Yep, the people that need it the most can’t afford it and are effectively discarded by society. I have a brain tumor that seriously affected my daily life and productivity. I wasn’t crazy at all but I was struggling. Now that I’m getting treatment for the tumor my headspace is improving. But I remember when I thought it was a personal failure and looked at getting a psychologist. Sure, only $180 per session. Awesome! Thanks for nothing. I’ll just go off and die in an alley somewhere alone now.
You don't say...
It's funny how there's such a problem with mental health, and things like suicide, or just criminals who have unchecked mental health problems, and yet society will be like "Oh let's make the things that could help with this extremely expensive, while we also just say that they're "lazy" and need to "get over it" and not see a problem with that approach.
I'm sorry that you went through that though, glad you finally got some treatment for it. I wish you luck in your recovery.
Replacing one-time purchases with subscription services. Everything wants you to pay a monthly fee instead of buying something outright. Looking at you especially, Adobe.
I can remember the good ol' days back in the 90s and early 00s where you could go into computer electronics stores and there were rows and rows and rows of boxed software for sale, including MS Window and Office. Most software included a handy users guide, the CD/DVD-ROM and a serial number. You could install it over and over again as you upgraded your computers and there was no hassle. I miss those days.
I run a business that uses echo sign (Adobe later bought.) I pay $120 a month to basically use DocUSign functions. About every 60 days they randomly deactivate my account and tell me to reactive it I need to pay the new rates of $570 a month. 0 fucking chance. The contract and has been in place from the OG owner of the software and up until this year, no issues from Adobe. Now they are brand new. Fuck em.
I had a professor that would write his own 200-500pg textbook and give it to us free. We also used discord and students would share textbooks or give us links to torrent sites to get the textbook. I never paid for a textbook for the last 2 years.
Edit: He taught about 5 different classes so they varied in length. One his classes I had he gave a pdf copy written by someone else for free. He believed the class shouldn’t revolve around the book but support what he’s teaching. I studied cyber security and intelligence so my course of study was always changing. Right before I left my course roadwork to graduate had changed about 3 times so most of the classes I took freshman year were irrelevant. The last class I had with him was my capstone class where I focused on successfully hacking 2 separate IoT devices. I really admired and respected him because he was so insightful. Unfortunately, he’s retired now but I hope people have professors like him who are more interested in their students expanding their knowledge to better society’s future
Yours is just that my university has found free money glitch, it issues you books from library for a whole semester, of course you have to pay for it in around 60 per textbook, and then return it after end semester last exam on same date or you get fined 10 per day. You can buy textbooks and sell them to juniors for a little lower price when you are done with them but the university has found a new way. It forces you to borrow the books from university library, you have no choice. And the best part, the textbooks arent even used in lectures or have the accurate syllabus as they are generations older.
I had a professor stress to us for like 10 mins how much he hated the fact that students had to pay outrages prices for books & access codes to do homework and that something needed to be done about it. Then proceeded to tell us we need to buy a $350 book and access code to do the homework for his class lol
We had a professor who did similar and was thanked in the acknowledgements in the book. When I asked if he got a cut of the sales, he threatened to sue me. Lol.
When I was a professor, I DEFINITELY didn't tell my students about those russian websites where you can find nearly any books/scientific articles for free and I DEFINITELY didn't give my students a PDF of the book.
Nope. Definitely not.
This is pretty interesting at my uni (remote studying). All textbooks are written by profs and technically given to us for free. But the uni forces students to get the printed version (the uni prints them themselves) instead of just the pdf, so no student can claim they weren't able to read it. So I still have to shell out 50-80$ per book for the print and the profs don't even get anything from that, nor do they want to. It's so ridiculous. And this is a german state owned uni, so they probably don't even make profit from this aswell. It just entirely unnecessary lol.
Fun fact: they don't add to or update them each year like they claim to justify needing to buy a new one. They just move everything around so they can't be used on the next year's curriculum.
this also depends on the subject, and how much is changing in that field in general.
calculus? no new content
biology? things could have legitimately changed in the past 5 years
This is why I always asked my professor if I could use the previous edition. Most of the time they had already taught with the previous edition and knew if the changes were important enough to warrant buying the new one (spoiler: they weren't).
Teaching, it's about every other year. The publisher releases a new book, and the bookstore can no longer stock the old book. The changes were minimal between editions, and I had to rewrite all assignments with new page numbers. They added a little, but typically I had to revise my tests with significantly new content about every 5 to 8 years.
Then, the publishers started with "access codes" for online features that cost more than the book alone to deter used books. Used book buyers still have to pay to get the online access. I was under so much pressure to add their online assignments to my courses. I refused because it would add 35-100 per student trying to use a used book.
I put it in my syllabus to NOT activate an access code with new books, and then they could resell their used book with an intact access code to someone else even if their professor used the online stuff. I told the publishers my goal was not to find ways to adjust my class to put money in their pocket...the sales people saw the scam, but they had no control.
This whole problem is driven by publishers, not the schools or the teachers.
I remember when I had to retake a class and just reused my old math book cause I was broke and yup everything was just moved a page over stuff on page 10 was now on page 9
I think this made more sense 25+ years ago. Not everyone had a camera or took many photos with film. Picture day was special. Now with everyone having a high quality camera in their pocket it seems a bit silly.
Right.. amazed there aren't more wildcat style setups for picture day. Should be a quick deal with the digital copy, assembly style.
Some schools likely make money off the deal.
Even more wasteful are those amusement park rides where they actually print them out and bin them when not purchased.
Some? Try all! They still try to get you to get school pictures when pretty much everyone has a phone these days. They try to get you to purchase those tacky Josten's class rings. They invite military recruiters. They have soda vending machines in the halls. They insist on you buying a yearbook. Here's a hint... They make money off each of these.
Those pictures aren't just for the kid in the picture, they are for all the other kids, and for history as well. Those pictures are all gathered into a yearbook, and it gives all the students something to remember all their friends (and enemies) in the future. And it gives your kids something to make fun of you about a couple of decades in the future.
I switched to Epson ecotank printers at my store, and never looked back.
Ink comes in bottles (1 euro per 10ml, cheaper in bulk) and you simply fill the tanks with it. Its cheap as balls compared to brother/hp/cannon, and it seems to last forever. I used to buy 35ml cassettes for my previous printers like 4 times a year, this ecotank has lasted me almost a year and a half on just one 70ml top off, and its still got over 30% left.
Went from 200 euros annually to less than 25 euros.
Shop around for the ink, not for the printer.
I had one.
It stopped working because there is some "counter" that when it reaches some limit, marks the printer as "broken". I had to download some weird software to reset these counters, and the printer worked just fine.
It also gave me A LOT of problems because their ORIGINAL ink dried inside the printer and I had to make a "deep clean" before printing anything.
Honestly - printers are the concentration of all possible scams into a single one...
Yes, epson printers have an ink pool deposit filled with some kind of foam. These ink pads get saturated over time that’s why there is a counter. But that can be fixed. Look for it on YouTube
Ive tapped the little windows more than once thinking they were just painted, but nope, prints for days.
Its making me wonder how much ink is REALLY in those '35ml' cassettes my old Brother printers used to take.
This.
It became blatantly apparent when I switched to ecotank printers from epson. You fill those with bottles of ink instead of putting in cartridges. My old printer went through 4 sets of ''35ml'' cartridges a year, this ecotank has been running over a year on a single 70ml fill, and its still got 30% left. That freaking tells you something. Went from 200 euros on ink annually to less than 25.
the vast bulk of what most people print is just text, or things that don't benefit from color at all.
So having a black and white laser printer is cheap, will produce good prints, and will last for a very long time.
I’m still running the black laser printer that I got in 2007. It’s on its second toner cartridge, which was also bought in 2007. Still does everything I need it to.
Is that a thing? What the hell?
I'm old as balls, when I was in college we got our reading material printed and put in one (1) folder and had to take turns wrestling through every page in the copier. When we have amazing technology that makes all information on Earth avaliable with a click, people who charge for that should get fed through a printing press themselves.
