I am an atheist and I believe the world would be much better without religions. Having said that, I don't conisder it as a scam in itslef. Instead they must have been something evolved over the time due to our ignorance, fear and helplessness. The very same factors that still keep them going.
But hell yeah, people are exploited in the name of religion. I'm from India, one of the largest so called democracies, currently under the governance of a fascist hindutva party that thrives on polarizing people in the name of religion.
BTW I was actually looking for specific instances of scams carefully plotted by known people, companies or even countries instead of broad answers like religion.
Having said that, I don’t conisder it as a scam in itslef
I think the more correct thing to say is that Organized Religion is a scam. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being religious (provided you don't force those views on others), but organized religion always winds up rotten at the top - and it's not surprising. Organized religion is one of the most powerful tools for controlling people, even if it wasn't (though it might have been) intended to be that way at the beginning. A king/president/dictator can threaten the lives of their subjects, but only a holy man can threaten their immortal soul (from the perspective of the devotee anyways).
Now that's a take I completely stand behind and agree with. I couldn't have put it better myself. That said, some religions were not made with the intent of controlling others. I don't think Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism were made with the intent to control people. We can argue about Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as they were made for control by their founders, and what they intended for these movements after their deaths we do not know (or at least I don't, maybe someone out there does).
Again - I'm not arguing necessarily that any of them started out that way, in fact - I'm willing to bet that very few (looking at you, Mormons) actually were. Most religion (in my humble opinion) just stems from folks trying to make sense of an unfathomable universe using what tools are available to them at the time. But once you have the religion, and you have holy men/women who have the ability to excersize some form of power over their flock, you'll inevitably find corrupt people flocking to those positions, as they do in every position of power. Then over time they'll carve out more power for themselves and more authority, find ways of extracting influence and power from their positions until soon you've got "holy men" living in palaces with the authority of kings.
It's just human nature for positions of power to eventually become corrupted to some degree, and positions of religious authority offer an unparalleled lever in which to move the masses, which only serves to make it more attractive to would-be tyrants
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being religious (provided you don’t force those views on others)
Hum. That's like saying "there's nothing wrong with being convinced that 2+2=5". There's something intrinsically mistaken about it, and I don't think it's defensible.
Ponzi schemes, especially the insurance companies. They really are a Ponzi scheme.
Think about it, they promise you things asking for money, then when you need their services they decide where you go, how much they will pay (leaving the rest for you to pay as a deductible), then they turn around and increase your costs for their services, that they fight tooth and nail not to pay anything.
I work in the insurance industry and I 100% agree with this.
The only time it's wise to take out an insurance policy is when
A) It's legally required (though this is sometimes due to lobbying by the insurance companies themselves)
B) When you absolutely will not be able to actually pay for a potential, but necessary expense by yourself (cancer treatments and stuff like that)
So Health Insurance, Auto Insurance (even if your car is cheap and self-insurable, the car you hit may not be), Home-owners insurance and stuff like that are necessary and generally a good financial bet, even if they are crooked af.
Any "micro-insurances" though? All total scams. Travel insurance, phone insurance (or "Extended Warranties"), Apple Care, all that kind of shit is 100% going to cost you more money to have than it'll save you - unless you get really really lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it). You'd be better off spending what you'd pay on those insurance premiums on a hand of blackjack, I'll bet the odds would be slightly more in your favor that way
Ugh my parents both insist on travel insurance. What if you get sick?? Idk, I'll cancel the stuff I can and take the loss on what I can't, for all the travel I've done the amount of times that has happened does not even remotely come close to how much I would have paid each time for travel insurance.
No mom, I'm not going to insure our 2 night stay at the Hilton in (mid sized city). I'm sure it's going to be fine.
Last time I did was for a very very expensive flight across an ocean, just because it was like, 15 dollars on a 2000 flight for a few people. Fine, but everything else we took the risk. (And we did not use it)
Travel insurance is especially terrible, because a lot of the time it's a pretty substantial premium, and actually filing a claim on it is a HUGE PITA.
