The stock market
Insurance.
Ending a price in .99 so you think it is a whole dollar less.
But it works! Supposedly. Don’t poke holes in the JC penney story.
college textbooks. have to have the latest edition for class, but almost nothing is different from the two-years-old one.
I once had a professor who gave assignments with the last several editions page numbers because he thought it was bullshit too.
in roughly half of my classes; my professors were the authors of the of the books that they were selling so they made photocopies of them to distribute to the student for free.
it was one of two benefits to attending the largest university in the country (at the time).
Any type of insurance or retirement plan really. I feel like the crazy one when i mention people how these things are scam are you are better off, much much better off, making yourself one.
my retirement plan is to live at the periphery of the us empire and that’s one plan you can take to the bank. lol
Health insurance
Depends on the country I believe. I’ve got a refund for my sixth eye surgery a couple of months ago thanks to my insurance.
Wow, how do you manage? Like - do they even make glasses for people with that many eyes?
Private Equity
Credit Score
Derivitives
Interest on Loans
Money
Loan interests and money I disagree with. Unless we get to a point where everything is in abundance and commerce isn’t needed anymore I feel like a common item we can agree the value of for goods and services is a pretty neat idea.
Similarly I don’t think interest is inherently evil. If i lend you money to buy something large that will take years to pay off, I wouldn’t want to lose a bunch of money with inflation. But predatory rates that bet on you defaulting can burn in hell. It’s disgusting that the whole fintech industry exists purely to maximise interest and debt at the cost of those who depends on those services the most.
copyright
Countdown-Timer on e.g. Amazon that try to FOMO-pressure me into buying the item. Edit: typo
Pretty sure most of us realize thats a scam.
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.
But if you dip each bit of that value in butter…
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
Not entirely true, socialist countries have managed to do it or severely limit 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.
how can I become that person
be born a millionaire.
Keep telling that to yourself
Scientific journals/publishers