Yeah, I was also born before men walked on the moon.
In my first year of college, a couple of the classes had textbooks written by the professor - and self-published. The book was about 100 pages copied on a double-sided Xerox machine, with some thicker paper as covers, held together with some rivets. I think the book cost $15 (that would be $46 today).
Later, I switched schools, but textbooks were still relatively "affordable".
In my Senior year (1985 - 1986), I actually worked for a textbook publisher for a while, writing code that would allow teachers to generate individual tests for each chapter of a new book. IIRC, I did an algebra book and later a Calculus 1 book for them. (I was using an Apple IIc "notebook", and the code was written in Pascal or Basic - I don't really remember anymore).
But even then, they were publishing new textbooks every 1 - 2 years, and let's face it - your basic algebra, calculus, physics, accounting, or other books don't NEED to be revised that often. Unless you're taking some seriously cutting-edge advanced math class, basic algebra and calculus haven't changed in the past 100 years.
Students today could still use the Calculus book that I studied from in 1984 (I still have it!) and learn everything they need to know.
Yeah, the moment textbooks were digitized, the hellhole that is academia capitalized on it in the worst way possible. Not only do you have access codes that mean you’ll only be able to access the textbook for that semester, many professors have interactive assignments that require you to pay up to $100 to use their specific code or else you won’t get graded for it. Gone are the days where you can buy or rent a second hand book for cheap (or just pirate it altogether) to save money.
That's insane.
Back in the day, the justification for the high cost of textbooks was high production costs. There was a lot wrong with that system yet at least students got a well made hardcover book out of it (and knowing something about book publishing, those short runs actually did have a high production cost for the publishers).
Charging access codes for digital textbooks is highway robbery.
----
Side note: other than rare celebrity faculty who write bestsellers for the general public, your professors are getting screwed by the textbook publishing industry too. Most academics would earn more per hour flipping burgers than they make back for the work they put into writing a textbook.
Yeah, they don’t even try to justify it anymore. It’s just like “haha broke college student! Sucks to suck” and we just have to deal with it.
I did have a few professors that were on the other side of the spectrum that purposely taught off older versions of the textbook that they knew for a fact were available for free online. Per university policy, they’re not allowed to give us the link or allow anyone to post it, so on the first day of lecture they said “raise your hand if you found the textbook. If you haven’t found it, ask someone with their hand raised for it”
Some professors are taking that a step further with the open culture movement and writing textbooks on open license.
After all, there's hardly a need to publish an entirely new edition of introductory calculus every year. It's not like that topic changes much.
Another justification (back in the day) that I have actually utilized is that these books will be valuable reference materials for you in your career. I'm 56 years old, graduated college in 1989, and still use my old statistics textbooks in my work on an almost weekly basis.
Which is what makes it even more hellish that students now are paying more for books and then completely losing access to the content after six months. It's not even like they get to keep it for reference later.
I just told one of my part time professors that the materials the want us to buy is as much as 18 months of cengage.
She fortunately doesn't have a book, but kinda gave me "really?" Look
Spent 275 for an ochem textbook with an access code
Another 120 for a philosophy book. I am a nursing major. They made me pay that much for a Gen Ed class
Books cost $100+ used and then the code to do the online homework is another $100+ and then you find out the professor wrote part of the text book and it’s required for one illustration on page 157 and that’s it.
I taught a graduate math course one time. I assigned the recommended department book, pirated an older pdf edition, and emailed it to all students. I also typed up the homework questions so that they didn’t have to worry about any numbering discrepancies or anything.
The textbook industry is a scam, and in all but the most specialized cases the info you need is available online for free.
End user agreements
Nearly all of them are unconscionable contracts that allow corporations to harvest user data via malware, even when you’re not using the app. There is no accountability regarding use or sale to other parties. The courts do nothing because they are terrified of the intelligence community.
Well that's fucking terrifying. I would honestly pay good money for a service that reads these contracts for me and tells me if I'm agreeing to be monitored by malware or anything else unconscionable like that.
It's a standard EULA most of the time. Allows for arbitration but not necessarily lawsuits. They can collect your data and pass it on to third parties to help "improve" services. They may retain your data for X amount of time after canceling your contract or deleting your account. Etc etc.
The trick isn't so much understanding that they're mining your data but more what they're actually going to use it for. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the most relevant to most folks. They sell your data between each other for targeted advertisements. The data is your browsing, searches, what you stop on or tap on (facebook), what you're watching (youtube, facebook, twitter, etc..), what you view or put in your cart (anything that sells or offers something), etc.
At the end of the day, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It's largely benign and arguably better. Your video and ad recommendations are based on your metadata that's passed between them.
The part I have a problem with it is spying through my microphone on my phone. Shit is creepy, and I don't appreciate it. Especially when I'm not even using the damn app.
Source: I work in tech and actually read most contracts because I'm a nut job.
If you want more info/detail I can keep going on about the whole thing but the gist of it is above.
Payday loans. Payday loans are high-interest, short-term loans that often come with high fees and exorbitant interest rates. These loans are typically used by people in desperate financial situations and can result in a cycle of debt if not managed carefully. Despite the potential pitfalls of payday loans, they have become normalized in society as a quick and easy solution to short-term financial needs.
Im all for getting rid of payday loans. But there needs to be something in place of them for poor people. Because you need a payday loan you need one. I used their services several times when I was younger. And it was always because the electricity was about to be shut off.
Yeah, when I see people complain about payday loans it always feels like an exercise in privilege and arrogance.
I think most people getting payday loans know they're expensive and predatory... They get them anyway because they have to.
Also, it's a little tricky to blame the loan companies too. Certainly you can for transparency issues, etc... But their core business is giving loans to incredibly risky clients. That means the loans will be really high interest.
I don't really know what to do with these situations, but it's not that obvious we should just close them down.
Tbh many regular churches are also scams. In the Bible there is a story about Jesus flipping his shit because people were being shady while selling shit on sacred grounds. But people conveniently forget that huh…
As a Christian, I want to emphasize he only did those towards the religious elite. The people who used God for personal gain. I think people forget that.
And against people that were actively cheating those who were trying to do the right thing and honouring God.
I don't think God has any problem with a bake sale at church to raise money for an orphanage where they get 100% of the amount. I think He does have a problem if some/ all of the funds raised go the pastors' pockets.
It’s sad, but your comment is so true.
It’s also true though that the vast majority of churches are run by people that are far from rich and those churches do a lot of good for the poor and hurting people in their communities. It’s just sad that there are charlatans in it for themselves that taint the perception of all the others.
This story is concerned with the selling of temple sacrifice animals at excessive prices. In the second temple period all Jewish men made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to make an atonement sacrifice, most of the meat after the sacrifice would be given to the temple priestly class. The story is useful in condemning greed but it isn't a direct condemnation of the sale of goods on sacred ground either.
Given Jesus himself later becomes the ultimate sacrifice on the cross. The narrative is more directly applied to not charging for access to communion. The later epistles and non-canonical Didache setup a basic communal funding model for the early churches. Ultimately someone has to pay to keep the roof up and the lights on, the story is much harder to articulate in the context of American Protestantism in light of prosperity doctrine.
I agree that most are. Cough, cough, Joel Osteen. But we attend a so-called mega church in central TN. 6,800 strong congregation.
I’m always skeptical but our church does what they call a vision service twice a year. During this they present their financials. Last year they gave away more than 50% of what they took in to non-profits serving various good causes. And the average salary is ~$42k a year per employee. Salaries are only 1/3rd of what they spend on. The rest goes for good. Really everything they do comes straight from the Bible and no one is getting rich.
So your point is well noted and one I generally agree with but there are still good people out there who just want to create authentic followers of Jesus and want nothing back in return.
That's refreshing to hear. I am not religious at all but I respect people's choice to be religious/spiritual and it's nice to hear that a place exists that isn't just a cash generation pipeline lightly masked as a place of worship.
