Gym membership.
Rental housing scam. A place came up for rent near me with more rooms and I deseprately needed it for my kids but it turned out to be a reupload of a house that used to be for sale and the guy fooled me with the “application fee” thing along with trying to get me to pay him more money to allow pets but I learned by then it was fake and called him out on it and he ghosted me
Yeah this is why I’ve stopped using Craig’s List. Most of the listings, last time I was looking, were scams. I lost a few ”application fees” and was always ghosted. I’ll never again respond to an ad that has any fees whatsoever until I can see with my own eyes that the property is real. Hunting for a place to live sucks so much.
Buying a car from a dealership.
New car it used car?
I’ve only bought two new cars but don’t consider the depreciation a scam, it’s something everyone knows is going to happen going into it so although I feel I made a bad choice doing it, I don’t blame the dealership. The high-pressure bullshit is also to be expected, sadly.
Used, OTOH, is an absolute scam. On trade-in, they make number adjustments to get the used car basically free and on the sale-end, they dress it up, tell the buyer that it’s been through a 5,000 point quality check and sell you whatever got bought at auction or traded in. They get even scammier if you finance through them. I’ve seen 16% interest rate for a buyer with an 800+ credit score.
The whole thing is predatory in nature.
True. I wish someone had warned me off of used car dealerships.
To add to all your points, maybe one car in 100 is a lemon (has something seriously broken), but 100% of lemons eventually get traded to car dealers for trade-in value.
I feel like the odds of getting a lemon new or private sale aren’t bad. But the odds of getting a lemon on a used car lot skyrocket.
What about scams you’re born into, but stayed in waaaay to long? If so Mormonism and the Republican party.
Good for you for getting out of that!
Thanks
This guy told me he’d give me great items. I’d just have to follow him into the woods so he could give them to me.
I didn’t make it out of there alive.
I understood that (RuneScape) reference.
I saw this clip on eBaumsworld when I was like 12 and was overjoyed that we had finally done it and all the climate change stuff I learned about wasn’t going to be a problem.
Haha I never knew there was a real person attached to that myth. I was hearing about that as a big conspiracy theory from teachers when I was kid all the way here in Australia.
That’s interesting he did produce an actual machine that could move though. I was reading the Wikipedia about him and they don’t go in to that exactly. They point out that his design and vehicle were just using conventional electrolysis and thus couldn’t work as claimed, but it still moved. What was the catch them? It uses a battery to do the electrolysis, does it just use up all your battery or something? Making it a really weird electric car?
Stanley Meyer’s invention was later termed fraudulent after two investors to whom he had sold dealerships offering the right to do business in Water Fuel Cell technology sued him in 1996. His car was due to be examined by the expert witness Michael Laughton, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Queen Mary University of London and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. However, Meyer made what Professor Laughton considered a “lame excuse” on the days of examination and did not allow the test to proceed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell
Probably the dune buggy never ran on the system he claimed. He was a fraudster, so probably it was just running on gas like normal while he was claiming it was all water.
Ah I see my confusion now
His “water fuel cell” was later examined by three expert witnesses in court who found that there “was nothing revolutionary about the cell at all and that it was simply using conventional electrolysis.”
I initially took it to mean they’d examined the fuel cell in the vehicle but the way that’s written it’s not necessarily the case so it was probably a separate demo prototype to the buggy.
The scammers didn’t get what they wanted, but they did get into my account. I got a call claiming to be from T-Mobile telling me that someone was trying to order an iPhone online to a second address and it was flagged as potentially fraudulent. They had all my basic account information, so it seemed like they were just asking me for verification, but really they were fishing for the additional details to confirm the order, not cancel it. It was when they tried to change my password and T-Mobile texted me the security code that I realized what was happening. They must have gotten my username and password from a data leak. They hung up when I started asking for proof that they were really T-Mobile. I’m glad that they didn’t get all the way, but I’m still embarrassed that they got as far as they did.
"I can’t hear you. What’s your extension again?
It’s seriously the second question I ask on a cold call. If they really are my bank / etc , then they’ll give me that super fast. If they try to give me a number, I assure them I have it in the phone book.
So many scams derail when you’re calling back an internal extension from the well-known switch-board number.
As someone who works in a call center, not all places have numerical extensions or ways to contact an individual. Some places you just get whoever is available next. Still, not a bad idea to ask for it, and if they give you a number, write it down and check it against publicly available info.
A couple years ago I spent a few hundred on various audio plugins for music production. I also spent a few hundred on a DAW with all plugins. I was hooked by the flashy marketing and celebrity shilling, especially when I was stuck producing on the Corporate OS.
There’s plenty of FOSS plugins (including ones built into your DAW) that are at least as good as what Izotope and Native Instruments are selling for 100’s of dollars. Furthermore, they don’t have invasive DRM and don’t try to sell you features you don’t need.
