Religion
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
Just FYI, that is specifically why The Baha’is don’t have clergy. They do have an administrative body with local, national, and global levels of influence, but those are 9 member councils that are elected by the members of the faith, who must use the Baha’i rules of Consultation to reach unanimous decisions. Also if any of them ever appear to want the position, they are automatically ineligible to hold said position. It’s worked well for about 60 years so far.
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.
Religion was needed, but at some point logic and critical thinking should have been enough.
The issue is the wealthiest benefit when the masses don’t have the tools to use that. They want people who won’t question rules and blindly follow them.
Humans are just animals, we’re not born with those abilities, we need to be taught.
So we see education outright cut or forced to focus on rote memorization rather than the process to understand and figure shit out on our own.
We should be past religion as a species, but it’s not automatic, we have to continually teach the next generation to think for themselves
Just imagine what could have been done in the last 300 years if every dollar that was donated to churches went to some other cause, or back into the pockets of the masses. There is an immense amount of wealth that is trapped in the collective real estate, bank accounts, etc owned by churches. I’m not even talking about megachurches or the mormon’s giant stack of cash, just mom’n’pop little parishes that are everywhere across the US.
If ALL that money was still kicking around in the economy and in the pockets of people to spend on real things, building real businesses, etc…we’d be way better off.
Always makes me sad when I visit my in-laws who live in a particularly bible thumpy area and you go and there are spots there where churches outnumber normal businesses. It seems like it’s just a huge drain on the local economy devoting that much money into propping up churches of various kinds…
There’s a church across the street from my home in a small rural town in Oklahoma. It sits completely empty except for about 90 minutes from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM when about 6 cars pull up into the parking lot and maybe 15 people saunter in for Sunday service after ringing a loud bell announcing to the whole neighborhood. None of these attendees live in the neighborhood I might add.
There are literally dozens of other churches just like it throughout the town. It blows my mind that a religion that claims to be about spreading the love of their savior and saving as many people as possible from literal damnation would let a resource like that go unused. They could have volunteers there every day of the week helping to improve the community and help people in need but they couldn’t care less.
Churches do an immense amount of charity work and helping their communities.
So do secular charities.
Religion is used as a scam by many people. It is also used in other ways by other people.
Sometimes I mull over what state we’d be in as a society if instead of celebrating a man’s deeds we had been celebrating nature and the environment that hosts us since the beginning.
I can’t help but think there would be a lot less damage to the environment and less greed.
thrives on polarizing people in the name of religion
things have been like this for a long time, irrespective of the parties. but this has been going too far for the past two decades, especially after the current prime minister started his period.
True that.
Obligatory George Carlin clip. https://youtu.be/iouZYYzQEjU
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/iouZYYzQEjU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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.
Lesson for next time, use the text part of your post to define what you are asking or are interested in hearing. Otherwise you get everyone giving glib answers that suck like the above.
BTW, I’m reading Smartest Guys In The Room, the book about Enron, you might be interested in looking up that company. They used very complex financial instruments to deceive shareholders and Wall Street and boost their stock price. Bunch of assholes, some of the shit they pulled was obscene.
Lesson for next time, use the text part of your post to define what you are asking or are interested in hearing.
Right, I should’ve seen it coming. But as long as the discussions are healthy, instead of mudslinging, I’m kind of okay with it.
I was gonna write about the fascist aspects of the country, but I wouldn’t say that it’s something completely unknown; many of my peers are okay with fascism just because there is no centerist alternative, as what we have already seen leftists are not going to be better given the same amount of power.
When it comes to religion, it should have been a personal thing rather than systematically integrating it with each aspect of our lives like how it was initially intended.
Sometime earlier in my life I took a decision of not going to my place of worship; this helped decouple my belief in something bigger that I don’t understand, and a cult made by man.
Very true my fellow enlightened gentlesir tips fedora
this but unironically
Oh my god, isn’t Christianity kinda a pyramid scheme?
I wanted to post this
The American healthcare system.
Capitalism, especially with little to no regulation*
What is the alternative to capitalism?
Depends on how you define capitalism.
According to the modern (very intentionally altered) definition of capitalism,
“a system allowing the exchange of goods and services for currency, where different skill sets can result in different compensation”
… everything, including the USSR [1][2] has been capitalism. And even most Marxists are pro-capitalists.
The definition above encompasses everything that ever was, and everything that ever will be. (And that’s only a slight exaggeration)
Which – just fyi – makes the word one of the most useless words in the history of language.