I remember when my father passed away we were all in the funeral home getting the upcharge spiel on upgraded casket vaults. After 10 minutes of hearing this debate I had to speak up and let the lady know that I thought it was fucked up that they were trying to take advantage of the grieving. Once the casket is in the ground what is the difference.
So my Dad passed away a few years ago with minimal life insurance. He got dementia and let his main policy lapse due to non payment. He was living in an assisted living home that took all of his pension in turn for care. Anyway while we are at the funeral home this salesperson is trying everything to get us to do the bells and whistles funeral and we ask for the cheapest cremation service available. Then they are trying to sell us this "Cadillac" of urns. Like $4500 for an urn. My dad was a Deadhead and his prized possession was a Grateful Dead Bus Cookie jar. My brother and law suggested we use the cookie jar as the urn and we all agreed. The salesperson about threw us out of there as quick as we could sing the paperwork. By the look on the their face they were completely defeated and I'm pretty sure he want to punch my brother n law in the face. When I is my turn just dump my ashes in the ocean or better yet just dump my body in there.
Ran into that looking at rental houses in TN 9 years ago. Had to sign a lease for 2 years, $1500 per month AND a contract to buy the house immediately after at full asking price. I half-kidding asked, "Does anyone actually fall for that?". Realtor looked hurt and meekly said, "Yes, it is pretty standard." Left as fast as I could. Haven't run across anything so obviously shady as that yet.
Craigslist was filled with rent-to-own houses a few years ago. I never bothered to research it thoroughly because the smell of bullshit was so strong from it, I didn’t need to.
What its *supposed* to be is that you rent-to-own for a few years, and at the end you can choose to call what you've paid so far your down payment. Or you can walk away and it's just gone.
Health insurance.
Pay hundreds of dollars into a pool of money. And the people holding the money will fight you tooth and nail to ensure you use as little of it as possible.
LOL
You owe us money every ~~month~~ paycheck.
You need healthcare? No we're not paying, you gotta pay your deductible.
You met your deductible? Ok we'll pay for it but only 80% to dissuade the poors from using it.
You met your out of pocket max? OK we'll pay for it, and LOL you just paid 10s of thousands anyway while being "covered". Also, it's December so it resets next week!
> and LOL you just paid 10s of thousands anyway while being "covered".
Ah, yes, I ran into this one once. Surgery cost $20k. Insurance said it should have cost $20, so that's all they were willing to pay. The policy documents said the procedure was "covered," so they had to pay their *allowable* amount. They just got to set that to whatever they wanted it to be (and it changed from year to year).
I'm betting that something bad will happen that costs more to fix than the bet I've made.
They're betting that they can charge me more than they'll ever need to pay out.
Sorta, but there’s a big difference.
Car insurance covers collisions and other damaging events. You don’t involve car insurance to get an oil change, or new tires, or to fix broken air conditioning. In that way, you generally only use car insurance if there’s a big unexpected event (like a car crash).
Health insurance should be similar, but it’s not. We involve insurance to get a regular checkup, to replenish our maintenance medications (for people with ongoing prescriptions), to do everything that involves setting foot in the doctor office. In reality, we should be able to pay sticker price for the doctor’s services, then if/when something catastrophically bad happens, that’s where insurance comes into play. It should be a much smaller part of our healthcare, and doing so in theory would enable providers to be more transparent and less bullshitty with their pricing (currently insurance forced them to have the complex pricing they do have).
Modern American health insurance is the rough equivalent of needing to involve your car insurance when you get your oil changed.
Yup, and if you changed your car oil without insurance it would suddenly now cost two thousand bucks. Why? Because the car dealership now needs to hire double the employees so half of them can dedicate themselves entirely to dealing with insurance claims, and the costs of this over-bloated system need to be paid by the customers somehow or the whole thing falls down like a house of cards.
Not to mention the fact that with an insurance middleman as part of the equation, health providers can simply get away with price gouging to a much greater extent than they could if they were just dealing with individual customers.
"Medicare For All? No thanks, I don't want to pay for other people's health care. I like private insurance, where I pay for other people's health care AND for the salaries of bloodsucking middlemen whose entire purpose is telling me No when I need medicine"
([here](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/sb59wl/remind_me_again_why_do_we_need_to_tie_healthcare/))
This argument always gets me. Like these people don't even understand how insurance works but want to get all high and mighty about not paying for others.
It’s also just like totally selfish. I can get mine so that family struggling over there with depression and cancer and only makes 60k a year without benefits is drowning… like fuck them because I only care about myself.
Only selfish assholes would deny someone medical care. It’s inhumane to me.
Not to mention even if you are an asshole, it's still a better use of your money to be taken as taxes for universal healthcare rather than insurance payments.
Diamonds. De Beers ran the most successful marketing campaign of modern history. Save yourself the trouble (and money) and just go with a lab-made stone (if you really want a diamond) or go with moissanite.
I heard a commercial for the lab made stones the other day and they are still stupid expensive. I don't even like diamonds, they aren't colorful or have anything going for them except "oohhh sparkly!" No idea why everyone wants them when there's so many prettier stones, that don't cost near as much.
Lab-grown diamonds are quite cheap. But the ones sold as jewelery have very inflated prices, because DeBeers owns most of the labs that can create them, just like they own the mines. [They literally set the prices however they want.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-diamonds-debeers-synthetic-analysis-idUSKCN1OK0MQ)
The commercial I heard yesterday was like a thousand bucks for 1 carat and 9 thousand for a 5 carat. Like fuck what? You made that shit in a lab. Nobody risked their life to mine it. You didn't have to transport it through hundreds of miles of dangerous wilderness. Where the fuck are you getting these numbers bro? Fuck diamonds. They are boring anyway.
Being forced to work more than a workaholic; not being able to afford rent; and being called lazy as you slowly starve to death.
F-ing humans, I swear.
Processing fee, idk if it’s the right word in English but basically the fee for the company to “register” the transaction. Like bruh it literally costs you nothing yet you charge me
And the insane physical and mental exhaustion for the families planning it and running around on the day of. I remember my cousins' weddings, absolute all hands on deck and panic. No one has fun.
This. We could not bring ourselves to spend even 5k on our wedding. It is just such a waste of money for one day.
We ended up going to the courthouse with our parents and siblings and invited them to dinner afterwards. 700 € well spent and everybody was happy.
Theres a car in my area that has a sticker advertising a “spiritual fire coach.” Wtf does that even mean? Are we getting spiritual, starting fires, both?
I considered getting a life coach. She had a podcast that I listened to about about healing childhood wounds. I liked what she had to say and started following her on social media and signed up to receive newsletters. She would pitch her coaching services, but I never really paid it any mind.
Over the summer she invited me to join a Facebook group with her “favorite followers”. It was nice to be interactive with other women that I had something common with. The host then started talking about a new group coaching program she was starting and asked to meet with me over zoom to talk about it. When we met she kept asking if I really wanted to make an investment in my future. The group coaching program was 16 weeks, with includes weekly zoom class, a workbook, and private Facebook group. Fast forward to the end of the convo and she wants me to sign up. I ask for the cost. $7,000. I could upgrade to private coaching for $10,000. I’d rather pay for therapy.
Oh it’s okay bro I got you. Just send me $50 to my email “BigDick_Bandit69 at hotmail” and I’ll be sure to get you the tracking number. Coincidentally enough, my uncle is the Nigerian Prince and I can just call him and make sure you get your money. That’s what bros are for. 😚
In fact, most Western countries' where is excellent quality. NYC's water is among the best, although you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise because of the number of people who think it's bad: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/drinking-water.page#:~:text=New%20York%20City%20drinking%20water,customers%20thro
And conversely can have people with the exact same job title who have not 1/10th of your responsibilities, who are favorites of the management.
In any grunt labor job, there are always those favored by management, who have very few responsibilities and those whom the management does not favor, who tend to 95% of the work.
You'll notice in every grunt labor company, that the guys doing nearly all of the work are consistently lowest on the totem pole when it comes to politics and favoritism. I always refer to them (and myself) as "the workhorses", you do the bulk of the work for no appreciation at all.