I worked for a traveler insurance company before, and we denied most claims that came in. People would buy insurance on a $100 concert ticket, paying a $10 premium for the insurance, then when they'd go to file the claim, we'd require a doctors note, so now they also have to cough up a $20 copay and a whole afternoon just to get a note saying "yup, this person is sick". And that's just one of the many ways people got fleeced. During COVID, a lot of travel insurance claims got denied because illnesses resulting from pandemics aren't covered in some policies as well
not surprised at all, I've found it's just better to learn the cancellation policy of your items. Most hotels are full refund if they know >48 hours, and if less usually you'll at least get points/credit back which for me I'll absolutely use next time. Not worth the premium and the hassle to get cash back if I only find out less than 48 hours ahead of time
Travel insurance is my big one. Why would you not get that? That seems like such a stupid risk not to get that.
Like if I get hit by a car in the middle of nowhere and they got to fly my home because the medical care there sucks. That's going to cost an absolute fortune. Even having to send my dead body home will cost my family loads.
Why would you not get that? That seems like such a stupid risk not to get that.
Pretty much for all the reasons I said in my comment - you'll almost certainly spend more on premiums for travel insurance than you'll ever claim (this is true of all insurance) and the expenses incurred by self-insuring are generally manageable. Even in the two situations you refer to, we're "only" talking about costs of a few thousand, and both of those are highly unlikely events that most people go their whole lives not dealing with. you're much better off putting the money you'd spend on that travel insurance into an emergency fund to cover those kinds of unexpected expenses.
Insurance is only a good financial call if you risk completely bankrupting yourself by not having insurance, otherwise you're just trading potential lump sum costs for small continuous costs, and the premiums will generally always wind up being more than what you're saving (because if they weren't, then the Insurance companies wouldn't be making so much money).
That being said, it's your money, if you'd rather accept that you're paying more over a lifetime on travel insurance than you're saving just to have the peace of mind that you won't have to dip into savings for any incident that happens before or during the trip (assuming your incident doesn't fall under one of the many carefully crafted exclusions that the insurance companies add to their policies to prevent paying out, which it probably will), then by all means, buy it - but if you're buying it because you think it's the financially savy move, and you have at least a few grand in your bank account for emergencies, then you're kidding yourself.
you'll almost certainly spend more on premiums for travel insurance than you'll ever claim (this is true of all insurance)
Yes I agree but it's about how you value risk. Losing $100 on travel insurance is better than losing $1,000,000 on hospital bills. The risk is different obviously but I'm not worried about $100 for peace of mind. I have even gone to war zones were my insurance was invalid but I had it in safer places because it's all about risk.
Even in the two situations you refer to, we're "only" talking about costs of a few thousand, and both of those are highly unlikely events
That's just where your wrong and there is no point continuing this discussion. You don't think people have to pay a fortune for medical cover when you have no insurance? Sure some countries might cover that and their might be mutual care agreements. But not having insurance in a place that won't pay your hospital bills. That's madness. Your argument works if you artificially make up costs sure.
I have personally know loads of people to get in accidents when travelling, I have myself. I have only heard one person being hospitalised and getting sent home but it happens and it isn't cheap.
And you would be entirely correct - if insurance companies acted in good faith, the reality however, is that they don't. Your comments are already littered with replies of people giving you examples that they've personally experienced of carefully constructed exclusions meaning that they can't actually claim their policy.
I have no doubt that there are people out there for whom travel insurance has saved their ass, but I know from my own experience in the industry that the far more common experience for policy holders is to wind up with the insurance company finding a reason to not pay up, and now you're left both with the cost of the emergency, as well as the cost of the policy.
Like I said, it's your money, and I'm certainly not going to give a shit if you keep buying travel insurance policies, hell - people buying insurance policies pay my salary (though i don't work in travel insurance any longer)
Thanks for your input, it helps not make me sound like a conspiracy theorist or anti-biz whack job
nothing conspiracy theorist about it at all. If anyone gives you sideways looks when you mention that insurance is a scam, just point out the very simple and undeniable fact that insurance companies are (very) profitable. That means, by definition that the average customer pays more in premiums than they get in payouts, and not just a bit more, a lot more, as that profit they make is after they pay their thousands of employees, award multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives, pay for their bigass skyscrapers, and all that other shit. If insurance was a "fair" deal, they'd be losing money from the administration costs
Always self-insure if you can afford it
Oh my god, thank you so much! I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees it. They get money, they invest that money in pension funds, and then they try not to pay that back. The only things stopping it from being one legally are some slight changes such as the investment part and the part where they pay back to people in need, not people at the top.