If you are a Linux music producer (or are interested in becoming one), I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaDoRa5n8nQ
Socialdemocracy :(
What did social democracy do to you?
To me? it is lefternmost political movement allowed to exist in Polish public space, so for years it pretended to not be what it really is, the left wing of fascism, and i believed that.
For example when after completely disastrous “reforms” by AWS and UW (direct predecessors of current PiS and PO parties) in 1999, succdems won a most landsliding victory in post 1989 history of Poland, they realised policies that had nearly nothing in common with what they promised, but the usual neoliberal austerity. That did pissed off nearly all of their voters and in next few elections their results have been abysmal. Recently they got some more support and get a partial generational exchange, but they only went even further right, openly making coalition with right-liberals of PO.
Social democracy as a concept would work if those doing it would have a spine and not be traitors of the working class.
But whatever is sold as social democracy these days (or actually the last 20 years at least), I absolutely agree is a scam.
At least in Germany, there is no left party that is both realistic (not trying to be pacifist when facing bullies, or promising unrealistic things making sure they will never get more than 15%) and also truly acting in the interest of the people, sadly. SPD is the German version of what you said, slightly softer neolibs in sheep’s clothing.
Social democracy as a concept would work if those doing it would have a spine and not be traitors of the working class.
No, it wouldn’t, because the thing they want is still capitalism, and everything they do (riding on actual workers struggle) will be inevitably dismantled as soon as capitalists gain the upper hand again, as we observe time and time again. Socialdemocracy itself is a class treason and was born from class treason.
What is it that you call capitalism is the question.
Market capitalism is a practical approach to solving a intractable optimization problem - allocating finite resources in the best way to get optimal results (whatever it may be, such as maximizing production of certain goods while minimizing waste and loss and minimizing “unfairness”, however it is defined).
The alternative to capitalism is planned economy. It could not work 100 years ago because technology was not even close to the advancement level to be able to optimize a whole economy, i.e. solve a highly complex set of equations with billions of variables.
Maybe today it would work out, technology-wise, but it is not clear in detail how a society completely without markets could work. Certainly not everything is feasible to be decided by some election or by decision of some committee. It would lead to what was seen in the soviet union - bad planning based on incomplete and unreliable data.
Markets solve this problem and the whole thing works.
The question is who controls the markets.
In capitalism = neoliberal dystopia actually the capitalists themselves all instead of competing try to transcend beyond competition by either becoming a monopolist or becoming the market itself (“platform”). The fascist US oligarchs are working towards this.
On the other hand, China has state capitalism - the government has a strong upper hand, but use capitalistic market mechanics (with the needed biases to ensure the market is working towards the goals of the state, not some wealthy class).
Now you can explain to me how I maybe use the terms all incorrectly, but what I’m saying is: what China is doing is working, what the Soviets tried to do did not.
If China was not authoritarian, but had elections, it would be democratic and capitalistic, so what wie also call social democracy. In contrast to socialism, which is supposed to be democratic and anti-capitalistic, i.e. planned economy, which never worked and probably still would not.
The problem is not capitalism as a mechanism of economy, it’s the distribution of power. Corruption and decay and abuse is possible in every coceivable economic system. The question is, who is the system working for.
Ideally the state works for the people, in the sense of a collective of respected individuals, and the economy works for the state. If that is given, details such as the exact structure and processes for decision making and resource allocation are irrelevant, as long as they are sustainable and ethical.
Honestly? Hot Slavic lady convinced me to buy some overpriced salt scrub at the mall. To be fair, it’s pretty nice…
Joining the workforce
Crypto
a video to help people understand the problem with crypto: https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g
I know the video says it’s about NFTs, but it touches on Bitcoin and blockchain first as background.
Without even clicking the link, I assume that’s Line Goes Up by Folding Ideas lol. Killer video, and tbh I could listen to Dan Olson read the dictionary and I’d be entertained.
You got it! It’s really an excellent video essay.
I’m just now starting to work through his other works, but everything he does is magic. Honestly the topic of “I Don’t Know James Rolfe” was basically as dull as the dictionary to me, but I enjoyed it anyway.
Currently working my way through his “Mantracks” video, which is so far about fossils and creationism.
I haven’t watched either of those yet, but I need to! “The Future is a Dead Mall” and “This is Financial Advice” are my faves along with “Line Goes Up”
How is crypto a scam? Can you be more specific?
MD5 betrayed us 😭
Capitalism.
Also, if I work hard I will be rewarded.
I get a reward every two weeks.
I tailor my work commitment based on it.
Life
When houses first came out in Runescape, someone said Dragon Longswords look big om tables and I put mine on the table. The dude kicked me out of his house and stole my dragon longsword.