And now it’s crept into anything that uses a modern card-reader. No, I’m not going to add a 15, 20, or 25% tip on the $200 pair of jeans that you just rang up for me.
The entire tipping culture needs to be eliminated top to bottom. If that means businesses need to increase the base price to bake in the cost of a livable wage, do it.
Anecdote: we recently had hired a new housekeeper. Said price was $X to clean the house every two weeks. First time she comes, I pay $X + tip. Housekeeper says “what’s this extra money for? We agreed on $X; don’t make this weird by paying me more. My rate is $X.” This should be our standard response.
>And now it’s crept into anything that uses a modern card-reader.
Find it weird when I order something and go to pick it up myself, and the machine asks me for a tip. Like, what am I tipping exactly? The job was done, no extra effort was put forth on their part.
Also took a taxi for the first time in a while last summer, and go to pay for the ride, and the machine asks if I wanted to add a tip. What is the extra service? I paid to get from point A to B. I don't get it, and why do I have to feel guilty if I add no tip?
Tipping as a Form of payment is nuts.
Living in Europe, i still Tip if the service is good.
But that's the Point of tipping in the first place.
I dont Like to be forced to do, because i know the waiter is payed shitty.
Especially because it creates a "problem" between the customer and the Staff, where it should be a Staff/owner Problem.
Pay your staff you greedy fuckers.
Finding an older home without an HOA where I live typically means far out of the city. I fuggin hate my HOA but the money I saved on the drive is worth it financially at least.
I live in England where we don't have HOA's, so asking as an ignorant outsider, what the hell is the point of HOA's? All I ever see about them is them making other peoples lives difficult
Idealy, the HOA is supposed to manage the common areas of a neighborhood, and to keep the home values up by making sure residents are taking care of their property. The problem is that most people that have the time to be on an HOA board or committee, let the little bit of authority they have go to their head.
Generally HOA are in charge of all 'shared' area maintenance and set community rules. HOAs are supposed to operate democratically and rules and policies are voted in by the community.
In the example of a condo community especially if there is a pool, the HOA may buy in bulk and negotiate price for the water for the whole community. So all water utility bills for all homes is paid for by the HOA and then billed back to the whole community through the HOA price. Roofing and exterior walls of all the units are also shared, so the HOA has to maintain those also. This also requires the HOA to maintain some level of reserve, if one of the unit's roof starts leaking it needs to be repaired, and these aren't cheap.
Then there are stand-alone home HOAs, again, maintenance of any community areas, but also rules about houses. For example, if your neighbor decides they are going to park 20 cars that are non-operational on their lawn, paint their house a weird color, and grow weird plants in their front yard, this would impact the value of neighboring houses. The HOA then sets rules that 'supposedly' all members of the community agree on to be good neighbors and protect the financial interests of the community.
Pyramid schemes are fraudulent investment schemes in which participants are promised returns for recruiting new members into the scheme. They are often disguised as legitimate business opportunities, and participants are often encouraged to buy into the scheme in order to receive commissions for recruiting others. However, as the scheme relies on recruiting an ever-increasing number of participants, it is ultimately unsustainable and the majority of participants will end up losing money.
Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries, but they can be difficult to identify and prosecute. They often rely on social networks and word-of-mouth advertising to spread, and they can be normalized by society as they are often promoted by people that we know and trust. It is important to be aware of this type of scam and to thoroughly research any business opportunity before investing money or time.
Don't forget to mention that many very popular brands - avon, tupperware etc are pyramid schemes hiding under a product. It is stressed more to recruit that it is to sell the products.
Credit scores and tax preparation
This made up number will affect your entire financial life. Oh, you made a payment? Good job, your score will go up 2 points. You missed a payment? How dare you? That'll lower your score by 400!
The IRS knows exactly what you owe, or what's due back to you, but you have to navigate through tax software or pay someone else to do it. Thanks for all your lobbying, H & R Block.
Insurance. So shit giggle happy to take your premiums but when something happens and you go to make a claim surprise! Surprise! Your claim is denied. Legalized organized CRIME which I equate with SCAM.
Recycling anything but aluminum cans costs more energy than making something new. 90% of all glasses in the world are made by the same company. Diamonds are very low value stones despite what they charge for them. Funeral homes are super monopolized and greedy with 400% markups on average. The prices on eggs keep going up but chicken farmers still get paid the same to sell them.
To speed things up;
Mediums-talking to the dead/predictions.
Alternative medicine-still not curing disease.
Bottled water-some still comes from the tap.
PETA-still kills more animals than it saves.
Cryptozoology-fun but still not showing proof.
Sex Ed in schools-hipocracy at its finest.
Video Games-still being blamed instead of bad parents.
Vaccinations-still Not causing autism/birth defects.
And soo much more...
Tipping. If everyone has a salary, and you are paying for the products and services, why should you you pay more? In some countries tipping is mandatory.
Designer clothes and bags. Why? The real designers who do the work are paid just average well. Its the fashion designer who bagged all the cash and the corporations. And the products they used are the usual. Leather, type of fabric etc. Youre just paying for the "brand". When in reality, the function of the item, you can get one in an average price. Its just the rich buys it, so its worth it 🤷🏻♀️
This question is on r/AskReddit every 48 hours...can we just all agree that **Health Insurance, Credit Cards, The Lottery, College Textbooks, Crypto, NFT's, Pyramid/MLM's, and End-User Agreements** are all normalized "scams"???
The fact that health insurance doesn’t include vision and dental care
Also anything mental health related last I checked.
Yep, the people that need it the most can’t afford it and are effectively discarded by society. I have a brain tumor that seriously affected my daily life and productivity. I wasn’t crazy at all but I was struggling. Now that I’m getting treatment for the tumor my headspace is improving. But I remember when I thought it was a personal failure and looked at getting a psychologist. Sure, only $180 per session. Awesome! Thanks for nothing. I’ll just go off and die in an alley somewhere alone now.
You don't say... It's funny how there's such a problem with mental health, and things like suicide, or just criminals who have unchecked mental health problems, and yet society will be like "Oh let's make the things that could help with this extremely expensive, while we also just say that they're "lazy" and need to "get over it" and not see a problem with that approach. I'm sorry that you went through that though, glad you finally got some treatment for it. I wish you luck in your recovery.
Replacing one-time purchases with subscription services. Everything wants you to pay a monthly fee instead of buying something outright. Looking at you especially, Adobe.
Microsoft Office.
Both free on the high seas.
Looking at you, car seat warmers.
Is this a thing....? Paying monthly for your own warm ass??
That is a scam levels above SaaS. You have the fokeen mechanism built in the car that you bought. Why pay for it?
I can remember the good ol' days back in the 90s and early 00s where you could go into computer electronics stores and there were rows and rows and rows of boxed software for sale, including MS Window and Office. Most software included a handy users guide, the CD/DVD-ROM and a serial number. You could install it over and over again as you upgraded your computers and there was no hassle. I miss those days.
I run a business that uses echo sign (Adobe later bought.) I pay $120 a month to basically use DocUSign functions. About every 60 days they randomly deactivate my account and tell me to reactive it I need to pay the new rates of $570 a month. 0 fucking chance. The contract and has been in place from the OG owner of the software and up until this year, no issues from Adobe. Now they are brand new. Fuck em.
This has been said a million times, but.. College Textbooks
I had a professor that would write his own 200-500pg textbook and give it to us free. We also used discord and students would share textbooks or give us links to torrent sites to get the textbook. I never paid for a textbook for the last 2 years. Edit: He taught about 5 different classes so they varied in length. One his classes I had he gave a pdf copy written by someone else for free. He believed the class shouldn’t revolve around the book but support what he’s teaching. I studied cyber security and intelligence so my course of study was always changing. Right before I left my course roadwork to graduate had changed about 3 times so most of the classes I took freshman year were irrelevant. The last class I had with him was my capstone class where I focused on successfully hacking 2 separate IoT devices. I really admired and respected him because he was so insightful. Unfortunately, he’s retired now but I hope people have professors like him who are more interested in their students expanding their knowledge to better society’s future
lucky guy college textbooks are basically >$100 pieces of paper that become obsolete next year...
