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pavioko

Fake selling of Eiffel tower. Twice.


SlainSigney

Victor Lustig, exactly who i thought of too. He had another scheme where he sold people with too much money and not enough sense a box that “duplicated currency”, and then when they realized they had been scammed they would either be too embarrassed to do anything or scared of being busted for attempting to counterfeit.


Gentleman-Bird

He also told them that the box took 10 hours to complete the printing. This was to give him time to skip town.


Rrrrandle

>and then when they realized they had been scammed they would either be too embarrassed to do anything Same reason the elderly are targeted by so many scammers today. Susceptible and too proud to admit they've been taken.


jaydubbles

The Dollop podcast has a solid episode about him.


hondanlee

Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower twice because the first victim was too embarrassed to complain that he'd been stupid. That's the psychology behind all successful con tricks.


Squigglepig52

That can be applied to relationships, too.


SnooChipmunks126

Gregor MacGregor tricked a whole bunch of people into moving to a fake country in Central America.


clkvang

I read this as Conor MacGregor and thought, wow what a career change.


nickmoe

Bruhhh me too I was so confused


Zoxphyl

This should be higher up. Dude made up his own world building project, as elaborate as that of any tabletop RPG or fantasy novel series; used it to lure hundreds of people to their doom; and died peacefully in Venezuela with full military honors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_MacGregor#Poyais_scheme


HyperSpaceSurfer

Was wondering why I'd never heard of the Irish UFC dude doing something like that, but wasn't exactly surprised either.


Starfire-Galaxy

Same. Like I was wondering "why has this never been mentioned before in a celebrities' ugliest secrets' thread??"


Ace-of-Spades88

Damn, what a wild read. Dude was sending shiploads of people to their death like it was going out of style. Unbelievable that he got off Scot-free for it too.


Zoxphyl

>Scot-free Just like the attempted settlement ended up being.


Tough_Music4296

Thats what you get for trusting a guy with two first names


COG_Employee_No2

No, he has two last names.


99tsumeIcantsolve1

But his name means "Gregor, son of Gregor," so they only have one of each. His father's name was Gregor, supposedly, and his name is Gregor, but MacGregor would still be a surname.


neonblue3612

Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme


Brainjacker

Charles Ponzi’s scheme


insertstalem3me

Damn, he was named after the term for scamming somebody, bad luck


loptopandbingo

"Mr. Simpson, you have Homer Simpson Syndrome." "Oh *why me*?"


tommytraddles

And then Lou Gehrig died...of Lou Gehrig's disease. *What're the chances*


InfamousCelery4438

Originally Carlo Ponzi, mentored by Charles Morse, the Ice King of Maine, when they met in an Atlanta prison: https://meandermaine.com/tale/the-ice-king/ Scroll way down to find the connection. CW Morse was quite the character and all around arch villain. It's likely Ponzi learned his ways directly from Morse.


Redqueenhypo

That guy was nuts, he was like a mix of altruistic and extremely scammy. He once was hospitalized for weeks bc he donated tissue to an injured Italian worker he’d never met. His wife was an anti-gold digger who told him she would prefer he be a bricklayer, hated living in a big house, and fired the cleaning staff bc she felt she did a better job


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yalaket111

US Telecom companies getting like 200 billion to expand infrastructure, which they didn't do - then using that money to fuck us over with the FCC's "fast lanes".


foxbones

Most of the money went to rural ISPs who just used the money to buy off all other rural ISPs and nearly bankrupt themselves with operating costs. CenturyLink and Frontier were the worst actors. Bought up a bunch of small local ISPs and cities that Verizon and ATT wanted to give up on supporting. Didn't make any improvements to infrastructure. Really should have had more regulation around it because that money was essentially stolen.


pissfilledbottles

In my rural area, we have CenturyLink and Astound Broadband. I can pay $60/mo for CenturyLink and their blazing fast 3.5mbps, or I can go with Astound and get gig speed internet for almost the same price. CenturyLink really fucked themselves.


SuvenPan

The Church of Scientology


PerthDelft

A guy I know's brother committed suicide because scientology took all his money and was hounding him for more. Because the guy was in the military there was a pretty deep investigation you can look up, but the short story is here. They're evil. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-23/brother-wants-answers-on-scientologists-suicide/1152806


Eshoosca

Did anything come of it?


