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Asklemmycopyright
Countdown-Timer on e.g. Amazon that try to FOMO-pressure me into buying the item. Edit: typo
Artichokes. You pay for the whole thing but throw away half of it, you literally have to scrape the value out of it with your teeth.
Capitalism
Crypto
Subscriptions for everything. Especially hardware.
I already hate my always-online, have to use their shit app robot vacuum that gets worse after each update. I can't imagine buying a new, overpriced car these days and having it do all the same shit.
Paying rent for land. Unfortunately it's been that way since feudalism and the progressive movements over the last few hundred years haven't managed to break out of it
And if that scam will never go away, I just want to know who is on the earning end of that scam, and how can I become that person.
Scientific journals/publishers
Spyware. Make it stop.
Democracy.
This world is what people voted for? Yeah?
Fake elections, fake democracy. The president of USA is a puppet controlled by secret societies, and thats why nothing ever changes.
People cant even choose candidates. Everyone has to be rich to be president. Because money is what controls people. If you dont have that greed, you cant be controlled by the system. Thats why everyone powerful is rich.
You mean democracy in the US, not all over the world.
If you have a functioning example of democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
There's a lot of worse options out there but western democracy on the whole doesn't really represent the "demos" in any real sense - that's both good and bad of course, but it's also not democracy.
There are better and worse democracies. Overall, democracy this decade is on the decline: https://www.v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/
Anything priced: $X.99
Private insurance companies
capitalism
I moved to Chicago a few years. I go to rent an apartment. It has a "move-in" fee.
I'm like what's that.
Oh it's $500 that you don't get back.
I say. What about the deposit? They say. Oh yeah we don't require that. Isn't that great ,?
I'm like. So move in fee is my deposit but it's just guaranteed I won't get it back.
Them: well it's different. It's a move in fee. We don't require a deposit but if you don't clean out the apartment to this list of specifications, we will charge you per item you miss.
Example. Refrigerator not cleaned :$150 Floors not clean : $200
Etc.
So I was super unhappy about this and complained to anyone who would listen. To which my new Chicago neighbors and friends were like "that's how it's always been here,"
Bro. Y'all getting fucked. Hard. Non refundable deposit where you still have to clean out the old apartment.
Wtf. Should be illegal.
that's why you stiff em the last month's rent
Just give your landlord a burner phone number. Don't even clean the jizz stains when you leave.
What the fuck? So it's just a deposit you're garuanteed to not get back? What if you don't "miss" anything when cleaning up? You're not getting your money back anyway so why clean anything when you're moving out?
Yeah there was a whole list of things and the fine for not cleaning the items. So you had to make sure you got it super clean or you would get all the fines.
Of which amounted to something close to $1000.
I spent 2 days cleaning it when I moved out to make sure I didn't get any of the fines.
You can basically get black listed as a renter if you don't clean well.
The whole Trump administration and all of the lies, including all of the so called, assasination attempts. Don't believe a thing coming out from that circus.
Oh you know... vaguely gestures at everything
Printer cartridges
Are people still out there buying new ink cartridges every time they need to print something? I was sick of that s*** in 2019 and returned my printer to Costco and I'm never buying another printer again.
Free market capitalism
Religion
Health insurance
Credit scores!
Cordless power tools. Yes, they are useful in concept, but today they're just a loss-leader to sell you overpriced batteries.
I hate how the batteries are always incompatible with every other tool except (sometimes) the ones by the same manufacturer. Its tempting to get a petrol generator instead and just use corded tools.
Here in Germany at least, the OEMs are working together battery wise. The battery from X fits in Y and Z, whilst the battery from Y fits in X and Z.
I wouldn't call that a scam. (Modern) Cordless power tools are fucking incredible despite the branded batteries being a rip-off. I literally have corded tools that I don't even use because extension cords are a real pain in the ass some times.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
Ban the entire business model.
Capitalism
Came here for that answer. Large concentrations of wealth generate structural power that can distort political decisions and markets in a way that serves to perpetuate itself. This creates a virtuous circle in which capital shapes return conditions / regulation / access advantages in such a way as to systematically favour further capital growth.