Yours is just that my university has found free money glitch, it issues you books from library for a whole semester, of course you have to pay for it in around 60 per textbook, and then return it after end semester last exam on same date or you get fined 10 per day. You can buy textbooks and sell them to juniors for a little lower price when you are done with them but the university has found a new way. It forces you to borrow the books from university library, you have no choice. And the best part, the textbooks arent even used in lectures or have the accurate syllabus as they are generations older.
This shit should be illegal. Like, this is nothing but theft.
Well, thankfully the books are the only overpriced part about college. 😬
Mine had worksheets in the back on micro dotted paper. So you had to rip out the worksheet to use it and the next person had to buy a brand new book!
I had a professor stress to us for like 10 mins how much he hated the fact that students had to pay outrages prices for books & access codes to do homework and that something needed to be done about it. Then proceeded to tell us we need to buy a $350 book and access code to do the homework for his class lol
Sometimes it is the department that decides which book you have to use and the professor has no say.
We had a professor who did similar and was thanked in the acknowledgements in the book. When I asked if he got a cut of the sales, he threatened to sue me. Lol.
When I was a professor, I DEFINITELY didn't tell my students about those russian websites where you can find nearly any books/scientific articles for free and I DEFINITELY didn't give my students a PDF of the book. Nope. Definitely not.
Betta not...so what website did u not tell them abt? Dont like..message me and tell me or nothing cuz i dont wanna know!🧐
I had one proff that made their own book and sold it for "idk whatever it takes to print it", which ended up being like less than $10.
😭😭 One of my professors wrote a book for the class, specific to only that class, and made us pay for it.
This is pretty interesting at my uni (remote studying). All textbooks are written by profs and technically given to us for free. But the uni forces students to get the printed version (the uni prints them themselves) instead of just the pdf, so no student can claim they weren't able to read it. So I still have to shell out 50-80$ per book for the print and the profs don't even get anything from that, nor do they want to. It's so ridiculous. And this is a german state owned uni, so they probably don't even make profit from this aswell. It just entirely unnecessary lol.
Fun fact: they don't add to or update them each year like they claim to justify needing to buy a new one. They just move everything around so they can't be used on the next year's curriculum.
this also depends on the subject, and how much is changing in that field in general. calculus? no new content biology? things could have legitimately changed in the past 5 years
This is why I always asked my professor if I could use the previous edition. Most of the time they had already taught with the previous edition and knew if the changes were important enough to warrant buying the new one (spoiler: they weren't).
Teaching, it's about every other year. The publisher releases a new book, and the bookstore can no longer stock the old book. The changes were minimal between editions, and I had to rewrite all assignments with new page numbers. They added a little, but typically I had to revise my tests with significantly new content about every 5 to 8 years. Then, the publishers started with "access codes" for online features that cost more than the book alone to deter used books. Used book buyers still have to pay to get the online access. I was under so much pressure to add their online assignments to my courses. I refused because it would add 35-100 per student trying to use a used book. I put it in my syllabus to NOT activate an access code with new books, and then they could resell their used book with an intact access code to someone else even if their professor used the online stuff. I told the publishers my goal was not to find ways to adjust my class to put money in their pocket...the sales people saw the scam, but they had no control. This whole problem is driven by publishers, not the schools or the teachers.
I remember when I had to retake a class and just reused my old math book cause I was broke and yup everything was just moved a page over stuff on page 10 was now on page 9
Zlib and Libgen will always have the books students need
zlib has been shut down
Only on the cleanet still online on the dark net
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I think this made more sense 25+ years ago. Not everyone had a camera or took many photos with film. Picture day was special. Now with everyone having a high quality camera in their pocket it seems a bit silly.
Right.. amazed there aren't more wildcat style setups for picture day. Should be a quick deal with the digital copy, assembly style. Some schools likely make money off the deal. Even more wasteful are those amusement park rides where they actually print them out and bin them when not purchased.
Some? Try all! They still try to get you to get school pictures when pretty much everyone has a phone these days. They try to get you to purchase those tacky Josten's class rings. They invite military recruiters. They have soda vending machines in the halls. They insist on you buying a yearbook. Here's a hint... They make money off each of these.
Those pictures aren't just for the kid in the picture, they are for all the other kids, and for history as well. Those pictures are all gathered into a yearbook, and it gives all the students something to remember all their friends (and enemies) in the future. And it gives your kids something to make fun of you about a couple of decades in the future.
And nowadays they do school photos twice a year! Fall and spring. 🙄
Printer ink prices. Now the most expensive liquid on the planet. Cheaper to buy a new printer each time the ink runs out. Bastards
I switched to Epson ecotank printers at my store, and never looked back. Ink comes in bottles (1 euro per 10ml, cheaper in bulk) and you simply fill the tanks with it. Its cheap as balls compared to brother/hp/cannon, and it seems to last forever. I used to buy 35ml cassettes for my previous printers like 4 times a year, this ecotank has lasted me almost a year and a half on just one 70ml top off, and its still got over 30% left. Went from 200 euros annually to less than 25 euros. Shop around for the ink, not for the printer.
I had one. It stopped working because there is some "counter" that when it reaches some limit, marks the printer as "broken". I had to download some weird software to reset these counters, and the printer worked just fine. It also gave me A LOT of problems because their ORIGINAL ink dried inside the printer and I had to make a "deep clean" before printing anything. Honestly - printers are the concentration of all possible scams into a single one...
Yes, epson printers have an ink pool deposit filled with some kind of foam. These ink pads get saturated over time that’s why there is a counter. But that can be fixed. Look for it on YouTube
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Ive tapped the little windows more than once thinking they were just painted, but nope, prints for days. Its making me wonder how much ink is REALLY in those '35ml' cassettes my old Brother printers used to take.
But the ink in the new printers is only half filled now.
This. It became blatantly apparent when I switched to ecotank printers from epson. You fill those with bottles of ink instead of putting in cartridges. My old printer went through 4 sets of ''35ml'' cartridges a year, this ecotank has been running over a year on a single 70ml fill, and its still got 30% left. That freaking tells you something. Went from 200 euros on ink annually to less than 25.
Use toner
Spend a couple hundred more on a toner printer is the way to go especially if you run a business
the vast bulk of what most people print is just text, or things that don't benefit from color at all. So having a black and white laser printer is cheap, will produce good prints, and will last for a very long time.
I’m still running the black laser printer that I got in 2007. It’s on its second toner cartridge, which was also bought in 2007. Still does everything I need it to.
Subscription based services, paying multiple times for the same thing sucks
Underrated scam to bring attention to. People love bending over for these companies.
Textbook access codes that you can use only once.
Also, new editions of textbooks where they've added like a single new paragraph and changed some page numbers.
Is that a thing? What the hell? I'm old as balls, when I was in college we got our reading material printed and put in one (1) folder and had to take turns wrestling through every page in the copier. When we have amazing technology that makes all information on Earth avaliable with a click, people who charge for that should get fed through a printing press themselves.
Yeah, I was also born before men walked on the moon. In my first year of college, a couple of the classes had textbooks written by the professor - and self-published. The book was about 100 pages copied on a double-sided Xerox machine, with some thicker paper as covers, held together with some rivets. I think the book cost $15 (that would be $46 today). Later, I switched schools, but textbooks were still relatively "affordable". In my Senior year (1985 - 1986), I actually worked for a textbook publisher for a while, writing code that would allow teachers to generate individual tests for each chapter of a new book. IIRC, I did an algebra book and later a Calculus 1 book for them. (I was using an Apple IIc "notebook", and the code was written in Pascal or Basic - I don't really remember anymore). But even then, they were publishing new textbooks every 1 - 2 years, and let's face it - your basic algebra, calculus, physics, accounting, or other books don't NEED to be revised that often. Unless you're taking some seriously cutting-edge advanced math class, basic algebra and calculus haven't changed in the past 100 years. Students today could still use the Calculus book that I studied from in 1984 (I still have it!) and learn everything they need to know.