If, however – just hypothetically – you wanted to have a productive dialogue with a self-described anti-capitalist, you would need to carry out the entire conversation pretending the word “capitalism” referred to something a hell of a lot more specific. A single mechanism within market society. A single kind of contractual relationship between worker and company.
Which is an exercise in imagination and in the algebraic concept of substitution that most people have a rather stubborn aversion to.
The barter system before currency was invented wouldn’t fit that definition, and strictly speaking Marx wanted Communism to do away with currency so if that ever happened anywhere, that would also be outside of that definition.
That being said, yeah the modern definition of “capitalism” is over-broad and mostly useless as a concept.
Right. That is a good point. Although Marx didn’t see the elimination of currency as a realistic goal attainable within the first few decades (possibly even the first century) of communism, he did believe a post-scarcity humanity would eventually transcend the need for currency.
However when it comes to barter, the thing is: even in societies dominated by barter, some commodity tends to become the standard against which the values of other commodities are measured. Cigarettes in POW camps, cacao beans in Mesoamerica.
By an admittedly-loose definition of currency, a currency does always emerge and end up being directly exchanged for goods and services, even in barter systems.
A hybrid system Whereby capitalism in a regulated form can go on pretty much as usual, but government run companies provide affordable alternatives for basic necessities (food, water, housing, communication, mass transit etc). The government run companies hire anyone who wants a job. Unemployment is reduced, cost of living is reduced, and no ones freedom is stepped on.
Communism
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People only overthrow the government when they get really desperate. Your mistake is comparing communist Russia to capitalist USA. If you compare communist Russia to either tzarist Russia or the cluster fuck Russia is today then yes communism was imesurably better. Unless you were a learned fella.
Having actually grown up in USSR and lived under communism, I can definitively say that it’s not. I love how a bunch of idiots who are suffering under capitalism got convinced that nothing better is possible and to reject obvious alternatives that would immediately improve their lives.
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Why would I lie about something like that, you delusional piece of human garbage.
Scam for sure. Hard to say it’s been unnoticed for a long time though
idk - only 63% of Americans support single-payer healthcare, nearly half of Americans still haven’t caught on at least
“only”
That’s a clear majority. If we had a referendum about it we’d get it (but the US doesn’t have federal referendums.)
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 argue insurance in and of itself is no ponzi scheme. Working together is the basis of all civilisation. Trying to make a business out of a social service however … that’s rife for abuse, yes.
Depends on how you define a Ponzi scheme. Personally I define it as pay us money in return for a service, then run with the money or come up with ways to deny that service, once again keeping the money or as much as possible by telling businesses how much they can charge for their services.
If I ran my own company, I would be damned if someone is going to dictate my prices to help their bottom line.
IMHO, that is what has caused health care cost to be untenable for someone who cannot afford health insurance or makes like $3 too much to qualify for the likes of Medicaid.
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
That’s not a Ponzi scheme. Sorry, but this misuse of the term really grinds my gears.
A Ponzi scheme is a specific scam promoted as an investment, but in reality the payouts made to early victims come from the incoming money paid by new investors.
Might as well be, the patron still gets screwed
Aka social security…
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.
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.
My personal conspiracy theory is that almost all art the public is exposed to is a forgery. Why show the plebs the real thing? We wouldn’t notice a difference anyway.
Maybe whenever you hear those stories about a famous work of art being stolen and later recovered, they’ve actually just stolen the forgery and the galley just puts up a new fake one.
The robbers then can’t sell it because they have a worthless fake and the ‘real’ one is clearly on display in the gallery, and they can’t expose the fraud because then they’d out themselves and go to jail.
The perfect scam!
That’s what they do with a lot more paintings that you would think. Not because they don’t want the plebs to look at them but because being exposed to the environment would cause irreparable damage to it. So they have experts make recreations and display those.
This isn’t really a conspiracy theory is it? I thought it was something they were open about that they often have replicas on display for security/preservation reasons
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.
That you can get rich if you work hard.
Additionally, that it’s okay to work yourself until death, because when you die you’ll actually live a new eternal life of permanent luxury.
Someone already mentioned religion, yes.
Lotteries. They’re just tax for poor people.
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The people who do lottery tickets are poor people who need the money. The government funded programs should be coming from the rich people.