UncleIrohsPimpHand

Well no, Scientology is still a thing.


CalmCalmBelong

Shelly! Where’s Shelly???


BigD_277

You lack the standing within the Church to ask that question.


DeificClusterfuck

Probably dead or locked away because she's mentally ill, and Scientologists font believe in mental illness or psychiatric treatment Never trust a religion literally written by a nutcase sci-fi author, y'all


Psycho-Maiko

I’m amased how tom cruise still has fans, honestly


SolarGum

The price of printer ink.


Chillypill

This is really a thing the EU ought to regulate better. They have introduced USB-C for standardization, now please force printer companies to make new models that all adhere to one standard ink cartridge that must be able to accept any 3rd party made ones.


idle_isomorph

We should crack down on lots of this stuff. The more standardized stuff is, the easier to recycle or refill or reuse also.


Resident_World2191

It’s literally cheaper by like $10-30 to buy a new cheap printer everytime you run out of ink than to buy more ink. It really is such a scam.


SugarHigh4me

Are new printers still only coming with 20% filled cartridges tho? Is that still a thing?


graboidian

Checkout the label of the cartridges when you get a new printer. There will be the word "Setup" written on them. What this means is, there is enough ink in each cartridge to get you set up, but you will need to get a set of new ink tanks very soon. Companies started realizing people were simply buying new printers because it was the better value, so they had to do something to combat this.


Occultic_giraffe

Because printer ink is apparently made with gold silver and the finest gemstones right


mariodementia

I just bought cheap HP printer/scanner and it arrived with 20-30% of black and color catridge. And whats top of it,it says that printer now can know if you buy 3rd party ink and printer can stop working if it registers it.


SyntheticReality42

This is why I won't buy another HP printer, or any other brand that pulls crap like that.


RogerPackinrod

As long as you fill the cartridge before it bricks itself when empty, you can refill them with 3rd party ink kits.


cS47f496tmQHavSR

I don't buy new printers anymore, every ~5 years I get myself a used laser printer. Toner doesn't dry out and they're absolute beasts, so if the cartridge is even half full it lasts me and my family until the printer dies or becomes too creaky


Resident_World2191

I mean, maybe? Anytime I’ve gotten a new printer they’ve lasted a really long time but I’ve not done any math or experimentation with them to see if that’s true.


JustaRandomOldGuy

Get a Brother laser printer.


mcdoolz

Agreed. Just get a Brother laser.


GozerDGozerian

At many times in the past I’ve wanted to lase my younger brother. But now that we’re adults, I quite like him and I’m glad I never bisected him with a powerful beam of coherent light.


jamieliddellthepoet

There’s still time.


[deleted]

+1, I have one and it's really nice. No bs drivers either.


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Hockeygoalie1114

Replacement razor cartridges have entered the chat


LittleTay

This is why I will always but a Laserjet now. They are more expensive, and the toner is too, but it doesn't dry up. You can nit use it for 10 years and it will still print just fine.


fuzzy_capybara

My mother in law recently told me about her "secret trick". She buys cheap, fake cartridges in bulk online just to then return the empty ones to a store that offers you a 5€ return per empty cartridge that you bring them. Her strategy is actually quite profitable.


[deleted]

... that's a scam itself right?


insertstalem3me

Its giving ink for something else, simply squid pro quo


Team_Captain_America

Epson Eco Tanks are pretty reasonably priced considering how long the ink lasts.


parkerjh

Eco Tanks are great and VERY cost effective. I bought one 3 years ago and due to my heavy printing, saves at LEAST $400-$500/year on ink. BUT: just a couple weeks ago, I got an error message. It said that I had reached the "end of life" of the printer. It allowed me to clear the message and continue to print for a little bit but message re-appeared and now the printer was "done". Said I needed to contact Epson for repair (more than cost of printer) or replacement. Straight out BULLSHIT b/c printer was working fine and just reached an arbitrary amount of pages that they decided they'd brick the printer. The good news is that I found an online utility that clears the page count from the printer (wasn't free but pretty cheap, like $10). I was skeptical that it would work but it worked perfectly and I am printing again. Galls me that that practice is even legal by Epson **EDIT** Here is the site I used: [https://www.wic.support/](https://www.wic.support/) They offer a free download so that you know it works. It rolls back the printer counter to 80% on a one-time basis so you can't keep using it. But 20% more life might offer months and months of printing. Anyway, if it works and you want to roll back to 0, you can buy the key for $9.99


nonsense_potter

I am fucking aghast that this is a thing.


mttl

You can replace the maintenance box on most models. There should never be an 'end of life' unless you have an unreplaceable maintenance box.


lollroller

Laser toner too A set of 4 color HP high-yield toner (e.g. 414x black/cyan/magenta/yellow) for color Laserjet printers is $850


vokat17543

Ticketmaster.


aRealTattoo

My hate for Ticketmaster is beyond anything in the world.


