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
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 is used as a scam by many people. It is also used in other ways by other people.
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.
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
Oh my god, isn’t Christianity kinda a pyramid scheme?
Homeopathy, acupuncture, ozone therapy… all “alternative medicines” basically.
Once I made a joke online about paying for homeopathy by dipping a dollar in a jar of water and giving them the jar, and like five people I know unfollowed me lol
Did you hear the one about the homeopathic who tried to commit suicide?
He took a 10X dilution of cyanide.
I have a pinched nerve. I went to many doctors, done many tests, went to months of PT and was still in pain. I went to my acupuncturist and she is able to release the muscles around the pinch enough that my right arm doesn’t feel constantly numb. I a man of science. I don’t believe in he Chi traveling my body etc but the physical result of the acuponcture cannot be denied.
I feel the same about chiropractic - many people call bullshit, but I’ll be damned if they don’t help me. Like you, I don’t believe “your spine is where all your problems originate” like some chiropractics try to peddle, but the dude pushes on my back and it pops and it feels better.
The issue with chiropractors is that they treat the symptom and not the cause. If your back is misaligned, it’s because your muscles are pulling on it the wrong way, the chiro will pull it back in place but now your muscles are still pulling the wrong way and they may have pulled on the muscle to make it move and may have injured it, now your muscle says hell no you don’t and starts pulling even more. It’s instant relief with little lasting result. which is a great business model, instant result and returning customers because the problem isn’t treated. It’s like going to the mechanic because your motor is out of oil but not trying to fix the leak so you come back every week to refill the oil.
The problem is I’ve been to numerous doctors, working with a pain management specialist now, done physical therapy with a few different places for months, do physical therapy every morning, do yoga, exercise every day, and still no relief. So, like, sometimes it gets so bad I go to the chiropractor because at least they can give me some relief.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 6•1 year ago
Yeah and the idea that a doctor is going to treat the root cause is laughable.
You go to a doctor with pain caused by muscles pulling too much out of alignment and they (a) won’t recognize the fact about muscles at all, (b) will start talking surgery, and © will either give you a prescription for pain meds that you wouldn’t need if they simply fixed the pain, or make the whole thing about denying you the meds that you aren’t even asking for.
Doctors and root causes are like oil and water.
Have you tried visiting a register massage therapist? They can provide even better immediate relief without the pseudoscience. It pairs very well with physical therapy.
Not covered by my insurance, sadly. Chiropractic is, but not massage therapy. Plus, it’s very hard to find a pro massage therapist where I live. But thanks for the advice.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 4•1 year ago
This is why you skip the chiropractor and go to the rolfer instead. They’ll free up the fascial tension and release the forces pulling your system out of whack.
rolfer
I had to look this up. Honestly, I think that the connective tissue is my problem as the ortho surgeon(s) have said there’s nothing wrong with my bone structure, but also said they have no idea what’s wrong. Same same with the pain management specialist, he is just out to treat my symptoms (something an earlier poster said was an issue with chiropractors).
I honestly think there’s a lot of types of medicine out there that work for people, even the “pseudoscience” or “new-age” ones. No one should put their lives in the hands of medicine that has no scientific basis (ie if you have terminal cancer), but when it comes to chronic pain and other non-urgent but life-impacting ailments, as long as you do your homework as to who you’re seeing and the potential risks of treatment, it’s your choice. I get that people had bad experiences (proposing chiropractic can cure kidney failure), but if you’ve tried the “scientific” avenues (even going to multiple doctors), and no one can give you relief, you have to look elsewhere.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 2•1 year ago
Just FYI two options you have are myofascial release and rolfing. Rolfing is myofascial release plus an extra layer of theory about how to target and sequence the releases for maximum long-term effect.
Part of the theory is that these tension patterns tend to exist across the entire body at once, so a rolfer will work on multiple body parts that are all related to the same pattern. The idea is that releasing just one component will cause the tension to just re-form again quickly, because it’s also stored in the other places.
See an osteopath instead, in the UK at least, they are trained and regulated unlike chiropractors who regularly kill or permanently disable people with unsafe and inappropriate “manipulations”.
osteopath
Thanks, I’ll check it out (though I’m in the US). Also, I researched my chiropractor very thoroughly to ensure that he’s not likely to kill or disable me.
edit: turns out my insurance covers osteopathic manipulative medicine, and there’s 1 practitioner in my area (25 miles, probably more in the 50 mile range since I’m close to a big city). I will be making an appointment with her. Thanks kind stranger!