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rich people dont get taxed for shit, that’s the whole problem
I think most people buying a lottery ticket know that it’s a loss on average. I think people buy it for the experience and the dreams that it represents. From that perspective, I don’t think that it’s a scam for most people but rather just buying a slice of fantasy
You quite literally described the scam part though, selling false hope
Well no, because thousands of people have won it all over the world. Yes, it might be 14 million to one, but for a couple of quid I don’t care.
The McDonald’s Monopoly promotions
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
Aquafresh baby!
I swear it’s also why they made that newer garbage cap design that slowly leaks toothpaste and gums up unless you carefully clean the end and fully close it every time. I know y’all know what I am talking about!
The garbage flip cap instead of the good old screw on lid
Fools up your game. Tom’s toothpaste is so absolutely classy. My gums never felt this good. Better ask jeeves.good ass toothpaste.
in fairness the directions on the back of the tube still state you should use a pea sized amount. i feel like that’s not all that helpful though, peas come in lots of different sizes.
printer ink, it costs them like 3 cents to make each cartridge and they sell it for so god damn much.
they also go out of their way to have chips in the cartridges and in the printers that make the printer not function if any ink is even running low, doesn’t matter if you want to print something in black and white you had better fucking buy more cyan ink
The whole issue here is that people fall for the trick of buying the cheapest printer available, that is clearly way cheaper than what it costs to build. Then people get cranky for having to buy these proprietary cartridges which are way overpriced to cover the cost of the printer.
The easiest solution is to buy a laser printer (unless you need photo finish on your prints). It’s a higher initial cost, but it never dries out. Would it cost me more that an ink printer in the long run? Maybe, but with my infrequent printing, i wouldn’t have to replace dried out cartridges every year.
Anyone who buys a color laser printer should be aware that the initial cartridges, at least from HP, are not as full as refills, so you will have to replace them fairly soon and it is expensive. That being said, the refills will last a looooong time.
Also, and the main reason why I purchased one, the printer will just work, even if you don’t print anything for a couple of weeks, or months even. I went through a couple of inkjets (not the cheapest ones), which would constantly get dried out, a head clogged, etc, before I said “fuck it,” and sprung for a laser. My wallet isn’t that happy, but it sure is nice not gambling on whether the damn printer will actually print.
I had an amazing multifunction colour laser printer. It always worked. It scanned straight to OCRd PDF which it placed on an FTP server. It was full duplex, in printing and scanning. It copied ultra-quickly. The toner was endless, or so it seemed. It was everything I needed and wanted in a printer.
But my wife thought it was “ugly” and “too big”. It became a real sticking point, this thing. So eventually it was replaced by a shitty ink-jets so “we could print good photos at home”. Now it’s clogged up to fuck, no amount of head cleaning works and she’s complaining about the shitty quality prints.
Stand your ground on a good printer. Stand. Your. Ground.
Damn, that’s a nice printer you
havehad there.We need a law that makes it illegal for someone to cause you to lose your beloved printer, despite the way it may look. We need an anti-discrimination law to protect them because they can’t protect themselves. We can call it the Stand Your Ground Act…wait.
Yeah. And we should be able to legally marry our printers too. I’m sick of the fact that nobody recognized my relationship with my printer even though we sleep together every night. In ever sense of that term.
Your sheets must be tie-dyed at this point.
y’all need to stop buying printers from HP
y’all need to stop buying ink printers from HP
FTFY
Do yourself a favour and buy a Brother laser printer. You’ll thank me later
Did the same some years back. Only black and white laser, but this thing just works!
Hardly “unnoticed” - it’s just a fundamental part of the business model.
I just assumed the manufacturing process required unicorn blood or something.
Homeopathy. It’s literally based on the idea that diluting stuff turns it into a remedy.
Cryptocurrency in general. Even on the surface, as presented, the main appeal to buy in is “to get rich from it” and the main way you’re supposed to get rich is “other people buying in, get in early while you can.”
Ponzi. Schemes. All of them.
It does have a utility though, buying drugs, moving money past capital controls, and creating fake revenue/losses for laundering money and tax evasion.
You forgot the human trafficking potential. Checkmate
The dollar is the favourite currency for that stuff. Cryptocurrencies are meant to take power away from banks and give it to the people. Sure, the vast majority of the people use them for spsculation, but that doesn’t make the technology useless. It’s just that people are mostly interested in making as much money as they can. That’s a society problem, not cryptocurrency’s.