G-Unit11111

And they've got significantly worse in the post COVID era.


aRealTattoo

Surprisingly I never had a problem with them prior to Covid. I was a nearly every week concert attendee for mostly smaller bands, but when Ticketmaster was used (especially wary 2010’s) I didn’t mind it all that much! I used to go to Walmart, go to the Ticketmaster machine in the electronic section and purchase and print tickets right there. It wasn’t expensive and nearly every time I saw that all of my money wasn’t going to $30 in “convenience fees.” Instead I was spending like $35-$80 on a decent standing room concert with $3-8 on printing fee.


skeletorbilly

That used to be the model. Ticketmaster would make it easier to buy tickets vs going to the box office. That's fine. but now it's the only option. You can't even go to the box office anymore to get around fees.


50YearsofFailure

> You can't even go to the box office anymore to get around fees. Haven't for a very long time, at least where I live. I got charged a "convenience fee" when I drove across town to the venue and bought at the box office - specifically to get around the new convenience fee - and that was 20-ish years ago. Ticketmaster is one of the big reasons I don't attend concerts much anymore and they hold the music industry hostage with their exclusivity deals with venues. Adding to this, they artifically inflate prices by buying their own tickets and reselling them as soon as they go on sale. They can rot in hell.


skeletorbilly

It's a blessing in disguise. It pushed me to go to local shows and bars to see up and coming bands. There are a ton of gems out there. There is no reason to pay 400+ for a concert. I hope one day ticketmaster will be a thing of the past.


Dysan27

Ticketmaster Fan-to-Fan resale. They get a cut of the inital sale They get a cut of the re-sale AND they are enabling scalpers.


notarooster

The moment Ticketmaster realized they could double dip on their outrageous fees by enabling scalpers was a moment of true evil.


Miss_Management

I can't even see a show for a reasonable price. I call bullshit. Ticketmaster has destroyed live music.


bioschmio

Agreed, I know I can’t afford concerts any longer so I no longer pay attention, which is absolute bs!


Cornyboy100

22k for Taylor swift. HAHAHAHA


PBRmy

You can advertise tickets for any price you want, but did anyone actually BUY tickets for that much, even for Swift?


-Lord_Loki-

Everyone needs to realise this.


Trapdoormonkey

Our government is complicit. I swear listen y’all, we all know a bully when we see one. The crap that they allow Ticketmaster to get away with, and now they can’t even do anything about it.


Boomerang_comeback

They CAN do something about it. They choose not to. Ticketmaster is breaking rules set out by the department of justice. They are just not bothering to enforce them. Probably because the only entity more corrupt than Ticketmaster is the government.


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Ohsnipes

Plus the professors that make their own books part of the curriculum.


LiLiLisaB

Luckily had one that did that, but basically photocopied it and just made us pay a couple bucks for the paper and binding.


Lengthofawhile

I had one assign his \*unpublished\* book for the class. We had to go to his office and pay him 45 dollars for it. There were grammatical errors in it.


dust_of_cheetos

I'd have sent it back with red pen correcting the errors


omgpickles63

We had a guy do that, but would give us extra credit if we found errors as he was in the process of publishing it.


I_pinguino

I had a teacher in high school who did that to us because we would find so many errors like with spelling. What was hilarious is he would never fix them. Honestly he was the best history teacher i had


ChunkyFart

I had a professor write his own book. Sent us to print shop not affiliated with the school to buy it. It wasn’t hard cover and just had the plastic spiral thing holding it together. I think it was $10 or $12.