This is how Entropy manifests. We are Entropy machines.
Preach
Dental care being treated as separate from health care.
You can die from teeth issues
This makes perfect sense from the supply side. Very few (younger) people need expensive medical care, so we can pool the risk. Almost everyone needs some, regular dental care, so it's more like a savings account than insurance. I'm not claiming that the insurance systems in any given country aren't exploitative, just that medical and dental insurance should be different.
Honestly, just health care in general being locked behind insurance to the point where people conflate the two conceots entirely!
Dental insurance in most cases is closer to what health insurance should be: an entirely optional, and generally affordable, policy that can offset major expenses. Not an expense that rivals housing in magnitude and is required for most people just to access the basic care needed by nearly everyone.
Privatization of government institutions and programs.
Listened to a really good podcast episode on this recently
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-236-manufactured-austerity-and-the-media-assisted-public-private-partnership-rip-off
Regan really did a number on the US. Broad privatization of public services, with all the wrong incentives in place. Which was then a vicious cycle of people hating their experience with public services -> politicians cut their funding -> service gets worse -> people hate their experience -> repeat until all your taxes have been siphoned to private entities and your govt is in shambles.
Let's be clear Reagan started it but Clinton really kicked it into overdrive. Privatization is unfortunately bipartisan.
Seriously this. The success of a public service shouldn't be how much revenue is generated or shareholder value is gained. We as a society are the shareholders and deserve infrastructure that works for us. Corporations have pushed the idea that lower taxes is better, but when you have to spend more to a company to get basic necessities, you're not really coming out on top buddy.
Two party politics
Bottled water.
Fees for leaving.
College / university in many countries.
In the US at least, its become such a parasitic industry, with tuition fees rising exponentially and far exceeding wage rates and job availability, that it accounts for a large portion of most people's personal debt.
With so many applicants for so few jobs, a college degree is the new highschool diploma / "minimum requirement" for nearly every job now. 1 / 4 US adults have student loan debt, with an average of 40k in student loans.. Nothing is putting the brakes on degree inflation, tuition, or the student loan industry.
The US federal government also makes a killing off of student loan interest fees, most of which is going to the MIC and Israel.
They've made the product they're selling you (a degree), both required, and extremely expensive; the ultimate goal of any parasitic industry. Its a dream for state and private colleges, the US government and its military, and a nightmare for people either without a job, or chained to their desks for fear of losing their job and getting further behind on loan payments.
I worked 64 hours a week to pay for my College Tuition.
That is plus 18 hours of classes, and 18 hours of studies a week.
This was for the cheapest college near me at a rate of $4000 a semester.
I love being slaved to the point my grades were low only because of my work. When I saved enough / got scholarships, I was able to stop working, and my grades became a 4.
So in summary, slaving to afford a chance to have a low grade compared to those with wealth who can get to focus all their time to college.
The real estate market. In many countries, the value of labor and materials necessary to build a house is about ~~30 to 40~~ 40 to 120 thousand euros. Everything else is speculation.
Edit. Initially I put 30 to 40 thousand euros.
Where the fuck do you live? In switzerland your average new house costs around 300-400k
Value is how much socially necessary labor it actually took to build and maintain that house: materials, construction work, infrastructure, etc. It’s the real human effort crystallized in the building.
Price is what they slap on it in the market, which can be wildly disconnected from its actual value. In housing, price gets inflated by speculation, land monopolies, credit bubbles, location hype, and landlord parasites treating homes as investment vehicles to extract rent.
So you might have a crumbling flat that cost relatively little labor to build 40 years ago, but because it's in a "desirable area" with a housing shortage artificially maintained by capital, its price skyrockets. That is a socially enforced ransom, not the value.
https://open.oregonstate.education/sociologicaltheory/chapter/value-price-and-profit/
I am just talking about the cost to build the actual house plus the profit the contractor slaps on top. The price of your house will not be below 1 million in most places because of the reasons you stated
How did you arrive at the 30 to 40 thousand euro figure
From a friend of mine who built a house in Southern Italy some years ago.