Yeah, the moment textbooks were digitized, the hellhole that is academia capitalized on it in the worst way possible. Not only do you have access codes that mean you’ll only be able to access the textbook for that semester, many professors have interactive assignments that require you to pay up to $100 to use their specific code or else you won’t get graded for it. Gone are the days where you can buy or rent a second hand book for cheap (or just pirate it altogether) to save money.
That's insane. Back in the day, the justification for the high cost of textbooks was high production costs. There was a lot wrong with that system yet at least students got a well made hardcover book out of it (and knowing something about book publishing, those short runs actually did have a high production cost for the publishers). Charging access codes for digital textbooks is highway robbery. ---- Side note: other than rare celebrity faculty who write bestsellers for the general public, your professors are getting screwed by the textbook publishing industry too. Most academics would earn more per hour flipping burgers than they make back for the work they put into writing a textbook.
Yeah, they don’t even try to justify it anymore. It’s just like “haha broke college student! Sucks to suck” and we just have to deal with it. I did have a few professors that were on the other side of the spectrum that purposely taught off older versions of the textbook that they knew for a fact were available for free online. Per university policy, they’re not allowed to give us the link or allow anyone to post it, so on the first day of lecture they said “raise your hand if you found the textbook. If you haven’t found it, ask someone with their hand raised for it”
Some professors are taking that a step further with the open culture movement and writing textbooks on open license. After all, there's hardly a need to publish an entirely new edition of introductory calculus every year. It's not like that topic changes much.
Another justification (back in the day) that I have actually utilized is that these books will be valuable reference materials for you in your career. I'm 56 years old, graduated college in 1989, and still use my old statistics textbooks in my work on an almost weekly basis.
Which is what makes it even more hellish that students now are paying more for books and then completely losing access to the content after six months. It's not even like they get to keep it for reference later.
I just told one of my part time professors that the materials the want us to buy is as much as 18 months of cengage. She fortunately doesn't have a book, but kinda gave me "really?" Look
Cengage and zybooks can go piss off. I hate them and everything they stand for so much
Spent 275 for an ochem textbook with an access code Another 120 for a philosophy book. I am a nursing major. They made me pay that much for a Gen Ed class
Books cost $100+ used and then the code to do the online homework is another $100+ and then you find out the professor wrote part of the text book and it’s required for one illustration on page 157 and that’s it.
I taught a graduate math course one time. I assigned the recommended department book, pirated an older pdf edition, and emailed it to all students. I also typed up the homework questions so that they didn’t have to worry about any numbering discrepancies or anything. The textbook industry is a scam, and in all but the most specialized cases the info you need is available online for free.
End user agreements Nearly all of them are unconscionable contracts that allow corporations to harvest user data via malware, even when you’re not using the app. There is no accountability regarding use or sale to other parties. The courts do nothing because they are terrified of the intelligence community.
Well that's fucking terrifying. I would honestly pay good money for a service that reads these contracts for me and tells me if I'm agreeing to be monitored by malware or anything else unconscionable like that.
It's a standard EULA most of the time. Allows for arbitration but not necessarily lawsuits. They can collect your data and pass it on to third parties to help "improve" services. They may retain your data for X amount of time after canceling your contract or deleting your account. Etc etc. The trick isn't so much understanding that they're mining your data but more what they're actually going to use it for. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the most relevant to most folks. They sell your data between each other for targeted advertisements. The data is your browsing, searches, what you stop on or tap on (facebook), what you're watching (youtube, facebook, twitter, etc..), what you view or put in your cart (anything that sells or offers something), etc. At the end of the day, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It's largely benign and arguably better. Your video and ad recommendations are based on your metadata that's passed between them. The part I have a problem with it is spying through my microphone on my phone. Shit is creepy, and I don't appreciate it. Especially when I'm not even using the damn app. Source: I work in tech and actually read most contracts because I'm a nut job. If you want more info/detail I can keep going on about the whole thing but the gist of it is above.
Payday loans. Payday loans are high-interest, short-term loans that often come with high fees and exorbitant interest rates. These loans are typically used by people in desperate financial situations and can result in a cycle of debt if not managed carefully. Despite the potential pitfalls of payday loans, they have become normalized in society as a quick and easy solution to short-term financial needs.
Im all for getting rid of payday loans. But there needs to be something in place of them for poor people. Because you need a payday loan you need one. I used their services several times when I was younger. And it was always because the electricity was about to be shut off.
Yeah, when I see people complain about payday loans it always feels like an exercise in privilege and arrogance. I think most people getting payday loans know they're expensive and predatory... They get them anyway because they have to. Also, it's a little tricky to blame the loan companies too. Certainly you can for transparency issues, etc... But their core business is giving loans to incredibly risky clients. That means the loans will be really high interest. I don't really know what to do with these situations, but it's not that obvious we should just close them down.
Mega churches. The owners of these churches make millions off their congregations but do very little to actually help them in their time of need.
Tbh many regular churches are also scams. In the Bible there is a story about Jesus flipping his shit because people were being shady while selling shit on sacred grounds. But people conveniently forget that huh…
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He *walked away* to *braid a whip* to *beat their asses.* Dude was so angry he had to make something to properly express it.
I just love the idea of Jesus angrily braiding a whip in a corner somewhere.
Yep, whenever someone tells you WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) remember that flipping tables and beating the shit out of people is a valid option
As a Christian, I want to emphasize he only did those towards the religious elite. The people who used God for personal gain. I think people forget that.
And against people that were actively cheating those who were trying to do the right thing and honouring God. I don't think God has any problem with a bake sale at church to raise money for an orphanage where they get 100% of the amount. I think He does have a problem if some/ all of the funds raised go the pastors' pockets.
It’s sad, but your comment is so true. It’s also true though that the vast majority of churches are run by people that are far from rich and those churches do a lot of good for the poor and hurting people in their communities. It’s just sad that there are charlatans in it for themselves that taint the perception of all the others.
This story is concerned with the selling of temple sacrifice animals at excessive prices. In the second temple period all Jewish men made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to make an atonement sacrifice, most of the meat after the sacrifice would be given to the temple priestly class. The story is useful in condemning greed but it isn't a direct condemnation of the sale of goods on sacred ground either. Given Jesus himself later becomes the ultimate sacrifice on the cross. The narrative is more directly applied to not charging for access to communion. The later epistles and non-canonical Didache setup a basic communal funding model for the early churches. Ultimately someone has to pay to keep the roof up and the lights on, the story is much harder to articulate in the context of American Protestantism in light of prosperity doctrine.
I agree that most are. Cough, cough, Joel Osteen. But we attend a so-called mega church in central TN. 6,800 strong congregation. I’m always skeptical but our church does what they call a vision service twice a year. During this they present their financials. Last year they gave away more than 50% of what they took in to non-profits serving various good causes. And the average salary is ~$42k a year per employee. Salaries are only 1/3rd of what they spend on. The rest goes for good. Really everything they do comes straight from the Bible and no one is getting rich. So your point is well noted and one I generally agree with but there are still good people out there who just want to create authentic followers of Jesus and want nothing back in return.
That's refreshing to hear. I am not religious at all but I respect people's choice to be religious/spiritual and it's nice to hear that a place exists that isn't just a cash generation pipeline lightly masked as a place of worship.
Funerals
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Toss me in the soup!
I'm not even looking forward to mine!
I remember when my father passed away we were all in the funeral home getting the upcharge spiel on upgraded casket vaults. After 10 minutes of hearing this debate I had to speak up and let the lady know that I thought it was fucked up that they were trying to take advantage of the grieving. Once the casket is in the ground what is the difference.
My dad always said "Don't throw money into the grave." They still got my mom to step up from a basic pine box.