SirJudasIscariot

I had a professor who did that, but he made his book free since it wasn’t selling at all, but man, it was a goldmine of information about the local area. Recorded history, interviews with famous locals, personal anecdotes, legends and the true stories behind them. This was his life’s work to document his home as faithfully as possible.


bel_esprit_

College textbooks (buying “new” editions every semester when they just rearranged a couple chapters around)


ibn1989

A few sentences lol


4ftTwelveInches

*American* Hospital billing. The minute you ask for an itemized receipt and breakdown, they start removing charges left and right and the bill gets reduced by ~30%. Edit: added *American*


Lemonburn

The last time I got a hospital bill, I sent it to my debt consolidation lawyers, and they were all like, "Don't worry about it." And they made the debt completely vanish.


SkootchDown

Can confirm *from both sides of that hospital bill!* Source: I worked in billing for the largest hospital network in the South. *PLUS* when I was pregnant with my last child I had complications for which the treatment wouldn’t be covered under insurance. We weren’t advised of this ahead of time and received a bill long after delivery for $27,000 *for just that portion.* Because of my prior work in the billing department I knew to ask for an itemized bill. Magically, all those charges disappeared. Bottom line? ALWAYS ASK FOR AN ITEMIZED BILL.


Emfx

Amazing how they successfully lobbied legal fraud.


[deleted]

We should make it a trend to take pictures of the original and itemized bills alongside each other. I don't go to the hospital so I can't really participate, but upper middle class people who can do that should take pics


juju611x

The real pro tip is always in the itemised bills.


theplow

Must be nice to have lawyers on retainer. wtf.


Lemonburn

Debt consolidation lawyers are cheaper than bankruptcy lawyers.


4ftTwelveInches

Something to keep in mind regarding *medical* debt, it **doesn’t** negatively count against you when buying a house. They disregard medical debt, and my guess is it’s because they know it’s bullshit meant to extort people of as much as they can get from them. So if you’re ever wonder what bills to pay first, make medical stuff your *LEAST* priority.


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Complete_Goose667

When we first moved to the US from Canada, the hospital billing was like a new language. Our twins were born on a Sunday and on Tuesday morning my husband got a bill from one of the neonatologists. He called them and asked about it. Their response was that baby A wasn't on our insurance. Well, he explained that we had 30 days to add them to the insurance and that they did not yet have names. Ridiculous. Related incident. I was a high risk pregnancy and had to go to a special hospital for extra screenings every three weeks. When the twins were 6 weeks old, we got a bill from said hospital for nearly $8k. I called and asked for a breakdown. Long story short, everytime I called either the insurance or the hospital a new bill or statement was generated. This required more inquiries and then more statements and bills. I had a stack over 1.5 inches high. I calculated that we owed something in the $300 - $400 range. In the end, the hospital offered me $116. I got out the credit card and paid it right then. It took me 7 months. What do people who don't have multiple university degrees and persistence do? Really a scam.


send_noots

They either go in to debt or die because they never go to the hospital or to the doctor for preventative care. Dentists are very expensive too and not covered on regular health insurance, you need separate insurance for your luxury mouth bones.


meowpal33

Once I got billed $250 for an urgent care visit when I never even stepped into the building. I called from the parking lot and was told I didn’t qualify for a COVID test (this was at the very beginning when they were being stingy with them). Hung up and left and got a bill a week later. I just paid it to make it go away because I had no resources or time to dispute it. **edited to add I called the customer service number for this facility multiple times and received no assistance, basically was told “that sucks but there’s nothing we can do”


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Quiet_Stranger_5622

I went there. I felt bad for the teachers, actually, because you could tell that they wanted to teach so much more then the curriculum and seemed to know we weren't learning what we really needed to know. You guys got scammed almost as bad as us students. But thank you for trying.


No_Duck4805

I taught there for about a year. It was awful in so many ways. Clearly almost illiterate students who couldn’t do the coursework but were paying crazy amounts for it and they falsified attendance records to force passage rates. I would not be surprised if they changed grades as well. I believe it did get shut down.


[deleted]

Took way too long [to close down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute). >In a 2015 federal whistleblower lawsuit, a former ITT Tech dean of academic affairs alleged that the company (1) directed recruiters to use coercive tactics to pressure students into enrolling, (2) admitted students who were unable to succeed at the school, (3) unlawfully paid sales commissions to recruiters, and (4) lied to students about their financial obligations and transferability of ITT credits to other schools and about the jobs students could expect to get after graduating.