Awesome I hope they are helpful to you ☺️
The guy who told you to see an osteopath is a little misinformed and had things a bit upside down. Osteopathy is basically just chiropractic and has the same pseudoscientific origins.
However, for historical reasons osteopaths are very different either side of the Atlantic.
In the UK, osteopaths are basically just chiropractors with pretensions. In the US, doctors of Osteopathy are basically just doctors who went to a school that teaches osteopathic nonsense alongside real medicine, and they are licensed and operate as real physicians.
The few things they do that are effective are better delivered by an evidence-based provider (e.g., physiotherapist, massage therapist) without the pseudoscience.
Where’s the proof that massage therapy is more evidence-based than chiropractic? Honest question, a cursory search seems to show that it’s not. Also, interesting that my chiropractic and physical therapy visits are covered by my insurance, but massage therapy is not. Wish I could afford it.
I should probably specify that it does vary by jurisdiction when it comes to massage therapy. We have registered massage therapists here. Some massage therapists might employ some pseudoscience, but there’s solid evidence on the near-term therapeutic benefits of massage. For chiropractic, it’s pretty much entirely based on pseudoscience.
If you need to fix a problem, a physical therapist is the way to go. If you want temporary relief, a massage therapist can be helpful. There’s no good reason to see a chiropractor - and it’s unfortunate that insurance providers (including my own) don’t allow those funds to be spent on actual treatments.
Trust me bro.
I Trust you what we doin’?
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 1•1 year ago
It just depends how you define the chi.
One simple way might be “responsiveness”. Chi is present wherever your body is capable of receiving and transmitting information.
So nervous system…
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 3•1 year ago
The information being passed isn’t just nerve signals.
Basically, imagine a human body as being like a whip. If you take parts of the whip and make them stiff, then you can’t crack the whip. The whip in its pliable form is capable of conducting a wave down its length. The whip with a stiff section can’t conduct that wave.
In the whip, this wave is its “chi”. A stiff section of the whip blocks its chi from flowing. It has a chi blockage. If the whip’s chi channels are open, then it can be cracked.
The more of your body you can recruit into each movement, the more efficient that movement is. I believe that different parts of the body “communicate” (more precisely they respond to one another’s actions) via tension and pressure. When a section of your body is stiff, that tension and pressure is less readable across that barrier. Your neck muscles will have a harder time predicting and responding to – and ultimately optimizing – the actions of your quadriceps, for example, if your trunk doesn’t convey the mechanical “signals” well enough for your neck muscles to tell what’s going on at the other end of the body.
To understand what I mean about responding, think of the way your body wobbles when you stand on one leg. That’s tons of muscles in your body responding to information about your balance point. Your gut muscles might clench for a fraction of a second in response to your knee detecting that your leg has become less stable. Just an example. This action is coordinated, classically, by peripheral ganglia of the nervous system. But I believe it also relies on mechanical signals – waves of pressure and tension, because mechanical signals conduct faster than nerve signals. (nerve conduction is about 50 m/s, speed of sound in the human body is about 1500 m/s)
Think of a flock of birds. Those birds each carry about a swarming algorithm: they make real-time decisions based on the positions and velocities of the other birds. The result is a flock that moves like an intelligent amoeba in the sky. Now imagine if you created some visual barrier in the middle of the flock. Now the birds on one side of that barrier can’t effectively swarm with the birds on the other side. The flock has been split into two flocks. That visual information is the flock’s “chi”, and the blockage makes the flock less integrated.
Various body parts – muscles, organs, nerve ganglia, senses – are a swarm, and a chi blockage is something that splits that swarm into two or more smaller swarms.
I love how ruthless the wikipedia pages on these topics are, by the way. Do check them out if you get the chance.
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.
Ponzi schemes actually already have a clear definition, and what you’re describing isn’t actually a Ponzi scheme
I work in the insurance industry and I 100% agree with this.
The only time it’s wise to take out an insurance policy is when
A) It’s legally required (though this is sometimes due to lobbying by the insurance companies themselves)
B) When you absolutely will not be able to actually pay for a potential, but necessary expense by yourself (cancer treatments and stuff like that)
So Health Insurance, Auto Insurance (even if your car is cheap and self-insurable, the car you hit may not be), Home-owners insurance and stuff like that are necessary and generally a good financial bet, even if they are crooked af.