You can also find numbers on the Internet, see basic construction cost in Bulgaria here: https://arch-pfoertner.com/en/blog/bulgaria-vs-spain-building-costs
Insurance
Insurance is nothing but a legal protection racket. The only difference is when you lapse on your protection money, the insurers don't go and blow your kneecaps out, although United Health has effectively killed people who lapsed on payments before or denied them potentially life-saving drugs.
As a concept or in practice?
Yes
Does that mean you don't buy insurance or are you paying someone to intentionally scam you?
It is strange that you don't have an option to choose a insurance company who are not scammers. I mean, that no one thought of starting an insurance company which promotes self on actually helping their customers.
There are companies outside US who are not scamming people and still are profitable.
Outside of the US here: nearly every insurance company in Belgium (that are coincidently also the banks) are 100% scamming people and literally make their entire business model off of ripping people off as much as possible.
Using any and every excuse to deny people the insurance they paid for when they have legitimate claims is literally how they are "profitable."
Any form of gambling.
Console memberships: having to pay monthly to use the games I already paid for, on the console I already paid for, to access the internet I already pay for.
"Earning a living".
Implies that you don't deserve to live. But they also make a large number of cheaper ways to live illegal. Buy some woodland away from town and live in a tent or caravan? No, can't have you doing that.
Everything about cars from manufacturing, sales, insurance, repair, registration and taxes. We could just have Public transportation.
The car is a tool to move yourself and your family/friends from place A to place B. But James Bond, Batman, rap videos made a status symbol of it. They created a modern mythology around it.
The transformation of the automobile from a means of transport into a luminous totem of status is a near-perfect case study of what Pierre Bourdieu theorised as the conversion and misrecognition of capital.
Bourdieu argued that capital presents itself in three fundamental guises: economic capital (money, assets), cultural capital (knowledge, taste, credentials), and social capital (networks, group membership). These are not static silos; they are constantly converted into one another to legitimise and reproduce social hierarchies. The car, in its purest state, is merely objectified economic capital, a purchased good with a clear use-value: to move from A to B. But the moment it enters the cultural field, it is inscribed with meaning, and it becomes a vehicle for symbolic capital, which Bourdieu defined as the form the other capitals take when they are perceived and recognised as legitimate.
https://archive.org/stream/bourdieu-the-forms-of-capital-1/Bourdieu%20The%20Forms%20of%20Capital-1_djvu.txt
The middle class in general in a lot of countries
Capitalism
AI being stuffed down our throat at every corner
Tipping
Dying.
Everyone thinks that you are supposed to go to the hospital when you are dying as if they are going to like, stop you from dying.
Mostly what they do is make sure that you don't leave anything behind for your kids to inherit as they spend a million dollars a day keeping you a miserable vegetable for a week.
Once that is done the funeral industry shows up to make sure that you dump the rest into buying a worthless box and digging a hole.
Everyone thinks that you are supposed to go to the hospital when you are dying
Do they? I often hear of people wanting to die at home if they have the choice, there is also hospice care. Hospital would only make sense if you have something that might be possible to treat, at least at the point of deciding to go.
Glad to have the NHS though, so there is no cost to worry about. Pretty sure you can get cremated for under £1k, you don't need to get a gold plated box.
When my father died a while back we decided to cremate him. The amount of money they suggested we spend on a casket that was literally going up in smoke was ridiculous.
similar problems in aged care honestly. Many people would rather sign away the equity in their parents' estate to an aged care provider, then actually care for their aging parents in their time of absolute vulnerability.
Aren't hospitals mostly free? Or tax payer funded.
Your ID identifies you as Australian, mate. Afaik public hospitals are free / publicly funded in Australia, just as it should be. But that's unfortunately not true for everyone.
Bots farming engagement, huh just like this one!
Wage labor.
Aka wage theft
pretty sure they meant wage slavery
Extended Warranties.
Capitalism
Suburbia, and by extension big-box stores. Hell, the entire fucking American economy is a huge scam just waiting to permanently collapse.
Shrinkflation.
i think people are still mad about shrinkflation and rightfully see it as a scam.
nothing a couple more decades of it can't solve though.