Grundens

I thought about going to UTI when I was in HS but the admissions guy who came to my house was such an obvious salesman that it made my spidey sense tingle and said nahh


chochaos7

ITT got shut down and fun fact, if you went to school there then you were eligible to get your loans forgiven because they, along with a few other schools, were considered fraudulent and predatory. This was finalized in the last year or so as far as i know


[deleted]

Former ITT student here, this is correct. It's been a battle, but finally that burden is gone!!


krigsgaldrr

If a school has a commercial, I automatically don't trust it.


PabloEstAmor

I used to (still available for work lol) be an actor and always tried so hard to book one of those college commercials. Those “HEY YOU! YEA YOU! SITTING ON YOUR BUTT WATCHING TV WHEN YOU COULD BE IN A NURSING PROGRAM!” commercials lol


Aerobiesizer

Tulips in the Netherlands in the 16^(th) century. There was a point at which one tulip bud cost as much as a good house.


WarlordofBritannia

I see your Tulip Mania and will raise you one South Sea Bubble


rattymcratface

Eat lead John Law


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WarlordofBritannia

It's basically the first stock market speculative crash. The South Sea Company bought up government debt and inflated its stock prices by reselling the debt at a "profit," not unlike how banks floated mortgage loans leading up to 2008. After the crash there was a Parliamentary investigation that revealed insider trading and compromised politicians to the highest levels of the government. Sounds familiar, huh?


trustthemuffin

What’s always been crazy to me about the South Sea Bubble is how both the Exchequer and the South Sea Company went into this thinking they found some magical loophole to erase debt and were shocked when it didn’t work. Mfers really thought debt could be paperworked away, more or less


A_Soporific

Incidentally, they finally paid off the last of the South Sea Bubble debt... in 2015. The bubble happened in 1711. The UK carried that debt for 304 years.


OtherEgg

I mean, you can. If both parties agree to cancel the debt then the debt is gone.


TheGreatCornolio682

Except that’s it’s all made-up bullshit from 19th-century financial “chroniclers”. We know today that Tulipmania was not the cataclysmic bubble burst it was made to be centuries later.


HyperSpaceSurfer

I view it similarly to the crypto crash. It was essentially worthless anyway and didn't affect regular joes as much as a housing crash, or too many companies being over-valued and needing to downsize at the same time when the jig is up.


PTVersa

The Trojan horse


Brilliant_Hat_8643

The one time they should have looked that gift horse in the mouth.


SonofaJerry

Insulin prices in America for the last decade.


synnarc

The US government once gave time Warner hundreds of millions of dollars to provide internet to rural areas. Time Warner sorta just fizzled away without ever providing much of anything.


Evil_Kittie

applies to every isp in the us, and they still take money and do nothing


fubo

Not just Time Warner. Verizon and other telecom companies got regulatory approval for additional fees, ostensibly for expansion of residential fiber-optic Internet service ("fiber to the home" or FTTH) ... and then didn't build it out. There has been no redress for this. Customers paid surcharges for FTTH that was never built. The parts of the US that have excellent residential Internet access are *specifically* the parts where a competitive broadband market exists; usually where the cable and telecom monopolists have to compete with regional ISPs (like Sonic here in the Bay Area), Google Fiber, or other alternatives to the cable-TV and Bell-descended monopolies. (I'm no Elon fan, but the existence of Starlink has got to be a good thing for the ISP market.)


krigsgaldrr

Neighbor from the opposite side of the state here! This is more of a funny anecdote about ISP than actually related, but Verizon refuses to provide to my house because they say we have "too many trees" (nevermind the fact that the last two winters have downed ~30% of our trees and we've also had a lot taken down which brings it up to roughly ~50% less trees in the last two years) but they've never been out to our house even to see, and several of our neighbors (including both on either side) have Verizon. The rest of us are stuck with Optimum, which is arguably the worst internet service possible. They're the only ones who will service us (my dad and I like to joke that they have Verizon, SmarterBroadband, and Xfinity held at gunpoint lol) and last winter, we had a crazy snowstorm that knocked down *thousands* of trees in our area, and we lost power for two weeks and internet for over a month. During the time after we got our power back, my dad was constantly on the phone with Optimum trying to get them to come fix our internet and I remember at one point he had the CS rep on speaker and the guy said "sir, we're not detecting an outage in your area. Your internet is connected and running fine." and my dad said, "Oh really? Then why am I looking at my internet cable, which is snapped in two from where a tree fell on it and laying in my yard?" The guy hung up on him.