Any “micro-insurances” though? All total scams. Travel insurance, phone insurance (or “Extended Warranties”), Apple Care, all that kind of shit is 100% going to cost you more money to have than it’ll save you - unless you get really really lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it). You’d be better off spending what you’d pay on those insurance premiums on a hand of blackjack, I’ll bet the odds would be slightly more in your favor that way
Ugh my parents both insist on travel insurance. What if you get sick?? Idk, I’ll cancel the stuff I can and take the loss on what I can’t, for all the travel I’ve done the amount of times that has happened does not even remotely come close to how much I would have paid each time for travel insurance.
No mom, I’m not going to insure our 2 night stay at the Hilton in (mid sized city). I’m sure it’s going to be fine.
Last time I did was for a very very expensive flight across an ocean, just because it was like, 15 dollars on a 2000 flight for a few people. Fine, but everything else we took the risk. (And we did not use it)
Travel insurance is especially terrible, because a lot of the time it’s a pretty substantial premium, and actually filing a claim on it is a HUGE PITA.
I worked for a traveler insurance company before, and we denied most claims that came in. People would buy insurance on a $100 concert ticket, paying a $10 premium for the insurance, then when they’d go to file the claim, we’d require a doctors note, so now they also have to cough up a $20 copay and a whole afternoon just to get a note saying “yup, this person is sick”. And that’s just one of the many ways people got fleeced. During COVID, a lot of travel insurance claims got denied because illnesses resulting from pandemics aren’t covered in some policies as well
not surprised at all, I’ve found it’s just better to learn the cancellation policy of your items. Most hotels are full refund if they know >48 hours, and if less usually you’ll at least get points/credit back which for me I’ll absolutely use next time. Not worth the premium and the hassle to get cash back if I only find out less than 48 hours ahead of time
Thanks for your input, it helps not make me sound like a conspiracy theorist or anti-biz whack job
nothing conspiracy theorist about it at all. If anyone gives you sideways looks when you mention that insurance is a scam, just point out the very simple and undeniable fact that insurance companies are (very) profitable. That means, by definition that the average customer pays more in premiums than they get in payouts, and not just a bit more, a lot more, as that profit they make is after they pay their thousands of employees, award multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives, pay for their bigass skyscrapers, and all that other shit. If insurance was a “fair” deal, they’d be losing money from the administration costs
Always self-insure if you can afford it
Travel insurance is my big one. Why would you not get that? That seems like such a stupid risk not to get that.
Like if I get hit by a car in the middle of nowhere and they got to fly my home because the medical care there sucks. That’s going to cost an absolute fortune. Even having to send my dead body home will cost my family loads.
Why would you not get that? That seems like such a stupid risk not to get that.
Pretty much for all the reasons I said in my comment - you’ll almost certainly spend more on premiums for travel insurance than you’ll ever claim (this is true of all insurance) and the expenses incurred by self-insuring are generally manageable. Even in the two situations you refer to, we’re “only” talking about costs of a few thousand, and both of those are highly unlikely events that most people go their whole lives not dealing with. you’re much better off putting the money you’d spend on that travel insurance into an emergency fund to cover those kinds of unexpected expenses.
Insurance is only a good financial call if you risk completely bankrupting yourself by not having insurance, otherwise you’re just trading potential lump sum costs for small continuous costs, and the premiums will generally always wind up being more than what you’re saving (because if they weren’t, then the Insurance companies wouldn’t be making so much money).
That being said, it’s your money, if you’d rather accept that you’re paying more over a lifetime on travel insurance than you’re saving just to have the peace of mind that you won’t have to dip into savings for any incident that happens before or during the trip (assuming your incident doesn’t fall under one of the many carefully crafted exclusions that the insurance companies add to their policies to prevent paying out, which it probably will), then by all means, buy it - but if you’re buying it because you think it’s the financially savy move, and you have at least a few grand in your bank account for emergencies, then you’re kidding yourself.
you’ll almost certainly spend more on premiums for travel insurance than you’ll ever claim (this is true of all insurance)
Yes I agree but it’s about how you value risk. Losing $100 on travel insurance is better than losing $1,000,000 on hospital bills. The risk is different obviously but I’m not worried about $100 for peace of mind. I have even gone to war zones were my insurance was invalid but I had it in safer places because it’s all about risk.
Even in the two situations you refer to, we’re “only” talking about costs of a few thousand, and both of those are highly unlikely events
That’s just where your wrong and there is no point continuing this discussion. You don’t think people have to pay a fortune for medical cover when you have no insurance? Sure some countries might cover that and their might be mutual care agreements. But not having insurance in a place that won’t pay your hospital bills. That’s madness. Your argument works if you artificially make up costs sure.