Unfortunately, like all big business, they don’t care about anything but fleecing the little guy
Homeopathy. It's literally based on the idea that diluting stuff turns it into a remedy.
joke's on you, i've been drinking 100000x distilled dinosaur piss and i'm growing stronger by the day
It does have a utility though, buying drugs, moving money past capital controls, and creating fake revenue/losses for laundering money and tax evasion.
I disagree that cryptocurrency in itself is a scam. It can have legitimate utility, for example I want to exchange money for international services without a credit card or mailing an envelope of cash/cheque. Bitcoin and some others are mainstream enough that I can do this.
That said, investing in them is absolutely a scam, using it as a marketing buzzhype is a scam, and most of them are founded as scams.
does it
Well, my transaction went through, so yes.
I agree that it is wasteful and overall a bad thing... now that I think about it could be somewhat excusable if they adopted a PoW algrothim that actually solves socially-useful expensive problems like protein-folding, through distributed computing.
But that doesn't make it a scam. There's not really any trickery. It's just bad.
I'm not claiming that. It would still be environmentally ruinous (insofar as the energy production where miners live remains ruinous, which I guess is the foreseeable future) but at least the PoW would be actually contributing to tasks we wanted to do anyway that require large amounts of work. Hence the heavy emphasis on 'somewhat'. I'm not saying it would be justified, but it would be far far far more useful to society.
Incidentally, why characterise non-profit medical research as "for Science!(tm))"? I hope we can both agree that understanding the human body is valuable to society and curing disease.
and state that such applications theoretically DON'T need Bitcoin or related blockchain monetization at all?
There are cryptographic requirements for securely conveying the necessary information for that application, an application that requires extremely limited identity and trust and centralization. I can't think of an alternative covering those requirements that is plausible right now and not pure what-if (there is a big jump in feasibility between 'change the proof of work algorithm' and 'invent an alternative to cryptocurrency'). If we can find an alternative to expensive PoW, wonderful!
Yes, if those requirements are relaxed, there are alternatives. If you're fine with PayPal storing your personal and financial details and those of the recipient and exploiting you a little bit, then it's an alternative. If your recipient is fine giving personal information, speed isn't an option and you live in a country where sending cash in mail is legal and won't get stolen, that's an option. Of course, this all goes to shit if you're trading with someone in a sanctioned country.
There's not really any trickery.
(X)
Alright, what about Bitcoin is fraudulent? We agree it's bad, but that doesn't make it fraudulent (i.e. a scam)
Agreeing with the parts re: net negative. No, I don't invest in cryptocurrency; like I said, investing in them is a scam.
Let's start with the actual fucking fraud done with it
Fraud is done with basically anything considered to have value. Cash, credit, signatures, votes, wine, wires, mail, licenses, taxes, recorded age. Fraud is the scam! And cryptocurrency is especially useful for scamming (has the anonymity of cash without the physical restrictions). But that's not it's purpose or main use. That's not spiting hairs, it's calling the hat the head. Your example of encrypting ransomware used to be done with the postal service, floppy discs and cash in the 90s. One example from 1989
edit: this of course is an advantage of non-transferable labour vouchers!
Sea lioning
That's not what sea-lioning is. Someone asked us to name some scams, you said cryptocurrency, I disagreed that it qualified as a scam, you replied that you doubted my disagreement and I asked for clarification. If either of us wants to stop, we stop. Sea-lioning is stalking across the site like a debate pervert, it's not replying to replies.
I'm not just running my mouth here, I'm evaluating my understanding of cryptocurrency and finding disagreements to make me question them. And also seeing if I'm able to have a constructive conversation - it's good practice for real labour conversations in the workplace.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sealioning-internet-trolling
The origin of the term sealioning is traced to a webcomic called Wondermark by David Malki. In a strip called "The Terrible Sea Lion," which was published on September 19, 2014, a character expresses a strong dislike for sea lions, only for a sea lion to appear suddenly and pursue the character relentlessly—to the point of following her and her partner into her bedroom—insisting that she justify her beliefs.