SuvenPan

Diamonds


Kono_Gabby

Diamonds are lovely stones, but I cannot justify the premium price. Moissanite fan for life right here!


Phase3isProfit

On similar lines- gold. Materials are often only worth the arbitrary value people put on them. When New Zealand had a gold rush, the Māori had no problem pointing out where to find gold, but they had little interest in it themselves. Too soft, not very useful. They preferred jade.


Tallon_raider

Turns out gold is insanely useful in materials science applications as well. The valence properties of rare transition metals are great in the chemistry world. Platinum and silver arguably more so.


Phase3isProfit

Yes it’s definitely had uses come up in more recent years. For most of history it’s just been used because it’s fairly soft, shiny, and doesn’t really react with all that much. These days there are far more useful things you could do with it, instead of forming into a bar and locking in a vault.


Connect_Atmosphere80

Yeah ! Netherite is way better anyway, but you still need diamond first. What a scam !


[deleted]

I have a son who passed away 3 days after he was born. I didn’t have the right insurance for a rare birth we had. $21,000 out of pocket later he’s still not here but the bills keep coming


Cringobello

That's a pretty rough. I feel for you. That is criminal. Good luck with the whole situation.


ouchimus

I do think "remember the baby you had for 3 days? Yeah you still owe us ten grand" is a fantastic summary of American healthcare


krigsgaldrr

Not quite on the same level, but my parents are dealing with something similar. I was really really sick when I was a kid and my parents have a small debt they owe because their insurance at the time suddenly switched over without informing them and a few of my treatments and hospital stays weren't covered. It keeps getting sent to collections and literally the month before it would fall off their name, the collection agency sells it to another one and starts the whole process over. I only just learned about this at 27 because it just happened again and this time the newest collections agency is attempting to sue them over it. Let me repeat that: a random collections agency is trying to *sue* my parents for a debt less than $1000 that they owed to a hospital *over twenty years ago* due to an insurance failure. Our country is so fucking rotten and corrupt. It's disgusting.


toepicksaremyfriend

IANAL but you should contest it. Ask for the copy of the contract your parents signed with that company. They won’t be able to provide it.


FailsAtSuccess

Not only that, the debt is well past the legal timeline the company is allowed to collect. By 2 decades ...


Pure_ElfWing

Planed obsolescence of appliances and technology.


[deleted]

Any MLM. I actually called someone out at my register for trying to recruit me to some MLM WHILE I WAS AT WORK. And as soon as I used the word “pyramid” him and his plug totally disengaged and left. Fuck MLMs.


islandsimian

If the company's new hire orientation explains why they're not a pyramid scheme, they 100% are a pyramid scheme


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cuetheconfetti

I had an interview for an insurance company MLM a few months back. It seemed like a normal sales job until he started saying things like, "you'll make six figures within a few months," "we give you things to post on instagram to recruit people," "the best way to sell this insurance is by going to friends and family about it and spreading the word." The interview was essentially an hour of him showing me slides on why it's a legit company and totally not an MLM. Boy bye 😂


Leothegolden

Bottled Water. Research suggests that for most Americans, the stuff in a bottle is not better for you than the stuff in your tap. In fact, a recent report found that almost half of all bottled water is actually derived from the tap, but may be further processed or tested for safety 300 percent profit for a natural resource in plastic bottle.


Narrow_Permit

Nestle pays 1$, total, per year to bottle public water in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Their permit is valid even during severe drought periods. They’re bottling up the public’s water and selling it to them. I’ll only buy bottled water if local water is undrinkable or if I’m extremely desperate. Bottled water is one of the biggest scams in human history. Edit- I decided to fact-check myself. Nestle actually pays 2100$ per year for their permit. According to their website they use 703,000,000 gallons of water a year for bottled water. So for a 12 ounce bottle they spend 0.00003 cents on water.


transmogrified

So many water rights were granted back in the late 1800's and early 1900's before proper surveys or assessments were done, and we've been massively over-using what the water table can properly carry based on natural recharge rates. Doesn't help that the branches of government responsible for reviewing permits and regulatory over-site are underfunded, understaffed, and hamstrung every few election cycles. See also: The Colorado River and how rights were divided up by states based off the flow-rate for a year with unusually high precipitation.