I have personally know loads of people to get in accidents when travelling, I have myself. I have only heard one person being hospitalised and getting sent home but it happens and it isn’t cheap.
And you would be entirely correct - if insurance companies acted in good faith, the reality however, is that they don’t. Your comments are already littered with replies of people giving you examples that they’ve personally experienced of carefully constructed exclusions meaning that they can’t actually claim their policy.
I have no doubt that there are people out there for whom travel insurance has saved their ass, but I know from my own experience in the industry that the far more common experience for policy holders is to wind up with the insurance company finding a reason to not pay up, and now you’re left both with the cost of the emergency, as well as the cost of the policy.
Like I said, it’s your money, and I’m certainly not going to give a shit if you keep buying travel insurance policies, hell - people buying insurance policies pay my salary (though i don’t work in travel insurance any longer)
Oh my god, thank you so much! I’m glad I’m not the only one that sees it. They get money, they invest that money in pension funds, and then they try not to pay that back. The only things stopping it from being one legally are some slight changes such as the investment part and the part where they pay back to people in need, not people at the top.
Unfortunately, like all big business, they don’t care about anything but fleecing the little guy
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.
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.
Lotteries. They’re just tax for poor people.
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!
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.
Bitcoin
Nah not really
Tax-free charitable organizations
Luxury handbags that cost $60k. Not just a handbag, but to diversify your investment and launder money.
Capitalism, religion, monarchy, and religion.
I hope you don’t mind we disagreeing with the second and the last point :)
Because you are a priest/rabbi/imam?
Nope, because if I was I probably wouldn’t be here 😊
Priests only work one day a week. They have plenty of time to browse Lemmy.
No, it’s because a lot of Islamic scholars I know refuse to use social media.
calling capitalism a scam is moot, the other viable alternative, socialism is even worse.
also, no country on planet earth is pure-capitalism, not even in US. Northern European countries have proven that market economy with the right taxation policies can effectively distribute income. I wished more wokeist knew about this or at least bothered to do a bit of research.
You’re mixing socialism and communism. Going from here, you see more than two options what make it a non-binary issue.
Communism itself has multiple variations. What we saw until today with fever exceptions wasn’t communism either. It was dictatorship using communism. At the beginning, they may believe in the ideology but once in power, they took another path.
I live in Norway. The system is fucked. The economy is full of monopolies and the solution is always to subsidise things that become unaffordable instead of putting a price cap on them. Private companies are allowed to charge whatever they want because they know that the government has their back.
The issue here is the lack of regulation. Regulations work. What doesn’t work and is a scam is “the free market will autoregulate”.
You forget neoliberalism.
Surprising that no one noticed the double prime symbol for inches instead of the single prime symbol for feet. The scammer was like “well, I didn’t lie, you weren’t careful enough and it’s not my problem!”.
Wouldn’t they have noticed that there were only 3 stories of windows on the blueprint?
Neither are scams but the UK is fond of permanently doing temporary things. Income tax in the UK was first imposed as a temporary measure to fund the Napoleonic Wars but after Waterloo it was never repealed since it brought in so much. Same sort of deal for the 70 mph national speed limit, it was a temporary measure in the 1960s apparently in response to someone caning it down the motorway in an AC Cobra and as we know, there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
Same thing with the removal of the gold standard. Nixon was supposed to do it temporarily but since it gave ths US the license to print money backed by nothing, why would they bring it back (they could never pay off the gold needed, there’s just not enough of it mined in total). And because the US dollar is the world reserve currentcy (meaning every currency can be exchanged for a dollar) and the moment you add in the fact that banks can create money out of thin air by being able to, for example take a deposit of 100, give a loan to someone else for 80, and then there’s technically 180 in circulation, however if the depositor decides to take the money back while there are no more money in the bank, the bank needs to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England or whatever the national bank is in this example land.
Pretty sure that’s what happens nearly everywhere not specifically the UK.
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.
Theranos ‘company’.
Oh yes, I’ve heard about this. Thanks for reminding.
Adding more details for others:
Founded in 2003 by then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos raised more than US$700 million from venture capitalists and private investors, resulting in a $10 billion valuation at its peak in 2013 and 2014. The company claimed that it had devised blood tests that required very small amounts of blood and that could be performed rapidly and accurately, all using compact automated devices which the company had developed. These claims were later proven to be false.