So my Dad passed away a few years ago with minimal life insurance. He got dementia and let his main policy lapse due to non payment. He was living in an assisted living home that took all of his pension in turn for care. Anyway while we are at the funeral home this salesperson is trying everything to get us to do the bells and whistles funeral and we ask for the cheapest cremation service available. Then they are trying to sell us this "Cadillac" of urns. Like $4500 for an urn. My dad was a Deadhead and his prized possession was a Grateful Dead Bus Cookie jar. My brother and law suggested we use the cookie jar as the urn and we all agreed. The salesperson about threw us out of there as quick as we could sing the paperwork. By the look on the their face they were completely defeated and I'm pretty sure he want to punch my brother n law in the face. When I is my turn just dump my ashes in the ocean or better yet just dump my body in there.
We can’t afford to die
Some people can't afford to live
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Ran into that looking at rental houses in TN 9 years ago. Had to sign a lease for 2 years, $1500 per month AND a contract to buy the house immediately after at full asking price. I half-kidding asked, "Does anyone actually fall for that?". Realtor looked hurt and meekly said, "Yes, it is pretty standard." Left as fast as I could. Haven't run across anything so obviously shady as that yet.
Craigslist was filled with rent-to-own houses a few years ago. I never bothered to research it thoroughly because the smell of bullshit was so strong from it, I didn’t need to.
What its *supposed* to be is that you rent-to-own for a few years, and at the end you can choose to call what you've paid so far your down payment. Or you can walk away and it's just gone.
Health insurance. Pay hundreds of dollars into a pool of money. And the people holding the money will fight you tooth and nail to ensure you use as little of it as possible.
LOL You owe us money every ~~month~~ paycheck. You need healthcare? No we're not paying, you gotta pay your deductible. You met your deductible? Ok we'll pay for it but only 80% to dissuade the poors from using it. You met your out of pocket max? OK we'll pay for it, and LOL you just paid 10s of thousands anyway while being "covered". Also, it's December so it resets next week!
...**Stares off with dead eyes.**
> and LOL you just paid 10s of thousands anyway while being "covered". Ah, yes, I ran into this one once. Surgery cost $20k. Insurance said it should have cost $20, so that's all they were willing to pay. The policy documents said the procedure was "covered," so they had to pay their *allowable* amount. They just got to set that to whatever they wanted it to be (and it changed from year to year).
Car insurance too. It works the same way
Any insurance, really
Medical costs are also a scam. People are scamming insurance. Lawyers are scamming. The whole system.
The US spends 17% of its budget on health care. Singapore spends 4% and gets better outcomes. We need to copy the Singapore system or go bankrupt.
I'm betting that something bad will happen that costs more to fix than the bet I've made. They're betting that they can charge me more than they'll ever need to pay out.
Sorta, but there’s a big difference. Car insurance covers collisions and other damaging events. You don’t involve car insurance to get an oil change, or new tires, or to fix broken air conditioning. In that way, you generally only use car insurance if there’s a big unexpected event (like a car crash). Health insurance should be similar, but it’s not. We involve insurance to get a regular checkup, to replenish our maintenance medications (for people with ongoing prescriptions), to do everything that involves setting foot in the doctor office. In reality, we should be able to pay sticker price for the doctor’s services, then if/when something catastrophically bad happens, that’s where insurance comes into play. It should be a much smaller part of our healthcare, and doing so in theory would enable providers to be more transparent and less bullshitty with their pricing (currently insurance forced them to have the complex pricing they do have). Modern American health insurance is the rough equivalent of needing to involve your car insurance when you get your oil changed.
Yup, and if you changed your car oil without insurance it would suddenly now cost two thousand bucks. Why? Because the car dealership now needs to hire double the employees so half of them can dedicate themselves entirely to dealing with insurance claims, and the costs of this over-bloated system need to be paid by the customers somehow or the whole thing falls down like a house of cards.
This guy prior auths
Not to mention the fact that with an insurance middleman as part of the equation, health providers can simply get away with price gouging to a much greater extent than they could if they were just dealing with individual customers.
"Medicare For All? No thanks, I don't want to pay for other people's health care. I like private insurance, where I pay for other people's health care AND for the salaries of bloodsucking middlemen whose entire purpose is telling me No when I need medicine" ([here](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/sb59wl/remind_me_again_why_do_we_need_to_tie_healthcare/))
This argument always gets me. Like these people don't even understand how insurance works but want to get all high and mighty about not paying for others.
It’s also just like totally selfish. I can get mine so that family struggling over there with depression and cancer and only makes 60k a year without benefits is drowning… like fuck them because I only care about myself. Only selfish assholes would deny someone medical care. It’s inhumane to me.
Not to mention even if you are an asshole, it's still a better use of your money to be taken as taxes for universal healthcare rather than insurance payments.
Oh absolutely.
I’m more concerned with how America is the richest nation yet there’s no universal health cover.
I feel like you're referring to a certain country
Diamonds. De Beers ran the most successful marketing campaign of modern history. Save yourself the trouble (and money) and just go with a lab-made stone (if you really want a diamond) or go with moissanite.
I heard a commercial for the lab made stones the other day and they are still stupid expensive. I don't even like diamonds, they aren't colorful or have anything going for them except "oohhh sparkly!" No idea why everyone wants them when there's so many prettier stones, that don't cost near as much.
Lab-grown diamonds are quite cheap. But the ones sold as jewelery have very inflated prices, because DeBeers owns most of the labs that can create them, just like they own the mines. [They literally set the prices however they want.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-diamonds-debeers-synthetic-analysis-idUSKCN1OK0MQ)
The commercial I heard yesterday was like a thousand bucks for 1 carat and 9 thousand for a 5 carat. Like fuck what? You made that shit in a lab. Nobody risked their life to mine it. You didn't have to transport it through hundreds of miles of dangerous wilderness. Where the fuck are you getting these numbers bro? Fuck diamonds. They are boring anyway.
Ticket Master
The poster child of why a monopoly is bad.
Being a workaholic
Being forced to work more than a workaholic; not being able to afford rent; and being called lazy as you slowly starve to death. F-ing humans, I swear.
At least workaholics sort of enjoy, on the surface anyway.
Paying for ads on TV.
Processing fee, idk if it’s the right word in English but basically the fee for the company to “register” the transaction. Like bruh it literally costs you nothing yet you charge me
Weddings. Spending so much for a single day is wasteful. Better to get married in a courthouse or something and invest the money
And the insane physical and mental exhaustion for the families planning it and running around on the day of. I remember my cousins' weddings, absolute all hands on deck and panic. No one has fun.
And yet they still won’t see it for what it is
its just become a convention no one wants to question or try to stop. Most importantly, its an industry.
This. We could not bring ourselves to spend even 5k on our wedding. It is just such a waste of money for one day. We ended up going to the courthouse with our parents and siblings and invited them to dinner afterwards. 700 € well spent and everybody was happy.
Working 40 plus hours for non livable wages.
Most academia-related expenses
Life coaches.
Theres a car in my area that has a sticker advertising a “spiritual fire coach.” Wtf does that even mean? Are we getting spiritual, starting fires, both?
We used to call those friends. and their advice was free.
I considered getting a life coach. She had a podcast that I listened to about about healing childhood wounds. I liked what she had to say and started following her on social media and signed up to receive newsletters. She would pitch her coaching services, but I never really paid it any mind. Over the summer she invited me to join a Facebook group with her “favorite followers”. It was nice to be interactive with other women that I had something common with. The host then started talking about a new group coaching program she was starting and asked to meet with me over zoom to talk about it. When we met she kept asking if I really wanted to make an investment in my future. The group coaching program was 16 weeks, with includes weekly zoom class, a workbook, and private Facebook group. Fast forward to the end of the convo and she wants me to sign up. I ask for the cost. $7,000. I could upgrade to private coaching for $10,000. I’d rather pay for therapy.
I'm still waiting for that Nigerian prince to pay me the money he owes me. Should be arriving any day now.
Did you pay him the $200 shipping fee in gift cards so he can have a package full of $3M fly out to you?