Your source agrees too. No-one is perusing anyone. You're willingly replying to me and I'm willingly replying back within a thread. That's called a conversation.
[re: https://hexbear.net/comment/3697897 ]
So it is all pedantic arguments for the sake of some theoretical version of something that does not actually exist in a functioning and usable form right now without all of the net negative consequences that already exist, right now.
No.
But you did a transaction! And in theory it can be for science(tm)! That makes it all okay because technically a dictionary absolves the holy code of all the wrongdoing done with the holy code.
I explicitly said it wasn't ok, multiple times. Nor did I suggest either of those would make it ok. Nor is there anything 'technically' about the concept of a scam, and why that's different to a wrongdoing.
If you're a leftist in any actual form please reconsider peddling internet funny money to people that can (and often have) lost a lot of money buying into it, whether through volatility or outright fraud/theft done with the technically not theft holy code you're apparently trying to peddle.
If you're a leftist in any form, stop making bullshit assumptions and listen to what people actually say instead of projecting some irrelevant ridiculous strawman stuffed full of shit-no-one-said. If you want to pull this nonsense online here then whatever, but if this is how you behave in person then it's actively harmful to the socialist movement, and that's everyone's business. We have a world to take, comrade, and this kind of false-premise ranting isn't how we do it.
In short, I'm accusing you of bad faith argumentation and I haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise.
Alright, here it is without any of the bloat. My argument, and then more importantly, why calling out incorrect terminology even matters:
[click to expand]
- A scam is a fraudulent scheme. (That's not some obscure technicality, that's what OP meant, and what business articles and English dictionaries generally define it as.)
- Cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, isn't fraudulent (it acts as consumers expect it to: a valuable item capable of digital anonymous exchange).
- Whether it is harmful to our planet (true) is irrelevant to whether it is a scam.
- Whether people should stop using it (true) is irrelevant to whether it is a scam.
- Whether people abuse it for scams (true) is irrelevant to whether it is a scam. They were already doing the same with cash prior, and they do that with anything of value.
- None of this is defending cryptocurrency. I am not defending it, and I keep saying that I agree it's bad. I am saying it is not a scam, people use it and they aren't being swindled.
.
The reason why making this kind of distinction matters is that critique of anything should be relevant. That's a bit abstract, so I'll illustrate with a much more extreme example that I've seen from other people.
If someone ignorantly supports Joe Biden, labeling them a literal neo-Nazi has zero rhetorical value there, but also zero analytical value. Anyone with a basic knowledge of what Nazis are will understand this is inaccurate and either an ignorant accusation or bad faith name-calling, and will probably dismiss their further points. But also, someone who actually believes Biden is a neo-Nazi will not be as effective in combating Biden's regime (this will be explained later).
Pointing out that Biden is a racist, nationalist, fascism-enabler and the head of a genocidal regime, and therefore supporting them is harmful, on the other hand, is much more realistic. It still conveys that Biden is disgusting and deserves a bullet. It still conveys most of the same ideas. But this time, the critique makes a more accurate and therefore convincing and sturdy claim.
Having a more accurate understanding of Biden will allow us to better predict how they will act, and how to prepare. Biden isn't going to say "Death to the Jews, let's put the trans in camps". Biden is going to slip out shit like "you ain't Black", make laws that hurt the disadvantaged in more subtle ways, and will fail to act to defend trans people. Biden is going to be more subtle than any neo-Nazi. A neoliberal and a neo-Nazi will do different acts and require different approaches to get mainstream people to realize how horrific they are.
Maybe Biden is a strange example for prediction, but another case would be DeSantis and Trump. Yes they're both horrible, horrible fuckers who deserve the same ending. But, how will they both act differently? Will one be more concerned with corruption, self-image and self-gain than enacting ideological goals? Will one be more effective in implementing their goals than the other? That can be the difference between life and death for many, many people.
It's not just a trivial technicality, using appropriate crits is the difference between being credible and being ridiculous, and applying the right classifications can be the difference between understanding something and misinterpreting it. And that will have serious consequences.
A large portion of art/artifacts are forgeries. Everyone is alright with it because galleries and collectors want to brag about having some unique old art piece and forgers are very good at making pieces that would fool anyone who is just looking at it.