Sigh… It’s like the currency still has issues or something
The main appeal is the ability to make transactions without intermediaries. The problem is that most people have as the only interest to get richer and richer and there will be always other people happy to sell them that dream… For a fee. These are the vastmajorituy of the people in cryptocurrencies, but that doesn’t disreguard the power and utility of the technology. It’s easy to shit on the tool, but the real problem is the greed-driven society we live in.
If people paid rent or bought groceries with crypto currency? Sure. It’s not like thousands of people without bank access are using coins.
I’ve been living on cryptocurrencies only for the last >6 years. Buying groceries, travels and whatever else i need. So yes, people do that. You don’t hear about it because people are too busy talking about speculators and price movements.
Cryptocurrencies are seeing high adoptions in country where banking is limited, in the rich country is 99% speculation.
Doesn’t the see saw of speculation kind of screw this up for you? Or do you only engage in business with other crypto people?
Speculation makes it harder because it causes price volatility, which is good and bad. There are services like bitrefill, travala and coincards that make very easy to buy almostanything using crypto. Of course if somebody accepts crypto directly i prefer them.
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I was into Bitcoin before it even had value. Cryptocurrency is a cool concept and not a scam by default, but it was never meant to be some mainstream thing that was going to replace the dollar as you hear parroted annoyingly everywhere.
When non tech people started getting interested is when the scams started (also didn’t help that governments were lending money at 0% interest rates for like the last two decades)…
Drug dealers also like getting paid in crypto, but they never hold on to it. The few that use it like a currency are ok, but the vast majority use it like a commodity.
Back in the early days (early 2010s was when I first heard of it) when Bitcoin was worth pennies on the dollar that was exactly the kind of thing it was good for, and it was marketed as an international currency not beholden to governments. It is a shame that it got taken from that for the sake of “Bitcoin being valuable because you can profit off owning Bitcoin.”
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.
It can have legitimate utility
Sure, sure. But does it and can it actually stay that way?
I haven’t seen a functioning example actually out there yet of a planet-burning electricity-wasting math busywork generator that actually does anything it supposedly can do besides become another ruinous and wasteful grift that does more damage to the planet than whatever convenience it supposedly offers to comfort the comforted.
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.
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.
You’re claiming that cryptogrifts can theoretically cease being environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grifts (for Science!™) and so on, so why not go one further and state that such applications theoretically DON’T need Bitcoin or related blockchain monetization at all?
If it’s already an environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grift, and you’re claiming it can do good things while also being an environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grift, why not take the speculative fantasy a little further and lose the environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grift entirely?
There’s not really any trickery.
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!™)”? 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)
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.
“Less of a net negative” is still a net negative if it requires a massive and ever-growing bloated blockchain to verify every accumulating transactions for the vague and non-enforced promise of FOR SCIENCE™ benefits.
If we can find an alternative to expensive PoW, wonderful!
At present the alternative is not doing it because it’s still a net negative when it comes to wasted energy and environmental damage.
Alright, what about Bitcoin is fraudulent? We agree it’s bad, but that doesn’t make it fraudulent (i.e. a scam)
Sea lioning at this point is very bad form and I’m quite confident that you’re not going to accept any example or definition I give because you’re already sold on your particular investment, but fine.
Let’s start with the actual fucking fraud done with it, from phishing to theft to holding data hostage and demanding payment to decrypt that data before it’s destroyed, as is a growing common “use case” for Bitcoin when it isn’t being used for human trafficking and the like. You can piously claim in some pedantic “CODE IS LAW” thing that there’s no fraud in the code itself but splitting hairs like that doesn’t remove the incentive (or the risk, or the ongoing caseload) of fraud done with, around, and even against your favorite investment vehicle.
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/3-4-billion-penalty-in-cftc-bitcoin-fraud/
https://www.theblock.co/post/226534/silk-road-hacker-sentenced
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.
And the forks!
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.
It does it infinitely more inefficient, slower and insecure than all other existing alternatives that can do this (and there are a lot of alternatives which doesn’t involve blockchain). Which is also why people doesn’t use it for this.
Seconding crypto.
Credit scores are a scam to sell credit cards.
You take small loans each month via a credit card that you have to pay back. This increases an imaginary number that lets you take out bigger loans in the furure.
This is all tracked by private companies that you trust with your personal data. That, or you’ll not be able to take out a loan if you want to buy a house or start a business.
If you have a good credit score it means that you don’t overspend or forget to pay, which you can also achieve with a regular debit card by default. This doesn’t serve people, only the banks who expect that a number of people will overspend or not be able to pay their loans back.
