless those profits are increased each quarter is asinine. This system of shortsighted hyper focus on short term quarterly growth for the sake of growth is the cause of so much pain and suffering in the world. Even companies with amazing financials will work to push workers compensation down, cut corners and exploit loopholes to make sure their profits are always growing. Consistent large profits aren't good enough.

My personal top 3:

• insurance
• subscriptions
• Google and similar data hungry companies (while not a financial scam but moreso a privacy scam, companies like Google and Meta profiteering on our personal data without our knowledge or awareness)

Subscriptions.

People pay every month but most don't use the sub to it's full value, and forget how expensive it becomes over the years. And you don't own anything on a subscription, you just borrow it.

Also trial periods that prolong automatically into subscriptions.

Unpaid overtime.

Framing "fulfilling your contract" as "silent quitting".

In what other context would be "delivering what's in the contract" anything less than satisfactory?

When I buy a litre of milk and the box contains exactly a litre of milk it isn't "silent stealing" either.

Car based infrastructure

the stock market

capitalism

Wedding rings/diamonds in general.

The tradition isn't as old as people think and was literally started by a jewelry company to sell more jewelry. Specifically diamonds, which are not as rare as commonly believed and if not for the false scarcity and misinformation, would be dirt cheap.

Tipping in restaurants…pay the workers.

Professors requiring their own, expensive textbook for their course.

First Past the Post voting at elections.

Religion. Whole cloth.

Dollar stores. A lot of the time they are profiting by selling you a smaller quantity at a slightly lower price. They target low income communities.

Car dealerships. They are awful on purpose. In many places car manufacturers are not legally allowed to sell their cars directly to customers, in order to create what is essentially legally mandated car dealerships, which all suck.

The price for glasses. It's like this because of a stupid duopoly

Private health insurance.

Banks.

Insurance (am American)

Diamonds.

Real estate agents getting 6% commission from the seller.

Tipping

Printer inkt. In our shop people are still buying them for a way to high price…

Homes as wealth-creators.

Americans take it as received wisdom that homes are meant to generate income through higher valuations over time. We just assume home prices go up over time and if it's not actively increasing in value, the home was a failure.

Many other countries don't treat homes this way. They are dwellings, invest what you want to your liking, but it's not a retirement account.

This focus on wealth generation creates lots of perverse incentives, such as exclusionary zoning, building on lots that are overly large, and suburban sprawl. These don't reflect people's actual, desired form of housing but rather maximize wealth for homeowners at the expense of everyone else.

We have a completely warped view of housing that causes us to be preyed upon by real estate agents, landlords, HOAs and the like.

Windows. You pay ~100€ just to give your personal data to MS and get a bloated OS that will use all of your resources. Even MacOS is a more fair deal than this.

The United States health insurance system. It's such a for-profit racket that more taxpayer money goes into it per capita than any other system out there and its outcomes are worse and shittier.

Capitalism and the 5 day 9 to 5 work week

British royal family.

Religions that collect money from adherents.

Web 2.0 data harvesting.

Landlording

Credit scores. It goes up when you have more debt and goes down when you pay your debt off, but it goes down if you ask for a loan and it goes down if you even try to check what it is.

Absolute nonsense.

Bank fees

Homeopathy?

capitalism

This is the third post I’ve seen on Lemmy recently where people seem to overwhelmingly think the word “scam” just means “something I don’t like”. To be a scam, something needs to be dishonest in its representation, usually either by falsifying the true cost to the buyer, or lying about what is being provided in return.

Commoditized bottled water.

Credit scores

Your ISP is suddenly asking for more money. What are you gonna do? Disconnect from the internet?

Printer Ink and paying companies like Google and Spotify, who still collect your data as a paid customer.

Capitalism and religion, easily the top two scams.

The way mobile providers charge. The likes of Vodafone, any random Telecom, T-Mobile and so forth. It's a huge scam, bordering theft sometimes. Want samples? Here we go:

"Your credit expires in x days. Better recharge now to not lose it!" (Banks should start doing this /s)

"Your credit has expired. Better give us more money within our generous deadline, or else we are forced to delete your number. We love you."

"Your data has expired. We now charge you a horrendous amount every minute, because we are too greedy to warn you in time. For technical reasons we also cannot stop you from using data after your allowance has been used. Fortunately you still have credit, huh?"

"Your data expires today. We don't insult your intelligence by telling you when. Surely you remember when you bought the package, right? It's not hard to count 24 hours. We also do not send any SMS anymore to save the environment."

"Your data has expired. You need data to buy a new bundle. Our app charges data for our convenience."

"Social media data only works for WhatsApp, but not for Signal. But who uses Signal anyways?"

"Use our customer friendly support chat. Conveniently it uses data. 'Hello, I am your smart bot speaking. How can I help you? I might understand you if you type one of the three questions I have been programmed to answer. Do you want to know more about our products?'"

Edit: added point 2, minor corrections for clarity

Cryptocurrency

Cars=freedom

Airlines charging for seat selection. I remember the days when that was just a right you got for "free" by purchasing the ticket 🤷

It's hard to pick just one because, duh, capitalism is inherently a scam.

But if I were to pick just one, it'd have to be the airlines. They're beyond necessary yet every year they pull some insane shit and no one bats an eye. And no matter what they're always crying poor and merging merging merging. Can't you see, they have to - they have no choice.

First the food costs extra. Then the drinks. Then the bags you check in. Then they charge you to sit in the exit aisle because you get an extra 3 inches. They literally say now it's "impossible" to book two tickets seated together unless you pay an extra fee. Impossible, you say? How the fuck were you able to do it for so long up until 2022???

Diamond Scarcity

Capitalism

Shampoo: Washing away the natural oils in our hair, causing the body to produce them in higher volume, causing our hair to get greasy, creating a need for shampoo.

Recycling: Only about 10% of plastic is actually recycled, the rest is sold to countries without environmental laws, and they are dumped irresponsibly. Composting is simple, effective, and would reduce landfill use by about 30%, not to mention creating a useful end product. Yet it is rarely promoted.

Mattresses and box springs: They are worse on our spines and end up causing neck and back issues. Sleeping on a firmer surface, even a thin mattress or pad on the ground, alleviates these issues.

Lawns: Turning a useful piece of land on which we can grow food into a barren wasteland and making it into a chore that requires expensive equipment and encourages chemical use.

Sales tax on food: Some countries and US states have them. It's a tax on existence. Also, taxes on gym memberships and personal protective equipment. The government simultaneously claims it wants healthy, safe citizens, and charges them when they try to be healthy and safe.