RolyPoly1320

What's better is that some of those states never had any access to the Colorado River until the government decided to siphon off flow and pipe it hundreds of miles away from its natural course. What's happened is that the river is drying up. It used to connect all the way to the Pacific Ocean in Mexico. Now it discharges into wetlands in Mexico.


ExcitementKooky418

How people aren't actually rioting against Nestle blows my mind. Not just them either, plenty of other companies, and indeed government's that really ought to be in fear for their lives but everyone just goes about their business like these bastards are perfectly reasonable


jeffzebub

The war against drugs.


keenr33

How D.A.R.E. you!! Edit: thank you for the award!!


Chaostraveler

Well, I mean, marijuana did kinda win the war on drugs, right?


pm0me0yiff

Every time we declare war on an intangible concept, the intangible concept wins. Drugs, crime, poverty, terrorism....


battleplatypus

The monorail in Springfield.


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hansn

Use my pen knife, my good man.


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Kevrn813

Interesting. I wood like to No this information as I immediately took possession of a large sum of currency and am afraid to be taken advantage of. However due to current international Trade and Amperage Laws Governing Currents I am unable to pay you directly. If you please send me $350 dollars that will bypass the ability for my government to apply income laws. In return I will happily send you the $100 for your list of scams and and additional $150 for your time and trouble. I’m sure this pleases you and am looking forward to receiving this amazing deal, as I’m sure you are.


Davonimo

Blaming everyday people for climate change when the real culprits are big companies and industrial countrys.


YallMindIfIJoin

American style health insurance


Dependent-Winner-908

I recently spent a couple hours in an US emergency room for something relatively minor. The bill was $14,000. When I told them I was self-pay the bill was ✨magically✨ reduced to $5,000. My assumption is that the $9,000 was the (expected) insurance company skim/cut. Outrageous.


YallMindIfIJoin

I had something similar happen with a dermatologist recently. I told him upfront that I was self-pay and we worked out a price. It was still outrageously high, but it was something that I could manage in the long run. The procedure was done, and I went home with a new scar. Much to my surprise a couple weeks later I received a bill from someone that I have never heard of. It was the lab that analyzed the tissue sample the doctor sent off. Their bill was three times as high as the doctor visit and they will not respond to phone calls or emails. Our system is so fucked up that it makes me feel crazy inside.


[deleted]

Had the exact same thing happen to me from a dermatologist. Had a .5mm bump cut off my face and a few weeks later I get a bill for around $275, and I was like cool not too bad. A month after that I get a bill for $800 from the lab so I called and complained and told me I'd get a 20% "discount" if I paid in full before 30 days. Next time I have something weird on my body I'll do a couple shots of whisky and go at it with a razor blade.


Reddygators

Had the same unpleasant experience. A surprise, expensive 2nd opinion was ordered for my biopsy without my knowledge and both concurred nothing for me to worry about. At this point I would not be surprised to receive a bill from the office janitorial company for their contribution to my procedure. It’s like your deductible pays for the actual service. Everything else is the booty the insurance company and facility administration splits up in the backroom. That backroom being in congress.


alinroc

There's negotiations with the insurance company too. They tell insurance one price, insurance says they'll pay another price, they settle on a final amount, and most of it is automated. A couple years ago my son had to take an ambulance ride from school to the hospital and there was no insurance information available at the time so I got the full bill ($2500) in the mail with a note saying "call us with your insurance info." I called, gave it to them, and as we were talking on the phone, the person on the other end was reading off the actual amount _as it changed_ right in front of her after she entered the insurance information. The billing system and insurance company's system were ping-ponging the negotiation as we spoke.


Tetrahedonist

Any product sold in the USA as insurance. With the complete dismantling of consumer protections in this country, the extent to which any insurance policy pays out has more to do with the companies concerns over its image than the actual obligation implied by the contact.