Credit cards alone aren’t the problem. Forcing them on people with the credit score system is.
Coming from a civilized country where the credit score is calculated by looking at income, taxes and property, I cannot fathom how the US credit score calculation is supported by anyone.
A lot of people actually like it because it really doesn’t work the way OP said it did. They are partially correct, but you also get rewarded for perverse incentives. If you double pay your CC, it will actually slightly lower your credit score. If you have a lot of credit cards with no balance, that can also lower your score. The quickest way to buildup credit in the US is to get a card that has a 0% 18 Month introductory interest rate. Pay the minimum balance each month, and save the cash to pay it all off in 17 months. You will accumulate credit like crazy, holding a balance strangely increases your credit (until the balance gets too high or you start missing payments, then it will take a nosedive).
Interest, late fees, holding a balance, a lot of the bad stuff is actually weirdly good for your credit in the US. I mean it makes sense… they want to reward people who are stupid and pay interest, but actually have enough income to keep making payments forever.
When someone from the US remarks about their credit score, it always causes me to raise eyebrows. You can be poor and have a high credit score, it’s incredibly common.
One way to make credit scores more consumer friendly would be to make it totally transparent what data is collected, retained and transmitted when calculating the score. If you want to open a new line of credit, instead of having businesses look up all this shit behind your back you’d request a letter of credit and provide it to the business yourself, knowing exactly what is in it.
But no, instead it’s a total mystery how it is calculated and you just have to hope that they don’t get confused and make a mistake because it can wreck your life if they do.
In many countries, mine included, there’s no credit score system. We recently took out a bigger loan to buy a house and what we had to provide was:
- proof of a steady income (in our case from our employer)
- 3 months of bank account history (to prove that we don’t overspend)
- written permission that they can request our data from the central (government operated) loan database
That’s it. From these they could tell that we are safe to loan money to because we’ll most likely be able to pay it back.
I don’t see how a credit score system is essential when you can provide them with the necessary data only when it’s needed.
You can “game the system” by picking credit cards that offer some kind of cash back incentive, and don’t carry balances month to month. For example the chase freedom card does 1% on all purchases and 5% on specific categories that change every quarter. I’ve had this card for like 9 years, I’ve never paid any interest because I pay it off monthly , and we make lots of “free” cash back. The key here is don’t go get a credit card and buy stuff you can’t afford, that should be hammered into youth from the beginning, just buy what you can afford, and if you’re disciplined enough you can put all of your purchases on the card and benefit from the card incentives for basically free.
I can’t agree with this more.
Transferring points earned to airlines can also net you some incredible deals on flights as well. I’ve booked several tens of thousands of dollars on business/first class travel over the years at a fraction of the cost. With the addition of free hotel upgrades and car rental upgrades, you can use credit cards to your advantage.
The caveat is that it takes some amount of expendable income to play.
Mormon church
Trim out the first half of that sentence and you’d have yourself a top comment.
Tax-free charitable organizations
In a society with capitalism at its core, externalities exist. That’s a fact that everyone agrees with. Nonprofits help mitigate those gaps. Calling all nonprofits scams is misguided at best. I think OP is looking for something more specific. What nonprofits?
Yes, I’m looking for more specific cases.
I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek but specifically the Roman Catholic Church in a historic context.
There are a lot who have an extremely positive impact. It’s a small minority that causes a huge number of issues.
I personally help out with a non profit charity and we get a lot done with not a lot financially. The reduced taxes are a huge help.
There are a lot who have an extremely positive impact. It’s a small minority that causes a huge number of issues.
I would argue it’s the other way around frankly
To be fair, there are some good ones out there. I worked for a drug-rehab company in the 90s as the IT head that got mostly government funding for a 6 month-rehab-program for non-violent drug offenders (mostly stuff like heroine, cocaine, etc.). We also had an in-prison program but I don’t think that was as effective. Of course to get government contact money we would have to meet lots of strict guidelines too.
I definitely more wary of ones that don’t get any public funding and therefore have practically no guardrails and less forced transparency.
Bernie Madoff should have been caught years before he did.
There’s zero chance the SEC wasn’t fully aware of what he was doing, just like they’re fully aware of what Ken Griffen is doing.
They probably weren’t fully aware because they didn’t want to be.
What’s the logic behind this take? I would think they’d stop him if they knew.
Not if they profit off it