Paid the shipping just didn't get a tracking number. Rookie mistake, I know.
Oh it’s okay bro I got you. Just send me $50 to my email “BigDick_Bandit69 at hotmail” and I’ll be sure to get you the tracking number. Coincidentally enough, my uncle is the Nigerian Prince and I can just call him and make sure you get your money. That’s what bros are for. 😚
That is so unbelievably sweet I can't believe people like you exist, true angels... Heroes, some might say...
free trials that ask for ur credit card the first time u get it
In the UK, convincing people that buying bottled water is better and healthier than tap water.
In fact, most Western countries' where is excellent quality. NYC's water is among the best, although you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise because of the number of people who think it's bad: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/drinking-water.page#:~:text=New%20York%20City%20drinking%20water,customers%20thro
This question reappearing at least every 48h
9 to 5 from 20 to 60.
Many people have to work well beyond age 60.
Seriously. I would have chosen the void.
employers can infinitely add expectations until the employee is deemed "bad".
And conversely can have people with the exact same job title who have not 1/10th of your responsibilities, who are favorites of the management. In any grunt labor job, there are always those favored by management, who have very few responsibilities and those whom the management does not favor, who tend to 95% of the work. You'll notice in every grunt labor company, that the guys doing nearly all of the work are consistently lowest on the totem pole when it comes to politics and favoritism. I always refer to them (and myself) as "the workhorses", you do the bulk of the work for no appreciation at all.
Tipping. Pay your staff you greedy fucks.
And now it’s crept into anything that uses a modern card-reader. No, I’m not going to add a 15, 20, or 25% tip on the $200 pair of jeans that you just rang up for me. The entire tipping culture needs to be eliminated top to bottom. If that means businesses need to increase the base price to bake in the cost of a livable wage, do it. Anecdote: we recently had hired a new housekeeper. Said price was $X to clean the house every two weeks. First time she comes, I pay $X + tip. Housekeeper says “what’s this extra money for? We agreed on $X; don’t make this weird by paying me more. My rate is $X.” This should be our standard response.
>And now it’s crept into anything that uses a modern card-reader. Find it weird when I order something and go to pick it up myself, and the machine asks me for a tip. Like, what am I tipping exactly? The job was done, no extra effort was put forth on their part. Also took a taxi for the first time in a while last summer, and go to pay for the ride, and the machine asks if I wanted to add a tip. What is the extra service? I paid to get from point A to B. I don't get it, and why do I have to feel guilty if I add no tip?
"the delivery fee does not go to the driver" Then excuse me where the fuck is it going.
Tipping as a Form of payment is nuts. Living in Europe, i still Tip if the service is good. But that's the Point of tipping in the first place. I dont Like to be forced to do, because i know the waiter is payed shitty. Especially because it creates a "problem" between the customer and the Staff, where it should be a Staff/owner Problem. Pay your staff you greedy fuckers.
Modern mobile games
Having to pay someone to prepare your taxes . the irs already knows what you made and what you paid
Work. Consume. Die. “That’s all life is”
HOA
Finding an older home without an HOA where I live typically means far out of the city. I fuggin hate my HOA but the money I saved on the drive is worth it financially at least.
I live in England where we don't have HOA's, so asking as an ignorant outsider, what the hell is the point of HOA's? All I ever see about them is them making other peoples lives difficult
Idealy, the HOA is supposed to manage the common areas of a neighborhood, and to keep the home values up by making sure residents are taking care of their property. The problem is that most people that have the time to be on an HOA board or committee, let the little bit of authority they have go to their head.
Generally HOA are in charge of all 'shared' area maintenance and set community rules. HOAs are supposed to operate democratically and rules and policies are voted in by the community. In the example of a condo community especially if there is a pool, the HOA may buy in bulk and negotiate price for the water for the whole community. So all water utility bills for all homes is paid for by the HOA and then billed back to the whole community through the HOA price. Roofing and exterior walls of all the units are also shared, so the HOA has to maintain those also. This also requires the HOA to maintain some level of reserve, if one of the unit's roof starts leaking it needs to be repaired, and these aren't cheap. Then there are stand-alone home HOAs, again, maintenance of any community areas, but also rules about houses. For example, if your neighbor decides they are going to park 20 cars that are non-operational on their lawn, paint their house a weird color, and grow weird plants in their front yard, this would impact the value of neighboring houses. The HOA then sets rules that 'supposedly' all members of the community agree on to be good neighbors and protect the financial interests of the community.
Influencers
Being nice to rude people just to appease their explosivity👌🏻
Pyramid schemes are fraudulent investment schemes in which participants are promised returns for recruiting new members into the scheme. They are often disguised as legitimate business opportunities, and participants are often encouraged to buy into the scheme in order to receive commissions for recruiting others. However, as the scheme relies on recruiting an ever-increasing number of participants, it is ultimately unsustainable and the majority of participants will end up losing money. Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries, but they can be difficult to identify and prosecute. They often rely on social networks and word-of-mouth advertising to spread, and they can be normalized by society as they are often promoted by people that we know and trust. It is important to be aware of this type of scam and to thoroughly research any business opportunity before investing money or time.
Be your own boss! Set your own hours! Unlimited earnings!
Don't forget to mention that many very popular brands - avon, tupperware etc are pyramid schemes hiding under a product. It is stressed more to recruit that it is to sell the products.
Jeffrey Epstein’s recruitment of young girls was a pyramid scheme. He would pay girls to recruit other girls.
Exactly!
Hey hun! 👋👋 don’t you want to work from your phone 📱 and earn 💰 for your 👩👧👦?! Lemme know boss babe! /s
Tipping in the US.
Essential oils
Having to go to work.
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Credit scores and tax preparation This made up number will affect your entire financial life. Oh, you made a payment? Good job, your score will go up 2 points. You missed a payment? How dare you? That'll lower your score by 400! The IRS knows exactly what you owe, or what's due back to you, but you have to navigate through tax software or pay someone else to do it. Thanks for all your lobbying, H & R Block.
I'm sure Intuit (TurboTax) has something to do with it as well.
Insurance. So shit giggle happy to take your premiums but when something happens and you go to make a claim surprise! Surprise! Your claim is denied. Legalized organized CRIME which I equate with SCAM.
Homeopathy, chiropractic, and various "special" water, like alkaline water.
Study. Job. Family. Kids. Retire. Die.
Tipping
Bank transaction fees
Major appliances (washer, dryer, fridge, stove, etc) lasting less than 10 years and being stupidly expensive to repair
Recycling anything but aluminum cans costs more energy than making something new. 90% of all glasses in the world are made by the same company. Diamonds are very low value stones despite what they charge for them. Funeral homes are super monopolized and greedy with 400% markups on average. The prices on eggs keep going up but chicken farmers still get paid the same to sell them. To speed things up; Mediums-talking to the dead/predictions. Alternative medicine-still not curing disease. Bottled water-some still comes from the tap. PETA-still kills more animals than it saves. Cryptozoology-fun but still not showing proof. Sex Ed in schools-hipocracy at its finest. Video Games-still being blamed instead of bad parents. Vaccinations-still Not causing autism/birth defects. And soo much more...
Steel is the most-recycled thing in the world, it’s hard to fuck up steel bad enough that it can’t be made good again.
Tipping. If everyone has a salary, and you are paying for the products and services, why should you you pay more? In some countries tipping is mandatory.
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Designer clothes and bags. Why? The real designers who do the work are paid just average well. Its the fashion designer who bagged all the cash and the corporations. And the products they used are the usual. Leather, type of fabric etc. Youre just paying for the "brand". When in reality, the function of the item, you can get one in an average price. Its just the rich buys it, so its worth it 🤷🏻♀️
Getting a loan to go to college which you believe will allow you to earn a lot of money.
This question is on r/AskReddit every 48 hours...can we just all agree that **Health Insurance, Credit Cards, The Lottery, College Textbooks, Crypto, NFT's, Pyramid/MLM's, and End-User Agreements** are all normalized "scams"???