CrystalWeim

When my husband had a massive heart attack, naturally, I called 911. And, naturally, they transported him to the nearest hospital. He was a Vietnam combat veteran. The VA wanted him to go to their hospital, some 45 minutes away. ER doc said no chance. He was very unstable, and was in ICU for weeks. The VA denied the entire bill, saying " it was non-emergent". 2 months later, and his heart functioning at 24 percent, the cardiologist said the the VA " since when is a massive heart attack non- emergent? " The VA never did pay. It is just so wrong.


captainofpizza

American healthcare is pretty much the thing where local businesses would pay “protection fees” from the mob so that the mob wouldn’t burn down their properties. Pay a ton to get next to nothing or pay nothing and get absolutely ruined by the system that threatened you to begin with.


ChadCoolman

I'm genuinely amazed at what we're willing to put up with here in the US. The cost of living has skyrocketed while wages have remained stagnant. Healthcare is essentially extortion. The housing market...holy fuck. Politicians are bought by corporations to actively disregard the interests and well-being of the people. Law enforcement is bordering on a police state. Meanwhile, the age of retirement in France gets bumped up 2 years and the country's on fire. I get it... I love my creature comforts, too. But what the fuck?


captainofpizza

No choice makes it pretty easy. The 3 groups controlling cost of healthcare are: -insurance companies, who benefit from few choices and high costs. -healthcare companies, same. -politicians, paid by the other 2 This issue is mirrored in a lot of the other problems you mentioned too; education costs, utilities, food, housing. Everything goes back to money nearly 100% of the time.


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Ok-Concentrate4522

Student loans.


KazukiSendo

When gold miners Arnold and Slack in 1872 tricked some bankers into buying a fake diamond mine. Another was when conman Count Von Lustig managed to "sell" the Eiffel tower to a Parisian scrap dealer for $70'00 dollars which be equal today to 1 million dollars. [Arnold and Slack: The Great Diamond Hoax](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqw-ZEa7JnM) [The Man Who Sold The Eiffel Tower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCicYiVJ3PI)


Boby_Dobbs

Homeopathic medicine


ScruffCheetah

It's ok, you can pay for a homeopathic consult by leaving a penny somewhere in the building.


SubstantialReturn228

Naturopaths calling themselves doctors is laughable


Ramoncin

The Franco dictatorship was once sold a water engine during the 1970s. https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2016-12-31/motor-de-agua-fraude-arturo-estevez-varela-franquismo\_1309726/


XanonymouspoetX

Kony 2012


fishnetdiver

The Louisiana Purchase. Holy crap but that's a shit-ton of fertile land for next to nothing and literally doubled the size of the nation


GlubSki

I guess Bernie Madoff should be up there


Prestigious_Ad_9422

that dark ages thing where the church asked people for money in exchange for a "ticket to heaven" when they die


WarlordofBritannia

Indulgences were the late medieval period/Renaissance. Not the Dark Ages


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WarlordofBritannia

*And* you had to keep buying them


nonsubmersibleunits

Subscription model


LeodFitz

Insurance. The basic concept is sound: major events can be debilitating as they require massive payments in short amounts of time. If you spread those around between people, and, effectively, over long periods of time... it's not so devilitating. In practice, it's a giant, legalized scam. You pay money for a promise and the people making the promise do their best to deny you if and when you need to collect. The fact that insurance companies are for profit institutions is a dead giveaway. If they were nonprofits... maybe they'd be functioning institutions. Maybe.


foxilus

We used our homeowners insurance to cover a medical expense for our nanny who got hurt on the job. The insurance company did everything they could to avoid liability, but accepted that they were on the hook for the “med pay” part of the policy. So they said they would cover the med pay limit of $1,000 for treatment that would easily exceed $6-7k. We did a deep dive to get our policy details - which was stupidly _way harder_ than it ever needed to be (surely by design) - and saw that the med pay limit was in fact $10,000. We pointed that out and the insurance company dude said “ope, looks like I accidentally missed a zero there!” and we were like yeah fucking right you pricks are straight up lying to our faces to escape 90% of your liability. Absolutely shameful.


_kevx_91

The War on Drugs.


Charming-Arachnid256

Bank bailouts. 2008, 2023. All us little guys get to bail out millionaires. The uniparty ensures the rich stay that way.


Beneficial_Heat_7199

Didn't the most recent bank bailout have other banks doing the bailing out? What's the the story there?


sammyxorae

Heath insurance


shiggins2015

Mormonism


[deleted]

Scientology