I don't know, I've heard some fairly smart people say some very positive stuff about how reduction of package sizes saves on calories, for one.
on the other hand there will always be the boot lickers.
Those "rent a e-bike/scooter for your commute" apps. Doesn't take that many rides to exceed the cost of getting your own. If you find yourself using those regularly just save up to buy an e-bike/scooter.
People hire bikes for a commute? I only ever saw bike hires as something you might do on holiday or a trip somewhere. Not daily.
our city had a great service when it was manual bikes. you could get a yearly membership for about the cost of a monthly bus pass. allowed for one hour but you could dock and undock anywhere to restart the clock. No per minut or per mile fee. Once they started doing e-bikes the problem is they stopped stocking regular bikes as much and now you don't know if any will be at a docking station when you get there and the ebikes have an extra cost outside of the membership.
A lot of it is having bikes wherever, and not having to worry about securing it.
Where I live they also have these very restricted service areas where you have to be in if you want to be able to park the scooter, otherwise the app simply won't let you end the session and pay. Not sure how they even determine these areas, I wouldn't be surprised if the competing scooter companies here have their own territory and keep people locked in for the mutual benefit of the companies and at the cost of anyone wanting to commute with these things.
And aside from all that, as you said they are extremely expensive even for a ride around the block, and also very dangerous if the roads are designed with only cars in mind.
I rented a scooter in iceland and - long story - dropped my phone just while renting it. Thus, renting a scooter was $400 that day.
Religion.
Religion is tricky. Most people search for meaning in life, and religions are an answer to that need.
But linking religion to nations is the root of evil. Not being Catholic in Italy will cause you a lot of headaches, for example, yet you should be able to choose any religion you like and follow it freely.
So I would say the real issue is the interplay between religion and power, and discrimination on religious grounds.
Religions claim to answer that need. But they're bullshit. It's all just made-up, and the made-up bullshit somehow means minorities don't get civil rights.
Subscriptions
Being told to go therapy, instead of being told to burn down the oligarchy.
It’s all part of the plan to pacify you…and others. People have been convinced they can solve everything with some calm chat and a hug.
Insurance
Car dealerships
Multi Level Marketing
Temu
Influencers
Education system
Maybe a bit more spicy. And I’m not against education itself. Just seems like an obviously contingent system that’s got a monopolistic lock on “demand” while having glaring issues around its quality.
Just to get the context. Are you writing about the United States of America, some other countries or the West in general?
A related controversial topic related to education is the Bologna Process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process
I don’t know anything about this, actually! What’s the controversy?
Many post-Soviet countries migrated from Soviet-style education to the standardized Bologna process ones. The quality of education in those countries dropped sharply. Many professors resisted the Bologna process and were able to form cultured students.
In Italy there was a similar process, where they migrated from an education system that forced you to write essays to one where you put a check into the right answer. The difference has deep psychological consequences. In one case, the possibilities are infinite, you can write anything you want, even draw. In the other case, there are four possible choices and you pick the one that sounds more realistic.
You can find more information here: https://frankfurtrights.com/Books/Details/unaccomplished-utopia-13358364
Ah! Yea, resonates strongly with where I was coming from.
Something, I suppose, like “not all good things can be scaled and mechanised, and not all scaled and mechanised things are good”.
"democracy"?
Career ladder bullshit. Including wage theft. Religion.
Feeling extra edgy today! Society's a scam, maaan!
Bullshit convenience fees.
The thing about good scams is that they exist in the grey area between fraud and real services.
Almost every answer in this thread is an example of this. Insurance for example - this is when you pay someone else to take responsibility for a risk. The modern economy couldn't exist without it. However, there are plenty of insurance policies which don't provide much value and are more like fraud than a real service.
Enshittification
Is anyone really accepting it?
I sure ain't.
Streaming services
Interest.
Big box store plant offerings. Clones of the same mother plants at best, highly invasive and unregulated at worst. Seriously most carry invasive plants that destroy ecosystems.
Big-box stores are a scam, period. Their whole business model is driving smaller local shops out of business and becoming the only game in town, and then completely screwing that town over when they leave.
Taxes
