Asklemmy

Chiropractors.

Private health insurance is the biggest fucking scam ever. The private insurance companies benefit by getting the aggregate healthiest population into their plans (working adults). The most likely to be expensive people, i.e. old people (on medicare) or poor people (on medicaid, or not even on an insurance plan) are on government, tax payer insurance plans. There is literally no reason except for corporate profiteering that Medicare should not be expanded to cover all people.

Also all those conversations, especially in the 2020 election period, were totally bullshit. You say something like M4A will cost 44 trillion dollars or whatever, which sounds like an insane amount of money. What is often left out of the discussion is that estimated cost was 1) over 10 years and 2) has to be weighed against the current costs we already pay for insurance. So the deal was very simple: the overall costs would go down because the overall spending would be less, and at the same time millions of people without coverage would be covered, and at the same time you don't have to contemplate stupid bullshit like in network, out of network providers. Or ever again talk to your insurance about why something is or isn't covered. Boils my blood when I think too much about this.

Not even gonna weigh in on things like how medicare can't negotiate prescription drug prices (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/medicare-drug-price-negotiations-lawsuits.html), or how dental, vision, and hearing are treated separately from general healthcare, or how med school is prohibitively expensive, or how the residents after med school are overworked because the guy who institutionalize that practice was literally a cokehead. Those are all just bonus topics. The point is we are getting fleeced.

Antivirus software

The stock market and publicly traded companies. The idea that a business that is making consistent profits isn't good unless those profits are increased each quarter is asinine. This system of shortsighted hyper focus on short term quarterly growth for the sake of growth is the cause of so much pain and suffering in the world. Even companies with amazing financials will work to push workers compensation down, cut corners and exploit loopholes to make sure their profits are always growing. Consistent large profits aren't good enough.

Subscriptions.

People pay every month but most don't use the sub to it's full value, and forget how expensive it becomes over the years. And you don't own anything on a subscription, you just borrow it.

Also trial periods that prolong automatically into subscriptions.

Capitalism and the 5 day 9 to 5 work week

In the US - - taxes.

Things used to be a lot simpler & cheaper in the US, but then we passed the War Revenue Act in 1917 which drastically increased the budget & helped to pay for the war. They probably saw all that money rolling in & got greedy. What was initially designed as a war-time fund raising effort is now just standard taxation, it has gotten worse, and the people being born & working & dying nowadays don't know anything different.

The government wastes so much money. Whose money? They don't have any money! They're wasting our money, that they extract from us via taxation.

We are financially raped into the ground, not allowed to enjoy the fruits of our own labor.

First Past the Post voting at elections.

Massage school. They say they’re teaching you a trade and will help with job placement but there is a glut of graduates and not enough jobs for them. Yet the school keeps signing up new students because that’s how they make money.

I'll try to list things that aren't in the typical internet echo chamber. Bring on the controversy. These are just my opinions.

50% of the shelf space at the grocery store is just different forms of corn syrup, sometimes with some trans fat mixed in, generationally twisting our idea of what food is in a race to the cheapest, most addictive product.

The only way it's profitable for someone to knock on your door to sell ANYTHING is if they are obscenely inflating the price (think 100-600% markup)

Most supplements, especially expensive ones with TV ads

Dr Scholl's and the goodfeet store

Genuine leather is just about the opposite of what you'd think

Bamboo fabric which is pretty much just a different way to say rayon but is pitched as a revolutionary and environmentally friendly cloth

Most bladeless fans just hide fan blades in the base

Many cleaning products don't do better than diluted soap and water (even for sanitizing) especially the ones with TV ads

Financial planners who are actually financial product salespeople

Most single-purpose kitchen gadgets, especially as-seen-on-TV

The realtors racket: I just paid $30k for an internet posting and mediocre advice

Many personal hygiene products are just repackaging the same two or three active ingredients by the same one or two megacorporations

Essential oils (even ignoring mystical claims) big names charge an order of magnitude higher than they should

People who vote for conservatives

Religion

Then start somewhere. Require new construction to be built for humans first. Then bit by bit change.

The Netherlands did this back in 1960 and look at it now. They too had to start somewhere and they did

It requires investment in your infrastructure which well, in the US that's a joke.

ads

Religion. The all-time champion, no contest, just as George Carlin said:

https://youtu.be/2tp0UNcjzl8

My personal top 3:

• insurance
• subscriptions
• Google and similar data hungry companies (while not a financial scam but moreso a privacy scam, companies like Google and Meta profiteering on our personal data without our knowledge or awareness)

Democracy. /s