There was a fantastic interview on The Jordan Harbinger Show podcast with a professional forger. I'd recommend searching for it. I've been meaning to give it a second listen for a few years, but have too much other content.
Landlords aren't a scam, they're anti-society economic hoarders and gougers. Scam suggests there's something voluntary about 'falling for' it. Human trafficking isn't a scam, and so nor are landlords.
i know a girl who takes her literal newborns to her chiropractor
completely fucking horrifying and it's impossible to convince her that doing so is like playing catch with your baby as the ball
I get it to some extent cause it feels good when I crack my back
That's just simple streaching of the muscles. Chiropractic treatments put pressure on the spine to change the alignment of it.
"yeah but I mean, if it feels good when I crack my own back , what if a guy who went to school for that did it, I bet it'd feel great!"
-poor dupe who thinks they're a real thing
I don't know what they did to me but I actually got lot of relief from them when I hurt my back deadlifting.
Restaurants being rated with “Michelin stars” was created as a ploy to encourage people to buy cars and drive more to go on road trips to these restaurants so they’d wear through more tires and have to buy more
*Edited because I was a bit off base
That sounds like it could be plausible or could be a great story. Do you have a source?
Not quite middle class people, but otherwise correct:
In 1900, there were fewer than 3,000 cars on the roads of France. To increase the demand for cars and, accordingly, car tyres, car tyre manufacturers and brothers Édouard and André Michelin published a guide for French motorists, the Michelin Guide.
Interest and Rent.
Passiv income in general ,as it obviously constituts itself from other Peoples Active Income , its per definition a scam...
*"Because you once where in need and i lended you some coin , you now have to pay me back a expotentially rising amount of Coin ! its rate of rising is not messured on your harvest or the amount of offspring of your Herd but on Time going forward ! Because it surely will ! , If you Cant you will fall in Debt-Slavery to me. I am a Risktaker . you take the Risk . I Take . Always ." *
they sold you for absolute Fools , Folks !
(PS: Muslims not included)
I mean, this is really the source of all anti-semitism. Jews are (generally) forbidden from usury with other Jews but not non-Jews. This evolves into “Jews run the banks” and then “Jews run the world”.
For that matter “religion” matches the OPs question.
It's a source. It's certainly not the 'one true source of all'. Quite a lot is just plain old unqualified nationalism and xenophobia too.
no the religion is actually the instrument to limit & forbid the Usury , Time is Gods realm thereby enslaving Time is Satans work (check out "the Pillars of Islam" ) Jesus wanted to also fight the Landholder & Creditor Classes and agitatoed for the Debt Cancelation (the Tabula Rasa , the Clean Slate , the Debt Jubilee ) , like they where demanded by the Scripture , the Creditor and Landholderclasses thereby had their Powerbase threatend by this Social Revolutionary & killed him. But his Message of "Debt Cancelation" they could not put back into the Box , thereby they twisted it.. Concret Debt became "Sin" and Jesus then suddenly "Died for our Sins" , removing christianity from its social revolutionary BASE function and putting all it into the Afterlife (Superstrutuctre)
. Not the Jews Killed Jesus , the "Landholder and Creditor Classes killed jesus" , thats why "class awareness" is soooo fucking key , if one does not have Class awareness , he will instead use "Peoplegroups" (Jews , Russians , Angloids) in his Mental Framing , bringing hate upon them (antisemitism good example) instead of the Parasitic Classes.. The "Landholder Classes " killed him , then castrated his message until the Religion became a instrument in service of their power....
Religion does thereby not match accutly the Definition of Scam , Islam protects specificly from this Scam , but the Landholder Christianity ,you know of , really is a scam. Obviously Religion will always serve the status quo Powerstructures ... but there are diffrences ..
Show
Toothpaste.
You only need to squeeze out an amount the size of a pea on to the bristles of your toothbrush.
The image of squeezing along the entire length of the brush bristles was concocted by an ad agency, a la Mad Men, to make consumers use their toothpaste faster, hence buy more product.
I've never used that much. I just assumed it was to look nice since a pea sized about would look silly in a picture. I think it I used that much my mouth would be so full of foam it would be uncomfortable
Fools up your game. Tom's toothpaste is so absolutely classy. My gums never felt this good. Better ask jeeves.good ass toothpaste.
